The Way of the Wizard

The Wizards of Perfil Kelly Link

The woman who sold leech grass baskets and pickled beets in the Perfil market took pity on Onion’s aunt. “On your own, my love?”

Onion’s aunt nodded. She was still holding out the earrings which she’d hoped someone would buy. There was a train leaving in the morning for Qual, but the tickets were dear. Her daughter Halsa, Onion’s cousin, was sulking. She’d wanted the earrings for herself. The twins held hands and stared about the market.

Onion thought the beets were more beautiful than the earrings, which had belonged to his mother. The beets were rich and velvety and mysterious as pickled stars in shining jars. Onion had had nothing to eat all day. His stomach was empty, and his head was full of the thoughts of the people in the market: Halsa thinking of the earrings, the market woman’s disinterested kindness, his aunt’s dull worry. There was a man at another stall whose wife was sick. She was coughing up blood. A girl went by. She was thinking about a man who had gone to the war. The man wouldn’t come back. Onion went back to thinking about the beets.

“Just you to look after all these children,” the market woman said. “These are bad times. Where’s your lot from?”

“Come from Labbit, and Larch before that,” Onion’s aunt said. “We’re trying to get to Qual. My husband had family there. I have these earrings and these candlesticks.”

The woman shook her head. “No one will buy these,” she said. “Not for any good price. The market is full of refugees selling off their bits and pieces.”

Onion’s aunt said, “Then what should I do?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer, but the woman said, “There’s a man who comes to the market today, who buys children for the wizards of Perfil. He pays good money and they say that the children are treated well.”

All wizards are strange, but the wizards of Perfil are strangest of all. They build tall towers in the marshes of Perfil, and there they live like anchorites in lonely little rooms at the top of their towers. They rarely come down at all, and no one is sure what their magic is good for. There are wobbly lights like balls of sickly green fire that dash around the marshes at night, hunting for who knows what, and sometimes a tower tumbles down and then the prickly reeds and marsh lilies that look like ghostly white hands grow up over the tumbled stones and the marsh mud sucks the rubble down.

Everyone knows that there are wizard bones under the marsh mud and that the fish and the birds that live in the marsh are strange creatures. They have got magic in them. Boys dare each other to go into the marsh and catch fish. Sometimes when a brave boy catches a fish in the murky, muddy marsh pools, the fish will call the boy by name and beg to be released. And if you don’t let that fish go, it will tell you, gasping for air, when and how you will die. And if you cook the fish and eat it, you will dream wizard dreams. But if you let your fish go, it will tell you a secret.

This is what the people of Perfil say about the wizards of Perfil.

Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil talk to demons and hate sunlight and have long twitching noses like rats. They never bathe.

Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil are hundreds and hundreds of years old. They sit and dangle their fishing lines out of the windows of their towers and they use magic to bait their hooks. They eat their fish raw and they throw the fish bones out of the window the same way that they empty their chamber pots. The wizards of Perfil have filthy habits and no manners at all.

Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil eat children when they grow tired of fish.

This is what Halsa told her brothers and Onion while Onion’s aunt bargained in the Perfil markets with the wizard’s secretary.

The wizard’s secretary was a man named Tolcet and he wore a sword in his belt. He was a black man with white-pink spatters on his face and across the backs of his hands. Onion had never seen a man who was two colors.

Tolcet gave Onion and his cousins pieces of candy. He said to Onion’s aunt, “Can any of them sing?”

Onion’s aunt indicated that the children should sing. The twins, Mik and Bonti, had strong, clear soprano voices and when Halsa sang, everyone in the market fell silent and listened. Halsa’s voice was like honey and sunlight and sweet water.

Onion loved to sing, but no one loved to hear it. When it was his turn and he opened his mouth to sing, he thought of his mother and tears came to his eyes. The song that came out of his mouth wasn’t one he knew. It wasn’t even in a proper language and Halsa crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Onion went on singing.

“Enough,” Tolcet said. He pointed at Onion. “You sing like a toad, boy. Do you know when to be quiet?”

“He’s quiet,” Onion’s aunt said. “His parents are dead. He doesn’t eat much, and he’s strong enough. We walked here from Larch. And he’s not afraid of witchy folk, begging your pardon. There were no wizards in Larch, but his mother could find things when you lost them. She could charm your cows so that they always came home.”

“How old is he?” Tolcet said.

“Eleven,” Onion’s aunt said and Tolcet grunted.

“Small for his age.” Tolcet looked at Onion. He looked at Halsa, who crossed her arms and scowled hard. “Will you come with me, boy?”

Onion’s aunt nudged him. He nodded.

“I’m sorry for it,” his aunt said to Onion, “but it can’t be helped. I promised your mother I’d see you were taken care of. This is the best I can do.”

Onion said nothing. He knew his aunt would have sold Halsa to the wizard’s secretary and hoped it was a piece of luck for her daughter. But there was also a part of his aunt that was glad that Tolcet wanted Onion instead. Onion could see it in her mind.

Tolcet paid Onion’s aunt twenty-four brass fish, which was slightly more than it had cost to bury Onion’s parents, but slightly less than Onion’s father had paid for their best milk cow, two years before. It was important to know how much things were worth. The cow was dead and so was Onion’s father.

“Be good,” Onion’s aunt said. “Here. Take this.” She gave Onion one of the earrings that had belonged to his mother. It was shaped like a snake. Its writhing tail hooked into its narrow mouth, and Onion had always wondered if the snake were surprised about that, to end up with a mouthful of itself like that, for all eternity. Or maybe it was eternally furious, like Halsa.

Halsa’s mouth was screwed up like a button. When she hugged Onion goodbye, she said, “Brat. Give it to me.” Halsa had already taken the wooden horse that Onion’s father had carved, and Onion’s knife, the one with the bone handle.

Onion tried to pull away, but she held him tightly, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. “He wants to eat you,” she said. “The wizard will put you in an oven and roast you like a suckling pig. So give me the earring. Suckling pigs don’t need earrings.”

Onion wriggled away. The wizard’s secretary was watching, and Onion wondered if he’d heard Halsa. Of course, anyone who wanted a child to eat would have taken Halsa, not Onion. Halsa was older and bigger and plumper. Then again, anyone who looked hard at Halsa would suspect she would taste sour and unpleasant. The only sweetness in Halsa was in her singing. Even Onion loved to listen to Halsa when she sang.

Mik and Bonti gave Onion shy little kisses on his cheek. He knew they wished the wizard’s secretary had bought Halsa instead. Now that Onion was gone, it would be the twins that Halsa pinched and bullied and teased.

Tolcet swung a long leg over his horse. Then he leaned down. “Come on, boy,” he said, and held his speckled hand out to Onion. Onion took it.

The horse was warm and its back was broad and high. There was no saddle and no reins, only a kind of woven harness with a basket on either flank, filled with goods from the market. Tolcet held the horse quiet with his knees, and Onion held on tight to Tolcet’s belt.

“That song you sang,” Tolcet said. “Where did you learn it?”

“I don’t know,” Onion said. It came to him that the song had been a song that Tolcet’s mother had sung to her son, when Tolcet was a child. Onion wasn’t sure what the words meant, because Tolcet wasn’t sure either. There was something about a lake and a boat, something about a girl who had eaten the moon.

The marketplace was full of people selling things. From his vantage point Onion felt, for a moment, like a prince: as if he could afford to buy anything he saw. He looked down at a stall selling apples and potatoes and hot leek pies. His mouth watered. Over here was an incense seller’s stall, and there was a woman telling fortunes. At the train station, people were lining up to buy tickets for Qual. In the morning a train would leave and Onion’s aunt and Halsa and the twins would be on it. It was a dangerous passage. There were unfriendly armies between here and Qual. When Onion looked back at his aunt, he knew it would do no good, she would only think he was begging her not to leave him with the wizard’s secretary, but he said it all the same: “Don’t go to Qual.”

But he knew even as he said it that she would go anyway. No one ever listened to Onion.

The horse tossed its head. The wizard’s secretary made a tch-tch sound and then leaned back in the saddle. He seemed undecided about something. Onion looked back one more time at his aunt. He had never seen her smile once in the two years he’d lived with her, and she did not smile now, even though twenty-four brass fish was not a small sum of money and even though she’d kept her promise to Onion’s mother. Onion’s mother had smiled often, despite the fact that her teeth were not particularly good.

“He’ll eat you,” Halsa called to Onion. “Or he’ll drown you in the marsh! He’ll cut you up into little pieces and bait his fishing line with your fingers!” She stamped her foot.

“Halsa!” her mother said.

“On second thought,” Tolcet said, “I’ll take the girl. Will you sell her to me instead?”

