In which Sofia saves the night, dreams are prophetic, and the woods are unfriendly.
Cedric doesn't know how long it takes him to get back on his feet.
Maybe it has been five minutes, maybe he has spent several lifetimes there, half of him on the stone path and half in the grass. Maybe the seasons have changed, the world has stopped spinning, the stacks out at sea have crumbled, and it was all a horrible dream. The rain falls cold in his face, hammering his stricken body, and as a puddle forms around him, he wonders if it would be enough to drown in.
He lies unmoving, numbed to the marrow, until his limbs regain sensitivity and start to lose it again from cold instead of shock. When he attempts to turn and lift himself up, the shot of pain in his back is so sharp and sudden he breaks into coughs, curving on his side, the icy wet cobblestones biting into his cheek and fingers.
I can't stay here all night, he thinks distantly, through the gluey fog in his mind.
His hands are ghostly blue through the streaks of dirt on them, as he presses down into the drenched grass and slowly, as if he were stacking his bones upright one at a time, he forces himself to his feet. Then, injured arm held tight against his body, knees shaking so hard each step staggers, he starts walking.
So cold he isn't quite shivering anymore, he wanders for a long time, trying to stay sheltered under the drooping eaves. But the rain is coming down at an angle, soaking him from head to toe, washing the mud off him in waves of icy shards. He has the vague impression that his whole middle fell out, leaving a hole where he used to have bones and organs. He keeps walking.
He circles the castle, leaving wet prints on every doorknob until he finds one that turns, and he can finally make his way back inside. Only the sound of his own dragging steps accompanies him through the echoing corridors and slowly, as the contrast of temperature puts a painful itch in his chilled limbs, thoughts start coming back to him. They seem muffled, as if he were trying to hear someone's voice while underwater; everything is rarefied, a dream through rain-streaked windows. A deserted castle, with no one in sight.
Were you expecting to be sent on your way in the middle of the night? Cedric scoffs at himself. Wormwood's words still ring in his ears, as remote as a distant memory and then closer, louder, until they kick him back into the present. No one wants you here.
Oh no, he thinks, halting in the middle of a staircase. I'll be banished. He grabs the railing with a trembling, blue-nailed hand. First thing in the morning, for sure. He can already see Baileywick's satisfied face, King Roland clapping and waving, everyone's relief at finally getting rid of him. They'll sing a song about it―how he got thrown out of his own tower―
How could he do this to me? Wormwood's betrayal burns like a scorch mark―he can't think about it for more than a moment without feeling all the air get squeezed out of his chest, a wave of nausea that makes him sway on his feet. His own loyal companion, going after the Wand, of all things...
What will Father think―? Goodwyn's approval flickers and disappears in his mind, a snuffed out candle. He couldn't even get used to that little warmth, and it's already gone―and Mother... he doesn't even want to imagine what Mother will say.
Will they even want to talk to him, this disgrace of a son their combined talents somehow created, if he had the guts to look them in the eye again? The blood chills in his veins. They'll disown me. And after that, his job and his place in the castle lost forever, he'll fall to disgrace and will have to travel to another kingdom where no one knows his name and starve in the streets performing tricks for a few coins―
I must hide, says something in him, in a child's voice, as he stands paralysed, still clinging to the railing for dear life. The castle has plenty of empty rooms... he could live in secret somewhere, Transport himself away when someone comes to check, conjure food when he's hungry―he must move, he just has to reach the first floor, and hide until... they come looking for him, then at least he still has his everyday wand, right?―in fevered urgency, he grabs the tatters of his green sleeve. Nothing.
His heart gives a strangled leap, his body freezing in fright where he stands. He has no wand on him―he's completely uncovered. He must have left it on the floor, he thinks, when Wormwood produced the Family Wand and... let Cedric think he had found it for him―How could he?!
But he knows exactly how Wormwood could do it. The raven told him―shouted it, in fact. A pathetic failure who has nothing, except a place he doesn't deserve. Bit by bit, his middle clenches on itself, as if collapsing under a terrible weight. Wormwood's hand is still there, the ghost of five fingers blocking his airway, too tight to be real―he can't hold still anymore.
His legs carry him up this staircase and another and another, dripping water throughout the corridors, until he finds himself standing in front of Sofia's room, staring down at the handle as if unsure how it got there.
It would make sense, he tries to reason, telling Sofia.
She knows who this visiting sorcerer is, and he knows she will keep his secrets if he asks her to. Despite her young age, Sofia is accustomed to dealing with problems without help, and keeps a few secrets of her own. No one but the two of them knows her Amulet is enchanted, for starters. And when the royal family wouldn't believe her on the Floating Palace, she went to fight his Sea Monster form all by herself.
And, no matter how loud the voices shout that it will eventually happen―he just can't picture her laughing with the others when they take him away. Just because she doesn't know what kind of lowly, worthless thing you really are, Wormwood's voice spats, ringing in his ears. If she knew, she'd deplore you. Just like I do. Just like everyone else.
