Resistance is Feudal

I hated him! I hated Da! His stinking breath and his wheezing and snoring that kept me up all night, and...and...everything! I hated him! I kicked at the ground with my heel, chunking out a bigger and bigger hole with every blow.

After a while, I stopped crying—the rhythm of kicking the ground calmed me down.

I heard something behind me. I turned to face the shed, peered in through a gap in the timbers. The wizard was sitting on his straw pallet, his legs drawn up under him. He had the magic wand in his hands and was turning it over and over. At one point, he pointed it at his face and squinted at the end. I caught my breath. What if it went off?

He shrugged and put it down. I kept watching. He took up something else—black and small, hinged like a clam. He opened it. I gasped—what if it ate his face?

He paused and turned. He had heard me! I froze, desperate not to make any more noise, but he came over to the wall, hunkered down, and peered through the gap. “Edward? It’s you, right, Edward?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Edward, it’s all right. I don’t mind. Come on in.”

I had seen a wizard with his secret magic items, and he still wanted me to come in! Maybe... maybe I could be his apprentice! Maybe he would teach me magic, and I could learn how to conjure...

And no more beatings from Da.

I went into the shed. The wizard smiled and motioned for me to join him. “You don’t have to be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I probably owe you my life.”

“Will you teach me magic?”

His face fell. “Edward, we’ve discussed this before. I don’t know any magic.”

“That’s not true!” I pointed at the wand where it lay. “I saw you use that! Against the troll!”

“I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything. You know that.”

“But—”

“Look. I can read these things, but they don’t mean anything. Look at this.” He showed me the magic clam. It had a piece of glass inside, with colors swimming on it, like when a bit of oil is spilled in a puddle of rainwater. Stranger still, some of the colors formed letters. I recognized the letters, but they didn’t make words I knew.

“This says,” and then he said something I couldn’t understand. It sounded like “purse-uh-null ih-murge-encie bee-kin.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he complained.

“Then how do you know how to pronounce it? Maybe it’s another language. Maybe it’s your wizard’s cant.”

“I don’t know how I know. I just do.” He frowned. “Can you hear that?”

I fell silent, listening. The little clam he held was making a sound, like a bird’s chirp, only not as pretty. It came every few seconds.

“I don’t understand any of this.” He was getting more and more frustrated. He pulled another item out of the wallet—a black and gold box. It had knobs and wheels on it, and things like looked like buttons, only they were sunken inside it so that you could press them with your fingers. “When I push these two”—here he did so—“it says:” More words I couldn’t understand: “Enviern-mint saaf. Class-emm.”

“What does that mean?”

For a moment, I thought he’d get angry, but then he just sighed. “I don’t know. I feel like...like there’s a hole in my head. And all of my memories, everything I ever knew... It’s all in that hole.” He looked at me sadly, then his eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

He touched my chin with a finger and turned my head to one side. “You’re bruised here. Did your father hit you again?”

I flinched. “Yes. So?”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Right? Da can do whatever he wants.”

“But it’s not...” He was struggling. “I don’t know how to explain it. Parents shouldn’t hit their children. I know that, somehow.”

That didn’t make much sense. “Then who should?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if parents shouldn’t hit their children, who should? Someone has to.”

He stroked his beard. “No. I think— I think no one should.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The wizard would sometimes speak strange ideas like that. Like the time he told me I should be glad that all we have to eat is vegetables, not meat and pastry like the lord and lady. Sometimes something would pop out of that hole in his head. It drove Da to distraction, all these crazy ideas.

“You keep saying things like that,” I told him, “and they’ll shave a cross in your head.” He looked puzzled. “That’s what they do to crazy people,” I told him. “To drive out the spirits.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but just then, Da screamed for me again. “Edward! Edward! Where are you?”

I leaned out the door. “I’m outside, Da! I’m—” I thought quickly. “I’m building a rabbit trap!”

“The hell you are! I can tell by your voice! Stop wastin’ your time with him! And tell him to get out to the fields!”

The wizard put his magic items under his bed. “Your father doesn’t like me.”

“Da doesn’t like anyone. Not since the troll hurt him so bad.”

“And since I came with the troll, I guess he blames me.”

“He shouldn’t. You stopped the troll from killing us all.”

The wizard stood and stretched. “Did I? I wish I had.” And with that he went out into the fields, leaving me alone.

I sat under a tree near the edge of the fields, and listened to the scream.

I had been wrong, and the wizard had been right. He had only stopped the troll that one day. In the time since, the troll had come to the village several times, always in the dead of night, sweeping a magic light over the huts and pathways, a reddish glow that frightened away even the shadows.