“What?” Halsa said.

“What?” Onion’s aunt said.

“No!” Onion said, but Tolcet drew out his purse again. Halsa, it seemed, was worth more than a small boy with a bad voice. And Onion’s aunt needed money badly. So Halsa got up on the horse behind Tolcet, and Onion watched as the wizard’s servant and his bad-tempered cousin rode away.

There was a voice in Onion’s head. It said, “Don’t worry, boy. All will be well and all manner of things will be well.” It sounded like Tolcet, a little amused, a little sad.

There is a story about the wizards of Perfil and how one fell in love with a church bell. First he tried to buy it with gold and then, when the church refused his money, he stole it by magic. As the wizard flew back across the marshes, carrying the bell in his arms, he flew too low and the devil reached up and grabbed his heel. The wizard dropped the church bell into the marshes and it sank and was lost forever. Its voice is clappered with mud and moss and although the wizard never gave up searching for it and calling its name, the bell never answered and the wizard grew thin and died of grief. Fishermen say that the dead wizard still flies over the marsh, crying out for the lost bell.

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends. No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they’ve tried, they’ve only made matters worse. No wizard has ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It’s better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings.

“Well,” Onion’s aunt said. She sagged. They could no longer see Tolcet or Halsa. “Come along, then.”

They went back through the market and Onion’s aunt bought cakes of sweetened rice for the three children. Onion ate his without knowing that he did so: since the wizard’s servant had taken away Halsa instead, it had felt as if there were two Onions, one Onion here in the market and one Onion riding along with Tolcet and Halsa. He stood and was carried along at the same time and it made both of him feel terribly dizzy. Market-Onion stumbled, his mouth full of rice, and his aunt caught him by the elbow.

“We don’t eat children,” Tolcet was saying. “There are plenty of fish and birds in the marshes.”

“I know,” Halsa said. She sounded sulky. “And the wizards live in houses with lots of stairs. Towers. Because they think they’re so much better than anybody else. So above the rest of the world.”

“And how do you know about the wizards of Perfil?” Tolcet said.

“The woman in the market,” Halsa said. “And the other people in the market. Some are afraid of the wizards and some think that there are no wizards. That they’re a story for children. That the marshes are full of runaway slaves and deserters. Nobody knows why wizards would come and build towers in the Perfil marsh where the ground is like cheese and no one can find them. Why do the wizards live in the marshes?”

“Because the marsh is full of magic,” Tolcet said.

“Then why do they build the towers so high?” Halsa said.

“Because wizards are curious,” Tolcet said. “They like to be able to see things that are far off. They like to be as close as possible to the stars. And they don’t like to be bothered by people who ask lots of questions.”

“Why do the wizards buy children?” Halsa said.

“To run up and down the stairs,” Tolcet said, “to fetch them water for bathing and to carry messages and to bring them breakfasts and dinners and lunches and suppers. Wizards are always hungry.”

“So am I,” Halsa said.

“Here,” Tolcet said. He gave Halsa an apple. “You see things that are in people’s heads. You can see things that are going to happen.”

“Yes,” Halsa said. “Sometimes.” The apple was wrinkled but sweet.

“Your cousin has a gift, too,” Tolcet said.

“Onion?” Halsa said scornfully. Onion saw that it had never felt like a gift to Halsa. No wonder she’d hidden it.

“Can you see what is in my head right now?” Tolcet said.

Halsa looked and Onion looked too. There was no curiosity or fear about in Tolcet’s head. There was nothing. There was no Tolcet, no wizard’s servant. Only brackish water and lonely white birds flying above it.

It’s beautiful, Onion said.

“What?” his aunt said, in the market. “Onion? Sit down, child.”

“Some people find it so,” Tolcet said, answering Onion. Halsa said nothing, but she frowned.

Tolcet and Halsa rode through the town and out of the town gates onto the road that led back towards Labbit and east, where there were more refugees coming and going, day and night. They were mostly women and children and they were afraid. There were rumors of armies behind them. There was a story that, in a fit of madness, the king had killed his youngest son. Onion saw a chess game, a thin-faced, anxious, yellow-haired boy Onion’s age moving a black queen across the board, and then the chess pieces scattered across a stone floor. A woman was saying something. The boy bent down to pick up the scattered pieces. The king was laughing. He had a sword in his hand and he brought it down and then there was blood on it. Onion had never seen a king before, although he had seen men with swords. He had seen men with blood on their swords.

Tolcet and Halsa went away from the road, following a wide river, which was less a river than a series of wide, shallow pools. On the other side of the river, muddy paths disappeared into thick stands of rushes and bushes full of berries. There was a feeling of watchfulness, and the cunning, curious stillness of something alive, something half-asleep and half-waiting, a hidden, invisible humming, as if even the air was saturated with magic.

“Berries! Ripe and sweet!” a girl was singing out, over and over again in the market. Onion wished she would be quiet. His aunt bought bread and salt and hard cheese. She piled them into Onion’s arms.

“It will be uncomfortable at first,” Tolcet was saying. “The marshes of Perfil are so full of magic that they drink up all other kinds of magic. The only ones who work magic in the marshes of Perfil are the wizards of Perfil. And there are bugs.”

“I don’t want anything to do with magic,” Halsa said primly.

Again Onion tried to look in Tolcet’s mind, but again all he saw was the marshes. Fat-petaled waxy white flowers and crouching trees that dangled their long brown fingers as if fishing. Tolcet laughed. “I can feel you looking,” he said. “Don’t look too long or you’ll fall in and drown.”

“I’m not looking!” Halsa said. But she was looking. Onion could feel her looking, as if she was turning a key in a door.

The marshes smelled salty and rich, like a bowl of broth. Tolcet’s horse ambled along, its hooves sinking into the path. Behind them, water welled up and filled the depressions. Fat jeweled flies clung, vibrating, to the rushes and once in a clear pool of water Onion saw a snake curling like a green ribbon through water weeds soft as a cloud of hair.

“Wait here and watch Bonti and Mik for me,” Onion’s aunt said. “I’ll go to the train station. Onion, are you all right?”

Onion nodded dreamily.

Tolcet and Halsa rode further into the marsh, away from the road and the Perfil market and Onion. It was very different from the journey to Perfil, which had been hurried and dusty and dry and on foot. Whenever Onion or one of the twins stumbled or lagged behind, Halsa had rounded them up like a dog chasing sheep, pinching and slapping. It was hard to imagine cruel, greedy, unhappy Halsa being able to pick things out of other people’s minds, although she had always seemed to know when Mik or Bonti had found something edible; where there might be a soft piece of ground to sleep; when they should duck off the road because soldiers were coming.

Halsa was thinking of her mother and her brothers. She was thinking about the look on her father’s face when the soldiers had shot him behind the barn; the earrings shaped like snakes; how the train to Qual would be blown up by saboteurs. She had been supposed to be on that train, she knew it. She was furious at Tolcet for taking her away; at Onion, because Tolcet had changed his mind about Onion.

Every now and then, while he waited in the market for his aunt to come back, Onion could see the pointy roofs of the wizard’s towers leaning against the sky as if they were waiting for him, just beyond the Perfil market, and then the towers would recede, and he would go with them, and find himself again with Tolcet and Halsa. Their path ran up along a canal of calm tarry water, angled off into thickets of bushes bent down with bright yellow berries, and then returned. It cut across other paths, these narrower and crookeder, overgrown and secret looking. At last they rode through a stand of sweet-smelling trees and came out into a hidden, grassy meadow that seemed not much larger than the Perfil market. Up close, the towers were not particularly splendid. They were tumbledown and lichen-covered and looked as if they might collapse at any moment. They were so close together one might have strung a line for laundry from tower to tower, if wizards had been concerned with such things as laundry. Efforts had been made to buttress the towers; some had long, eccentrically curving fins of strategically piled rocks. There were twelve standing towers that looked as if they might be occupied. Others were half in ruins or were only piles of rocks that had already been scavenged for useful building materials.

Around the meadow were more paths: worn, dirt paths and canals that sank into branchy, briary tangles, some so low that a boat would never have passed without catching. Even a swimmer would have to duck her head. Children sat on the half-ruined walls of toppled towers and watched Tolcet and Halsa ride up. There was a fire with a thin man stirring something in a pot. Two women were winding up a ball of rough-looking twine. They were dressed like Tolcet. More wizards’ servants, Halsa and Onion thought. Clearly wizards were very lazy.

“Down you go,” Tolcet said and Halsa gladly slid off the horse’s back. Then Tolcet got down and lifted off the harness and the horse suddenly became a naked, brown girl of about fourteen years. She straightened her back and wiped her muddy hands on her pants. She didn’t seem to care that she was naked. Halsa gaped at her.

