The Magician's Apprentice
Desirae May
The village I grew up in was a small one. It had two general stores and a one room chapel. We did not even have the benefit of an assembly hall or other gathering place – dances and the like were held outside on warm nights. It had so little to recommend it to outsiders that a newcomer was always a shock to the residents. People did not move to St. Clair, they were born there and left to go someplace better.
When I was a boy of fourteen a man took up residence in the old Parker cabin. It was far enough in the woods to be out of sight but close enough to be within the village limits. It was barely habitable, but according to Jason Parker the buyer had wanted it particularly and had paid far more than the place was worth. It was a week before he made any appearance in the village.
He was not given to talking about himself and may have never been found out if not for the widow Cavanaugh. She had been traveling with her wealthy, city-dwelling daughter two years previous and had attended a theatre production that also boasted his Majesty, the king himself, as a spectator. Seated with his Royal Highness was the man who now lived in St. Clair, the official court enchanter M. Eldridge. The widow had a quick tongue and loved gossip, and soon the town was abuzz with excitement.
When my father heard the news he saw an opportunity. An enterprising man who always had ambition beyond his lot, he wanted better for his only son than farming in the tiny village.
I will never understand – particularly in light of what came later – why Eldridge accepted me as his apprentice. The meat and produce my father paid him could certainly have been procured elsewhere. But accept me he did, and that spring I began my instruction in the art of the magician.
We started lessons in his workshop that always smelled of moss and sage, of green things that grew low in the forest. It was dark enough that even during the day we generally needed a candle and the dust made me sneeze, but I loved the place. Eldridge’s books lined the walls, filled with unlearned symbols and equations, and the work tables held many objects of mystery and fascination: a mirror faceted like a jewel, colorful vials and flasks, the twisted horns of some animal I didn’t recognize.
The early lessons were the cornerstones to basic education – writing and math, history, and so on. I had been to the village school and was a bright student, and so I moved through this first stage quickly.
Earth magic came next. Much of this was medical in nature, which herbs would cure and which would kill, which were poisons and which were balms. I excelled at this, but once Eldridge began to teach me the more abstract branches of the arcane I am afraid I faltered. I always was hopelessly practical.
“Thomas,” he would say sharply, “did you study at all last night, or did you spend your time in the barnyard with the chickens and the pigs?” He always put my struggles down to a failure to commit properly rather than a lack of ability.
And to him I was never Tommy Brown, always Thomas of St. Clair. I felt as though there were two of me: the boy who helped his father clean pig troughs and milked cows, and the apprentice enchanter who was learning to read fortunes by the phases of the moon.
Eldridge had rules. I could never visit him in the night and had to leave by early evening, and I was allowed in the workshop and the kitchen – no more. The rest of his cabin was strictly for his own use. I was his student and he the teacher. I did not question him.
At first I was in awe of him and more than a little afraid. I soon became used to his ways, and then I started to talk.
* * *
I was a great talker. My mother said I was like a wind-up toy; I kept going until all my steam ran out. More than once the teachers of the village school had despaired of ever getting me to remain quiet.
Though he was a man of few words himself, Eldridge was content to let me rattle on. One particular day, I told him all about my troubles with love.
Belinda was the prettiest girl in the village. Or at least I, with all the ardor of a fourteen year old in love, believed she was. Unfortunately, her mother did not approve of me, and the way I spent all day with a mysterious foreigner learning god knows what. To Mrs. Montgomery a foreigner was anyone born more than a hundred miles from our village.
We had been meeting in secret for weeks, but when Belinda’s mother caught us kissing behind their barn it was all over for me. Belinda was watched like a hawk from church to school and back, and I was torn as only a boy that age can be.
I poured out my soul to my teacher, who listened with a wry, amused smile. I could tell he wasn’t taking me seriously.
“You’re laughing at me,” I sulked. “That’s fine for you. I suppose you don’t know what it’s like, having her there every day and then suddenly gone forever.”
He turned away quickly, but not so quickly that I didn’t get a glimpse of his stricken expression, his thin, tanned face white like he was in pain.
When he told me to open my books and read quietly, his voice was sharper than it had ever been before.
I first began to hear the noises a week later. I dismissed them at first, these small scrapings and thumps – my teacher lived in the forest, surrounded by little animals that got into everything if he wasn’t careful. There was nothing suspicious about it in the beginning.
That all changed during a late lesson. We had gone past my usual dismissal time, as I was attempting to hammer numerology into my head and making very little progress. The noise had started up again, but I was used to it by now and paid no attention. Just as I lay my head down on my arms in frustration a plaintive cry cut through the air.
I shot up in a fright but Eldridge was still as a stone.
“It was a bird, Thomas.” He said, his eyes fixed on my face. “A bird.” I was sent home, and knew better than to mention it again.
I found the finger three days later.
* * *
I had my own garden at Eldridge’s, not flowers but herbs and natural medicines. I tended to it once a week, always on Saturdays. Eldridge was very big on schedules, and he said timing was one of the most important parts of magic. It had to be done early because I still had lessons to complete. Sunday was the only day I had off and I spent so much of it in church that it didn’t seem to be much of a holiday.
I dragged myself out of bed and walked to the cabin in a kind of half sleep. A farm boy I may be, but that never gave me any natural aptitude for early mornings. Eldridge was inside cooking porridge for me to eat as I tended to my plants.
