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The storm falls silent, seething helplessly against blue flecks of immaterial light. They dance at the cloaked apparition’s beck and call, forming shield and sword, one to protect the wanderers, one to cleave the blizzard. As the mage weaves and spins, the light coalesces into ethereal figures. There must be some patterned meaning behind them, Jayce decides. He wipes away melting tears with the hand not clinging to his immobile mother’s cowl.
He’s not afraid, he realizes, though the mage looks far from kindly as it swings its staff, sending beads of light swirling around him, through him, warming him the way a good forge does. Lingering. The storm cowers before the heat, trembles, yet still it hammers against the burning light: a tiger reduced to a teething kitten, who, yet in denial, rages against its fate.
Jayce feels heat surge within the light, an echo of the storm’s unfettered fury. It feels different from the whips of ice, though; it’s a sort of anger one learns to cherish. He thinks of blankets, warmed over fire, wrapped around his shoulders by his mother’s gentle hands. Heavy, yet safe.
It’s the mage’s magic that wraps around him now.
The entire world shifts, away from danger and tears and endless, ruthless snow. Enveloped by white, Jayce feels his mother’s cloak slip from beneath his fingers, yet he does not fear. The light will not lose her to darkness. He knows this well.
The light fades.
He opens his eyes.
The air is gentle, and there’s the sound of trickling water. He nuzzles against the sun-warmed earth, letting it erase the last vestiges of the ice that plagued his veins. He thinks of staying like this forever, but no. Remember, he tells himself as he gathers his feet beneath him, mother and the mage. He has questions, and he doesn’t think he can live with them unanswered.
He stands, a strange buzzing filling his ears. He cannot see his mother nor the mage, nor the snow-capped peaks they left behind, nor the fabled meadows he and his mother were striving to attain. Still, no panic claims his composure, and he sets off along the banks of a limpid stream.
The buzzing grows louder, morphing into something distinct yet blurred at the edges. Children’s laughter, Jayce realizes. The sounds echo hollowly, and he knows he cannot share the children’s mirth. He is not one of them. He stands at the one end of a long, twisted tunnel. They stand at the other.
He doesn’t belong here.
Still there is no fear, and he presses on. The stream flows green beside his feet. He watches it bend and sway, and he follows it. He lets it lead him. He trusts it. It is a good friend.
It leads him to another child.
This child sits beside the bank, the model of a boat cradled in his careful hands. A stick, no, a cane, rests beside his crossed legs. He cranks the boat with concise twists, once, twice, pulls out the crank and lets the propellers turn. A soft laugh is heard, six parts joy and four parts cough, and Jayce cannot help but smile along. Joy, he once heard, is far more infectious and potent than any disease known to man.
The boat is set in water and it dashes off, far faster than any real boat could’ve done. The child grabs his cane and scrambles to his feet, caught between wonder, pride and the abrupt realization that he is about to lose his cherished creation. He runs along as fast as his limp would allow him, but he is no match for the nimble boat. Jayce follows him, worry burgeoning in his chest as the child’s breathing grows pained and shallow. He has half a mind to reach out and stop this impromptu race, but the child, though struggling, persists.
The rivers skates around a jutting rock. A cavern looms before them, round as a wild beast’s gullet and twice as ravenous. It ceaselessly drains the stream of its emerald blood, and now it prepares to devour one meandering boat and the two children pursuing it.
Just then, a rock catches the boat’s maker unawares. He trips, cane flying, and is about to dash his face on the treacherous pebbles below when Jayce reaches out and catches him around the wrist. They hang in balance for the briefest of seconds, fixed in perfect equilibrium. Then the child finds his feet once more, recovers his cane and tilts his head. He contemplates Jayce for a while, then he extends a hand. Jayce grasps it.
“Thank you,” the child says. His accent is crisp, efficient, not unlike the way he treated his boat.
“Welcome. That’s a nice boat, by the way.”
The child glances over his shoulder. The boat has already disappeared into the cave. He shakes his head, once, and drops the subject with alarming abruptness.