The girl frowned. She said, “You be good, now, or they’ll turn you into something even worse.”

“Who?” Halsa said.

“The wizards of Perfil,” the girl said, and laughed. It was a neighing, horsey laugh. All of the other children began to giggle.

“Oooh, Essa gave Tolcet a ride.”

“Essa, did you bring me back a present?”

“Essa makes a prettier horse than she does a girl.”

“Oh, shut up,” Essa said. She picked up a rock and threw it. Halsa admired her economy of motion, and her accuracy.

“Oi!” her target said, putting her hand up to her ear. “That hurt, Essa.”

“Thank you, Essa,” Tolcet said. She made a remarkably graceful curtsey, considering that until a moment ago she had had four legs and no waist to speak of. There was a shirt and a pair of leggings folded and lying on a rock. Essa put them on. “This is Halsa,” Tolcet said to the children and to the man and women. “I bought her in the market.”

There was silence. Halsa’s face was bright red. For once she was speechless. She looked at the ground and then up at the towers, and Onion looked too, trying to catch a glimpse of a wizard. All the windows of the towers were empty, but he could feel the wizards of Perfil, feel the weight of their watching. The marshy ground under his feet was full of wizards’ magic and the towers threw magic out like waves of heat from a stove. Magic clung even to the children and servants of the wizards of Perfil, as if they had been marinated in it.

“Come get something to eat,” Tolcet said, and Halsa stumbled after him. There was a flat bread, and onions and fish. Halsa drank water which had the faint, slightly metallic taste of magic. Onion could taste it in his own mouth.

“Onion,” someone said. “Bonti, Mik.” Onion looked up. He was back in the market and his aunt stood there. “There’s a church nearby where they’ll let us sleep. The train leaves early tomorrow morning.”

After she had eaten, Tolcet took Halsa into one of the towers, where there was a small cubby under the stairs. There was a pallet of reeds and a mothy wool blanket. The sun was still in the sky. Onion and his aunt and his cousins went to the church where there was a yard where refugees might curl up and sleep a few hours. Halsa lay awake, thinking of the wizard in the room above the stairs where she was sleeping. The tower was so full of wizard’s magic that she could hardly breathe. She imagined a wizard of Perfil creeping, creeping down the stairs above her cubby, and although the pallet was soft, she pinched her arms to stay awake. But Onion fell asleep immediately, as if drugged. He dreamed of wizards flying above the marshes like white lonely birds.

In the morning, Tolcet came and shook Halsa awake. “Go and fetch water for the wizard,” he said. He was holding an empty bucket.

Halsa would have liked to say go and fetch it yourself, but she was not a stupid girl. She was a slave now. Onion was in her head again, telling her to be careful. “Oh go away,” Halsa said. She realized she had said this aloud, and flinched. But Tolcet only laughed.

Halsa rubbed her eyes and took the bucket and followed him. Outside, the air was full of biting bugs too small to see. They seemed to like the taste of Halsa. That seemed funny to Onion, for no reason that she could understand.

The other children were standing around the fire pit and eating porridge. “Are you hungry?” Tolcet said. Halsa nodded. “Bring the water up and then get yourself something to eat. It’s not a good idea to keep a wizard waiting.”

He led her along a well-trodden path that quickly sloped down into a small pool and disappeared. “The water is sweet here,” he said. “Fill your bucket and bring it up to the top of the wizard’s tower. I have an errand to run. I’ll return before nightfall. Don’t be afraid, Halsa.”

“I’m not afraid,” Halsa said. She knelt down and filled the bucket. She was almost back to the tower before she realized that the bucket was half empty again. There was a split in the wooden bottom. The other children were watching her and she straightened her back. So it’s a test, she said in her head, to Onion.

You could ask them for a bucket without a hole in it, he said.

I don’t need anyone’s help, Halsa said. She went back down the path and scooped up a handful of clayey mud where the path ran into the pool. She packed this into the bottom of the bucket and then pressed moss down on top of the mud. This time the bucket held water.

There were three windows lined with red tiles on Halsa’s wizard’s tower, and a nest that some bird had built on an outcropping of stone. The roof was round and red and shaped like a bishop’s hat. The stairs inside were narrow. The steps had been worn down, smooth and slippery as wax. The higher she went, the heavier the pail of water became. Finally she set it down on a step and sat down beside it. Four hundred and twenty-two steps, Onion said. Halsa had counted five hundred and ninety-eight. There seemed to be many more steps on the inside than one would have thought, looking at the tower from outside. “Wizardly tricks,” Halsa said in disgust, as if she’d expected nothing better. “You would think they’d make it fewer steps, rather than more steps. What’s the use of more steps?”

When she stood and picked up the bucket, the handle broke in her hand. The water spilled down the steps and Halsa threw the bucket after as hard as she could. Then she marched down the stairs and went to mend the bucket and fetch more water. It didn’t do to keep wizards waiting.

At the top of the steps in the wizard’s tower there was a door. Halsa set the bucket down and knocked. No one answered and so she knocked again. She tried the latch: the door was locked. Up here, the smell of magic was so thick that Halsa’s eyes watered. She tried to look through the door. This is what she saw: a room, a window, a bed, a mirror, a table. The mirror was full of rushes and light and water. A bright-eyed fox was curled up on the bed, sleeping. A white bird flew through the unshuttered window, and then another and another. They circled around and around the room and then they began to mass on the table. One flung itself at the door where Halsa stood, peering in. She recoiled. The door vibrated with peck and blows.

She turned and ran down the stairs, leaving the bucket, leaving Onion behind her. There were even more steps on the way down. And there was no porridge left in the pot beside the fire.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she jumped. “Here,” Essa said, handing her a piece of bread.

“Thanks,” Halsa said. The bread was stale and hard. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten.

“So your mother sold you,” Essa said.

Halsa swallowed hard. It was strange, not being able to see inside Essa’s head, but it was also restful. As if Essa might be anyone at all. As if Halsa herself might become anyone she wished to be. “I didn’t care,” she said. “Who sold you?”

“No one,” Essa said. “I ran away from home. I didn’t want to be a soldier’s whore like my sisters.”

“Are the wizards better than soldiers?” Halsa said.

Essa gave her a strange look. “What do you think? Did you meet your wizard?”

“He was old and ugly, of course,” Halsa said. “I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”

Essa put her hand over her mouth as if she were trying not to laugh. “Oh dear,” she said.

“What must I do?” Halsa said. “I’ve never been a wizard’s servant before.”

“Didn’t your wizard tell you?” Essa said. “What did he tell you to do?”

Halsa blew out an irritated breath. “I asked what he needed, but he said nothing. I think he was hard of hearing.”

Essa laughed long and hard, exactly like a horse, Halsa thought. There were three or four other children, now, watching them. They were all laughing at Halsa. “Admit it,” Essa said. “You didn’t talk to the wizard.”

“So?” Halsa said. “I knocked, but no one answered. So obviously he’s hard of hearing.”

“Of course,” a boy said.

“Or maybe the wizard is shy,” said another boy. He had green eyes like Bonti and Mik. “Or asleep. Wizards like to take naps.”

Everyone was laughing again.

“Stop making fun of me,” Halsa said. She tried to look fierce and dangerous. Onion and her brothers would have quailed. “Tell me what my duties are. What does a wizard’s servant do?”

Someone said, “You carry things up the stairs. Food. Firewood. Kaffa, when Tolcet brings it back from the market. Wizards like unusual things. Old things. So you go out in the marsh and look for things.”

“Things?” Halsa said.

“Glass bottles,” Essa said. “Petrified imps. Strange things, things out of the ordinary. Or ordinary things like plants or stones or animals or anything that feels right. Do you know what I mean?”

“No,” Halsa said, but she did know. Some things felt more magic-soaked than other things. Her father had found an arrowhead in his field. He’d put it aside to take to the schoolmaster, but that night while everyone was sleeping, Halsa had wrapped it in a rag and taken it back to the field and buried it. Bonti was blamed. Sometimes Halsa wondered if that was what had brought the soldiers to kill her father, the malicious, evil luck of that arrowhead. But you couldn’t blame a whole war on one arrowhead.

“Here,” a boy said. “Go and catch fish if you’re too stupid to know magic when you see it. Have you ever caught fish?”

Halsa took the fishing pole. “Take that path,” Essa said. “The muddiest one. And stay on it. There’s a pier out that way where the fishing is good.”

When Halsa looked back at the wizard’s towers, she thought she saw Onion looking down at her, out of a high window. But that was ridiculous. It was only a bird.

