Chapter 9

Chapter 9  pdf file

A halfmoon before MidWinter, Stan and Shaughan went back to their families for their MidWinter Trainee leave. While Charity worked overtime to finish the last desperate requests of Clan Vithavre a’Tailtiu, the living areas of the tower underwent a flurry of decoration. Then, as was the custom, most of the staff went to their respective homes the night before MidWinter’s Eve. With such reduced household, dinner was served in the kitchen, and Charity renewed her acquaintance with the NeachCook and his granddaughters.

NeachCook Reglin d’Shadowed Rooster had a wizened face and the body of a guard. His voice boomed out over everyone, and he was respectful but not subservient. Jaylin and Jernine were bright and cheerful, as Charity remembered them, and just as easy to feel comfortable with as their grandfather.

The NeachCook had never felt the need to pussyfoot around anyone, and had always treated Charity as he treated his granddaughters (except he didn’t swat her backside when she gave him lip). So she wasn’t surprised when, as soon as the meal was finished, NeachCook Reglin tilted back his chair, sent a sideways glance at Acting Savant Deibra and said, “Now that I have you in my kitchen, Honored, and before I have to ruin our next dinner in vexation, I would like to make a complaint.”

Charity laughed at his formal phrasing. “NeachCook, I have been complaining for a year and a half. Please feel free to join in.”

“It’s the critters, Honored. Feathers, scales, fur and whiskers. When I’m not tripping over one, the girls are rousting another out of the stores. Now I don’t mind animals…”

“…in their place,” chorused the granddaughters.

“But in the kitchen, the only place for an animal is in the pot or on the chopping block.” And he looked at Charity with expectation.

“Hmm. Mixed stew sounds good,” she said lightly. After her formal decree, she hadn’t been plagued by any animals, but she wasn’t surprised they were still around. She rested her chin in her hand and looked at Deibra.

“But you have to have a Familiar!” the Acting Savant wailed.

“Where is it written?” Charity whined back, falling into the old playful pattern.

But Acting Savant Deibra was not playing. For an answer, she whipped a book out of her pocket and smacked it onto the table. It was titled The Handy Wizard’s Secretary’s Rule Book. With a smirk, she slammed open the cover and flipped to the second page, which read as follows:

A Wizard Must Have a Familiar. This Means You. If the wizard does not have a familiar, with whom is she going to argue?  Who is she going to turn into a toad whenever she is angry? On whom is she going to practice other, not so considerate, spells? Who is the cousin who sees her most? If you have to look in the fountain to find the answer, quit now.

Triumphant, Deibra folded her arms and sat back in her chair.

Charity stared at Deibra, humor gone. “But I don’t…”

Deibra pointed at the page.

Charity turned to Sunny. “But seriously, I can’t…”

Sunny put her hands up and backed away from the table. The NeachCook and his granddaughters had already found something else to do.

Charity whispered to Deibra. “Do you know how unfair you are? Isn’t it enough I’m trying to train wizards, now I have to train a Familiar also? I’ll pick something, and it will die of neglect or I will turn it into a statue and then you’ll push something else on me and something else on me. You’re going to make my life a misery just because you’re afraid I’ll turn you into a frog. When have I ever threatened you?”

“Every dawn since All Fools’ 2513,” was the unfeeling reply.

Charity blinked back the sudden tears and wished, for the first time, that she were a mature, magical wizard, and not a fourteen-year-old girl trying to express something intangible while formally losing her best friend. “You are a terrible and stinking liar,” she said quietly to Deibra, “and I’m sorry I’ve been much too preoccupied trying to tame my power to see all the problems it has been causing you. Do you wish me to release you from your post?”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then you’d have no one who would remember you as you were before.” Deibra crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I’m staying right here. I have worked just as hard as you have. You need to find a Familiar.”

Charity stiffened her spine and her voice. “Very well. If it will make you feel more comfortable, I shall give you this MidWinter gift and take a Familiar. I will even try to keep it in a usable fashion until MidWinter next.”

Charity turned to Sunny, who was loitering by the stove. “Please make sure all the animals are gathered. Tomorrow morning, after they have been fed and groomed, release them. The first to find me shall be my Familiar.”

And she walked out of the room.

Charity sat vigil until morning, using the WorldView to peruse the different nooks and crannies of the tower. When she saw Sunny guiding a crowd of animals from their pens, Charity crept to the statue room. Everyone knew it was her favorite place. She could repose there out of sight and still be easily discovered. Unmentioned forbid she actually really try to hide from something she did not want.

