The Real Boy (20 page)

It was like being an orphan, in a way. They would feel it, but they would never understand why. Oscar would never know why he didn’t work quite in the same way as everyone else. All this time, the gray shadows of the Home had been obscuring some bigger void, one he hadn’t even known existed until now. Wolf had said:
You don’t even know where you came from.
Oscar had thought Wolf knew some terrible secret about his past. But no. Oscar was an orphan with no history attached to him, no story of the parents he had once had. Wolf had been taunting him because his past was unknowable.

Callie coughed a little, and Oscar looked up. She was staring at the table, twisting curls in her hand. “My brother was so much younger than me,” she said in almost a whisper. “I saw him go from a baby to a child. He went from being this creature who ate and slept and cried to being . . . Nico. And suddenly . . .” She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment. When she opened them, they were wet. “Suddenly he liked playing in the fireplace and pretending it was a cave. And building things out of little scraps of wood. He made me little houses. And when I’d tell him stories . . . he loved that.”

Callie hugged herself. “Suddenly he was a person.” she said, voice as thick as the night. “It was amazing.” Her lips pressed together, her eyes fell closed again for a moment, and volumes of history passed over her face After a time, she added, “The child Lord Cooper was talking about, the one who died, was the duke’s son. Marcus was his name. Right after I first got here, the boy had a terrible fever. The duke screamed at Madame Mariel that she was supposed to be able to fix him. That this never should’ve happened in the first place.”

Callie’s voice slowly changed, and suddenly she sounded like she was talking to him, and not to some tiny patch of air. “And Mariel couldn’t help him. She tried, but it was beyond her. The boy died a few days later. And soon after that, we were flooded with City parents looking for something to protect their children. Caleb was, too. They were all so afraid. Terrified. As if their own children were already sick. I’d never seen City people afraid, especially not like that.”

No. City people were not supposed to be afraid of anything. Wasn’t that the whole point?

“That’s where I met the duchess. The mother of Ronald-who-can’t-remember. While we were there, while the duke was screaming, she just sat in the corner, like a shadow. Like she’d died and was already a ghost. That was a long time ago. But Ronald . . . I wonder if he was the first one. A child who would never fall ill . . .”

“They’d never have to watch their kid suffer,” Oscar said quietly.
There was a need,
Caleb had said.
That was all.
Not for a shop boy, as Oscar had thought. He had not understood that there were many different ways to need.

Callie slowly traced a finger along the tabletop. “I’ve been reading about the City during the plague,” she said. “It was so awful in there. People would try to escape, but the walls kept them in. Everybody was dying, all around, hundreds a day, and their families were locked in, too, and they could only watch. . . . When you lose someone, it hurts so much your body can’t contain it.” She swallowed. “The wizards said the City was just a wound at the end. Maybe there are scars. Maybe the ground still carries all that grief. Maybe the whole land is still . . . traumatized, somehow, and the people who were born there have it in their blood, the way some people in the Barrow have magic in their blood.”

“The land remembers,” Oscar said. The wizards had told him so.

“Maybe that’s why the City people are the way they are,” Callie went on. “Acting so superior. Thinking they’re chosen. If you’re chosen, if magic exists for your benefit, nothing bad can ever happen to you, right? Then you don’t have to be afraid.” She glanced up at Oscar. “I’m not saying it’s right. At all. It’s horrible. It’s so selfish, and now their children are suffering.”

Oscar nodded slowly.

Callie dropped her hand on the table. “Well, it doesn’t matter what we think,” she said, straightening. “They’re children now. This was never their choice. And they could all be breaking down. How many times did City people come in yelling for Caleb?”

Oscar bit his lip. “A lot.” Over fifty children, all made of unstable spells, all threatening to fall apart at any moment. The decoction would keep them. But Oscar didn’t know for how long. They could fall apart again, or something else could fail. Their spells could simply fade, and they would be nothing but wooden dolls again.

“Fifty children, Oscar! Do we give them all remedies? Even the ones who haven’t broken yet? How do we know the remedies won’t stop working, just like the original spells did? What do we do?” Eyes widening, she inhaled sharply. “What if Caleb was going to export them? What if he already did?”

There is danger in small enchantments, my boy. Small enchantments make us dream of
big ones.

“There’s something else I have to do,” Oscar said. “It is very stupid.” He looked up at Callie hesitantly. “Do you want to help me?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Endings

T
he monster was gone. Or at least it belonged to the sea now. But the monster was not the real problem.

Even though it had very much acted like it.

Oscar explained to Callie about his original plan, about all the magic he’d dumped into the earth trying to feed it, about the unrelenting hunger that surrounded him, about how it was only after he gave the ground every last piece of magic that the monster had appeared, desperate and ravenous for more.

