Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters (9 page)

But even beyond the camaraderie that was filling the room, here, in the Tower of London . . . the stones within were speaking to him. The past, the present deep within the foundations of this place, they called. Muted, by the shields, but still there, in the back of his head.

A sense of satisfaction spread through him.

“Congratulations, young Davies,” the Lieutenant-General was before him, smiling. “A Yeoman Warder, and a promotion your first day,” the man’s smile grew teeth. “By order of the Constable of the Tower himself.”

“Promotion?” Tom asked.

“Aye.” The Lieutenant-General slapped a falconer’s thick leather glove against his chest. “You’re the new Ravenmaster.”

Fire’s Children

Elisabeth Waters

“Albert! Luke! Go light the altar candles!” The crucifer sounded nervous, which wasn’t surprising because the service was due to start in ten minutes and the Rector, Father Pearce, wasn’t here yet.

Luke and I each grabbed a candle lighter/snuffer, and Luke lit the wicks on both of them. All the other acolytes knew I wasn’t very good with fire. This was embarrassing for two reasons: My father and my twin were both Fire Magicians and couldn’t understand why I had problems with things they could do easily; and El, my twin, was a much better acolyte than I was and everyone knew it. Unfortunately, our mother’s return from Switzerland had meant the end of El’s career as an acolyte.

I made sure that I was on the Gospel side of the altar, because the Epistle candle had to be lit first. The Gospel candle is never supposed to burn alone. Luke lit his candle, and I tried to light mine. Unfortunately, the Altar Guild had put in new candles since last week, and I couldn’t see the top of the candle. For all I knew the wick could have been buried in the wax, which would make it almost impossible to light. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Luke trying to decide whether to come help me. Before he could move, however, a ball of light exploded at the top of the candle. I quickly pulled the lighter away before its entire wick melted and slid the wick back into the tube to extinguish it. The light subsided to a normal candle flame as Luke and I turned to go back to the sacristy. I took a brief look to my right as we went and saw El smirking at me from the front pew. Normally I would have found that annoying, but first, she
had
helped me, and second, it was the happiest I had seen her look in two weeks. As I entered the sacristy, where Father Pearce was hastily vesting, the crucifer handed Luke and me our torches before picking up the processional cross. I hoped that nobody else had noticed El using her magic. I knew Mother hadn’t noticed; she didn’t believe in magic, and she didn’t really know either of us.

Mother was consumptive, so Father, who was a doctor, sent her to Switzerland to be cured when El and I were three. Between the soot in the air from burning coal and the frequent fog, London was no place for anyone with bad lungs. The mountain air in Switzerland had done wonders for Mother, even if her recovery had taken nine years. She remembered, however, that she had given birth to twins, but not twin
boys
—something El and I had pretty much forgotten. At the moment, she was barely speaking to Father. And El was barely speaking to anybody.

El and I understood what Father had done. Between his medical practice and his duties as a Fire Adept with the White Lodge, he didn’t have patience for the fuss of raising a girl. Actually, he didn’t have much patience at all. So when he was left with no wife and two small children, he raised us alike—as twin boys. He shortened Eleanora to El and told anyone who asked that it was short for Elihu (which actually
is
a family name). El and I went to the same schools and learned the same things, though she was much better at mathematics, which she loved and I hated. Mother said that mathematics were unladylike, which was one of the
nicer
things she had said to El since her return—as if any of this was El’s fault. I really missed having El as a fellow acolyte. She was so much better at it than I was, and she was good at covering up my deficiencies.

Now El sat stiffly next to Mother and Father in a pew at Christ Church. She was wearing a pale pink dress with a matching bonnet to hide her short hair. I didn’t have to see her to know that she was miserable. I stood next to the last pew in the nave, resting the base of my torch on the floor and carefully mirroring Luke’s position. The crucifer stood just ahead of us. When the introit ended and the opening hymn began, the crucifer would lift the cross, and we would raise our torches and process down the aisle, followed by Father Pearce, who stood behind us. From here I could see that the altar candles were now different heights. It looked as if about four inches of the Gospel candle had burned when El lit it. Ooops.