He shakes his head. He can't seek out a child for his troubles, he can't add this humiliation on top of the pile―
She owes me, he argues. Regardless of second or third motives, he did help her out many times... he surely is in credit in the favour department, isn't he? No, you're not. You'll never be. He surely made up for the time he almost killed her. She doesn't know. If she knew... if his dearest, oldest companion had been despising him all along... That's what you do to people, the voice hisses. You are just some pitiful thing she feels sorry for. How could you ever deserve her friendship? Or anyone's friendship, really? You are nothing.
"Come in!" Sofia's high voice calls from the other side of the door, cutting through all the voices arguing in his head like a sunbeam through the clouds. His treacherous hand, deaf to all internal debates, already knocked. He hears her short steps tap closer, until she opens the door and smiles up at him. "Good evening, B―oh, Mr. Cedric?!"
He is unexpected, of course. Sofia runs a hand over the hem of her nightgown, her smile unfaltering, the surprise clear in her wide eyes.
"Hello," he rasps. His voice barely made it out of his aching throat, like he didn't have enough air to finish a single word, the wheeze of something ran over and left to die on the side of the road. It's the same strangled voice he would hear come out of himself during exams, teachers bending over their desks to hear better, stern scowls on their faces and points already shaved off his grade―the voice that makes him mess up his spells when people are watching.
As her eyes trail down his figure, Sofia's smile slowly dims. "Uhh, what hap―" she starts, but then something at the end of the hallway catches her attention. There must be someone―before he can look, she has grabbed his hand and has dragged him inside. He lets himself be pulled, zoning out until the door of her walk-in closet is shut in his face. Sofia whispers, "I'm sorry, wait in here just a moment."
Cedric blinks at the door, eyes adjusting to the half-light until he can make out the rows and rows of hanging gowns. He's standing, soaked and shivering, in a child's closet. He puts his forehead to the door, defeated, and listens to the muffled sounds on the other side. Baileywick's voice, a tinkling of china cups. Scraping of iron poker in the fireplace. Goodnight wishes. Cedric's gaze fixes down, on the water slowly dripping off him, in a small pool at his feet.
He's caught by surprise when Sofia opens the door, blinded by the light in the room and thrown off balance. She catches his arm, and keeps him upright.
"I told Baileywick I was chilly," she says, pointing at the crackling fire. Her little play-date table and chairs are arranged in front of it, as if ready for a miniature tea party. On the table, impeccably disposed on a crochet doily, the goodnight snack the Steward must have brought: a small tray of butter biscuits, and a mug of steaming hot cocoa. "Come, shoes off, and warm yourself up!"
Sofia has a big pink towel over her arm. She has him crouch in one of the small chairs, and lasso-throws the towel over his shoulders to pat him dry.
"There," she says. He bends a little bit, so that she can flip the towel over his head. Sofia watches him shiver, as the fire warms life back into his aching body, a slight air of reprimand on her features. "Mr. Cedric, did you... by chance lock yourself out of your tower?"
In the process of removing his shoes and socks to let them dry by the fire, her poignant question startles him. He almost falls off his chair. "How did you―?"
"Just a guess," she says with a light shrug. Her small hands rub the towel into his hair, careful not to pull on it or hit his ears. She throws a glance at the window. "I don't think anyone would be outside on purpose. It's really coming down, isn't it?"
He has barely the strength gesture to himself, and nod. "Evidently."
"But imagine, how green and bright the grass will be tomorrow!" Sofia smiles. The thought of tomorrow seems so far away, like a distant echo, and way too near all at once. He shudders, and his back cramps in pain. The Princess, leaving the towel on his shoulders, sobers up. "Why don't we have a sleepover? There's lots of space, and I like sleeping in the window-seat when it rains, anyway. And you can finally eat something."
Cedric glances over the room, from the cream-coloured sheets of her bed―the spread neatly folded at the bottom, the fluffy pillows ready to accommodate the child's auburn head―to the bedtime snack put together especially for her, with her favourite mug and favourite cookies. He'd want to say he doesn't need to stay there, he doesn't need her to give up her bed―he has coveted the crown for years, but now he doesn't even have it in him to take over a single room. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat.
"Would you like a tour of my room?" Sofia's voice startles him again, pulling him out of his reverie. He just blinks at her, earning himself a chuckle. "I also was soaked when you offered me a tour of your workshop, last year, remember?"
"Oh," he answers weakly, in a shaky murmur, "of course."
"That day was the worst day." A pause. Carefully, she asks, "Did you... end up having a bad day too?"
He inhales sharply, holding back with all he's got. He cannot bear to look into her earnest eyes, and the admission crawls out of his throat like a spider out of a dry, empty pipe.
He croaks, "The worst."
"I'm sorry," Sofia murmurs, reaching to pat his arm. The arm that Wormwood―he can't stop himself from flinching, and Sofia pulls back like he burned her. Her eyes drop, and he's not quick enough to cover his ripped sleeve. Sofia gasps, "What happened to your shirt? Are you hurt?"
Her little hands pry away the hand he's hiding with, and he can't really fight her.
"Princess, it's fine, I just fell," he protests, in a way more anxious tone than intended. He gives her a tight smile, the best he can do. He's not lying, he tells himself, he really did fall. Trice on the same arm, actually. "See? No need to worr―no, wait, don't look!"