Everything and everyone was so hungry. The monster. The Barrow folk, buying everything up when danger lurked. The City people, clutching at pretty little enchanted things. Substituting magic for people. The shining people’s ancestors, when the plague threatened, ignoring the warnings of the wizards, assuring themselves magic would keep them safe as they themselves brought death upon the entire island. They could have kept Aletheia safe, they could have kept the plague contained, but they had all cared for magic more than their own survival.

And, again, the City people, forgetting the lessons, believing the lies, letting the dark parts of their legacy be obscured by white space and blank pages.

Everyone was so hungry.

“So what are you saying?” Callie asked.

“The hole in the magic is still there,” Oscar said. “The earth will keep bearing monsters as long as there’s magic enough to let it.”

“So what do we do? The apprentice and the hand?”

“I don’t think . . .” He glanced up warily. “I don’t think there should be magic anymore.”

She drew herself up. “You think it should be destroyed?”

Oscar swallowed. “I think
we
should destroy it.”

Callie’s eyes widened; they took in the whole of him, the whole room, the whole Barrow, she took them all in, and then her eyes lit and her jaw set. “Great,” she said. “How?”

That evening, Oscar and Callie sat in the library poring over the shelves, cats swarming around them. Books lay all around—Aletheian histories, atlases, the plague history, the official and unofficial wizards’ chronicles. But while people had written volumes on finding magic, using magic, and making magic grow, and more volumes on magic’s theories, ethics, practical applications, and even impractical ones—no one had ever written a word about making magic go away.

So they put away the books while the cats settled on their laps, and talked, and slowly they hatched a plan.

No one had ever tried to make magic disappear—but sometimes it disappeared anyway. Sometimes it got used up. And sometimes it was lost in a vacuum.

It was Callie who mentioned the plaguelands dirt, the way Oscar had described it sucking off the magic on his skin; and the sea, lapping away everything that had held the monster together.

It was Oscar who talked about the trees—Galen’s diagram with the arrows going up from the soil in one tree and down to the soil in the other. And, underneath the ground, the roots spreading the magic through the soil. A network. A web.

Or a circulatory system, Callie said. With magic coursing through the roots like blood.

And so, Oscar said, if something else got into the system . . .

. . . it would course through the roots, Callie said. Like magic.

And they had their plan.

It was late when they were done—the cats were all balled up and sleeping. Oscar walked Callie upstairs. They were silent now; all the words had been said. But when Callie was about to leave, she turned to Oscar, raised her eyebrows, and blew air out of her cheeks.

He could think of nothing better to say.

Oscar kept an eye on her through the window as she walked back to the healer’s, though he didn’t know what he’d do if another monster appeared—except maybe send the cats after it. When she disappeared into the house, his eyes fell on the bakery. It was Sunday; bread day, once upon a time, when Oscar lived in the cellar.

Oscar rubbed his arm. With the bakery shuttered, the marketplace looked like it was missing its wizard tree. And so he sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a letter:

Dear Mister Malcolm,

There was a soil monster. It killed Caleb. It chased me into the sea and drowned. Now Callie and I are going to destroy magic. Then we have to stay in the Barrow to watch the City children. They are made of wizard-tree wood. You should come back. You can bake bread.

—Oscar

That night, he dreamed of the plaguelands. But the dream was not like his sky nightmares. Everything was still empty and endless, and yet not monstrous. A boy was running through the land, moving toward the horizon—and at first it seemed like the boy was being chased. But the boy kept running, and nothing appeared behind him. When the boy finally disappeared into the horizon and nothing followed, it occurred to Oscar that maybe the boy might not have been running away, but maybe he’d been running toward something.

When he woke up, Oscar had the taste of the plaguelands around him. He rubbed his chest, but he was uneven, everywhere. He held the plan in his head, and his stomach shifted, just slightly. The earth that they were going to put into the forest had been so damaged that nothing could survive it—its nothingness was an even greater power than magic. Maybe a greater power than wizards. Once, Oscar had not believed such a thing could be possible.

When Callie arrived in the morning, Oscar was up in the kitchen reading Galen’s journal again.

“Where’s your cloak?” Oscar asked.

Callie shrugged. “Doesn’t seem necessary anymore.”

“Come look at this,” he said, nodding to his book. “Near the end. Galen wrote about the plaguelands.” He tried to sound casual, but he was rocking in his chair a bit. He grabbed onto the seat to stop himself.

It was one of the entries he’d read that night in the library—and at the time he hadn’t thought anything of it. But now—now, he wanted to see if Callie saw what he saw.

She read:

The plague has killed everything along the western banks of the river and the shores around the sea. Now, that earth is not just barren, but a vacuum. One cannot plant a seed or light a match in this land, and one cannot carry magic across and expect it to survive the journey. Perhaps this will stop the spread. If it isn’t already too late.

“I remember this one,” Callie said. “What did you want me to see?”

