Chapter 5 Caelum Six Years Old
Caelum: Six Years Old
Sixteen Years Ago
Bones Estate, “The Black Tower,” Exmoor
He ran through the fronds of grass and wildflowers, a grin plastered on his face.
His heart filled with joy as his legs flashed through the flower, wind, and green-smelling field. He had time, he told himself. He chanted it in the back of his head.
I have time. I have time. I have time.
His father had gone to work in London that day.
He’d taken the carriage, which meant he would be gone for hours.
When he left for shorter times, he took the giant, gilded, snake and bones mirror in the main foyer.
The mirror fascinated Caelum. He couldn’t walk through it.
His father magicked it so that he couldn’t, so that no one could but a select few, but Caelum would press his hand to the glass, stroke the detailed snake heads where they coiled around the edges, hiding among the gilded roses and thorns and bones.
His father hadn’t taken the mirror today.
Instead, his mother followed him out the front door to the carriage, murmuring under her breath about shopping and gowns and a lunch date with friends in Covent Garden.
Caelum could scarcely believe his luck when he realized both of them would be gone.
Longer openings were so few. They came so rarely.
There was only one obstacle left in his way, and luckily, the mage in question had been sitting on a settee in the sunroom when Caelum found him.
He’d already been sitting down.
He’d already been in a position where he could have fallen asleep.
He really could have fallen asleep in the warm sun, immersed in the thick smells of lavender and roses and honeysuckle and other flowers of his mother’s that wafted into the high-ceilinged glass room.
It made everything so easy.
“What, you little fuck?” The bearded mage had scowled at him, his black eyes hard and predatory in an angular, hawk-like face. “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to be studying?”
Caelum nearly lost his nerve. He fought back and forth in his mind.
He couldn’t give it up, though. His heart hurt at the thought.
No. No. He couldn’t. He had to have this. He had to.
His father wasn’t always gone as long as he said.
His father so rarely left him alone.
“What?” Rolf slammed a hand down on the glass table, trembling a vase filled with roses and baby’s breath.
“Your father’ll hide you down to the bone if you screw around while he’s gone.
Worse, he’ll blame me. Get to it, whatever he has you on, or this’ll be another kind of teaching moment. One you’ll like a lot less, runt.”
Caelum was already focusing his magic.
He had to be careful. He had to be really, really careful with his magic, with the coiling green and gold flames that always wanted to do things he didn’t want them to do. When he wasn’t careful, bad things happened. He went too far. He broke things.
He couldn’t break this.
He focused with all of his body, all of his being, his breath held in a tight knot in his chest, hands clenched, heart thudding slowly.
He stared at the thick-faced mage. He had to do this fast. Rolf was clever and mean and quick.
He would figure out what Caelum was doing if he took too long. He would know.
Caelum focused on his scarred face, the dark eyes, the heavy brows, the thick lips. He gritted his teeth.
Control it. Control it. Don’t let it out too much.
Fear nearly made him lose it, anyway. Rolf was right, of course.
Now was the time for manipulation spells.
His father told him to pick a new spell, every day.
Inevitably, his father began demanding more spells, more complex magic, darker magic, more control over every aspect of the magic Caelum knew how to use.
He would ask for two spells, three, four, five…
more than Caelum could remember. Spells he didn’t understand, that wanted and cajoled and demanded things that made no sense to him.
Caelum usually tried to remember at least eight new ones every day, to be safe.
But this one, he’d learned for himself.
He found it inside one of the heavy books he’d pulled out of the castle’s library shelves.
He’d been poring through that book every day for weeks now, usually for part of the day and much of the night.
As it wasn’t one his father had given him specifically, Caelum knew he might notice it gone and demand it back.
Dornroschen… he thought at the muscle-corded, scarred, black-haired wizard silently.
He’d experimented with words, without words.
The words helped him focus. They gave him something to hold onto.
He used the strange-sounding word now to push himself into the other wizard. It worked so quickly, so perfectly, it nearly frightened him.
Rolf slumped on the blue and white, brocaded piece of furniture.
His eyes rolled back. He didn’t move.
Caelum blinked.
He stared at the wizard, terrified he’d killed him.
He’d killed things before, on accident.
