Sudden winds didn’t just pick up history books and throw them at bullies.
Barclay’s stomach turned, thinking of what Falk had shouted. Barclay Thorne just did magic! Falk wasn’t bright, but he had quickly guessed the truth—and made even quicker work of spreading it. Already, anyone who was listening was probably horrified. Magic? In Dullshire?
Barclay struggled to his feet, stumbling over more potatoes. He needed to think fast if he was going to fix this.
But what if he didn’t deserve to? He hadn’t just accidentally used magic—he’d accidentally used magic to hurt someone. It didn’t matter if Falk was due a broken nose. Barclay had been so worried about the Beast escaping its Mark that he hadn’t considered that he was just as dangerous.
Maybe he should leave. He could run into the Woods and never come back, but that meant leaving everything behind. Barclay’s everything wasn’t much—it was no friends, one apprenticeship, and two graves.
But it was still his home.
Barclay took a deep breath and emerged from behind the fried food stall, only to come face-to-face with Poldi.
“Here he is!” Poldi shouted, and Barclay froze like a startled deer. Then Poldi lunged for him, and Barclay darted away. Maybe he was imagining it, but he swore he was running as fast as he had in the Woods. His feet barely even seemed to scrape the ground, and he had no control over his balance. He raced through the festival, tripping over fallen streamers, slamming into dancers, knocking over barrels of beer and apple juice.
“Oi! B-boy!” stammered Mrs. Kraus as onions and carrots toppled from her produce stand.
“There’s no running in town!” blustered Mr. Jager, a lawmaker who had been awarding another father the second-place ham.
“Barclay Thorne!” called out the baker.
But Barclay was too busy fleeing Poldi to pay any of them attention. Until Barclay skidded around a game of hammer throwing—ducking so as not to be clocked in the head—and collided with Marco. The two of them crashed into a bale of hay.
Barclay recovered first. He stood and held his hands up to Marco in front of him and Poldi behind him. “I can explain,” he choked out.
“You can’t trick us,” Marco snarled. “We saw it!”
As the two of them took menacing steps forward, two more winds tore across the square. Marco and Poldi were swept off their feet and thrown back ten feet through the air.
Suddenly the music of the festival screeched to a raucous halt. Many of those around them gasped. Mrs. Kraus even screamed, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.
“Did you see that?” someone whispered in the crowds.
“He didn’t touch them,” Mrs. Kraus moaned, now fanning herself.
“It looked like magic,” a person behind her called.
Soon every pair of eyes in Dullshire turned to Barclay in a communal, suspicious glare.
Barclay’s face flushed as he desperately tried to come up with a lie. But he couldn’t. His throat seized up, and he backed away, scared of his secret, scared worse of these powers he couldn’t control.
“I didn’t…,” he managed hoarsely. “I didn’t mean…”
The winds from earlier picked up again, gusting alongside the fearful swooping of his stomach, making the fallen streamers and stalks of hay swirl around Barclay’s feet.
“No,” Barclay whispered, trying to make it stop. But the magic was wild, and it didn’t listen to him.
The baker, a burly man with dark brown skin and a flour-coated apron, stepped forward and tightly grasped Barclay’s shoulder. Barclay sprung backward from the pain of his wound—and the fear of revealing his Mark.
The winds reacted, growing stronger until they formed a vortex, and Barclay stood scarecrow-still at the center. Many around him screamed. Some even raced away. The banners with the flags of Humdrum and Diddlystadt were torn down. Loose potatoes and fallen apple chips soared in the air. Mr. Jager shrieked as his impressive, curly wig was ripped from his head and launched into the sky like a tawny owl.
If that had not all been terrible enough, there was a loud, mechanical groan. Barclay whipped around, squinting through the dusty, high-speed winds, and watched in horror as the already crooked face of Dullshire’s clock toppled off the tower and fell to the ground with a sickening crack! The wooden disk splintered in two.
Only then did the winds die down, exposing the ruins of the town’s festival square and Barclay at its center. He crouched, his arms braced over his head, and he trembled all over.
Marco was the first to move. He launched himself forward, grabbed a fistful of Barclay’s coat, and yanked the smaller boy to his feet. “I caught him!” Marco announced proudly.
“Don’t touch him!” Falk called, appearing behind them. He looked a mess—blood smeared all over his nose and chin. “He’s dangerous!”
Falk and his cronies had barely regarded Barclay as more than an ant before, but now Marco let go of Barclay as though he’d been burned.
“Boys, what is going on?” Mr. Jager asked, aghast, his bald head gleaming in the afternoon sun. His gaze roamed over Falk’s broken nose, over the baker’s now tattered apron, then to Barclay, whose hair was tangled, his skin smattered with dirt, his clothes covered in hay. Lastly, he looked to the clocktower, even more broken than when Gravaldor had attacked.
“Barclay is a Lore Keeper, sir!” Falk announced.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Barclay?” Mr. Jager asked him.
Barclay had gone red all the way to his ears. “I…” He searched the crowds for a friendly face, but Selby and his family were gone.
Then Mrs. Havener stepped forward, looking disheveled and missing a few mittens from the winds. “There must be some kind of mistake. Barclay is just a boy.”
“But look at him,” Mrs. Kraus said uneasily, her hand clutched to her heart. “Doesn’t he look a bit… wild?”
An uproar ensued over whether he was innocent or guilty, and as much as Barclay wanted to lie and claim it had all been a misunderstanding, he couldn’t. They were all right to be afraid of him. He was dangerous and wild and out of control.
“We should throw him in the river!” someone suggested. “Lore Keepers don’t float!”
“If the boy had any parents…,” Mrs. Kraus mumbled.
“You can’t honestly believe this is true,” Mrs. Havener growled.
“It is true!” a voice bellowed, and everyone turned to see the mayor arrive, Selby and his parents close behind him. The mayor, a serious-looking man barely taller than Barclay, marched to the center of the crowd, dragging Selby by the wrist. “This boy told me everything! Barclay has bonded with a Beast from the Woods!”
Selby let out a high-pitched wail.
Selby told his parents, Barclay realized. It was no wonder Selby had looked so nervous this morning. He’d broken his promise.
Barclay wasn’t angry, though. Even if Selby hadn’t spilled Barclay’s secret, Barclay had already managed to ruin his life entirely on his own.
“By the power vested in me, and by the tenants of Dullshire’s principle rule,” the mayor declared, “I pronounce you, Barclay Thorne, guilty of—”
But Barclay didn’t stay to hear his punishment. It was too much—the destruction, the stares, the horror. Breaking yet another rule, he sprinted away, too fast for anyone to catch him. And he didn’t stop until he had thrown open the door to Master Pilzmann’s house.