“I need your help,” Barclay rasped, nearly in tears. “I ran after Selby into the Woods, and something happened, and now I’m a Lore Keeper, and…”
His voice vanished when he saw Master Pilzmann standing beside Gustav with a grave expression on his face. He held a traveler’s bag. It looked full.
“I already know, my boy. The mayor and Selby’s family were just here.” He thrust the bag into Barclay’s arms. “You need to leave, and you can never come back.”
SIX
L-leave?” Barclay sputtered. The traveler’s bag dropped from his hands, sending clothes and canisters spilling across the floor. “It was an accident! Isn’t there… There must be a way to reverse the magic!”
“I don’t know how to reverse it, and we don’t allow magic here. That is a rule, and there are no exceptions.”
Although Master Pilzmann’s voice wasn’t unkind, Barclay wasn’t prepared for such harsh words from him. Dullshire was his home, and Master Pilzmann was the closest thing to a parent he’d had in a long time.
But Barclay didn’t have parents. No exceptions.
“Don’t make me leave,” Barclay pleaded as Master Pilzmann picked up Barclay’s possessions and shoved them back into the bag. “I didn’t mean to hurt Falk. And the clocktower, it can be fixed, can’t it?”
“What happened to the clocktower?” asked Master Pilzmann sharply.
With a fresh wave of shame, Barclay explained the events of the festival.
Master Pilzmann shook his head. “If Selby had come straight to me, I could have…” A shadow swept over his face. “Well, I don’t know what I could have done, but I certainly can’t do anything now. After Selby’s parents reported you, the mayor came straight here. And if his mind wasn’t made up before, I’m quite sure it is now. The laws about magic… They’re very strict, I’m afraid.”
Then Barclay realized that Master Pilzmann wasn’t trying to evict him.
He was trying to save him.
“This is not your fault,” Master Pilzmann told him gently.
“Then why do they want me to leave?” Barclay’s voice rose to a shout. He would normally never shout at Master Pilzmann, and now he had done it twice in two days. Hopelessness seeped into him as the reality of his situation set in.
“I’m supposed to stay here,” Barclay whispered. “And when I have children, they’ll live here too. Just like my parents and my grandparents and my—”
“You were never supposed to stay here, Barclay.” Master Pilzmann closed the drawstrings of his bag and slipped its straps over Barclay’s trembling shoulders. “Do you want to know the real reason I kept turning you away when you asked to be my apprentice?”
“Because I’m an orphan who’s always breaking the rules?”
Master Pilzmann’s face softened. “I turned you away because you aren’t meant for this. You think staying in Dullshire is the life you were supposed to have if your parents had never died. There are other ways to honor their memories than following the same path they did. They’re proud of you, I’m sure, but they’d rather you find a path of your own.”
As if in response, a breeze wafted through the window, and it smelled like earth and pine—like the Woods. It made the hair on the back of Barclay’s neck stand on end.
“What happens if they catch me?” he asked, turning to the window that faced back toward the center of town.
Master Pilzmann paled. “You mustn’t think about that.”
“But I don’t even know where to go.” The next town down the road was no different from Dullshire, nor was the next or the next or the next. That only left one place for him.
The Woods.
“If you let them, your feet will put you on the right path.” Master Pilzmann ushered him toward the door. “Now it’s time to leave. You must leave, or—”
He was cut off when Barclay threw his arms around him and squeezed tightly. “I’ll miss you,” he choked out.
“As will I, my boy,” Master Pilzmann said with a quaver.
After Barclay reluctantly let go, he opened the front door. To his shock, a mob of men and women was already marching down the street toward their home. They were faces he recognized—the mayor, Mr. Jager, the other farmers.
The torches they carried left a trail of black smoke.
“Run,” Master Pilzmann urged him.
Barclay didn’t have time for one last look goodbye. He took off.
Even with a wounded shoulder, even carrying a heavy bag, Barclay ran as fast as he could through the town. The wind picked up behind him, pushing him along like it had in the Woods. He ran down the main street, across the bridge over the creek, and through the fields of cabbage and sheep. In a matter of minutes, he was merely a small figure in the distance, Dullshire a smudge of black across the gray, Wintery landscape behind him.
This time, when he ran into the Woods, the trees bent low to embrace him. Their branches uncurled and thickened like a shroud, allowing Barclay to disappear completely.
Within moments, he lost sight of the edge.
And only then, when he was surrounded by dark, twisted trunks and that same eerie mist, did he slump against a tree and put his head in his hands.
His entire life was gone.
He sat there for a long while. He ate a few of the mushrooms and nuts that Master Pilzmann had packed for him. He cried a little—something he hadn’t done in a long time, not since he was younger than Selby. Then he reached into his bag for his notebook and drew a map of what little he knew of the world. It had Dullshire, a few dots for other towns in Diddlystadt, an X at the bottom to represent the capital of Humdrum, and black covering almost everything else—the Woods.
A whole world of places, but none for him.
“Are you back foraging for mushrooms?” a voice asked, and Barclay looked up to find the girl from yesterday standing in front of him, Mitzi once again perched on her shoulder.
“Does it look like I’m foraging for mushrooms? Go away. I don’t want to talk to you. All of this is your fault.”
She examined his traveler’s bag with sympathy. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” He clenched his fists, causing the map to crinkle. “The Beast made me do magic, and it went out of control! Because I…” He swallowed. “Because I’m dangerous.”
“It’s normal to experience a burst of power like that, when your bond is so new. But don’t worry—it shouldn’t happen again. Though it seems like the damage is already done.” She sighed. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t tried to stop me.”
“If I hadn’t, you could’ve set Gravaldor loose on the town.”
“The same town that forced you to leave. Very grateful, aren’t they?” She crouched down in front of him, all of her golden buttons and jewelry flickering in the hazy daylight. “So where are you going to go?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m only trying to help you. You don’t need to be so rude.”
“I don’t want a Lore Keeper’s help. Especially not yours.”