The sun was warm on my back, the breeze was playful and birds sang a lullaby in the trees. It was far too idyllic for me to be at my most alert and I kept nodding off and jerking awake.
Eldridge called out through the widow, saying my breakfast was almost ready, and I tried to look busy. He was only a man, but I sometimes wondered if he could see through walls because he always caught me in my moments of idleness.
I was digging randomly near a patch of monkshood when I found it. A finger, naked and pale as a worm. I thought my eyes were deceiving me for sure – it was a bared root, an insect, something.
I reached out with a hand that appeared to be acting on its own while my mind ran in circles, and picked up what was fellow flesh and blood in my palm.
The rest of the day passed in a dream. I buried the finger and went inside for a breakfast I couldn’t eat and lessons I couldn’t learn. My stupidity was so acute that Eldridge noticed and sent me home early.
I didn’t sleep well that night, if at all. That finger followed me. It swam up behind my closed eyelids and I could still feel it in my hand. I carried it with me to church the next day, lodged in the back of my mind and blocking out the sermon I for once tried to listen to. Every nasty rumor I had heard about Eldridge came back to me, along with a few I might have been making up.
By Monday, I knew what I had to do.
* * *
I couldn’t tell the pastor, or the ancient, grim schoolteacher that had steered the education of St. Clair’s youth for longer than my memory. I couldn’t even tell my father, good man though he was.
Public opinion, such as it is, was against Eldridge already. If I told my discovery to the wrong person or even to any person at all, he would hang. What if I was wrong about – what if I was wrong?
I decided I had to investigate on my own. I would find out what I could, and act accordingly. I was nauseous with fear, but determined.
Giving my father some excuse about meeting Belinda in the village, I left home. I waited in the woods for Eldridge to leave – he made periodic, scheduled trips to town to get supplies – and I made my move.
The locks on the doors were fairly easy to pick. I had been half hoping that I wouldn’t be able to get in, but no quirk of circumstance rescued me. The interior was as dark and dusty as ever, but I didn’t dare open a window shade.
I began my search immediately, flipping through leather-bound texts, opening the drawers of the desk I had never seen into, and panicking in general. I have no idea what I was looking for, perhaps a devious plan for a murder scrawled inside a diary left conveniently open?
I combed over the house and found nothing. It was then I noticed a thin door just off the master bedroom I had first thought was a closet. No closet would have locks on it like this one.
They were deadbolts, placed on the outside of the door. It confused me; they weren’t going to keep anyone out. Something white spilled out from under the door; I touched it and discovered it was powdered lime.
I slid the locks open and descended the staircase that was revealed. It was steep and long, and led down into a thicker darkness than the dimness I left behind.
It was a low, L-shaped cellar. It could have been used for vegetables or for wines in the past, but presently it was empty. The most notable thing was the smell. The rest of the cabin smelled earthy but the cellar smelled strongly of rot. So strongly that I put my sleeve over my face for protection.
I crept around the corner and found a larger room, lit faintly by a small basement window on one wall. There was a bed pushed against that wall.
And there was the body of a woman on it.
She lay on her side with her back towards me and her long hair spread out behind her. Even by the light of my candle, I could tell that it was lank and unwashed. The odor was awful.
I can never forget what happened next. It wakes me up in the middle of the night and makes me think I see faces in the dark. I don’t sleep well anymore.
I put my hand on her shoulder to turn her over and her hand, the one with the missing finger, grabbed my wrist. I didn’t scream, I just froze, cold with fear. I couldn’t breathe or blink or move.
Her hand was no human color. It was a mottled greenish white, and the skin was bubbled and peeling. It slid against my wrist like it was about to come loose. I could see bone poking up from the missing finger.
Her face was much worse.
Her face – oh, God, her face. Her mouth was a gaping hole, crawling back from teeth that were exposed in a death’s head grin. One eye was white and collapsed and the other halfway there, but it focused on me, it saw me.
She tried to pull me down and that brought me back to life. I pulled myself backwards hard, and stumbled.
It was Eldridge who caught me.
I thought: I’m going to die. I thought that the last thing I would ever see was the woman’s rotting face.
She started to speak, and Eldridge walked past me like I wasn’t even there.
She was making thick, gurgling sounds. I think she was trying to cry. “This is your fault. Why won’t you let me die, just let me die –.”
At the same time he was saying, “I’m sorry, I can fix it. Just give me time, Olivia, please.”
She started to hit him. Her fists made squelching sounds, like a boot pulled free of mud, and I was running, running up the stairs and out into the bright sunlight, the blessed clean air.
* * *
I never saw Eldridge again. I arrived home in tears and told my parents the whole story, but by the time the villagers reached the cabin, it was ablaze. I knew they wouldn’t find any bodies.
I left that village behind me years ago. I work as a traveling entertainer these days, Thomas the Magnificent. It’s all show and parlor tricks, but I suppose my education is being used after all.
I think about them sometimes – I think about them far too often. I wonder if he ever brought her fully back to life. I wonder if she died, or if she still exists out there somewhere. She would be dry clacking bones by now, and a voice like dust.
I wonder if either of them got what they wanted.
As for me, I take each day as it comes. On dark and lonely nights I lock the doors, fasten the shutters tightly, and always keep a candle burning.