"Oh, good, it's just scratches," Sofia breathes in relief, as she delicately folds his sleeve to uncover the wounds. On his forearm, a blotchy mess of rubor and pasty white against the rosy colour of Sofia's fingers, are four parallel scores, ugly but not too deep. "I got really scared for a moment. Do you think I've never seen a bit of blood before? Wait here."
She dashes to the closet, and comes back holding her little camping first aid kit. She scoots the second chair closer to his, and gestures for him to put his arm on the table.
"At least they're clean," she notes, dabbing a cotton ball with vinegar. "Now, this might sting a little."
"I certainly was queasier when I was your age―ow," he mutters. His nose wrinkles at the pungent smell, and he hisses at the sting, and if his eyes start watering at least now he has a good excuse.
Sofia chuckles. "Nothing a Buttercup can't handle!"
She is smiling, but the worry comes through in the arch of her eyebrows, the glances she keeps throwing at his face. She passes some salve on his arm, so the scabs won't be too dry, and pauses.
"Funny, it almost looks like a clawed hand―wait a minute," Sofia says, depressing the skin with her index, eyes narrowing. In the light of the fire, the red outlines of fingers make what happened as clear as inked words on his skin, and he has nowhere to hide. "Mr. Cedric... did Wormwood do this?"
He goes tense all over, his hand grabbing the edge of the small table before he can do anything to control it. The gaping chasm in his chest, briefly forgotten, opens under him all over again.
"Oh, h-he was just acting up," he stutters, breathless. "He does it all the time. You know how birds are."
The child's face scrunches up, unconvinced. She wraps his arm in clean gauze, apparently deep in thought.
"But he's not a bird now," she says after a while, very seriously, "Mr. Cedric, I think you need to explain to Wormwood that it's really not okay to do things like these. Not now that he's a human."
"He is still a raven, Princess," he echoes, hollow. "He wouldn't understand. It's fairly normal for them to be..." treacherous, destructive, right about everything, "to play a bit rough."
Sofia tilts her head, as if something were not quite clear.
"I'm sure he can be reasoned with," she says eventually. "If you talk to him, he'll understand he's much stronger now, and he'll learn to be more careful. And that it's just not right to hit others."
Cedric looks at her, thinking of all the times Cordelia flicked quills in his face, how many times Greylock pushed him down the Hexley Hall staircase, or made his potions explode on purpose, how many times Roland twisted back his arm to get him to promise something or cover for him. How many times wands have served as switches during his apprenticeship. But all this was many years ago, he reasons, times have changed. And he never got a scratch on him anyway so, he supposes, it shouldn't count.
In the meantime, Sofia has given his sleeve a couple of stitches just to hold it together, and put away the kit. When she nudges the lilac mug between his limp, frost-nipped hands, he can feel the heat of it as if it were melting the skin off his palms.
"I thought someone had skipped dessert," he teases, feeling some semblance of smile tug at his numb face. He nudges the tray back, not quite hungry, and the Princess' rosy cheeks colour a little bit.
"Oh, I said that so you'd recognise Wormwood from his laugh," she says with a small shrug, tucking her hair behind her ear. He is reminded of the time she exculpated him for the griffin's crimes, saving him from being dragged to the dungeon. She really is good at riddles. "But if you insist, I guess we can share it."
He sips the over-sweet hot cocoa from the cozy lilac mug. It is not so hot as to burn his throat, but as his stomach fills with warmth, his eyes sting all the same. This is probably the last hot drink he'll be able to savour in a while.
"Do you wanna tell me why you guys had a fight?" she inquires after a while, wiping crumbs off her face. Cedric's guts somersault and twist into knots, so suddenly he has to put the mug down before the tremble in his hands can make him drop it. Sofia winces a bit at the clatter of china on wood. "I'm sorry, it's just... I know how upsetting it is to fight with your best friends, and―"
"No, no, Princess," he cuts her off, pushing words out through his locked jaw. He clears his throat, grimacing in pain. "It's nothing of the sorts. You'd be quite upset too if you were going to be... replaced, like some old rag."
Sofia blanches. "What?" she gasps. "You are leaving?"
"Oh, yes," he follows, smiling uncomfortably. "Just imagine, a better Princess waltzes in, she gets your room and board and kablui!" He shoos his hands towards the exit. "You're out the door."
"Oh," Sofia murmurs. She sounds grief-stricken. "But... but you can't be replaced!"
He heaves a sigh. He's seen Wormwood do all those perfect tricks, making up in confidence what he lacked in form, after less than a day of having magic. Using the Family Wand, no less. Cedric started to see a glimpse of that prowess only in his tenth year of study, and only in the privacy of an empty classroom and the safety of his teacher's eye. Put like this, it's obvious that the raven deserves his place... just like Wormwood himself said.
"Turns out my raven is a far better sorcerer than I am. Very gifted," he grits out, spitting the word like venom. If he keeps talking, he knows he'll crumble, right under Sofia's eyes, consumed by shame as the logs burning fast in the fire. "He―he told me the King already decided... that he'll be taking over my charge as Royal Sorcerer."
