The Sorceror and his wife

There was a deck around the yurt. It was a prefabricated thing - made of stained wood, a dark red that stood at contrast to the white canvas walls. A little railed stairway leading down. A rocking chair set near the yurt door, draped in discarded blankets, with a table beside it. The deck had treated boards set an inch or so apart with screws holding them down.

A pair of hooves clopped back and forth across the deck now, kicking anxiously at the gaps, nervously turning at each end to return the other way, never pausing for a moment in their mad pacing, pressing for self preservation.

“I can’t do it.”
“You’ll be fine,” Bri assured him for the fourth time. This time he whirled on her, indignant.
“No! You don’t understand!” Sylvan rarely raised his voice and it came out now as almost a bleat. “This is how my kind usually die! Statistically this is 80% - I am literally signing my death warrant!”
“It’s just a lady with some yard work!”
“And a fascinating nubile young daughter who she’s trying to hook me up with. My kind are not known for our self control.”
“Then why did you call her back?”
Sylvan stopped, calmed, voice grew higher, pleading  “. . . We need the money . . . “
“And somehow the fact that you’re out of propane is worth - your life?”
“Maybe I want to take a risk. Maybe I’m not afraid,” he shot back angrily.
She was all calm. “That’s not what I’m hearing.”
“. . . I might not die. My dad deserves to have hot food, and Satyr lives are cheap, right?”
“Your life isn’t cheap to me.”

He looked at her, really looked, eyes meeting hers for the first time this morning, and she held his gaze for as long as the moment lasted before he jerked his eyes away.
“I can’t do it,” he muttered. “I can’t, I can’t”
“I could,” suggested Bri, “I could turn in rent early so you guys could buy propane.”
“And the fair is soon, we always sell a lot of cheese at the fair.”
“We’ll tell her you couldn’t make it, but nobley sent me in her place. I have been looking for work - even if yard work isn’t really what I was imagining.”
“Thank you.”

“I’m a lifesaver?” She cocked her head a little, just the hint of a smile.
He looked up, grinned, chuckled. “Yes, quite possibly yes.”

So it was that a pair of sandaled feet made their way down old Landes lane. It was feet not hooves that made their way up the long steep hill as Old Landes turned from private road to driveway, Feet that crossed through the front garden to the door of the first adobe plastered building.

Bri knocked on the door. The woman who answered was middle aged with hair silvering around her neck. Her skin was a dark hazelnut, her clothes loose but well fitting. She surveyed Bri with eyes that felt like they belonged to a hawk, despite having nothing hawklike about them.
“Hi - I’m Brianna.” Bri stuck out her hand.
“Hello. I’m Lisa.” She took the proffered hand in her loose one. The question hung unspoken. Why are you here?
“Sylvan had a scheduling issue and won’t be able to make it.” Bri lied smoothly.
“Oh, such a pity. Still we need the help.” And like that, Bri found herself accepted and put to work.

They tried very hard to enact civilization on the wild place that was now their home. There were beds to weed, brush to move, lawns to mow, flowers to water, showers to clean, dishes to wash, windows to clear of the smallest speck of dirt. The work seemed endless, tedious, and largely pointless - but none of it was hard work. Bri set to it, and when one finished Lisa was ready with another task.

Lisa conveyed all her authority from her husband. “James was hoping you could . . .”  and wasn’t shy about calling him at his workplace to ask the tiny questions Bri asked. Did he want the extra gravel on the path, or the road? Should she water the raspberries too? Each had her going inside to call and coming back outside to answer, and these were the only moments Bri found to rest. She started asking more questions where she could find them, wondering if Lisa would ever make a decision on her own. She never did - the closest they came to it that day was a “I think we should . . . but I should probably call James and make sure.”

The house itself was actually two houses, one where the family cooked and slept, and the other which Bri had knocked at served as an office for Lisa’s stay at home business, and a bedroom for the eldest daughter recently home from college. Both buildings were exquisitely built. Bri didn’t have an eye for craftsmanship - but she was sure there had been a lot of money put into this place - from the state of the art solar system, the chandeliers on the ceiling, the giant jacuzzi in the master bedroom, and the burnished mahogany floors.

When she was asked to dust, she got a chance to go over the myriad of expensive objects carefully set on every table and windowsill. The picture perfect photographs of the family, framed in a polished wooden heart - Bri knew all of their names long before putting an image to them, because there were tributes to them done in wood and wrought iron. “Clara” etched in glass. “We love you Alethea” carved into ivory.

Fortunately, she was not asked to dust the fine porcelain inside the glass cabinets that ringed the kitchen. Here too she saw everyone’s name and the love they held for each other - writ in clay and crystalline glass. The plate with “I love you daddy” scrawled across it in a preschooler’s hand sat with equal value on the shelves to a cup, shaped like a rose, exquisite in every detail. Money mattered less here than love. Family before everything.