The train was so crowded that some passengers gave up and went and sat on top of the cars. Vendors sold umbrellas to keep the sun off. Onion’s aunt had found two seats, and she and Onion sat with one twin on each lap. Two rich women sat across from them. You could tell they were rich because their shoes were green leather. They held filmy pink handkerchiefs like embroidered rose petals up to their rabbity noses. Bonti looked at them from under his eyelashes. Bonti was a terrible flirt.

Onion had never been on a train before. He could smell the furnace room of the train, rich with coal and magic. Passengers stumbled up and down the aisles, drinking and laughing as if they were at a festival. Men and women stood beside the train windows, sticking their heads in. They shouted messages. A woman leaning against the seats fell against Onion and Mik when someone shoved past her. “Pardon, sweet,” she said, and smiled brilliantly. Her teeth were studded with gemstones. She was wearing at least four silk dresses, one on top of the other. A man across the aisle coughed wetly. There was a bandage wrapped around his throat, stained with red. Babies were crying.

“I hear they’ll reach Perfil in three days or less,” a man in the next row said.

“The King’s men won’t sack Perfil,” said his companion. “They’re coming to defend it.”

“The King is mad,” the man said. “God has told him all men are his enemies. He hasn’t paid his army in two years. When they rebel, he just conscripts another army and sends them off to fight the first one. We’re safer leaving.”

“Oooh,” a woman said, somewhere behind Onion. “At last we’re off. Isn’t this fun! What a pleasant outing!”

Onion tried to think of the marshes of Perfil, of the wizards. But Halsa was suddenly there on the train, instead. You have to tell them, she said.

Tell them what? Onion asked her, although he knew. When the train was in the mountains, there would be an explosion. There would be soldiers, riding down at the train. No one would reach Qual. Nobody will believe me, he said.

You should tell them anyway, Halsa said.

Onion’s legs were falling asleep. He shifted Mik. Why do you care? he said. You hate everyone.

I don’t! Halsa said. But she did. She hated her mother. Her mother had watched her husband die, and done nothing. Halsa had been screaming and her mother slapped her across the face. She hated the twins because they weren’t like her, they didn’t see things the way Halsa had to. Because they were little and they got tired and it had been so much work keeping them safe. Halsa had hated Onion, too, because he was like her. Because he’d been afraid of Halsa, and because the day he’d come to live with her family, she’d known that one day she would be like him, alone and without a family. Magic was bad luck, people like Onion and Halsa were bad luck. The only person who’d ever looked at Halsa and really seen her, really known her, had been Onion’s mother. Onion’s mother was kind and good and she’d known she was going to die. Take care of my son, she’d said to Halsa’s mother and father, but she’d been looking at Halsa when she said it. But Onion would have to take care of himself. Halsa would make him.

Tell them, Halsa said. There was a fish jerking on her line. She ignored it. Tell them, tell them, tell them. She and Onion were in the marsh and on the train at the same time. Everything smelled like coal and salt and ferment. Onion ignored her the way she was ignoring the fish. He sat and dangled his feet in the water, even though he wasn’t really there.

Halsa caught five fish. She cleaned them and wrapped them in leaves and brought them back to the cooking fire. She also brought back the greeny-copper key that had caught on her fishing line. “I found this,” she said to Tolcet.

“Ah,” Tolcet said. “May I see it?” It looked even smaller and more ordinary in Tolcet’s hand.

“Burd,” Tolcet said. “Where is the box you found, the one we couldn’t open?”

The boy with green eyes got up and disappeared into one of the towers. He came out after a few minutes and gave Tolcet a metal box no bigger than a pickle jar. The key fit. Tolcet unlocked it, although it seemed to Halsa that she ought to have been the one to unlock it, not Tolcet.

“A doll,” Halsa said, disappointed. But it was a strange-looking doll. It was carved out of a greasy black wood and when Tolcet turned it over, it had no back, only two fronts, so it was always looking backwards and forwards at the same time.

“What do you think, Burd?” Tolcet said.

Burd shrugged. “It’s not mine.”

“It’s yours,” Tolcet said to Halsa. “Take it up the stairs and give it to your wizard. And refill the bucket with fresh water and bring some dinner, too. Did you think to take up lunch?”

“No,” Halsa said. She hadn’t had any lunch herself. She cooked the fish along with some greens Tolcet gave her, and ate two. The other three fish and the rest of the greens she carried up to the top of the stairs in the tower. She had to stop to rest twice, there were so many stairs this time. The door was still closed and the bucket on the top step was empty. She thought that maybe all the water had leaked away, slowly. But she left the fish and she went and drew more water and carried the bucket back up.

“I’ve brought you dinner,” Halsa said, when she’d caught her breath. “And something else. Something I found in the marsh. Tolcet said I should give it to you.”

Silence.

She felt silly, talking to the wizard’s door. “It’s a doll,” she said. “Perhaps it’s a magic doll.”

Silence again. Not even Onion was there. She hadn’t noticed when he went away. She thought of the train. “If I give you the doll,” she said, “will you do something for me? You’re a wizard, so you ought to be able to do anything, right? Will you help the people on the train? They’re going to Qual. Something bad is going to happen if you won’t stop it. You know about the soldiers? Can you stop them?”

Halsa waited for a long time, but the wizard behind the door never said anything. She put the doll down on the steps and then she picked it up again and put it in her pocket. She was furious. “I think you’re a coward,” she said. “That’s why you hide up here, isn’t it? I would have got on that train and I know what’s going to happen. Onion got on that train. And you could stop it, but you won’t. Well, if you won’t stop it, then I won’t give you the doll.”

She spat in the bucket of water and then immediately wished she hadn’t. “You keep the train safe,” she said, “and I’ll give you the doll. I promise. I’ll bring you other things too. And I’m sorry I spit in your water. I’ll go and get more.”

She took the bucket and went back down the stairs. Her legs ached and there were welts where the little biting bugs had drawn blood.

“Mud,” Essa said. She was standing in the meadow, smoking a pipe. “The flies are only bad in the morning and at twilight. If you put mud on your face and arms, they leave you alone.”

“It smells,” Halsa said.

“So do you,” Essa said. She snapped her clay pipe in two, which seemed extravagant to Halsa, and wandered over to where some of the other children were playing a complicated looking game of pick-up sticks and dice. Under a night-flowering tree, Tolcet sat in a battered, oaken throne that looked as if it had been spat up by the marsh. He was smoking a pipe too, with a clay stem even longer than Essa’s had been. It was ridiculously long. “Did you give the poppet to the wizard?” he said.

“Oh yes,” Halsa said.

“What did she say?”

“Well,” Halsa said. “I’m not sure. She’s young and quite lovely. But she had a horrible stutter. I could hardly understand her. I think she said something about the moon, how she wanted me to go cut her a slice of it. I’m to bake it into a pie.”

“Wizards are very fond of pie,” Tolcet said.

“Of course they are,” Halsa said. “And I’m fond of my arse.”

“Better watch your mouth,” Burd, the boy with green eyes, said. He was standing on his head, for no good reason that Halsa could see. His legs waved in the air languidly, semaphoring. “Or the wizards will make you sorry.”

“I’m already sorry,” Halsa said. But she didn’t say anything else. She carried the bucket of water up to the closed door. Then she ran back down the stairs to the cubbyhole and this time she fell straight asleep. She dreamed a fox came and looked at her. It stuck its muzzle in her face. Then it trotted up the stairs and ate the three fish Halsa had left there. You’ll be sorry, Halsa thought. The wizards will turn you into a one-legged crow. But then she was chasing the fox up the aisle of a train to Qual, where her mother and her brothers and Onion were sleeping uncomfortably in their seats, their legs tucked under them, their arms hanging down as if they were dead — the stink of coal and magic was even stronger than it had been in the morning. The train was laboring hard. It panted like a fox with a pack of dogs after it, dragging itself along. There was no way it would reach all the way to the top of the wizard of Perfil’s stairs. And if it did, the wizard wouldn’t be there, anyway, just the moon, rising up over the mountains, round and fat as a lardy bone.

The wizards of Perfil don’t write poetry, as a general rule. As far as anyone knows, they don’t marry, or plow fields, or have much use for polite speech. It is said that the wizards of Perfil appreciate a good joke, but telling a joke to a wizard is dangerous business. What if the wizard doesn’t find the joke funny? Wizards are sly, greedy, absent-minded, obsessed with stars and bugs, parsimonious, frivolous, invisible, tyrannous, untrustworthy, secretive, inquisitive, meddlesome, long-lived, dangerous, useless, and have far too good an opinion of themselves. Kings go mad, the land is blighted, children starve or get sick or die spitted on the pointy end of a pike, and it’s all beneath the notice of the wizards of Perfil. The wizards of Perfil don’t fight wars.