After all, Roland had always wanted nothing more than to get rid of him. Ever since...
"Mr. Cedric," Sofia says, her soft features taking a sharper edge, lips thinning into a line, "I was there the whole time, and Dad said nothing of the sort. He just asked him to help out this one time," she assures. She sounds angry, almost offended. "Wormwood is lying."
Cedric stares at her, in stunned silence, for a few long moments.
"Are you sure?" he attempts to say, but his voice cracks, and it comes out as an high-pitched keen that prompts the Princess to spring to her feet and clasp his good hand in both of hers.
"Don't worry, Mr. Cedric!" she says vehemently. "You literally can't be replaced! The charge is hereditary, Dad told me himself. And you wouldn't be replaced that easily, even if you could! Not now that everyone is starting to see how great you are."
"R-right," he mumbles, blinking down at the table. He frees his hand to pull the tray to him, and nibbles on a biscuit, thinking as the salty butter melts on his tongue. Sofia is right, of course: the charge being hereditary is in fact the reason he was able to keep his job in the first place, before Sofia came along. Right. What Wormwood said must have reeled him into panic, and forgo all logic. "He... he said it to trick me."
Sofia clicks her tongue, shaking her head like a disappointed schoolteacher. "Unbelievable."
"I don't know what got into him," Cedric murmurs. "I... guess I didn't know him as well as I thought."
He can barely let his mind go there, to the thought that his lifelong companion... hated him all along―but why would he stay all these years, and share Cedric's dreams, when he could have been flying free? If he thought so lowly of him, and was convinced Cedric could never reach the ambitions they shared―was he only using him for the advantages of being a kept animal in a royal castle? Took you long enough, you dimwit, says the insinuating little voice.
"Was he very angry, when he said those things to you?" Sofia postulates. He just nods, miserable. Wormwood seemed furious. "Well, you can't help getting angry sometimes. It's no excuse to be mean, though," she says, somewhat understanding. "Did you make him human by accident, maybe?"
"No, I haven't, it's not my fault!" he shouts, rejecting the accusation way too vehemently, words a garbled, rushed mess. Sofia just tilts her head at him, not questioning when he covers his mouth like a child that said a bad word. Through his fingers, he hisses, "All this... he did by himself, and won't tell me how! When I tried to turn him back to normal, he got angry and―started telling me how this... project, that we have been working on together for years... he told me my ideas were all... worthless and idiotic, and that it would never work."
His voice is coming out in thick, choked jerks, and his bruised throat aches like it's being scraped from the inside from how hard he's keeping tears down―but Sofia doesn't laugh at him, not even one bit.
"That's awful," she says. "Maybe, I can help you with your project, and then we can show him! You'll see, he'll surely change his mind."
Cedric looks at her, for a moment overcome with the temptation of telling her―disclosing all his plans, as confessions in the merciful ears of a friar, to the only person who would be sad to see him gone―confide in the kinship they always shared, their common desire to prove themselves.
"Better not," he saves, self-consciously rubbing the underside of his nose with his intact sleeve. "Advanced magic is tricky, I can't involve an amateur―an amul―I mean, an apprentice."
"Right!" Sofia says, without getting offended, at ease with her level. "I'll just cheer for you, then."
When he was her age, it was already clear that he hadn't inherited his father's genius. He used to have fits over it, freezing up in class and systematically failing anything that could resemble a performance. How many tears he cried... only Wormwood knows. He shudders.
"Oh, speaking of magic," Sofia pipes up, index finger raised in sudden thought. "I have your crystal ball! You forgot it earlier."
Cedric follows her pointing finger, to the shabby puppet theatre he built the previous year. Sofia keeps it parked in the play area of her room, for some reason. She says she uses it to play charades with her animal friends. Currently, the century old scrying globe sits in front of the little curtains, like a prop for some cheap street magic show. It tears a smile from him, albeit a weak one.
"Excellent, thank you," he manages. "Please keep it for the moment. I don't know when I'll have my tower back, and I'm sure it's safe in your hands. It's a very important famil―" Father came to mind, and the thought threatens to make him chunder the few biscuits he had. He has to swallow, and try again. "―family heirloom."
With her keen senses, Sofia hits the proverbial nail on the head, "Mr. Cedric, maybe you should tell your parents what happened?" He just snorts, a brief derisive snicker that makes the Princess fuss to explain, "I mean, who transformed Wormwood if you didn't? It could be really serious, and you might need their help―"
A full-blown laugh erupts from somewhere in him, and he can do nothing to stop it. A dissonant cackle that sounds sick to his own ears, pulling painfully at his cheeks like an overly fond aunt. Sofia watches him, bemused, as he covers his face waiting for the fit to die down.
"Princess," he croaks darkly, shoulders still shaking in mirthless laughter, "he did it on purpose." Inhale, exhale. "You know the Family Wand, that you helped me acquire just yesterday? He took it for himself. He said I―don't deserve it. I cannot let my father know."