Before he could rush forward, check the beating of the mage’s heart, or listen for his breath, like he’d learned to do…
a huffed snort came from the muscular chest. A snore rose loudly, laboriously, gratingly, from the wide, flaring nostrils.
Caelum held his breath as the wizard inhaled, then snored out another, louder breath.
Delight broke over him.
Caelum grinned, then crowed in delight. He jumped up and down where he stood next to the blue-and-white striped chair that faced the gardens. He threw up his arms and crowed again.
Such a simple thing. Such a tiny, simple thing.
Still, he didn’t wait.
He darted out past the edge of the patio.
He ran through the rose bushes, past the lilacs and snapdragons, through more austere and precisely cut bushes and trees.
His heart rose, the deeper he ran into the grounds.
His legs pumped faster. His face grew damp with sweat under the morning sun.
He reached the field and his heart burst with joy.
He was free. For a short, tiny, whisper of time, he was free.
He ran all the way to the river.
He skidded in the mud by the river’s bank.
He stared out over the rushing water, panting.
He wished he could dive in, let it carry him away.
It was spring, and the waterline sat high on the banks, high enough to spill over and be a little scary.
It had been raining a lot. Water fed the stream from both fields, and turned it into a rushing, tumbling torrent in this part of the forest grounds.
He stopped long enough to watch the creatures that teamed in the blue water: water fae, knucker dragons, sprites, glowing fish that flashed different colors as they darted through the rough currents, turtles, frogs.
He took a breath, then picked his way to the higher part of the path.
He soon ran along the muddy trail, still choosing his footing carefully where it curved alongside the shore, leaping over or walking carefully around the muddiest parts where it ran too near the banks, or dipped low enough to capture part of the stream.
He stared down at the ridge of mud he’d already collected around the soles of his shoes.
He’d need to clean everything thoroughly before his father came home.
But that was for later.
He came to an abrupt stop as he reached the dead English oak.
He saw the dark hole of the nearest large burrow between the roots and grinned.
He dug into his pocket, pulled out a scratched gold pocket watch he’d found in one of the drawers of one of the many rooms in the Black Tower no one ever went inside. It had a bird on the case, a hummingbird according to the colorful books in the Bones family library.
He dangled it from the gold chain, and whistled.
A bare pause, a rustle in the wet ground.
A dark, wet nose poked out of the muddy hole.
It sniffed.
Caelum’s grin widened.
“Come on,” he called out in his loud, proud, six-year-old’s impatient voice. “I brought it for you. Do you want it, or not?”
The nose ventured out further. Red, glowing eyes soon followed, peering up at him. The black nose sniffed again, followed by tufted ears that swiveled forward, listening.
“Don’t be a coward!” Caelum admonished. “You already took two of my buttons, last I was here. And my sandwich. And my shoe, which you promptly set on fire and chewed to ribbons. This one I actually brought for you. Or do you only like it when you steal?”
The soft, black-furred head emerged all the way.
It continued to sniff the air as it hunkered down, walking low over the mud and grass towards him.
Its fiery tail emerged last. The blue and green, licking and coiling flames somehow never burned the black fur of the creature itself, even as it made leaves and grass-tips smolder and scorch as it passed.
Most of the area around its burrow had already been burned free of everything but mud and ash.
Caelum stood still, waiting, dangling the gold watch on its chain.
He grinned when the little black fox walked right up to him.
She took the gold object carefully, almost daintily, out of Caelum’s fingers with her sharp teeth. Then, without a pause, she turned and darted back into the dark hole.
Caelum waited, arms folded.
Seconds later, the creature reemerged, and now it had an unmistakable smile on its canine jaws. It walked towards him again, wagging its tail, still low to the ground.
The fox didn’t flinch when it got close enough for Caelum to bend down and stroke its achingly soft head and nose.
After Caelum rubbed her ears for a few seconds, she made little yelping, chattering, yipping noises.
Then she rolled over on her back, plaintively wagging her fiery tail as she begged for belly scratches.
Caelum crouched down next to her, careful not to get too close to the burning tail as he rubbed the creature’s belly and chest and tugged her black paws and ears.
“Why do you like gold so much?” Caelum mused softly. “What do you do with it? Just fill your dirt hole so you can admire it all when no one’s around?”