Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [41]
One night, Joram rebelled.
Sitting home alone that day as usual, he had watched from his window as the other little boys played together, floating and tumbling through the air, chasing after a shimmering ball of crystal their leader, a bright-eyed young lad named Mosiah, had conjured up. The rough game came to a halt with the return of several parents from the fields. The children crowded around their parents, clinging to them and hugging them in a way that made Joram feel dark and empty inside. Though Anja constantly fussed over him and hugged him, it was with a fierce kind of intensity that was more frightening than affectionate. Joram sometimes felt as if she wanted to crush him into her body and make them one.
“Mosiah,” called out the boy’s father, catching hold of his son who, after a quick greeting, was heading back to his play. “Y’er lookin’ like a young lion,” the father said, ruffling his son’s hair that fell in long blond tanks over the boy’s eyes. Drawing the child’s hair between his fingers, the father gently sheared it off with a quick, deft motion of his hand.
That night, when Anja called Joram to the stool and began to take down what remained of the braids in his hair, Joram jerked away from his mother and turned to face her, his dark eyes wide and solemn.
“If I had a father like other boys,” he said quietly, “he would cut my hair. If I had a father, I wouldn’t be different. He wouldn’t let you make me different!”
Without saying a word, Anja struck Joram across the face.
The blow knocked the child to the floor and left a bruised mark upon his cheek for days thereafter. What followed left a bruised mark on Joram’s heart that never truly healed.
Hurt, angry, and alarmed by the look on his mother’s face—for Anja had gone deathly white and her eyes burned with an inner fever—Joram began to cry.
“Stop it!” Anja dragged her son to his feet, her thin-fingered hand digging painfully into his arm. “Stop it!” she whispered fiercely. “Why do you cry?”
“Because you hurt me!” Joram muttered accusingly. His hand holding his stinging cheek, he stared at her in sullen defiance.
“I hurt you!” Anja sneered. “The slap of a hand and the child cries. Come”—she hauled the boy through the door of the shack and out into the mean little village, whose people were settling down to rest after their hard day’s labors—“come, Joram, I will teach you what it is to hurt!”
Walking so fast that she literally dragged the stumbling child through the muddy street behind her (Anja always walked when she was with Joram—an odd circumstance that the other magi noted and wondered at), Anja came to the catalyst’s dwelling at the far end of the village. Using her magic stored from the day’s work, Anja caused the door to burst wide open. She and her child burst through after, propelled by the heat of her fury.
“Anja? What’s the matter?” cried Father Tolban, springing up in alarm from where he had been resting before a cheery fire. Marm Hudspeth bent over the flames, cooking his dinner, this task taking more Life than a catalyst has. The sausages hung suspended over the fire, spitting and cackling very much like the old woman herself, who was preparing gruel in a sphere of magic bubbling on the hearth.
“Get out!” Anja ordered the old woman, never taking her eyes from the astonished catalyst.
“You—you had better go along, Marm,” Father Tolban said gently. He would have liked to add, “and bring the overseer at once!” but the sight of Anja’s glittering eyes and mottled face made him bite his tongue. Clucking and muttering, Marm sent the sausages from the flame to the table, then—staring at Anja and the boy with narrowed eyes—she flew out the door, making the sign against evil with her hand.
Her lip curled in derision, Anja slammed the door shut and stood facing the catalyst. He had not been to visit her since she had stopped him from