"He did what?!" Sofia yells, her voice reaching new heights of pitch. All traces of sympathy and understanding have left her face, her hands planted on her hips. "Mr. Cedric, you should really tell your parents about this. I'm sure they will help."
"But I cannot!" He shakes his head, drying fringe still sticking to his skin. "It took so much for Father to entrust the Wand to me! If he knew I lost it..."
"You didn't lose it, it was taken from you!"
"Honestly, Princess, you've seen what my father is like. He'll never understand... he'll just think I messed up." He sighs, and adds, lower, "Like I always do."
Side by side, they watch the fire die down. Sofia, arms crossed and head tilted to the side, appears deep in thought. Now that she's met his parents, she has to see how he's caught in a perpetual conundrum: if he keeps his secrets, he'll face consequences alone when they backfire; if he asks for help, his parents will never trust him to take decisions by himself again. And maybe they, too, were right all along.
It's getting late, and the whole day is taking its toll on him. In the easy silence they adapt to, Sofia gathers the mug on the tray, and quietly goes to wash her teeth. He's thinking he'll just skip for tonight, but she comes back with a spare―pink―toothbrush already loaded with sage and salt paste, and he can't be bothered to argue his case.
"Are you sure you want to sleep there?" she asks as he tiptoes, barefoot on the cold floor, to the window-seat. Sort of pensively, she adds, "You'll be cold without your robe."
From the chest at the bottom of her bed, where she keeps the treasures from her previous life, she pulls a ratty patchwork blanket. It might have been red once in its lifetime, and he wrinkles his nose at it when Sofia holds it out for him.
"Here. This is special, my mom made it. I've had it since I was a baby," she says simply, and when he reluctantly takes it the smell of faded dye and motherly hands reaches him, and he's finally defeated. He drapes the thing over his shoulders, and with the excuse of keeping it closed, he clings to it like a lifeline. He bites hard into his lower lip, looking away from Sofia, blinking furiously.
Sofia says her goodnights, patting him softly on his good arm. She lets him take the window-seat, climbs into bed, and dims out her lamp.
Only wakeful thing in the silent room, waiting for sleep to bring him relief, Cedric watches the wind lash the rain into the window, as waves over a still sea. Curled on the window-seat too short for his legs, knees chattering against the glass, he falls to unrestful stillness, and starts dreaming before he's even fully asleep.
In the dream, he's a little boy clinging to Mother's hand.
They are walking back from the forest to the village, and his round toed shoes patter hurriedly on the well trodden trail, nettles lashing his bare legs. It took him all his courage to go outside, but it paid off, just like Mother said. The late spring smells sweet and brackish, and in his other hand, tucked into the fold of his shirt, nestles the little weight of a baby raven.
In the quiet Northern village where they live, waiting for Father all year, the bells are chiming a cheerful melody of golden Sundays, silvery as children's voices. Just a bit longer, Mother says, just a bit longer and we can all go to the castle. And you'll start school, and you'll grow up alongside Prince Roland, like blood-brothers.
And 'Delia won't steal my things anymore, he adds, but Mother pretends he hasn't spoken. Or maybe she hasn't heard him.
The bells ring their chime, a call to joy. To go trample anthills, throw rocks at the foxes, jostle on broomsticks that don't even fly... and all the other things he sees boys do when he looks down into the street from his bedroom window. When they see him look, they point up and yell Witch-boy, Witch-boy! because of his white streaks.
Since the sea almost swallowed him whole, he hasn't gone outside much. Mother says she's proud of him for surviving. Father wrote back that almost dying of clumsiness is nothing to be proud of.
He used to be fond of the shore just off the seastacks, where the waves lap the small rounded stones, in a soothing rustle, and the tide coming in can always be spotted from afar. He liked to kick his shoes off and dangle his legs from the goose barnacle-covered quay, letting the cold sea bite at his ankles. He'd feed kale and bits of boiled eggs from his lunch to the hooded crows that dance on the muddy banks in a frolic of black and grey feathers. He thought, if he took their side in the turf war with the seagulls, maybe one of the crows would become his friend, and warn him of any traps of rock that lie ahead.
The baby raven is supposed to keep an eye on him, Mother says. But for now, he's so young he can't even fly, all ugly goosebumps and bulging eyes. The raven, too, fell into a hole―the hollow of a fallen tree―and he had to climb to pull him out, and his legs are still shaking from it.
Where are we going? he asks, tugging lightly towards the sound. As usual, Mother doesn't answer immediately.
A wind rises when they step out of the forest, and the chiming it brings is slower, solemn. The memory has morphed into dream. A crow's high cry reaches them, much more distant than it seems. When he looks down, in his hand there is no bundle of sparse feathers, no bleary green eyes.
Instead, taking up the whole of his small palm, there is a purple jewel, too heavy to hold.
The Amulet dangles from his free hand, chain cutting into his palm like it's trying to pass through it. The book he nicked from the Royal Library says the Amulet of Avalor has voices that can teach its wearer the most powerful secrets of Magical Arts. So far, he has heard nothing, so he follows the distant caw, and the chiming of bells.
To the castle, Mother says, eventually, you are going to be your father's apprentice, his very special helper. You will assist him with his spells and potions, tidy up the place and so forth.