It was like having a stone in his shoe. Halsa was always there, nagging. Tell them, tell them. Tell them. They had been on the train for a day and a night. Halsa was in the swamp, getting farther and farther away. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone? Mik and Bonti had seduced the two rich women who sat across. There were no more frowns or handkerchiefs, only smiles and tidbits of food and love, love, love all around. On went the train through burned fields and towns that had been put to the sword by one army or another. The train and its passengers overtook people on foot, or fleeing in wagons piled high with goods: mattresses, wardrobes, a pianoforte once, stoves and skillets and butter churns and pigs and angry-looking geese. Sometimes the train stopped while men got out and examined the tracks and made repairs. They did not stop at any stations, although there were people waiting, sometimes, who yelled and ran after the train. No one got off. There were fewer people up in the mountains, when they got there. Instead there was snow. Once Onion saw a wolf.

“When we get to Qual,” one of the rich women, the older one, said to Onion’s aunt, “my sister and I will set up our establishment. We’ll need someone to keep house for us. Are you thrifty?” She had Bonti on her lap. He was half-asleep.

“Yes, ma’am,” Onion’s aunt said.

“Well, we’ll see,” said the woman. She was half-in-love with Bonti. Onion had never had much opportunity to see what the rich thought about. He was a little disappointed to find out that it was much the same. The only difference seemed to be that the rich woman, like the wizard’s secretary, seemed to think that all of this would end up all right. Money, it seemed, was like luck, or magic. All manner of things would be well, except they wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the thing that was going to happen to the train, perhaps Onion’s aunt could have sold more of her children.

Why won’t you tell them? Halsa said. Soon it will be too late.

You tell them, Onion thought back at her. Having an invisible Halsa around, always telling him things that he already knew, it was far worse than the real Halsa had been. The real Halsa was safe, asleep, on the pallet under the wizard’s stairs. Onion should have been there instead. Onion bet the wizards of Perfil were sorry that Tolcet had ever bought a girl like Halsa.

Halsa shoved past Onion. She put her invisible hands on her mother’s shoulders and looked into her face. Her mother didn’t look up. You have to get off the train, Halsa said. She yelled. Get off the train!

But it was like talking to the door at the top of the wizard’s tower. There was something in Halsa’s pocket, pressing into her stomach so hard it almost felt like a bruise. Halsa wasn’t on the train, she was sleeping on something with a sharp little face.

“Oh, stop yelling. Go away. How am I supposed to stop a train?” Onion said.

“Onion?” his aunt said. Onion realized he’d said it aloud. Halsa looked smug.

“Something bad is going to happen,” Onion said, capitulating. “We have to stop the train and get off.” The two rich women stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Onion’s aunt patted his shoulder. “Onion,” she said. “You were asleep. You were having a bad dream.”

“But—” Onion protested.

“Here,” his aunt said, glancing at their traveling companions. “Take Mik for a walk. Shake off your dream.”

Onion gave up. The rich women were thinking that perhaps they would be better off looking for a housekeeper in Qual. Halsa was tapping her foot, standing in the aisle with her arms folded.

Come on, she said. No point talking to them. They just think you’re crazy. Come talk to the conductor instead.

“Sorry,” Onion said to his aunt. “I had a bad dream. I’ll go for a walk.” He took Mik’s hand.

They went up the aisle, stepping over sleeping people and people stupid or quarrelsome with drink, people slapping down playing cards. Halsa always in front of them: Hurry up, hurry, hurry. We’re almost there. You’ve left it too late. That useless wizard, I should have known not to bother asking for help. I should have known not to expect you to take care of things. You’re as useless as they are. Stupid good-for-nothing wizards of Perfil.

Up ahead of the train, Onion could feel the gunpowder charges, little bundles wedged between the ties of the track. It was like there was a stone in his shoe. He wasn’t afraid, he was merely irritated: at Halsa, at the people on the train who didn’t even know enough to be afraid, at the wizards and the rich women who thought that they could just buy children, just like that. He was angry, too. He was angry at his parents, for dying, for leaving him stuck here. He was angry at the king, who had gone mad; at the soldiers, who wouldn’t stay home with their own families, who went around stabbing and shooting and blowing up other people’s families.

They were at the front of the train. Halsa led Onion right into the cab where two men were throwing enormous scoops of coal into a red-black, boiling furnace. They were filthy as devils. Their arms bulged with muscles and their eyes were red and inflamed. One turned and saw Onion. “Oi!” he said. “What’s he doing here? You, kid, what are you doing?”

“You have to stop the train,” Onion said. “Something is going to happen. I saw soldiers. They’re going to make the train blow up.”

“Soldiers? Back there? How long ago?”

“They’re up ahead of us,” Onion said. “We have to stop now.”

Mik was looking up at him.

“He saw soldiers?” the other man said.

“Naw,” said the first man. Onion could see he didn’t know whether to be angry or whether to laugh. “The fucking kid’s making things up. Pretending he sees things. Hey, maybe he’s a wizard of Perfil! Lucky us, we got a wizard on the train!”

“I’m not a wizard,” Onion said. Halsa snorted in agreement. “But I know things. If you don’t stop the train, everyone will die.”

Both men stared at him. Then the first said, angrily, “Get out of here, you. And don’t go talking to people like that or we’ll throw you in the boiler.”

“Okay,” Onion said. “Come on, Mik.”

Wait, Halsa said. What are you doing? You have to make them understand. Do you want to be dead? Do you think you can prove something to me by being dead?

Onion put Mik on his shoulders. I’m sorry, he said to Halsa. I don’t want to be dead. But you see the same thing I see. You see what’s going to happen. Maybe you should just go away. Wake up. Catch fish. Fetch water for the wizards of Perfil.

The pain in Halsa’s stomach was sharper, as if someone was stabbing her. When she put her hand down, she had hold of the wooden doll.

What’s that? Onion said.

Nothing, Halsa said. Something I found in the swamp. I said I would give it to the wizard, but I won’t! Here, you take it!

She thrust it at Onion. It went all the way through him. It was an uncomfortable feeling, even though it wasn’t really there. Halsa, he said. He put Mik down.

Take it! she said. Here! Take it now!

The train was roaring. Onion knew where they were; he recognized the way the light looked. Someone was telling a joke in the front of the train, and in a minute a woman would laugh. It would be a lot brighter in a minute. He put his hand up to stop the thing that Halsa was stabbing him with and something smacked against his palm. His fingers brushed Halsa’s fingers.

It was a wooden doll with a sharp little nose. There was a nose on the back of its head, too. Oh, take it! Halsa said. Something was pouring out of her, through the doll, into Onion. Onion fell back against a woman holding a birdcage on her lap. “Get off!” the woman said. It hurt. The stuff pouring out of Halsa felt like life, like the doll was pulling out her life like a skein of heavy, sodden, black wool. It hurt Onion, too. Black stuff poured and poured through the doll, into him, until there was no space for Onion, no space to breathe or think or see. The black stuff welled up in his throat, pressed behind his eyes. “Halsa,” he said, “let go!”

The woman with the birdcage said, “I’m not Halsa!”

Mik said, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

The light changed. Onion, Halsa said, and let go of the doll. He staggered backward. The tracks beneath the train were singing tara-ta tara-ta ta-rata-ta. Onion’s nose was full of swamp water and coal and metal and magic. “No,” Onion said. He threw the doll at the woman holding the birdcage and pushed Mik down on the floor. “No,” Onion said, louder. People were staring at him. The woman who’d been laughing at the joke had stopped laughing. Onion covered Mik with his body. The light grew brighter and blacker, all at once.

Onion! Halsa said. But she couldn’t see him anymore. She was awake in the cubby beneath the stair. The doll was gone.

Halsa had seen men coming home from the war. Some of them had been blinded. Some had lost a hand or an arm. She’d seen one man wrapped in lengths of cloth and propped up in a dog cart which his young daughter pulled on a rope. He’d had no legs, no arms. When people looked at him, he cursed them. There was another man who ran a cockpit in Larch. He came back from the war and paid a man to carve him a leg out of knotty pine. At first he was unsteady on the pine leg, trying to find his balance again. It had been funny to watch him chase after his cocks, like watching a wind-up toy. By the time the army came through Larch again, though, he could run as fast as anyone.

It felt as if half of her had died on the train in the mountains. Her ears rang. She couldn’t find her balance. It was as if a part of her had been cut away, as if she was blind. The part of her that knew things, saw things, wasn’t there anymore. She went about all day in a miserable deafening fog.

She brought water up the stairs and she put mud on her arms and legs. She caught fish, because Onion had said that she ought to catch fish. Late in the afternoon, she looked and saw Tolcet sitting beside her on the pier.