The introit, being sung
a capella
by the usual tenor soloist, seemed to me to get longer each week. I wondered whether he was singing to glorify God or just to show off. Maybe it was both.

While I was waiting for him to finish, I looked through a blur caused by the heated air just above my candle’s flame and wondered what was wrong with me. El could light candles with her magic, even when seated in the congregation unwillingly pretending to be a young lady, while I had trouble lighting even a previously burned candle from the flame on the end of the candle lighter. If there was such a thing as an anti-Fire Magician, I seemed to be one.

After the reading of the Gospel, Luke and I took the torches back to the sacristy and extinguished them. We wouldn’t need them again until the recessional, when all we had to do was carry them and follow the crucifer. The middle of the communion service was my favorite part; I had no problems with the collection plate, the bread, the wine, or the water. Especially the water; I like water.

In London, the water is at least more wholesome than the air—usually. We’ve had epidemics of cholera, and Father often sees dysentery among his charity patients. He volunteers at a hospital for the poor, and he frequently takes El and me along to assist. Again, it’s something she’s better at than I am.

But I enjoy handling the water during the service. It feels alive to me in a way that fire does not. The other acolytes help me with fire, but they all seem happy to let me do the ablutions: a carefully choreographed routine in which I pour water from a cruet over Father Pearce’s fingers while holding a small silver bowl beneath them, and then turn slightly so that he can take the towel draped over my left forearm to dry his hands. This ritual washing of the hands is purely symbolic; if his hands were dirty, this would not clean them. But before he consecrates the bread and wine so that they become the body and blood of Christ, his hands have to be symbolically clean as well. We finished the ablutions, Father Pearce and I bowed to each other, and I put the bowl, towel, and cruet back on the shelf at the side.

*   *   *

Our family stayed after the service to meet with Father Pearce. It was horrible, even though nobody was angry with me. Father was angry enough for everyone in the room to feel it, and Mother was furious as well. And I hate it when people around me are angry. I sat in a chair, shaking, and kept my mouth shut.

Father Pearce wasn’t angry with El, either, but he was
very
upset to learn that she was a girl. Apparently there’s a rule in the Church of England that says girls can’t be acolytes. He told her she could join the Altar Guild when she was older, but I could tell she did not find that to be the consolation he obviously intended. Still, she thanked him politely, and she pointed out that the Bishop couldn’t blame him; there was no way he could have known she wasn’t a boy. Christ Church didn’t even have our baptismal records; we had been baptized at the estate of our mother’s family, out in the country, so the records were in the parish church there.

He then tried to mediate between our raging parents, with limited success. Mother was determined to leave Father—and to take El with her. It was finally agreed that she and El would visit her family in the country. Father allowed this on the grounds that it would be better for her lungs, and that’s what he could tell anyone who had the impertinence to ask why his wife had left him so soon after her return. As for Mother’s argument that this would give Eleanora a place to learn to be a proper young lady, Father wasn’t enthusiastic about losing his best pupil and assistant, but he couldn’t say
that
in front of Mother, who would have thought him insane—and she already thought that raising her daughter as a boy was both crazy and cruel.

From the look on El’s face as Mother promised her lots of pretty dresses and lessons in music, dancing, and embroidery, it looked as if the cruelty was coming from Mother. El had no more interest in those things than I did.

El hugged me hard, and I hugged her back. Being separated from El was inconceivable; we hadn’t been apart from each other since we were born.

Mother practically dragged El from the room before we could say a proper goodbye—although I felt as if I were choking and probably couldn’t have said anything anyway. I felt as if half of my soul was going with them. Maybe it was.

Father scowled after them. “El will be wasted in the country; she’s been doing good work in my practice, and she shows the potential to become an Adept. Why did the one with real talent have to be the girl? The White Lodge doesn’t take women!”

I was astonished to hear him mention the Lodge in front of an outsider, but Father Pearce’s reply surprised me even more. “You’ll have to find a teacher for her wherever she ends up. She needs to learn more control; she melted several inches of one of the altar candles this morning.”

Father looked at me, and I said miserably, “I couldn’t light it; I think the wick had been covered by melted wax, but it was too tall for me to see. El lit it for me.”