But I already have the Amulet, he tries arguing, squinting up at Mother's face, backlit in the blazing sundown. He waves the Amulet up high. Can't she see it? Can't she see him? I don't need to be an apprentice anymore, I can be King!
They go up the tower where Father works, and the endless stone staircase puts cramps in his short legs. Mother's grip moves to his wrist: she lifts him up for each step, long nails sinking into his shirt. You'll be fine, she says. If you love Mummy, you'll see you're meant to be. And Mummy loves you too.
Well, what have we here? Father is a daemonic figure, as tall as the door and shrouded in cauldron smoke. He bends over him, and Cedric cannot breathe or speak, and the Amulet he stole weights so much it imprints in his hand. A little magpie?
I'm your son, he finally manages, voice shaking. He wants to hide behind Mother, but she's nowhere to be found.
Are you? This is sub-par even for a first year. The sky is dark but the curtains are still drawn, and he has not rested in so long. Father rips the fissured wand from his hands. On the dark stone walls he starts seeing the sneering faces of his classmates, laughing, laughing. Father asks every question like he wants an answer, like he's supposed to know. Who will I leave my charge to? Who will I leave the Family Wand to? Who will take care of this kingdom, once I'm gone?
Mummy loves him, therefore he's meant to be. He's meant to be, therefore Mummy loves him. If you were meant to be, your grades wouldn't be such a disaster, Father says, expression gone from sardonic to grim, and the words hurt like glass shards in his face, like the scalding ladle in his bare hands. You'll be expelled. You'll never wield the Family Wand. You'll have to run away and change your name and play tricks for spare change.
But you keep interrupting me! He finally blurts out. The classmates laugh and laugh at his voice that cracks so easily, at the witch-boy that bawls at the drop of a hat.
Excuses, excuses, Father says. His precise, effortless forms shine a bright light over his first attempts charred in the hardwood desk. Everyone claps, ecstatically. This kingdom has seen many sorcerers, but none quite as bad as you. If we were at war, you'd doom us all.
But I'm meant to be! he yells, desperate. His father has turned his back, and the smoke surrounded him―he's all alone in the stifling tower, with a spitting cauldron he doesn't know how to manage. Its just like being trapped beneath the rising tide, all over again, buried in water like a seed in soil―but he won't grow into a rose, not a ragweed or mugworth stem. He won't grow into anything. You are nothing, you have nothing, except this place you don't deserve.
Where is the baby raven now, if he has never plucked him from the hollow of the tree? He wonders, looking at the Amulet now welded to his hand.
There's the thief! The King accuses, slamming the door open, pointing wildly. The jewel is stuck to him, caught red-handed, and he can't deny, can't explain, can't speak at all. In the darkest of dungeons, where the guards drag him―A likely story. Guards, seize him!―there is a hole.
They throw him in like he weighs nothing, and hitting the water at the bottom he hits the waterfall of rain outside of his tower, he hits the Ocean's surface with the too many limbs of his monstrous form, he hits the treacherous tide of his childhood slip. He climbs onto the throne down there, standing on tiptoes to keep himself out of the water―but the water pours and pours from his wet robes, pools at his feet, rising, rising, soon touches his ankles in a chilling bite.
The cheerful chime of the bells is now a fast, urgent ring, a call for arms and fleeing―it drowns out his slight child's voice as he cries for help, stutters and slips and fails a Floating spell, alone and doomed. The water rises. He clutches the Amulet to his chest, letting it bury itself in his skin, sink into his heart like a thorn.
The kingdom is at war, a deep voice drawls above him, when all is lost. The people want your head on a pike.
The little raven he never picked up has the face of a man, and great black wings. He is a vision of awe and horror, long feathers drawing in all the light, eyes of ruthless jade and cold grasp of arched talons.
Old friend, Cedric begs, stretching his free arm, up, up, leaping from the submerged throne like a fledgeling trying to fly. Old friend, I wasn't meant to be. When he's about to be submerged, Wormwood reaches down, and lays a hand upon his heart. He finds his breath into that hand, in the crease of a smile in Wormwood's perfect, stony face. Please, don't abandon me!
You were the one to abandon me. Wormwood's hand closes in a fist, slicing his chest open as he rips the Amulet from him. He gasps above the water, but Wormwood's hand pushes him down, until he goes under. The pitchforks will find you drowned.
I have not―! he cries, choking on a lungful of water, sharp as a kick in the sternum. The raven's eyes burn in his cold face, full of reprimand. You have to believe me! You at least! Please―
The kingdom is flooding, Wormwood drones in Baileywick's voice. No surprise, no more contempt. His failure was expected, only a matter of time. All along, he was nothing, he's always been nothing. The water rises, and Wormwood's hand in his chest keeps him trapped on the throne, one and the same, a captain and his ship, sharing the same destiny. You have doomed us all, King Cedric.
The chime of the bells, once cheerful, is now a death knell. A call for mourning.
The raven's breath comes harsh and shallow in the still air of the tower.
