4.

The mystic was the sort who made himself at home wherever he was. Because he had no home. Zero concluded this on his own. If one is a wanderer, one is always at home. He sat on the floor, in front of the hearth in the sitting room. A careless spirit, constantly in flight, ready to sing at a moment's notice… Like the bird from which is nickname sprung… Caroline and Nimbus, two vain felines, were poised on his left and right hand. They watched him, eyes round as saucers, to drop more of the feathers they loved to bat about. The feathers seemed to appear, out of nothing, flimsy things as thin as air. One second nothing, another second there.

Nitten stopped beside her brother in the archway, between foyer and parlour. She eyed the mystic, lips buckled. In her hands was Zero's cloak, to be mended before the morn. He had snagged it on an intrusive bush somewhere along the Red Road.

'I can't believe he's a mystic,' Nitten stated. But the few yellow feathers dotting the braided hearth rug exemplified his status if his countenance did not. 'And I can't believe you're making us stay here. I'd much rather go home.'

'And I'd much rather you and Vier didn't get the plague and die,' he quipped. Nitten was often stunned to incapacitation at the rapid firing of his wit. He was coarse, but he was every inch veracious as well. 'We don't always get what we want.'

'Why are you so sure you won't get sick?'

He held her gaze steadily. 'Nittie, I've never been sick. I won't start now.'

-x-

'Is that true?'

The query came suddenly, into the dark, as Zero had just blown out the candle on the bedside cabinet. The garret room had no furniture to speak of, but a bit of empty space on the floor wide enough for Zero and the mystic to stretch and sleep. Starlight came through an oriel window. It caught the furry white back of Nimbus, kindly tucked beside Finch. Zero shoved his head against the pillow and slammed his eyes shut.

'Is what true?'

'That you've never been sick.'

One eye lifted and closed again. 'Maybe. Can hardly remember all the way back to when I was a baby, but otherwise… It is true. Never been sick. That's why Vier and Nitten are staying. I don't want to risk them—it just wouldn't be right, that's all. When our parents are better, I'll come back for them.'

'Of course you will.'

But it had a false chord of pacification. Something disconcerting and recreant lurked in every word a mystic uttered. Through no fault of his own, Finch wasn't trustworthy. He could comb a heap of lies and make it seem believable, as real as imagination permitted.

-x-

Zero woke at a touch on his shoulder, that of Finch, when the oriel window was still dark. Pale, groggy, worried, Zero enfolded himself in layers of clothing against the cold, damp fog of morning. Finch did the same; and, as far as Zero noticed from the corner of his eye, Finch had no feathers stuffed up his sleeves after all. But as they left the garret, Zero lingered, and saw a bit of white fluff on the floor.

The household rose briskly. Uncle Pip heated water on the stove, after he had Zero stoke the fire, and tea was passed to each. A peppery, sharp tea that seared the palate but brought clarity to the senses. Nitten crammed a few more orts into Zero's rucksack, and Vier, as he got going, began a swing of questions that made Zero smile so deliberately and thoroughly that his face began to ache. But at the farewells, held in the dreary, misty garden, a place like a dream, Vier's garrulous spirit wilted to despondency. He clung to his brother.

'Will we see you soon, Zero?'

'As soon as possible, Vier.'

As Nitten thought he would, Zero never looked back. It was bad luck.

-x-

Below a cinereous sky, two companions walked with purpose. Gatehill-on-Cleg was left behind them, and Zero commanded Finch across the moor, where the Red Road met them in its shattered confidence. Finch commented a remembrance of the Red Road, the fragments of brick half-interred in earth and debris of a coniferous forest. Once it had been made of perfectly formed squares, a mark of the sinuous avenue from the hem of Central City all the way to the Rip. Now it was a frayed landmark, a memory of better times, when the House of Pastoria ruled the realms. And not, as Zero said with undeniable reprehension, the ineffectual House of Gale…

The topic thus raised, it was discussed from tip to tip, as much as young men of fifteen and sixteen annuals of age could know details of regime. Zero found Finch to be a mind adherent to political relationships, particularly between that of the Royal House and the People of the Land. The latter phrase one that Zero saw italicised and capitalized in his mind's eye.

'It's my duty as a mystic to know the political views of the people,' Finch explained, but a subsequent sigh altered the subject. 'All mystics are like that. Only the Mystic Man himself has any political ramifications. And the rest of us, well… We know too much for our own good. Things are not well in the O.Z these days. The royal family members spend all their time holed up in one of their elaborate palaces. Meanwhile, crops, people, beasts are all suffering and dying, and those who wear a crown or tiara are forcing us to stick our heads in the sand. The plague has lessened some. But who is to say it won't start again?'