Father glared. “You do have
some
magic; I can feel it in you. You should certainly be able to light a candle with a lit taper; boys with
no
magic manage that!” He sighed. “I’ll step up your lessons; now that I have only one of you to teach, I can concentrate more on you.”

This made me feel the way El had looked when mother was promising her embroidery. I didn’t seem to be able to learn
anything
from Father. While El was there, it hadn’t been as noticeable, but if he was concentrating on just me . . . I repressed a shudder. Father and Father Pearce exchanged a few more comments that I didn’t hear, and then we went home.

*   *   *

The next few weeks were very strange. I spent hours with Father in his workroom, trying to light a candle: a process that left him scowling and made me very thankful that it was Lent and the church had only the two altar candles to light. I wasn’t looking forward to Easter, when there would be dozens of them.

I accompanied Father to his surgery and to the hospital. Although I don’t have El’s talent, I was moderately useful as an extra pair of hands.

*   *   *

But not only did I miss my twin, I was starting to fear that I was losing my mind. Whenever I went out alone, I saw things. Creatures. I’m not talking about Elementals like salamanders; I’d seen them as long as I could remember. I think they lived in the fire in our nursery. But now I saw tiny naked women—with long hair covering at least part of their bodies—splashing in the pond in the garden near our house or perched at the top of every rain barrel I passed on the way to school. I watched the boys with me carefully, and I could tell that none of
them
could see the creatures. And when we all went down to the river one afternoon, the women were there too, but this time they had seaweed draped around their bodies. They called to me: “young magician”—and I was thankful that none of the other boys heard
that
. I really hoped it was just that I was reaching the age when boys started thinking about naked women, because if those creatures were
real
 . . .

*   *   *

Lent came to an end, school was out, and I was busy at church with the various services for Holy Week. Father was busy with his medical practice; there was a sudden increase in dysentery in London.

Although I was serving as an acolyte on Easter Sunday, I wasn’t one of the ones who had to deal with all of the candles. On Easter everyone in the parish came to church, including the “Easter Lilies” (the people who come only at Christmas and Easter), so we had extra acolytes and extra Altar Guild ladies.

The only thing I had to handle for the Easter communion was water, so I was feeling pretty relaxed—until I picked up the water for the ablutions. It felt as if it were twitching in my hands, despite being contained in a glass cruet that was
not
moving, and it looked to me as if it were full of red flecks. I must have been seeing things, because not even the most inexperienced new Altar Guild member would put out something that really looked like that. But a new lady might not know to boil and filter the water . . .

Father Pearce’s hands were clean; the ablutions couldn’t make them physically cleaner. But pouring
this
water over his fingers could make them spiritually clean and physically dirty, right before he distributed consecrated—and contaminated—bread to everyone in the parish. It would be a nightmare, an epidemic. I could
not
let that happen.

Father’s lessons had been all about pulling power through me and pushing it out to light the candle. I found myself doing the same thing now, except that instead of trying to call up fire, I pushed power through the cruet, visualizing pure, uncontaminated water. I felt dizzy, the stopper jiggled in the top of the cruet, and the crucifer hissed, “Don’t just stand there!” I blinked and looked again at the cruet. The water looked clear, and it felt pure. I quickly removed the stopper, gathered up the bowl and the towel, and crossed to Father Pearce to do the ablutions. He looked at me oddly, but I thought it was just that I had been slow about it. The rest of the service was normal.

After the service I was absolutely starving. I had never been so hungry in my life. Father and I had been invited to the house of some friends of his for Easter dinner, and I tried very hard to behave properly, despite my desire to eat everything in sight. I obviously didn’t quite succeed, because the man sitting next to me made a joke about growing boys with hollow legs. But then he had one of the footmen give me second helpings, so I guess he did just think I was a growing boy. Still, it’s a good thing that Easter dinner is a feast.

*   *   *

That night I dreamed of those little naked women again. I was sitting next to the pond in the garden, with my pajama legs rolled up and my feet in the water, and they were frolicking around me like a pack of puppies, excited because their human had returned. I could hear their voices still in my head: “magician, Water Master . . .”