Chapter 11

  A lesson

  Dorcha agreed to trust the Witch, though begrudgingly. To give a life oath, as Eoin had done, was not something taken lightly in Caorah; the grieving Dorcha was given no choice but to trust Eoin, without absolute proof that the Witch was the one who caused the plague. If he did not, Dorcha would be forced to demand Eoin forfeit his life.

  The atmosphere was rather turbid as the group set off from the Witch’s home, back into the marsh. Celyn, or Miss Cailleach as she insisted on being called now that she was Eoin’s Master, led the way. Reithe was not far behind, he made sure to stay ahead of Eoin. The ram was distancing himself from the lad after his stupid and reckless actions.

  That left Dorcha and Eoin in awkward silence at the rear. They didn’t look, let alone talk to one another as they crunched along the frozen muddy path, hidden by snow.

  Miss Cailleach returned Eoin’s sword, which surprised the young man. Though maybe he should not have been; he had failed to even graze her with it when they had fought.

  Being his Master, the Witch promised to show Eoin how to use it when they stopped for the night. Truth be told, the promise was more of a threat. When she heard the Eoin had cut himself with his own blade, she seemed to take it as a great personal insult and vowed to insure nothing like that would ever happen again.

  Alongside magic and hand to hand combat, Eoin’s Mistress also knew how to wield a sword. When asked why, she had simply replied:

  “The world is dangerous, one can never be too careful.”

  Although her demeanour was just as impervious to scrutiny as ever, Eoin sensed that there was more to those words, more she was not saying.

  Dorcha tripped on a slippery rock hidden beneath the snow. He stumbled into Eoin, who was barely able to keep the pair from tumbling off the safe path and into the treacherous bog. Neither Reithe nor Eoin’s new mistress looked back.

  “Sorry,” Dorcha mumbled, his black hair covering his eyes.

  “Hmm,” Eoin replied, noncommittally.

  Several more similar interactions occurred as they continued along the treacherous path, each time it seemed to make Dorcha more and more annoyed. Without having an evil Witch to be the target of his anger, Dorcha was becoming more surly and unpleasant.

  That was not to say that he didn’t still hold some resentment for the woman he believed responsible for his parents' deaths. He would shoot deadly glares at her back from time to time and when ever she used any magic, be it a gust of wind to scrape of the snow that was piling up on her shoulders, or a spark of flame to warm the hands, Dorcha would start mumbling sullenly; swearing vengeance and death.

  Dorcha did not yet know that Eoin was supposedly ‘awakened’ to the world of magic; a mage of some kind. If he did, Eoin imagined that the grouchy lad wouldn’t be best pleased.

  He was already lashing out with petty acts, the young man how might Dorcha react if he learned that Eoin had agreed to apprentice under a Witch. Given that they were traveling together, he would find out, sooner or later… preferably later. Eoin would do his best to hide the fact.

  “Watch where you’re walking!” Dorcha complained, when Eoin was the one stumbled, this time over a frozen clod of earth and into the other boy.

  Miss Cailleach turned back. Although her face looked the same as ever, she seemed to hold an air of disappointment as she said:

  “Aren't you Awakened, you should be able to sense the obstacles through the snow.”

  Eoin cringed when he saw the confused look on the other man’s face but replied, “I thought you told me not to do anything with… you know,” he replied, trying to be covert.

  “I said you shouldn’t do anything with mana for a while, now that you’ve awakened you should have a vague sense for the earth mana in the ground, enough that tripping should not be an issue,” she explained.

  “But it hurts to look at,” Eoin tried to explain.

  “Hurts?” Miss Cailleach asked, genuinely confused. Unfortunately that line of questioning didn’t go any further as it was just then that Dorcha burst out in an enraged outburst.

  Sadly, although not familiar with magical nomenclature, Dorcha was not stupid. He accused Eoin of colluding with the Witch, of hiding something from him, and of planning behind his back.

  This, in turn, sparked a heated argument, in which Eoin aired his own grievances. Eoin asked why the other man hadn't told him that he had been to see the Witch once before. At this, Dorcha was actually embarrassed. He revealed that he had withheld the fact that he already failed, had he told Eoin, Dorcha feared the young Shepherd might not have come with him.

  This then led Eoin to question, in a shouted tone, why Dorcha hadn’t warned him about the enraging effect that existed when entering the Witch’s domain.

  At this, the orphan blanched. As it transpired, the young man did not know. He thought he had become so overwhelmed with righteous anger upon seeing his parent’s killer that he had blacked out…

  Seeing it was time to fight, Reithe bowled the pair over; partially because he felt like it and partially because Celyn had not stopped with the others and was nearly a half mile ahead. Unfortunately, moves made in anger are never wise.

  There was no appearance of a mysterious wind elemental this time and the ram was left to pull the two mug covered boys out of the bog on his own. Then, he had to hurd the humans so they would catch up to the Witch.

  Despite Dorcha's obvious outrage at what, to him, was the betrayal of someone whom he had felt an immediate kinship with, he still chose to follow. In spite of his anger, Dorcha still did not directly question Eoin’s life oath.