“You shouldn’t have bought me,” she said. “You should have bought Onion. He wanted to come with you. I’m bad-tempered and unkind and I have no good opinion of the wizards of Perfil.”

“Of whom do you have a low opinion? Yourself or the wizards of Perfil?” Tolcet asked.

“How can you serve them?” Halsa said. “How can you serve men and women who hide in towers and do nothing to help people who need help? What good is magic if it doesn’t serve anyone?”

“These are dangerous times,” Tolcet said. “For wizards as well as for children.”

“Dangerous times! Hard times! Bad times,” Halsa said. “Things have been bad since the day I was born. Why do I see things and know things, when there’s nothing I can do to stop them? When will there be better times?”

“What do you see?” Tolcet said. He took Halsa’s chin in his hand and tilted her head this way and that, as if her head were a glass ball that he could see inside. He put his hand on her head and smoothed her hair as if she was his own child. Halsa closed her eyes. Misery welled up inside her.

“I don’t see anything,” she said. “It feels like someone wrapped me in a wool blanket and beat me and left me in the dark. Is this what it feels like not to see anything? Did the wizards of Perfil do this to me?”

“Is it better or worse?” Tolcet said.

“Worse,” Halsa said. “No. Better. I don’t know. What am I to do? What am I to be?”

“You are a servant of the wizards of Perfil,” Tolcet said. “Be patient. All things may yet be well.”

Halsa said nothing. What was there to say?

She climbed up and down the stairs of the tower, carrying water, toasted bread and cheese, little things that she found in the swamp. The door at the top of the stairs was never open. She couldn’t see through it. No one spoke to her, although she sat there sometimes, holding her breath so that the wizard would think she had gone away again. But the wizard wouldn’t be fooled so easily. Tolcet went up the stairs, too, and perhaps the wizard admitted him. Halsa didn’t know.

Essa and Burd and the other children were kind to her, as if they knew that she had been broken. She knew that she wouldn’t have been kind to them, if their situations had been reversed. But perhaps they knew that too. The two women and the skinny man kept their distance. She didn’t even know their names. They disappeared on errands and came back again and disappeared into the towers.

Once, when she was coming back from the pier with a bucket of fish, there was a dragon on the path. It wasn’t very big, only the size of a mastiff. But it gazed at her with wicked, jeweled eyes. She couldn’t get past it. It would eat her, and that would be that. It was almost a relief. She put the bucket down and stood waiting to be eaten. But then Essa was there, holding a stick. She hit the dragon on its head, once, twice, and then gave it a kick for good measure. “Go on, you!” Essa said. The dragon went, giving Halsa one last reproachful look. Essa picked up the bucket of fish. “You have to be firm with them,” she said. “Otherwise they get inside your head and make you feel as if you deserve to be eaten. They’re too lazy to eat anything that puts up a fight.”

Halsa shook off a last, wistful regret, not to have been eaten. It was like waking up from a dream, something beautiful and noble and sad and utterly untrue. “Thank you,” she said to Essa. Her knees were trembling.

“The bigger ones stay away from the meadow,” Essa said. “It’s the smaller ones who get curious about the wizards of Perfil. And by curious, what I really mean is hungry. Dragons eat the things that they’re curious about. Come on, let’s go for a swim.”

Sometimes Essa or one of the others would tell Halsa stories about the wizards of Perfil. Most of the stories were silly, or plainly untrue. The children sounded almost indulgent, as if they found their masters more amusing than frightful. There were other stories, sad stories about long-ago wizards who had fought great battles or gone on long journeys. Wizards who had perished by treachery or been imprisoned by ones they’d thought friends.

Tolcet carved her a comb. She found frogs whose backs were marked with strange mathematical formulas, and put them in a bucket and took them to the top of the tower. She caught a mole with eyes like pinpricks and a nose like a fleshy pink hand. She found the hilt of a sword, a coin with a hole in it, the outgrown carapace of a dragon, small as a badger and almost weightless, but hard, too. When she cleaned off the mud that covered it, it shone dully, like a candlestick. She took all of these up the stairs. She couldn’t tell whether the things she found had any meaning. But she took a small, private pleasure in finding them nevertheless.

The mole had come back down the stairs again, fast, wriggly, and furtive. The frogs were still in the bucket, making their gloomy pronouncements, when she had returned with the wizard’s dinner. But other things disappeared behind the wizard of Perfil’s door.

The thing that Tolcet had called Halsa’s gift came back, a little at a time. Once again, she became aware of the wizards in their towers, and of how they watched her. There was something else, too. It sat beside her, sometimes, while she was fishing, or when she rowed out in the abandoned coracle Tolcet helped her to repair. She thought she knew who, or what it was. It was the part of Onion that he’d learned to send out. It was what was left of him: shadowy, thin, and silent. It wouldn’t talk to her. It only watched. At night, it stood beside her pallet and watched her sleep. She was glad it was there. To be haunted was a kind of comfort.

She helped Tolcet repair a part of the wizard’s tower where the stones were loose in their mortar. She learned how to make paper out of rushes and bark. Apparently wizards needed a great deal of paper. Tolcet began to teach her how to read.

One afternoon when she came back from fishing, all of the wizard’s servants were standing in a circle. There was a leveret motionless as a stone in the middle of the circle. Onion’s ghost crouched down with the other children. So Halsa stood and watched, too. Something was pouring back and forth between the leveret and the servants of the wizards of Perfil. It was the same as it had been for Halsa and Onion, when she’d given him the two-faced doll. The leveret’s sides rose and fell. Its eyes were glassy and dark and knowing. Its fur bristled with magic.

“Who is it?” Halsa said to Burd. “Is it a wizard of Perfil?”

“Who?” Burd said. He didn’t take his eyes off the leveret. “No, not a wizard. It’s a hare. Just a hare. It came out of the marsh.”

“But,” Halsa said. “But I can feel it. I can almost hear what it’s saying.”

Burd looked at her. Essa looked too. “Everything speaks,” he said, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “Listen, Halsa.”

There was something about the way Burd and Essa were looking at her, as if it were an invitation, as if they were asking her to look inside their heads, to see what they was thinking. The others were watching, too, watching Halsa now, instead of the leveret. Halsa took a step back. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t hear anything.”

She went to fetch water. When she came out of the tower, Burd and Essa and the other children weren’t there. Leverets dashed between towers, leaping over each other, tussling in midair. Onion sat on Tolcet’s throne, watching and laughing silently. She didn’t think she’d seen Onion laugh since the death of his mother. It made her feel strange to know that a dead boy could be so joyful.

The next day Halsa found an injured fox kit in the briar. It snapped at her when she tried to free it and the briars tore her hand. There was a tear in its belly and she could see a shiny gray loop of intestine. She tore off a piece of her shirt and wrapped it around the fox kit. She put the kit in her pocket. She ran all the way back to the wizard’s tower, all the way up the steps. She didn’t count them. She didn’t stop to rest. Onion followed her, quick as a shadow.

When she reached the door at the top of the stairs, she knocked hard. No one answered.

“Wizard!” she said.

No one answered.

“Please help me,” she said. She lifted the fox kit out of her pocket and sat down on the steps with it swaddled in her lap. It didn’t try to bite her. It needed all its energy for dying. Onion sat next to her. He stroked the kit’s throat.

“Please,” Halsa said again. “Please don’t let it die. Please do something.”

She could feel the wizard of Perfil, standing next to the door. The wizard put a hand out, as if — at last — the door might open. She saw that the wizard loved foxes and all the wild marsh things. But the wizard said nothing. The wizard didn’t love Halsa. The door didn’t open.

“Help me,” Halsa said one more time. She felt that dreadful black pull again, just as it had been on the train with Onion. It was as if the wizard were yanking at her shoulder, shaking her in a stony, black rage. How dare someone like Halsa ask a wizard for help. Onion was shaking her too. Where Onion’s hand gripped her, Halsa could feel stuff pouring through her and out of her. She could feel the kit, feel the place where its stomach had torn open. She could feel its heart pumping blood, its panic and fear and the life that was spilling out of it. Magic flowed up and down the stairs of the tower. The wizard of Perfil was winding it up like a skein of black, tarry wool, and then letting it go again. It poured through Halsa and Onion and the fox kit until Halsa thought she would die.

“Please,” she said, and what she meant this time was stop. It would kill her. And then she was empty again. The magic had gone through her and there was nothing left of it or her. Her bones had been turned into jelly. The fox kit began to struggle, clawing at her. When she unwrapped it, it sank its teeth into her wrist and then ran down the stairs as if it had never been dying at all.