'It's possible,' acceded Zero, finding the voice of the Finch echoed his own beliefs of the current establishment. 'I pray the gods see my parents as the last of this plague.'

'As do I. You know the worst bit? The worst bit is what the people are saying about the Queen. The sign of the plague marks a steep decline of magic in the O.Z. This place used to be heaven, free of pestilence, but the plague… well…'

'If the Queen is losing her power, you would know. You're tied to the feel of this place.'

Finch regarded Zero keenly, emotions unbarred: disgust, resolve, hope. 'I'm not the only one.'

-x-

As the far moon rose, the suns sank, and it was Finch who directed Zero into a manger for the night. They had not quite made it as far as the Rip, though near enough to reach it in less than an hour the next morning, should they hurry. And they were not so far into the south that the frost in the air had gone. Zero mentioned foregoing the manger for a sylvan encampment, a place they could build a fire. The mystic shook his head and dived into the manger shadows.

'No fire tonight. And this is not the last we will see of cold weather.'

For a long while, neither slept. They lay on their backs, listening to the breathing of donkeys, the occasional noise from the horse.

Zero finally tumbled his thoughts to a chain of cognisable language. 'What does it mean, exactly, to be a mystic?'

'Lots of things.'

'Are you magical?'

'Not particularly. I have some powers, but nothing that influences the universe. Only thought can really do that.'

'So your magic is thought?'

'No… No, not really. Consciousness has its own ability. Without it, we would never be able to alter our perception. Perception, consciousness, thought: these are all the maxims of a mystic. It's a subtle vibration in the heart. An awareness of it.'

'It,' Zero repeated this stagnantly. It was a inflexible thing. 'An awareness of what?'

'Myself, you,' he made a light gesture to indicate Zero, 'the hay we're lying on, the relationship between the two moons, their relationship on the ocean… Everything. Vigilance and sensitivity to the outer planes, everything that exists beyond rudimentary thought. The grass is green. The sky is blue. Your eyes are grey. What's that mean? Very little. Go beyond it, and what's it mean? Everything. I could say that mystics tend to think too much,' he allowed Zero the privilege of snickering at this remark, foul of actual humour though it was. 'The truth is far more unknown—or incomprehensible. The grass may be green. The sky may be blue. And your eyes may be grey. But that's the physical. As spirits, we are neither so incongruent nor so congruous. We have a sense no one else has. That makes us… different. And, to some people, dangerous.'

Zero turned on his side, towards Finch, and already found a few scant feathers, black ones, between them. Finch picked up one, to toss it away, but its lightness failed to carry it far. In the sedentary peace of a little feather, Zero believed he found a visual explanation of what Finch had orated. Thoughts were light, light as feathers. But his will to move the feather was a weighted inclination of a spirit whose lightness equalled that of the feather… Or equalled nothing at all.

Finch pressed his finger against Zero's chin. 'That, my friend, is mysticism. More or less.'

-x-

The bridge was crossed, the Rip transcended. This rather mundane act, this banal activity of walking among others, as it was the only bridge within twenty-three miles, brought forth to Zero the very real intensity of the mystic. He would not have noticed if no one else had been on the same bridge that morning. But among market workers, shoppers, travellers, guards, a few men of the army, ruffian children orphaned by the plague, and all sorts of people, including a few domestic and farm animals, Zero was enlightened to the force of his travelling companion. For while Finch passed along pleasantries, when and if required, he moved very little from a straight course across the wide bridge of wood and stone. He did not have to veer from his path more than an inch, for everyone he passed moved from his path instead.

Zero's doubts as to the mystic's abilities and qualities had been on a slow and steady decline ever since that first feather seen on a tiny stage. And last night's conversation, coiling on into the night, till owls ceased to screech, had lessened mouldering reservations. Now…

He angled his head to his shoulder to the way they'd come. Among the padding feet of pedestrians, some goats, a man with a wagon of vegetables, was a soft downy spray of black, white and yellow.

Last night, he'd asked Finch whether he possessed the magic of shape-shifting. Finch had smirked, a dainty if arrogant thing with a life of its own, and denied, once again, possessing any thaumaturgy at all.

The feathers were a manifestation of his connection to a higher consciousness. 'All mystic's have something. Even the Mystic Man, the most powerful mystic in all the O.Z., has a manifestation. He changes light to colours, creates spectrums. One colour to the next, to the next, to the next, so on, so forth. But unless you're standing beside him, you would never notice. I have feathers. Or do the feathers have me? I always wondered that.'