“You’re alone,” the child says.
“What?”
“You’re alone.”
It is merely an observation, yet Jayce feels mildly offended. “So are you,” he replies.
The child nods. Once.
“So am I.”
Then the child falls silent, though his eyes never leave Jayce’s. The paperclip pinning his shirt together glints like a third eye, watching Jayce. The boat is largely forgotten.
“I don’t even know your name,” Jayce blurts. He has to say something, but finding something to say has suddenly become quite difficult.
The child looks at him for a long, long time. No reply comes. Jayce blinks, and the child has his back to him. He is walking away.
“Wait!” Jayce calls, but it does not give the child pause. There is a halo around his head, a halo of white light.
The white light expands and consumes Jayce entirely.
He blinks.
The white light is gone. As is the river, the cavern, and…
And what?
He cannot tell.
Feathers of grass and timeless blooms brush against drying boots. Jayce leaps to his feet, fully revitalized despite his recent brush of shoulders against a frosty end. His mother is lying a little ways behind him, unconscious still, but he can sense life pouring from her prone figure. He entrusts her to the vernal breeze’s care, ruffling her dampened, whitening locks.
He turns to face the mage.
It towers above him, one hand twined around its staff, the other curled around an object Jayce cannot discern. A nondescript cloak of faded indigo shields its visage from sunlight; there is naught but shadows where the features of an angel should reside. Jayce takes a step forth, questions half-remembered brimming in his chest. Words fail him, but he need not ask.
He gazes on with wonder as the mage extends one bony hand. Jayce echoes the motion, raising his, and one cool shard of unfathomable might falls into his waiting palm. He folds his fingers around it, reverent. The child in him lifts his head and demands answers, answers. Yet when Jayce raises his eyes once more, the one who roused such turbid questions has already vanished into the light mist of morn.
Jayce grips the shard of magic tighter and turns away. His mother is stirring.
***
“Am I interrupting?”
Yes, thinks Jayce, before the more or less reasonable portion of his brain manages to scrounge up enough strength for anger. The ensuing ire itself is less than reasonable, but it’ll have to do, mercy on those who bear the brunt of it. No written rules in the history of humanity demand etiquette from a dying man.
The gaunt frame of a man steps out from the shadows, and Jayce recognizes him. The very same man had the audacity to call him dangerous and order his arrest not one day ago. The man holds a notebook in one hand, the other rests on a rather rickety cane, and the look of polite indifference on his face almost tips Jayce over the edge. He is trying to off himself, dammit. The rest of Jayce’s sense of politeness is blown away, rather like the wall that once stood where he now stands.
“The hell’s your problem?” Jayce snaps. “What’s that, another list with my name on it?”
The man shrugs, waves the notebook around a bit in a vague gesture of admission. “Actually, yes. But only because you signed your notes.” The book is snapped shut and laid on a charred desktop. “Every page, I might add. A little egotistical, don’t you think?”
Jayce has always been sort of a gentle giant, but now he feels sorely tempted to put his sightly fists to good use. He tamps down the violent urge and asks, through gritted teeth, “Is that why you came? To insult me?”
Then the man tells Jayce he believes him in a clipped though not unpleasant accent. It makes every word twice more reasonable than words have any right to be. The man says he believes in Jayce’s theory (“Not a theory,” Jayce insists), believes in taming magic, then tells Jayce he should believe in himself. It’s hard to remain angry when faced with this degree of sincerity.
“I want to help you complete your research,” the man says lightly, as if he hasn’t just upended Jayce’s entire existence.
“No one thinks it can be done.”
The man smiles sharply, showing just what he thinks of the “no ones” Jayce speaks of. He raises a hand, a strip of cloth nestled in his palm.
The rune embedded in the cloth sparkles with moonlight.
“When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.”
Jayce takes the rune, his hand dallying in the warmth effused by another’s hand.
(Forge. Blankets. Runes. Magic.)
“I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Viktor.”