It was strange, then, for Bri - who had never spent time in this kind of house, and had never experienced a family like this one, to walk among it unseen. When the father, James, got home with his two daughters, Bri watched them all hug in a circle in the familiar way of families, so unfamiliar to her. They carried in groceries together, Alethea telling her mother about something that had happened in high school that day, Clara pausing after putting the bags down in the kitchen to give her father a squeeze before heading out to get the rest of the bags. Then Lisa came and found her, brought Bri out into the living room and introduced her and told the whole family how much work she’d been doing all day. They all seemed grateful. James took her hands in his and told her how much it meant to have the help, asked if far too much money was enough - and pressed it into her hands. She was promised to come back the next week with much ado.

“We have all these extra vegetables in our garden that we don’t know what to do with,” Lisa informed her as she was leaving. “Would you like some?”
Of course! Then there was too much for Bri to carry alone, and Clara was assigned to walk it home with her, and by then it was too late to back out. They walked down the hill together. Bri trying to convince her the whole way that she could carry all this alone - she couldn’t -  and Clara assuring her it wasn’t a problem - It wasn’t.

This being accomplished, they moved to other things. Clara had heard rumors that the husk of a car at the end of the road had come with Bri - how was she faring here? When they arrived at the yurt, nothing would do but to bring her in and show her, and Clara promised that she had some castaway clothes that Bri could have when she discovered with astonishment the little to nothing Bri had to change into after the day’s work.

When Sylvan poked his head in, hearing her back, and his eyes grew wide with fright, Clara was courteous to him, but not, as they had all been afraid of, flirtatious or overly warm in the slightest - if anything she was a little formal, which Sylvan took to well, and excused himself when he first got the chance. Bri took an excuse to follow him, and they decided he was okay with Clara staying to help eat the bounty she’d carried in, and even if he couldn’t cook it - early rent was promised to turn into propane tomorrow - he’d transform it into a salad and bring it to them.

When Bri came back she found Clara thumbing through the fairytales Bri still had - long overdue -  by her bed, and rather than being dismissive, she pointed out her favorites. They talked until dinner, and then a bit after, and parted fast friends. Bri found in her absence that while Sylvan filled a hole in her, a loneliness that had needed a friend, there is something to talking with a girl, in the way of girls, that she had missed.

Clara tried to visit again a few days later - but a run in with Farrius drove her off - and discouraged unplanned visits thereafter. Bri didn’t hear about it until she went back to work the week after, and got the whole story, Clara perched on a stool in the kitchen, as Bri labored over dishes.

“So I show up, and there’s this old dude out by the car, and I wave to him and he gives me this creepy smile and shouts ‘What’s a pretty young girl like you doing here. Come to have some fun with me?”  I kinda just ignored him and started walking towards the yurt as fast as I could, but he intercepted me, and said in this weird singsong voice ‘You should respect your elders and attend to our boners.’ and makes this obscene gesture - I’m sure you can imagine - and I didn’t know what to say, so I just said something like ‘no thank you’ and bolted.”

“Yeah - that’s Farrius” Bri commiserated, “He’s my pervy landlord.”
“How can you stand it?!” Clara seemed outraged.
“You get used to it - just kinda tune it out. It’s nothing you don’t get on the street.”
“You’ve had people talk to you like that regularly? That’s not uncommon?”
“Sure - I’ve lived a lot of places. Some are worse than others. Farrius is pretty bad because he has no shame - but he also doesn’t mean it.”
“He sure sounded like he did.”
“He just doesn’t like people, and tries to drive them off however he can.”
“I told my dad about it, and he doesn’t want me going back there. Mom thought I’d be okay, but she wasn’t about to argue.”

It was probably for the best, Bri mused - they wouldn’t have to worry about Sylvan if Clara couldn’t come over, and despite him claiming it was okay - and her being there all the time as chaperone - they were still risking his life every time he interacted closely with a human in a way that she didn’t seem to have to worry about.

After she’d done dishes and weeding for the day, James took her aside. He was a tall man with a stern face, a kind smile, and an air of control about him that overshadowed everything else. Unlike his dark skinned wife and light brown daughters, he had blond hair and pale skin that spoke of Sweden or somewhere far to the north. His eyes were a piercing blue that faded into the whites at times to make it seem like his eyes were all one color in odd moments.

“I have a special task for you,” he told her. Clippers, gloves, and a leather apron all came with as they went out to the end of the driveway and he showed her the blackberries stretching as far as the eye could see. “I just want you to clip them back to the fenceline,” he explained - pointing out the chainlink that had become entirely overgrown. “Can you do that?”

“Not a problem,” Bri smiled at him - there was something fatherly about him that made her want to please him.

“Glad to hear it,” he said, and gave her shoulder a squeeze, then he went back up the driveway, leaving her to do battle. She studied the terrain a moment before deciding to start from the fence and work her way back. She donned her gloves and apron and began clipping from the road, disentangling great big himalayan blackberry vines from the fence.