The spiralling coil of books has no answers for his swearing and invocations, and neither do the grim-faced paintings scowling at him from the silent stone walls. His fingers tremble, and when he presses, the damn clippers twist out of his unsteady grip. Another of his claws snaps in half.
"Drat," Wormwood hisses through clenched teeth, watching the blood from his quickened veins bead and drip down his fingers. "Again?!"
He kneels on the floor of the workshop, Wand held in his mouth his only light source. The candles, though he's sure he got the clapping sequence right, wouldn't turn on for him. In the Wand's dim halo, he smashes the dittany jar on the floor and dips his bleeding nails in the small puddle.
He only wanted to shorten them, because when he punched the door with his whole weight, only the yellow bow wrapping his fist prevented him from running his own palm through―absolutely no other reason.
When his fifth claw snaps and bleeds, he throws his head back and howls, full as never before of anger and frustration. His heart pounds, the very air of the tower presses down on him on all sides, and the once comforting noise of the downpour grating in his ears as nails on a blackboard―as the silence hangs, raw and drab and deafening―until he can't bear it anymore.
In his haste to get up and flee the very place he just conquered, Wormwood knocks his perch down. It falls and rolls and the noise, fracturing the silence like thunder, seems to peal on his nerves until he hurls the clippers aside and and propels himself out of the room, an awful tremble in his whole body.
He breathes in the foyer, locking the door with feverish haste and pocketing the key. For a stupid second he puts his hands onto the wet sill of the window, as if he could fly out. He swears under his breath, dashing down the stairs until the castle's daedalus of hallways opens before him.
He has never used Transport magic on his own, but he needs to go somewhere... somewhere else, somewhere old, somewhere new, anywhere. He pulls out the Wand, waves it in a broad whiplash towards the ground, and thinks intensely of the woods―where the reminders of what he did won't surround him, and the quiet won't be as stifling. In a cloud of green smoke, he feels his body stretch and disappear.
Wormwood knocks back into existence somewhere green and surrounded by thicket and tall trees. His heart is pounding in his ears, so loud, drowning out the sound of his panicked breathing as he stumbles into the weight of his body.
It's nightfall, he slowly takes in, and it's not raining.
"How... how far did I go...?" he asks out loud, but the forest only rustles, leaves shivering in the breeze. For all he looks around, he cannot tell where he landed: he's not on a path, and the trees around him are too thick to see where the castle might be. From this earth-bound standpoint, the forest looks completely different. He can't Transport back if he doesn't know where he is.
Wormwood, flighted and perfectly able to orient himself up until this very afternoon, has never been lost before. He moves a few hesitant steps in the murky under-bush, sharp and scratchy against his legs and the soles of his feet, looking for some sign that may guide him. His throbbing nails, untended, pearl the green ginger shrubs in red droplets.
He wonders if somehow he Transported north... all the way to the forest he was born in. For all he tries to force his memory back, he can remember nothing but the hollow tree Cedric found him in. He wonders if his parents still have a nest there, in that forest near the northern sea, so close to the cliffs of the coast. Maybe they are still raising his siblings, year after year, strong fledgelings that fly off and never look back―and they forgot all about their lost son. What would they think of him, if they knew he has a Royal Palace in his turf? Would they understand? Would they be proud?
"They would be dead," he reminds himself.
Ravens who live in the wild... they have probably been gone for years now. Wormwood knocks his shoulder into a tree, letting himself stand there for a moment, eyes closed. A light is filtering under his eyelids. When he opens his eyes, in the surrounding darkness there is an eerie glow, that he can never see clearly. Foxfire.
"Am I dreaming?" he asks to no one. His feet, shuffling through twisted roots and fallen leaves, take him towards the small lights, until he finds a river, slithering quietly in the night like a great shining serpent. He knows that, if he wants to find humans again, he just needs to follow downstream.
He looks down at his dripping hand, wondering if he'll end up bleeding out from it. He bends to wash it in the river, cold water stinging in his open claws, running an itch up into his teeth. He steps down in the river to find relief for his chafed feet, and before he knows it, in the steady nudge of the current, he's wading in the water. The rainclouds must be following him, because a few drops start falling, hammering the surface.
The hem of his robe, soaked, grows heavy, and clings to his body like tar. He can see small silver fish dart around the black columns of his legs, around his submerged hand. Could he catch one, if he wanted? The river flows against his thighs, the current mild but persistent, pushing him downstream. He can hold upright on the river stones, rounded by the currents, only digging his talons in the slimy water-moss. Will he bleed out in this river, or can he survive in this form? Can he swim? He wades deeper and deeper, following the foxfire on the other side.
The forest was never this dark and unknown in his memories―opening to a meander of gloomy mangroves dipping their finger-like roots into the water, the smell of something rotten wafting into his nostrils, frogs loud and then eerily quiet. Blocking his watery path when he looks down, a drowned deer, half-submerged, backbone picked clean and antlers caught in the roots that hold the riverbank together. He doesn't flinch away from carrion, even though the smell is so different from what his memory tells him. Looking into the milky submerged eyes, he thinks he must still be dreaming.
When he lifts his eyes from his contemplation, another pair of eyes meets his. He leaps out of his skin.
