“Of course,” Golden said, pleased with his son’s caution. He had thought Diamond might leap at the offer, which would have been natural, perhaps, but painful to the father, the owl who had—perhaps—hatched out an eagle.
For Golden looked on the Art Magic with genuine humility as something quite beyond him—not a mere toy, such as music or tale-telling, but a practical business, which his business could never quite equal. And he was, though he wouldn’t have put it that way, afraid of wizards. A bit contemptuous of sorcerers, with their sleights and illusions and gibble-gabble, but afraid of wizards.
“Does Mother know?” Diamond asked.
“She will when the time comes. But she has no part to play in your decision, Diamond. Women know nothing of these matters and have nothing to do with them.
You must make your choice alone, as a man. Do you understand that?” Golden was earnest, seeing his chance to begin to wean the lad from his mother. She as a woman would cling, but he as a man must learn to let go. And Diamond nodded sturdily enough to satisfy his father, though he had a thoughtful look.
“Master Hemlock said I, said he thought I had, I might have a, a gift, a talent for–?”
Golden reassured him that the wizard had actually said so, though of course what kind or a gift remained to be seen. The boy’s modesty was a great relief to him.
He had half-consciously dreaded that Diamond would triumph over him, asserting his power right away—that mysterious, dangerous, incalculable power against which Golden’s wealth and mastery and dignity shrank to impotence.
“Thank you, Father,” the boy said. Golden embraced him and left, well pleased with him.
THEIR MEETING PLACE was in the sallows, the willow thickets down by the Amia as it ran below the smithy. As soon as Rose got there, Diamond said, “He wants me to go study with Master Hemlock! What am I going to do?”
“Study with the wizard?”
“He thinks I have this huge great talent. For magic.”
“Who does?”
“Father does. He saw some of the stuff we were practicing. But he says Hemlock says I should come study with him because it might be dangerous not to. Oh,” and Diamond beat his head with his hands.
“But you do have a talent.”
He groaned and scoured his scalp with his knuckles. He was sitting on the dirt in their old play-place, a kind of bower deep in the willows, where they could hear the stream running over the stones nearby and the clang-clang of the smithy further off. The girl sat down facing him.
“Look at all the stuff you can do,” she said. “You couldn’t do any of it if you didn’t have a gift.”
“A little gift,” Diamond said indistinctly. “Enough for tricks.”
“How do you know that?”
Rose was very dark-skinned, with a cloud of crinkled hair, a thin mouth, an intent, serious face. Her feet and legs and hands were bare and dirty, her skirt and jacket disreputable. Her dirty toes and fingers were delicate and elegant, and a necklace of amethysts gleamed under the torn, buttonless jacket. Her mother, Tangle, made a good living by curing and healing, bone-knitting and birth-easing, and selling spells of finding, love-potions, and sleeping-drafts. She could afford to dress herself and her daughter in new clothes, buy shoes, and keep clean, but it didn’t occur to her to do so. Nor was housekeeping one of her interests. She and Rose lived mostly on boiled chicken and fried eggs, as she was often paid in poultry. The yard of their two-room house was a wilderness of cats and hens. She liked cats, toads, and jewels. The amethyst necklace had been payment for the safe delivery of a son to Golden’s head forester. Tangle herself wore armfuls of bracelets and bangles that flashed and crashed when she flicked out an impatient spell. At times she wore a kitten on her shoulder. She was not an attentive mother. Rose had demanded, at seven years old, “Why did you have me if you didn’t want me?”
“How can you deliver babies properly if you haven’t had one?” said her mother.