She wandered, waiting, wrapped in her solitude as much as the statues were trapped in theirs.

They really were creepy. Eyes watching and peering and staring, usually with fear wrinkling their mouths and eyes. They did not like being observers, waiters, hidden from the world in a cold and friendless place. Prisoners.

Charity shivered and bowed slightly to the statue she was regarding. It was probably just a fancy, but if there was a cousin stuck inside there, she did not want to be thought rude.

Though one or two of the statues had their hands up shielding their eyes, none looked like they were surprised. They all stood on similar disks, with names and dates carved upon them. Just a name, no title. Just one date, most often from the 2400s.

There were some animal statues as well. The old Familiar had a place of honor on a high shelf, with a blue pillow and a bowl ready for cream. Charity sneered at it. Not even for Deibra would she reanimate him.

There was a bird on another shelf, thankfully out of sight of the Familiar.

A strange snake gave her a fright; it was twined tightly around a stone column, and seemed to be watching her with intent. It took a breathless moment to realize its eyes and tongue were ruby. Which somehow did not lessen the heart pounding shivery feeling.

And there was a puppy. The cutest puppy. It had big, floppy ears of dark stone, and a marble white muzzle. It had huge feet and a short tail. There was no pedestal, no date for this little creature. It sat forgotten in a little stone doghouse. Charity knelt and petted it. This would be a Familiar worth having. It wouldn’t make a mess, it was already a statue, and every orphaned girl deserved a puppy.

She lifted him up and snuggled him, making little girly noises as one does whenever we see a baby animal. Then she curled up with him on a window seat, in full view of whatever animal would come in search of her, and took a nap.

When she woke, the sun was going down and there were no live animals around her. Relieved, giddy, Charity lifted Heeby Jeeby in her arms and trotted back to the kitchen.

Deibra was frantically sobbing with her head on the kitchen table; NeachCook Reglin had an arm about her, patting and soothing. Charity paused, but she had fulfilled Deibra’s demand in a way that made Charity happy, so she felt she could put aside her grudge and return to being friends. With that thought, Charity stepped into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

Deibra jumped up. She started forward, arms outstretched. Then she saw the stone dog nestled in the young wizard’s arms. Deibra threw up her hands, turned around, and sank back into the chair.

“She’s been worried about you,” said NeachCook Reglin quietly. “You weren’t in your room this morning; in fact, you weren’t anywhere. Your morning cry was absent.”

“And then you bring that… that…” Deibra stuttered.

Charity blinked slowly. “But I said the animals had to come find me. I thought that implied I wouldn’t be in my room. I waited and waited. I fell asleep waiting. But the only animal I encountered that seemed free to be a companion was this puppy. I named him Heeby Jeeby.” She grinned as she lifted him. “He’s perfect, don’t you think?”

“It’s not real and it doesn’t count!” Deibra shouted.

“Acting Savant Deibra, I think this has gone far enough…” started the NeachCook.

Deibra whirled on him. “No, it hasn’t. She’s just being willful as usual, poor little wizard with no one to love her. Nothing has gone right, not one thing, since she got all that power, and this is one thing that’s going to go right.” She whirled around again to stare at Charity. “My life was turned topsy-turvy just as much as yours. This one thing you will do my way.”

Charity straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and replied stiffly and formally. “As you desire, Acting Savant d’Shadowed Rooster, so it shall be. I require a witness.”

A Herald appeared beside NeachCook Reglin, with a little flash of light and a light trumpet fanfare. “I will witness.”

Charity turned to the north and held out her arms. “I wish this stone puppy, recently promoted to Familiar, named Heeby Jeeby, to have what power and mobility and tools he needs to be able to act and communicate in the fashion that Acting Savant Deibra d’Shadowed Rooster requires.”

They waited, not looking at each other, as a light beamed down upon the stone puppy. A spectral voice muttered to itself about tails and voice boxes, then said, “One stone Familiar. As you desire, so it shall be, Cousin.” And the white light vanished and Heeby Jeeby’s tail began to wag creakily.

Charity turned to the Herald, who nodded. “It has been witnessed.” She vanished also.

“Please send supper to my tower, NeachCook Reglin,” Charity said in a tone worthy of R’Majesty. Then she turned tail and went, voluntarily, to her workroom. There, by virtue of the WorldView fountain, she and Heeby Jeeby sat and watched other wishes come true with more clapping and laughter than had been heard in Shadowed Rooster for two years. The puppy snuggled in Charity’s arms and licked her tears away with a sandpaper tongue.