Oscar’s eyes widened. “Read it carefully,” he said, motioning to the page. “He says the plague killed the land, and then talks about it being a vacuum. But what if that was . . . later? What if he’s not describing what
happened
to the land, but rather what the wizards
did
?”

Callie squinted at the entry. Her eyes passed over the words, and then again. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Here,” Oscar said. His words were starting to pile on top of one another. “Look at the words. The plague killed the land, they say, made it barren. But what if the
wizards
did everything that came next? ‘Now, the earth is a vacuum.’
Now.
” His face was flushed. “They couldn’t get anyone to stop crossing to the west and back for magic. What if they
made
the plaguelands so people wouldn’t have a reason to go to the west anymore?”

Callie forehead scrunched up, and she studied the words again, tugging on a curl. “I guess,” she said, tilting her head, “it
could
be read that way.”

“It could!” he said. “Yes!”

“But we don’t know,” she said softly. “It’s not clear. It could have been the plague, too.”

“It could,” he whispered.

“Really,” Callie said, “it doesn’t matter, as long as it works. Whether the wizards did it or not, the plaguelands stopped the spread. And now they’re going to stop the monsters from coming. It doesn’t matter, as long as it works.”

Oscar didn’t say anything. But she was right: it didn’t really matter, not in the end.

Still, it was a nice thing to believe.

Soon, they had plunged into the forest. Oscar had a bag with the jug of plaguelands dirt from Caleb’s workroom strapped to his back; Callie, one carrying the jug of seawater. This time they walked right into the center of the forest, the middle of the circulatory system, to the biggest wizard tree.

It was Oscar’s favorite tree, the one with the honey mushrooms growing underneath, the one with the five massive branches rising up and out of the trunk like a flower.

Had it looked so old when Oscar had last been here? The bark was gray, fading. The leaves were thinning like an old man’s hair. There was a long welt of missing bark in the middle of the trunk, and some kind of dark fungus was growing in the welt.

The tree looked so tired. They all did.

But maybe, without the hungry soil taking from them all the time, the wizard trees would not be so tired anymore. Maybe, now, the soil could feed them. Just like it was supposed to.

Oscar walked up and put his hand on the trunk. The gentle warmth pressed into his palm, a reassurance. Despite all the things churning inside him, the touch of the tree eased him a little, as surely as a cat’s purr. As it always had.

“Is this the right thing to do?” Oscar whispered, running his hand along the trunk. “Is this what you want?”

No answer, just the same steady warmth. It was the same as it had always been, Oscar realized. Though this tree was drooping and thinning, though the magic had been used and abused, though its colleagues had fallen for no good purpose, though it was so tired, this feeling of some steady, generous vitality in all the wizard trees had never lessened. It was the essence of the tree, the truth at its core.

He’d always thought of this feeling as the presence of magic. But no other magic-laced thing had ever felt like the wizard-tree wood. It was the tactile translation of the ineffable warmth and peace Oscar felt in his chest when he was with the wizard trees, when the cats were with him, when Callie was there—and so he named the feeling love.

He nodded at Callie, and they both put their jugs down. Callie poured some seawater into the plaguelands dirt and began to mix it around with a stick. A poultice. Then Oscar scooped some of the mud up with his hands and began rubbing it into the exposed bark gently. Just a little, so it would work its way through the tree very slowly. He wanted to murmur things, but he could think of nothing to say.

Callie massaged the mud into the visible roots, and then poured the excess water around the tree. Whatever magic-destroying thing was in the plaguelands would be in the tree soon. The soil would suck it up, and it would travel through the circulatory system, from root to root. And slowly the magic would dissipate, like a pile of dust in the wind.

It had all been such a beautiful lie. Such a warm blanket. The enchanted island. The storied history. The magic, always good, always acting in service of the people, always protecting them. The Aletheians, always so noble and worthy. The shining people, free of disease and want, so blessed they could have anything they desired—beauty, luck, health, wealth. Anything, even children made of wood.

It was a beautiful lie that they had all been telling themselves—that you could have magic without monsters.

“People are going to be very upset,” Callie said.

Yes. They were going to be very upset.

They stood back and looked at the tree. The whole bottom of the trunk was covered in mud, but the tree had already begun to drink it in.

In a blink Oscar’s throat swelled; his eyes filled with tears. Callie grabbed his hand and held it. They stood together, eyes fixed on the great tree, and together, they took notice. They carried the wizards’ secrets, and they would remember.

After a while, Callie squeezed Oscar’s hand. “Let’s go home now,” she said.

He gave the tree one more glance, and then turned and followed her. They walked in silence all the way home. But even as they approached the marketplace he could still feel the warm humming of the tree in his hands. Like he had taken it with him.

There were people in the marketplace again. Half the shops were closed, but villagers and merchants were milling around. Some were replacing the windows at the jeweler’s. Madame Sabine and another villager were putting a wall back on the shoemaker’s. Everywhere people were cleaning, rebuilding, putting the marketplace back together.