"Is it you, then, bleeding in the water?" asks the red fox, smiling with his mouth full of teeth. Wormwood, startled, clenches his. "Come out of there, human. You don't wanna attract the pikes, do you?"
"Do not mistake me for a human," Wormwood snaps, lifting what is left of his black claws. His voice sounds rough, as if he hasn't used it in two months rather than two hours. "I come from the Palace, but human I am not."
The fox doesn't ask what Palace is he talking about, nor asks him what he is. He just blinks slowly, the brightness of his eyes dimming the eerie fires on the other side.
"The current lulls you in and then drags you down." The fox pats the deer's white bones. "And you end up like our friend here. Water fouled the flesh, and the flesh fouled the water. What a waste."
"Not to the crows," Wormwood challenges. "We eat what we want, and foul meat doesn't scare us."
"Even the other crows haven't dared," the fox grins. The other crows? "All castle pets are the same. No fresh idea how to survive out here anymore. Just like my old friend Clover. Word of advice, mate: if you don't go back to your stone burrow, the forest will take you, and never give you back."
"I have nowhere to return," Wormwood says quietly. Blinking, his head spinning a bit, he reaches the bank and climbs out of the river. He derails, "You're friends with the furball, I take?"
"You know him?" the fox asks, raising his brow in mild surprise. "How is he?"
"Heavy," Wormwood answers, without hesitation. The fox gives an odd yappy bark of a laugh, and slaps the ground with his paw.
"Same old Clover," he chuckles. "I like your style, flesh-crow. No wonder you're Clover's friend."
"We are not friends. How could we?" He blinks. "How can you? Doesn't he know you kill and eat his kind?"
"Of course he knows. Nature is nature, my friend," the fox says, with an irksome air of wisdom. "He also knows I mean no disrespect: were I starving, I'd rather choke on this rotten deer than lay a paw on a friend."
Wormwood wonders what brought the fox on his path, to tell him how friends are supposed to treat each other. It sounds like some twisted joke. He looks down at the chopped nails of his hand, finally done bleeding, the memory of what they have done sculpted in his mind. Something twitches in his chest, in the empty space left by the anger that burned so bright and blinding inside him. It smells like the regret he used to feel for all that he didn't have the time to do, when his life was at the end of its tether. Maybe it's what they call guilt.
While it's still drizzling, a dense white mist approaches, blurring the shadowed banks of the river. The fox lifts his paw off the ground, attempting to avoid it.
"If you are a raven, and you come from the Palace, you must be Wormwood," he says. The raven nods, impressed and almost flattered. The fox points to the fog that surrounded them in a matter of minutes. "You know anything about this? It started coming last night from the island your Palace is. It all got chilly, and the trees are shedding, like we were already in Winter."
"I know nothing of this," Wormwood says, maybe a bit defensively, an unpleasant chill running down his spine.
The fox paws the ground again, head tilted to listen to the night air, as if it were bringing him news from far away. "I'd better go check if my little birds know something, then. What are you gonna do?"
"I... do not know," he admits. "Not anymore."
"Then listen, I'll tell you: whatever you do, get that magic man of yours to do something about this, will ya? 'Cause something doesn't feel right here."
At the mention of Cedric, something sharp tears through him. When he can breathe again, the red fox has disappeared.
"The magic man of mine isn't going to listen to me for a long time, red fox," he says to the empty forest.
The thick mist has descended, painting the riverside a milky grey. In the blueish light of eventide, the foxfire looks like alligator's eyes, third eyelids shining red into the water. Wormwood steps back on the bank and starts walking, following the current, away from the meander.
The fox is right, his instincts tell him, this form isn't made to survive out here. Adrenaline pushes him to follow the river, his only path in the fog and the unknown, for a long time. Probably most of the night, judging by the moon's dance when the clouds part enough that he can see it.
In his hands he clutches his spoils of war. The Wand, and the yellow ribbon. The first he brandishes at least a dozen times against imaginary threats when, heart hammering in his chest, he's startled by the shadow of fangs in tree bark, a rock with owl's horns, the shriek of a hawk in the distance. The second, he cannot recall if he just kept like this or pulled it from the folds of his robe, but it stays wrapped around his fist like a bandage, keeping him safe from the convulse clench of his own claws.
When finally fatigue wins over the fear, he finds shelter under a fallen tree. He shakes in his wet robes, and he is a flightless nestling all over again, unprepared for the harshness of the forest, and it counts nothing how much he grew overnight. No child's hands will come to save him, gather him whole in the sleeves of his robe, in his hands that can be so gentle, so precise. Not this time―or ever again.
Cedric would sing, if he were him, to keep himself strong. But Wormwood is no songbird, and in his throat there is no song―only a single, muffled whimper.
"Cedric," he lets himself keen, alone and unseen, the ribbon bunched in his hands, pressed to his eyes and nose―as if the sorcerer could hear him, as if he'd still come to his call of distress. After all that happened. After all he has done.
Exhausted, he lets his forehead thud against his bent knees. He waits for the forest to take him, and never give him back.
Everyone is miserable, news at 9. Guest star, Whiskers the Fox.