Halsa stood up. Onion was gone, but she could still feel the wizard standing there on the other side of the door. “Thank you,” she said. She followed the fox kit down the stairs.

The next morning she woke and found Onion lying on the pallet beside her. He seemed nearer, somehow, this time. As if he weren’t entirely dead. Halsa felt that if she tried to speak to him, he would answer. But she was afraid of what he would say.

Essa saw Onion too. “You have a shadow,” she said.

“His name is Onion,” Halsa said.

“Help me with this,” Essa said. Someone had cut lengths of bamboo. Essa was fixing them in the ground, using a mixture of rocks and mud to keep them upright. Burd and some of the other children wove rushes through the bamboo, making walls, Halsa saw.

“What are we doing?” Halsa asked.

“There is an army coming.” Burd said. “To burn down the town of Perfil. Tolcet went to warn them.”

“What will happen?” Halsa said. “Will the wizards protect the town?”

Essa laid another bamboo pole across the tops of the two upright poles. She said, “They can come to the marshes, if they want to, and take refuge. The army won’t come here. They’re afraid of the wizards.”

“Afraid of the wizards!” Halsa said. “Why? The wizards are cowards and fools. Why won’t they save Perfil?”

“Go ask them yourself,” Essa said. “If you’re brave enough.”

“Halsa?” Onion said. Halsa looked away from Essa’s steady gaze. For a moment there were two Onions. One was the shadowy ghost from the train, close enough to touch. The second Onion stood beside the cooking fire. He was filthy, skinny, and real. Shadow-Onion guttered and then was gone.

“Onion?” Halsa said.

“I came out of the mountains,” Onion said. “Five days ago, I think. I didn’t know where I was going, except that I could see you. Here. I walked and walked and you were with me and I was with you.”

“Where are Mik and Bonti?” Halsa said. “Where’s Mother?”

“There were two women on the train with us. They were rich. They’ve promised to take care of Mik and Bonti. They will. I know they will. They were going to Qual. When you gave me the doll, Halsa, you saved the train. We could see the explosion, but we passed through it. The tracks were destroyed and there were clouds and clouds of black smoke and fire, but nothing touched the train. We saved everyone.”

“Where’s Mother?” Halsa said again. But she already knew. Onion was silent. The train stopped beside a narrow stream to take on water. There was an ambush. Soldiers. There was a bottle with water leaking out of it. Halsa’s mother had dropped it. There was an arrow sticking out of her back.

Onion said, “I’m sorry, Halsa. Everyone was afraid of me, because of how the train had been saved. Because I knew that there was going to be an explosion. Because I didn’t know about the ambush and people died. So I got off the train.”

“Here,” Burd said to Onion. He gave him a bowl of porridge. “No, eat it slowly. There’s plenty more.”

Onion said with his mouth full, “Where are the wizards of Perfil?”

Halsa began to laugh. She laughed until her sides ached and until Onion stared at her and until Essa came over and shook her. “We don’t have time for this,” Essa said. “Take that boy and find him somewhere to lie down. He’s exhausted.”

“Come on,” Halsa said to Onion. “You can sleep in my bed. Or if you’d rather, you can go knock on the door at the top of the tower and ask the wizard of Perfil if you can have his bed.”

She showed Onion the cubby under the stairs and he lay down on it. “You’re dirty,” she said. “You’ll get the sheets dirty.”

“I’m sorry,” Onion said.

“It’s fine,” Halsa said. “We can wash them later. There’s plenty of water here. Are you still hungry? Do you need anything?”

“I brought something for you,” Onion said. He held out his hand and there were the earrings that had belonged to his mother.

“No,” Halsa said.

Halsa hated herself. She was scratching at her own arm, ferociously, not as if she had an insect bite, but as if she wanted to dig beneath the skin. Onion saw something that he hadn’t known before, something astonishing and terrible, that Halsa was no kinder to herself than to anyone else. No wonder Halsa had wanted the earrings — just like the snakes, Halsa would gnaw on herself if there was nothing else to gnaw on. How Halsa wished that she’d been kind to her mother.

Onion said, “Take them. Your mother was kind to me, Halsa. So I want to give them to you. My mother would have wanted you to have them, too.”

“All right,” Halsa said. She wanted to weep, but she scratched and scratched instead. Her arm was white and red from scratching. She took the earrings and put them in her pocket. “Go to sleep now.”

“I came here because you were here,” Onion said. “I wanted to tell you what had happened. What should I do now?”

“Sleep,” Halsa said.

“Will you tell the wizards that I’m here? How we saved the train?” Onion said. He yawned so wide that Halsa thought his head would split in two. “Can I be a servant of the wizards of Perfil?”

“We’ll see,” Halsa said. “You go to sleep. I’ll go climb the stairs and tell them that you’ve come.”

“It’s funny,” Onion said. “I can feel them all around us. I’m glad you’re here. I feel safe.”

Halsa sat on the bed. She didn’t know what to do. Onion was quiet for a while and then he said, “Halsa?”

“What?” Halsa said.

“I can’t sleep,” he said, apologetically.

“Shhh,” Halsa said. She stroked his filthy hair. She sang a song her father had liked to sing. She held Onion’s hand until his breathing became slower and she was sure that he was sleeping. Then she went up the stairs to tell the wizard about Onion. “I don’t understand you,” she said to the door. “Why do you hide away from the world? Don’t you get tired of hiding?”

The wizard didn’t say anything.

“Onion is braver than you are,” Halsa told the door. “Essa is braver. My mother was—”

She swallowed and said, “She was braver than you. Stop ignoring me. What good are you, up here? You won’t talk to me, and you won’t help the town of Perfil, and Onion’s going to be very disappointed when he realizes that all you do is skulk around in your room, waiting for someone to bring you breakfast. If you like waiting so much, then you can wait as long as you like. I’m not going to bring you any food or any water or anything that I find in the swamp. If you want anything, you can magic it. Or you can come get it yourself. Or you can turn me into a toad.”

She waited to see if the wizard would turn her into a toad. “All right,” she said at last. “Well, goodbye then.” She went back down the stairs.

The wizards of Perfil are lazy and useless. They hate to climb stairs and they never listen when you talk. They don’t answer questions because their ears are full of beetles and wax and their faces are wrinkled and hideous. Marsh fairies live deep in the wrinkles of the faces of the wizards of Perfil and the marsh fairies ride around in the bottomless canyons of the wrinkles on saddle-broken fleas who grow fat grazing on magical, wizardly blood. The wizards of Perfil spend all night scratching their flea bites and sleep all day. I’d rather be a scullery maid than a servant of the invisible, doddering, nearly blind, flea-bitten, mildewy, clammy-fingered, conceited marsh-wizards of Perfil.

Halsa checked Onion, to make sure that he was still asleep. Then she went and found Essa. “Will you pierce my ears for me?” she said.

Essa shrugged. “It will hurt,” she said.

“Good,” said Halsa. So Essa boiled water and put her needle in it. Then she pierced Halsa’s ears. It did hurt, and Halsa was glad. She put on Onion’s mother’s earrings, and then she helped Essa and the others dig latrines for the townspeople of Perfil.

Tolcet came back before sunset. There were half a dozen women and their children with him.

“Where are the others?” Essa said.

Tolcet said, “Some don’t believe me. They don’t trust wizardly folk. There are some that want to stay and defend the town. Others are striking out on foot for Qual, along the tracks.”

“Where is the army now?” Burd said.

“Close,” Halsa said. Tolcet nodded.

The women from the town had brought food and bedding. They seemed subdued and anxious and it was hard to tell whether it was the approaching army or the wizards of Perfil that scared them most. The women stared at the ground. They didn’t look up at the towers. If they caught their children looking up, they scolded them in low voices.

“Don’t be silly,” Halsa said crossly to a woman whose child had been digging a hole near a tumbled tower. The woman shook him until he cried and cried and wouldn’t stop. What was she thinking? That wizards liked to eat mucky children who dug holes? “The wizards are lazy and unsociable and harmless. They keep to themselves and don’t bother anyone.”

The woman only stared at Halsa, and Halsa realized that she was as afraid of Halsa as she was of the wizards of Perfil. Halsa was amazed. Was she that terrible? Mik and Bonti and Onion had always been afraid of her, but they’d had good reason to be. And she’d changed. She was as mild and meek as butter now.

Tolcet, who was helping with dinner, snorted as if he’d caught her thought. The woman grabbed up her child and rushed away, as if Halsa might open her mouth again and eat them both.