At first, some of the men tried to fight it, rushing it with blades and rocks.

They stopped trying that after the first funerals.

It took things. Gold rings. Bits of copper. Iron from the smithy. And sometimes...

Sometimes it took people.

From a cave on the outskirts of town, we heard horrible noises. High-pitched whines like the lightning wand. Banging. And screams. Awful, horrible screams.

“We need to stop it,” the wizard said once to a group of men. “We know it lives in the cave. We need to go and kill it.”

But no one would go. There were six new tombstones behind the church, after all, and plenty of people in town. Good odds that on those occasions when it stole a body, it wouldn’t be yours. And who would miss a little gold, a little copper, a little iron...if you still had your heart in your chest?

I listened to the scream. It was high and keening. A week ago, my friend Gwendolyn had vanished at night. I recognized her voice and I hated myself for being small. And afraid.

The sun went down, and Harold and the others—including the wizard—came in from the field. Da grumbled and complained that they’d probably ruined the crops, we’d have another bad yield, he’d show ‘em how to do it, if he could only get out of the damned house.

Ma put food out. We prayed. I reached for a roll.

“No!” Da smacked my hand. “You lie around all day, day-dreaming about magic and wizards”—he glared at the wizard here—“while your brothers sweat. Let them at it first.”

I waited until everyone else had taken their food. A trencher came around to me. “I did make a rabbit trap,” I said quietly. I had made it while sitting under the tree, listening to Gwenny. It was a good trap. We’d have plenty of rabbit meat.

“What did you say?” Da asked.

“Nothing.” I bent to my food.

“You said something. Something about a rabbit trap.”

I looked up. Across the table, the wizard was watching me. His eyes flashed. They were green, like old copper.

“I made a rabbit trap today, Da. A good one. I didn’t lie around. I did something.”

“A rabbit trap!” Da laughed. “Well, that’s good, son! In a whole day, you made a trap that catches a bunny! Why, look around!” he gestured to the entire table—my three brothers, the wizard, Ma. “How many rabbits do you suppose you can catch in a day with your trap? Enough to make maybe one bowl of stew...after you give your tithe to the lord and lady?”

Ashamed, I looked down at my trencher. He was right. It was only one—

“Look at me when I talk to you!” He swept out his hand, knocking my trencher to the floor. Hot vegetables and broth spilled out onto the dirt.

“Da!”

“What? Are you going to complain? Why should you eat what you don’t grow?” He cuffed me on the side of my head. “Pick up your food and eat it.”

“But—” I looked at it, oozing there on the dirt floor.

“Pick it up!” He grabbed my hair and dragged me off the bench. I fell to my knees in front of my food. I heard Da’s breath coming hard and fast. When I looked up, he was sweating and red, but he didn’t care. “Get it! No waste! No waste in this house but you!”

I bent to my task, picking up the food, trying to get as little dirt as possible as I put it back into the trencher. Footsteps came to me, and then the wizard was kneeling down, helping me.

We got as much as we could into the trencher, which he brushed off and put back on the table. Then he helped me onto the bench. I thought he would go back to his place at the table. Instead, he stood by me, drawn up to his full height, waiting patiently until Da finally looked up from his meal. “What?”

“Sir, you’ve been...kind to me these few weeks. And I’ve tried to repay that kindness with hard work in your fields, and respect and silence in your house and at your table. But I’ve decided that I won’t let you hit this child again. Never again.”

Da choked and coughed. His face went bright red until he was able to catch his breath again. “You’ve decided? And I suppose you’re King Aethelred himself, to make such a proclamation?”

“It isn’t right. I won’t let you hit him.”

“Oh? Really?”

“If you try again, I will stop you.” The wizard clenched his fists. “However necessary.”

I heard something behind me. Harold had gotten up at some point and was coming up behind the wizard with a rake.

“Look—” I started.

“You’ve overstayed your welcome,” Da said, and Harold brought the rake down.

“No!” I cried. The wizard spun just in time, bringing up his arm to block the blow. Harold stepped back, raised the rake again—

I jumped up and stood between them. “Don’t do this. No one has to be hurt.”

I felt the wizard’s hand on my shoulder. “That’s right. No one has to be hurt.”

“Get back to the shed,” Da grumbled. “Take your foolish things and get out. I’ve given you enough of my hospitality.”

The wizard patted me on the shoulder again, then brushed past Harold and went to the door. I watched Harold lean the rake against the wall and take his seat. Then I ran to the door myself.