  The trip proceeded in a tense silence.

  All of a sudden, there were more tripping hazards as the pair sought an excuse to push at one another. This back and forth would only die down when a cloud formed over Cailleach’s head; then they would subside for a time, but the temperature would inevitably rise once more. It took a few light shocks for the teens to agree to each stick to their own side of the path.

  Miss Cailleach, for her part, didn’t seem to care about the young men’s arguing, she just liked peace and quiet.

  On the bright side, Reithe felt bad that Eoin was covered in mud, thanks to him, so he stopped giving his friend the cold shoulder. When they sat down for lunch, Eoin offered the ram an apple he had taken from the Witch’s larder, and that was enough for the pair to make up.

  That said, Reithe still refused to walk near his friend because of the pungent aroma of bog that hung about him.

  So it was that a strung out party entered the village at the heart of Hoofstuck Marsh, imaginatively named Hoofstuck. The group kept their distance as they followed the Witch and apparently they weren’t the only ones.

  Hoofstuck was what Eoin assumed a normal Caorah village to be, based on his limited experience. Like Shearford, the buildings were squat and huddled together. Here though, they were even lower down, as if they had sunk into the sucking mud.

  Each house seemed to have a larger roof than was necessary, as if showing off the reeds which thatched most of the roofs on the island and that were all grown here in the marsh.

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  As for the people, they were also much like those of Shearford; just as cold as the harsh Corah winters.

  It felt strange. Eoin had forever been an insider in Shearford, and as such he sore the warm hearts the people possessed on full display. Whenever a traveler or unknown merchant came to the village, Eoin had seen the people turn shifty eyes upon the outsider, walk well clear of them, and generally act hostile towards them.

  It was just how one treated a stranger and Eoin had never thought twice about it. But now that he was that stranger, it felt different, isolating.

  It wasn’t until they rounded a corner, saw a group of children freeze in the middle of some kind of game involving a ball made of a sheep's bladder and run away screaming, that Eoin realised he might be being treated more harshly than ordinarily.

  The kids’ cry of “Witch,” gave a clue as to why. Although the woman Eoin had agreed to work under didn’t fit the typical image of a Witch. She wasn’t wearing all black, she didn’t go around cackling, and she didn't have a long nose covered in warts, Miss Cailleach seemed to be somewhat familiar to the people here. Her dress was unseasonable, covered in flowers as it was, and her pointed hat, made of the same fabric, definitely said: Witch.

  Despite this, Eoin was uncomfortable with the glairs of the village folk and sought to act more warmly towards strangers in the future.

  The three humans and a sheep eventually came to a large stone building near the heart of the village which stood apart from the others. It was thrice the size of the average house and Eoin knew it to be the Village Hall, a space used for the community.

  In Shearford this meant housing religious events, celebrations, and, most importantly to the residence, it was a place to get drunk in the evenings, play games, or generally have fun. More relevant to their present needs, a Village Hall also had a few spare cots open to any who might need them.

  The sky was darkening and, after returning to sleeping in a cot for just one night, Eoin realised the novelty of camping had already worn off. That said, given how hostile the people here seemed to be, Eoin was unsure if they would be allowed to stay the night.

  Miss Cailleach, however, seemed to be oblivious to the scowls and whispers of all the villagers as she burst into the Hall, disturbing the men and women sitting at tables drinking and playing games with stones and chalk.

  She strode confidently over to a bar that was sat against one wall. As in Shearford, someone had been entrepreneurial enough to realise that a space like this would profit greatly from the direct sale of drinks.

  Celyn saw the person she was looking for drinking at the bar and marched straight towards him without any hesitation. The person in question, a large but strong man with clothes slightly cleaner than the other people of Hoofstuck, forced a grimacing smile onto his face as the woman stomped over.

  “Witch Cailleach, to what do we owe the pleasure,” the man asked in a way that made it seem anything but.

  “Me and my group are staying here tonight,” Celyn replied without giving him room to oppose her. At this, the man who Eoin assumed to be an elder of the village given his greying hair, looked pained.

  Noticing this, the Witch slammed something onto the bar.

  “For the village,” she explained. As Miss Cailleach removed her hand from atop the item, Eoin caught the brief gleam of reflected gold in the firelight before whatever it was that she had offered disappeared into the elder’s hand.

  His smile became slightly less strained as he nodded. At his signal, the rest of the villagers returned to what they were doing. Although the village folk were no longer actively staring at Eoin and his party, the newcomers were clearly still not welcome.

  Dorcha tried to sit at the bar and order a drink but the two people next to the stool he had chosen got up and left as soon as he sat down and the bartender ignored the man who would traveling in the company of a Witch. That and he was still covered in now dry mud.

  Failing in his endeavour to get drunk, and having tried and failed to start a conversation with any of the marsh folk, Dorcha moped over to Celyn and Eoin who were each claiming a cot at the edge of the hall by placing their belongings upon them.