“Ouch!” She looked over in surprise as an old woman began to materialize out of the blackberry bushes coming towards her, “You Goddamned bloody m**********r, just what do you think you are . . . “ It was Phylis from the potluck and she wasn’t walking, she was coming out of the vines themselves, coalescing out of green light that poured into her from all around. She finally focussed on Bri, a finger pushed her spectacles up over her eyes, and the entire string of epithets died on her tongue. They stared at each other for moment, each one equally surprised.

“Well,” said Phylis finally, “I suppose that if you were a human that wouldn’t have happened, so I guess I don’t have anything to worry about.”

“I, yes, no I’m not human.” Bri stuttered. “What are you?”

“I’m a blackberry patch.The very same blackberry patch that you’ve been cutting into with those big iron shears of yours by the way.”
“I’m sorry - I didn’t know,” was all Bri could say.
“I thought it was that sorcerer trying to do it again, which is why I came so fast. I suppose he put you up to this?”
“James? Sorcerer?”
“Of the vilest dark magic. Did you know that wife of his is an elemental he bound to him? She’s so much more than he lets her be.”

Bri shook her head, trying to reorganize everything inside. She would have thought having had so many revelations she would be used to them by now - but she wasn’t.

“So - why did he put me on trying to cut - um you - down?”

“Oh we’ve been fighting for ages now, he’s always trying new vile things to do to me. Poisons, plagues - bugs. He’ll stop at nothing.”

“No - but why me?”

Phylis paused and considered. “He doesn’t know you’re not human does he?”
“No, neither of us know anything about each other.”
“He must have thought you were human and I’d be powerless to stop you. Stupid assumption. What are you anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Bri told her honestly.
“Doesn’t take much. A drop of the talent, a fairy grandfather five generations back - you can have no magic at all, and look completely human and still have the fates treat you as one of us. That’s probably it.”
“Probably.” Bri said gloomily - she had been nursing hopes of being a demigoddess even though Sylvan assured her those didn’t happen anymore. The gods were all in hiding. This new image of a magicless orphan not quite human enough to fit in with the humans but not magical enough to function as a function of the magical world, was not flattering.

“Wouldn’t let him know - whatever you are though,” Phylis advised. She was still sitting on a big blackberry vine, not all the way opaque, made distinctly of green light - so that it was no surprise she didn’t seem to mind resting on her own thorns. “You going to stop cutting me to pieces?”

“Yes - I promise, I’m sorry - I didn’t know.”
“Okay - I better get going before he comes back and finds you chatting with me. Feel free to visit anytime!” And with that she vanished, absorbed back into the blackberries.

Bri stood there a moment, then gathered up her tools and headed up the hill. James was outside, unloading buckets of rocks from his truck. “Already done?”
“Phylis came over.”
“Really? That fast? - I swear she doesn’t do anything but patrol the edge of her blackberry patch.”

“Yeah, she seemed really mad.”
He sighed. “She has no right to be mad. Her blackberry patch covers acres, and when it crosses my fence I have every right to trim it back.”
“I’d tend to agree with you,” Bri said - and she was starting to mean it  “-but I don’t really feel comfortable doing work with an old woman yelling at me.”
“Yeah - of course, thank you for trying.”

The rest of work went by in a blur. Clara invited her to her room after, but Bri begged off saying she wasn’t feeling well. When she got home Sylvan came and checked in on her right away, and she had told him the whole story in a rush before he even knew what hit him.

“So if Clara is the daughter of a sorcerer and an elemental - she’s not human right?” Was the first thing she wanted to know.
“That’s assuming everything Phylis said is true. He sounded pretty reasonable to me.”

“But if she’s telling the truth . . . then . . . “
“Sorcery doesn’t follow bloodlines or that’s what I’ve heard. A sorcerer is just a human who sold their soul - and not having any divinity left in them are no threat to the gods and thus no longer termed human. Dad knew one a long time ago.”
“But an elemental’s daughter?”
“I can’t imagine that could ever be considered human,” he admitted. “Assuming Phylis knows what she’s talking about. She’s a blackberry patch - she could very well just be referring to marriage.”

When they had completely talked it over, Sylvan took his leave and Bri lay on her bed wide awake. If nothing else, she knew, she had found one more magical creature on the lane, and if there were four different species on one little dirt road - well the entire world must be full of them! Four plus her - whatever she was - a bit of fairy blood in her distant past seemed likely the more she thought about it. She didn’t know her parents after all, one of them could have looked more fey and she’d never know.

She very much wanted to tell Clara, to confide in the other girl this secret life that she had discovered, to learn what the daughter of a sorcerer might know about magic, but could she trust that Phylis was right about Lisa?

And Clara was open about everything with her father. Could she trust her to keep their secrets safe?