“Halsa, look.” It was Onion, awake and so filthy that you could smell him from two yards away. They would need to burn his clothes. Joy poured through Halsa, because Onion had come to find her and because he was here and because he was alive. He’d come out of Halsa’s tower, where he’d gotten her cubby bed grimy and smelly, how wonderful to think of it, and he was pointing east, towards the town of Perfil. There was a red glow hanging over the marsh, as if the sun were rising instead of setting. Everyone was silent, looking east as if they might be able to see what was happening in Perfil. Presently the wind carried an ashy, desolate smoke over the marsh. “The war has come to Perfil,” a woman said.

“Which army is it?” another woman said, as if the first woman might know.

“Does it matter?” said the first woman. “They’re all the same. My eldest went off to join the King’s army and my youngest joined the General Balder’s men. They’ve set fire to plenty of towns, and killed other mothers’ sons and maybe one day they’ll kill each other, and never think of me. What difference does it make to the town that’s being attacked, to know what army is attacking them? Does it matter to a cow who kills her?”

“They’ll follow us,” someone else said in a resigned voice. “They’ll find us here and they’ll kill us all!”

“They won’t,” Tolcet said. He spoke loudly. His voice was calm and reassuring. “They won’t follow you and they won’t find you here. Be brave for your children. All will be well.”

“Oh, please,” Halsa said, under her breath. She stood and glared up at the towers of the wizards of Perfil, her hands on her hips. But as usual, the wizards of Perfil were up to nothing. They didn’t strike her dead for glaring. They didn’t stand at their windows to look out over the marshes to see the town of Perfil and how it was burning while they only stood and watched. Perhaps they were already asleep in their beds, dreaming about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She went and helped Burd and Essa and the others make up beds for the refugees from Perfil. Onion cut up wild onions for the stew pot. He was going to have to have a bath soon, Halsa thought. Clearly he needed someone like Halsa to tell him what to do.

None of the servants of the wizards of Perfil slept. There was too much work to do. The latrines weren’t finished. A child wandered off into the marshes and had to be found before it drowned or met a dragon. A little girl fell into the well, and had to be hauled up.

Before the sun came up again, more refugees from the town of Perfil arrived. They came into the camp in groups of twos or threes, until there were almost a hundred townspeople in the wizards’ meadow. Some of the newcomers were wounded or badly burned or deep in shock. Essa and Tolcet took charge. There were compresses to apply, clothes that had already been cut up for bandages, hot drinks that smelled bitter and medicinal and not particularly magical. People went rushing around, trying to discover news of family members or friends who had stayed behind. Young children who had been asleep woke up and began to cry.

“They put the mayor and his wife to the sword,” a man was saying.

“They’ll march on the king’s city next,” an old woman said. “But our army will stop them.”

“It was our army — I saw the butcher’s boy and Philpot’s middle son. They said that we’d been trading with the enemies of our country. The king sent them. It was to teach us a lesson. They burned down the market church and they hung the pastor from the bell tower.”

There was a girl lying on the ground who looked Mik and Bonti’s age. Her face was gray. Tolcet touched her stomach lightly and she emitted a thin, high scream, not a human noise at all, Onion thought. The marshes were so noisy with magic that he couldn’t hear what she was thinking, and he was glad.

“What happened?” Tolcet said to the man who’d carried her into the camp.

“She fell,” the man said. “She was trampled underfoot.”

Onion watched the girl, breathing slowly and steadily, as if he could somehow breathe for her. Halsa watched Onion. Then: “That’s enough,” she said. “Come on, Onion.”

She marched away from Tolcet and the girl, shoving through the refugees.

“Where are we going?” Onion said.

“To make the wizards come down,” Halsa said. “I’m sick and tired of doing all their work for them. Their cooking and fetching. I’m going to knock down that stupid door. I’m going to drag them down their stupid stairs. I’m going to make them help that girl.”

There were a lot of stairs this time. Of course the accursed wizards of Perfil would know what she was up to. This was their favorite kind of wizardly joke, making her climb and climb and climb. They’d wait until she and Onion got to the top and then they’d turn them into lizards. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being a small poisonous lizard. She could slip under the door and bite one of the damned wizards of Perfil. She went up and up and up, half-running and half-stumbling, until it seemed she and Onion must have climbed right up into the sky. When the stairs abruptly ended, she was still running. She crashed into the door so hard that she saw stars.

“Halsa?” Onion said. He bent over her. He looked so worried that she almost laughed.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just wizards playing tricks.” She hammered on the door, then kicked it for good measure. “Open up!”

“What are you doing?” Onion said.

“It never does any good,” Halsa said. “I should have brought an axe.”

“Let me try,” Onion said.

Halsa shrugged. Stupid boy, she thought, and Onion could hear her perfectly. “Go ahead,” she said.

Onion put his hand on the door and pushed. It swung open. He looked up at Halsa and flinched. “Sorry,” he said.

Halsa went in.

There was a desk in the room, and a single candle, which was burning. There was a bed, neatly made, and a mirror on the wall over the desk. There was no wizard of Perfil, not even hiding under the bed. Halsa checked, just in case.

She went to the empty window and looked out. There was the meadow and the makeshift camp, below them, and the marsh. The canals, shining like silver. There was the sun, coming up, the way it always did. It was strange to see all the windows of the other towers from up here, so far above, all empty. White birds were floating over the marsh. She wondered if they were wizards; she wished she had a bow and arrows.

“Where is the wizard?” Onion said. He poked the bed. Maybe the wizard had turned himself into a bed. Or the desk. Maybe the wizard was a desk.

“There are no wizards,” Halsa said.

“But I can feel them!” Onion sniffed, then sniffed harder. He could practically smell the wizard, as if the wizard of Perfil had turned himself into a mist or a vapor that Onion was inhaling. He sneezed violently.

Someone was coming up the stairs. He and Halsa waited to see if it was a wizard of Perfil. But it was only Tolcet. He looked tired and cross, as if he’d had to climb many, many stairs.

“Where are the wizards of Perfil?” Halsa said.

Tolcet held up a finger. “A minute to catch my breath,” he said.

Halsa stamped her foot. Onion sat down on the bed. He apologized to it silently, just in case it was the wizard. Or maybe the candle was the wizard. He wondered what happened if you tried to blow a wizard out. Halsa was so angry he thought she might explode.

Tolcet sat down on the bed beside Onion. “A long time ago,” he said, “the father of the present king visited the wizards of Perfil. He’d had certain dreams about his son, who was only a baby. He was afraid of these dreams. The wizards told him that he was right to be afraid. His son would go mad. There would be war and famine and more war and his son would be to blame. The old king went into a rage. He sent his men to throw the wizards of Perfil down from their towers. They did.”

“Wait,” Onion said. “Wait. What happened to the wizards? Did they turn into white birds and fly away?”

“No,” Tolcet said. “The king’s men slit their throats and threw them out of the towers. I was away. When I came back, the towers had been ransacked. The wizards were dead.”

“No!” Halsa said. “Why are you lying? I know the wizards are here. They’re hiding somehow. They’re cowards.”

“I can feel them too,” Onion said.

“Come and see,” Tolcet said. He went to the window. When they looked down, they saw Essa and the other servants of the wizards of Perfil moving among the refugees. The two old women who never spoke were sorting through bundles of clothes and blankets. The thin man was staking down someone’s cow. Children were chasing chickens as Burd held open the gate of a makeshift pen. One of the younger girls, Perla, was singing a lullaby to some mother’s baby. Her voice, rough and sweet at the same time, rose straight up to the window of the tower, where Halsa and Onion and Tolcet stood looking down. It was a song they all knew. It was a song that said all would be well.

“Don’t you understand?” Tolcet, the wizard of Perfil, said to Halsa and Onion. “There are the wizards of Perfil. They are young, most of them. They haven’t come into their full powers yet. But all may yet be well.”

“Essa is a wizard of Perfil?” Halsa said. Essa, a shovel in her hand, looked up at the tower, as if she’d heard Halsa. She smiled and shrugged, as if to say Perhaps I am, perhaps not, but isn’t it a good joke? Didn’t you ever wonder?

Tolcet turned Halsa and Onion around so that they faced the mirror that hung on the wall. He rested his strong, speckled hands on their shoulders for a minute, as if to give them courage. Then he pointed to the mirror, to the reflected Halsa and Onion who stood there staring back at themselves, astonished. Tolcet began to laugh. Despite everything, he laughed so hard that tears came from his eyes. He snorted. Onion and Halsa began to laugh, too. They couldn’t help it. The wizard’s room was full of magic, and so were the marshes and Tolcet and the mirror where the children and Tolcet stood reflected, and the children were full of magic, too.

Tolcet pointed again at the mirror, and his reflection pointed its finger straight back at Halsa and Onion. Tolcet said, “Here they are in front of you! Ha! Do you know them? Here are the wizards of Perfil!”