  For a time, the two teens were left standing awkwardly while Miss Cailleach fiddled a small box that glowed to Eoin’s sight, seemingly oblivious to the world around her. After a few breaths, the container made a soft chime. Celyn looked at it with definite displeasure and shook it as if unhappy with whatever it was telling her.

  Before Eoin was able to ask about it, Miss Cailleach turned her cold eyes upon the young man and said:

  “Apprentice, it’s time for your first lesson.”

  Eoin cringed once more at her directnes and Dorcha, who had suspected something before, paled as the exact nature of Eoin and Cailleach’s relationship was revealed.

  ?

  After the inevitable argument, which the villagers appeared to pointedly ignore, Eoin left the Village Hall with Miss Cailleach .Dorcha remained behind to cool off. Reithe also chose to stay and keep an eye on the lad and Eoin’s satchel.

  Eoin followed Miss Cailleach on a brief but swift walk out of the village and through a thicket of trees. Pines seemed to cluster in copses around the village, likely providing the stability the land needed to house the homes of the marsh folk.

  When Miss Cailleach deemed they were a safe distance from the town, she sat Eoin down on a stump; preparing him for his first magic lesson. He couldn’t sit still, he was just too excited. Questions boiled about in his mind, he was a pressure cooker without a valve, ready to explode.

  Before he could vent his tide of inquiries, Miss Cailleach asked him a question that caught the young man short.

  “Earlier, on the way here, you said looking at mana hurts; Explain.” she demanded without preamble.

  Confused and sitting on a kettle of questions, Eoin simply replied, “It… well… you know…” When his Mistress indicated that she did not, in fact, know, he tried to elaborate, “Like, it hurts my eyes, but not just my eyes, all the senses, but at the same time… not?” Eoin asked, unsure of himself.

  That wasn’t enough for Miss Cailleach so she prompted him, “Be more specific.”

  Eoin took a breath and really thought about how to answer her. He had just assumed that she would know what he was talking about, she was clearly Awakened herself; how else would she have played with the elements like she did, unless… Eoin slapped himself on the cheek to stop his mind from wandering down tangents and instead remained focused.

  “Pain is perhaps not the best way to describe it. It's like I’m seeing, hearing, and even smelling too much all at once. It's so overwhelming that I can’t tell what’s going on,” the young man tried.

  Due to Miss Cailleach's general impassivity, it was very difficult to tell if he was getting his point across but when she asked a follow up question he relaxed.

  “Did this happen with anything in particular?” she asked.

  “How do you mean,” Eoin returned.

  “Does it happen when you look at water or hear fire or what not?”

  “No?” Eoin replied, not understanding what she was getting at, “It just is, all around me all the time.”

  “Then why aren't you overwhelmed now?” Miss Cailleach asked with what might have been genuine interest.

  “I just… sorta ignore it, like I can switch the sensations off, except not. They're still there but I’m just not aware of them, unless something catches my attention or I lose concentration on ignoring it, if that makes any sense?”

  “Hmm,” Celyn replied, followed by a long pause. Silences didn’t seem to bother her in the least but Eoin soon became antsy.

  “What does it mean?” he pressed.

  “Hmm. Well, it sounds like you’re already using a concentration technique called Oblivence, it’s quite advanced and usually requires someone to sit for a month with a candle on their head until they can walk around without even noticing it. At least, that’s how I was taught.”

  “What possible good could that do?”

  “It teaches someone to maintain focus on a spell for a long period of time, indefinitely in some cases, without failing due to distraction, or even keep it up in their sleep. It is good you have gotten a grip on the idea already but that’s not really what’s interested me.”

  “No?” Eoin asked, curious. Miss Cailleach stood from her hunched position and summoned a lightning cloud to stave off the coming darkness before answering.

  “No. What you’re describing sounds like what happens when someone has a very high affinity with a type of mana. I, for example, as a Witch have a strong connection to the types of mana nature has control over. Earth, water, wind, to name but a few.

  This meant when I awakened, those types of mana seemed clearer to me than others, they would divulge their secrets more easily. But the mana of weapons and other man made items is nearly invisible to me and I would be hard pressed to gain any level of proficiency with them.”

  “Does that mean I have a high affinity for lots of stuff?” Eoin asked, excited.

  “Likely. Is there anything in particular you felt more inclined towards, drawn to, if you will.”

  Eoin shook his head in response.

  “Hmm,” Cailleach repeated.

  “You sound concerned, wouldn’t it be good if I had a high affinity for lots of things?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Hmm. I have a friend in the east, she’s a pyromancer–

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Zip it!... Good. Now, she is a pyromancer, that means she primarily uses fire, but in her case that’s all she can use. That said, she has a ridiculous affinity with fire. She can sing it to her will and do nearly anything I can do with fire alone.

  But it wasn’t always that way. When she was six, she burned down her home and became an orphan. Not out of any malice, she was simply a child who had lost her temper. It took her years of diligent practice to remain in control and she still occasionally has slip ups, it is in fire’s nature to burn after all.”

  Eoin was silent, not knowing how to respond.

  Miss Cailleach continued, “I’m just saying we’ll have to be careful is all. Now, for this evening's lesson…”