Moira reddened. “I suppose you think this is easy for me! To have you trailing after me like a puppy dog, or a bull and me a cow in season? To have to stay here when there are people elsewhere who need me? To have to tiptoe around avoiding you for both our sakes? Do you think I enjoy any of it?” she shouted, her freckles vivid against her flushed skin, her bosom heaving and her green eyes flashing like emeralds in candlelight. Wiz could only stare, but Moira didn’t notice.
“Sparrow, believe me when I tell you I want nothing so much as to be rid of you and gone from this place.” She turned on her heel and slammed out the door.
“Damn that old wizard anyway!” Wiz said viciously in his teeth. Then he went off to the woodpile to turn logs into kindling.
Moira didn’t exactly apologize and neither did Wiz. But the outburst seemed to clear the air slightly and for a while things at Heart’s Ease were a little less strained.
Other than that, life went on as before. Wiz chopped wood and moped about, Moira stayed out of his way, Shiara was as beautiful and gracious as ever and Ugo grumbled.
In addition to cutting firewood and sighing after Moira, Wiz did try to learn more about his new world and his new home.
“Ugo, why is Heart’s Ease so special?” Wiz asked one morning when the little wood goblin came out to the wood pile to collect his work.
“Because the Lady live here,” said Ugo in a tone that indicated only an idiot would ask such a question.
Wiz put the axe down and wiped his brow. “I mean besides that. Moira said there was something about the way it was built.”
“No magic,” Ugo told him. “Every stone raised by hand. Every board and beam felled by axe and shaped by adze. All joined with pegs and nails. No magic anywhere in the building.”
“Why not?”
“The Lady does not like magic,” the goblin servant said, gathering in an armload of wood. “It hurts her now.” With that he turned away to his duties.
Pumping Ugo for information was never very satisfactory, Wiz thought as he washed and changed for dinner. But then damn little around here is.
Wiz pulled a clean shirt out of his chest and paused in front of the mirror before putting it on. The days at the woodpile had put muscle on his frame and the sun had darkened his normally pasty torso. He still wasn’t going to win any bodybuilding contests, but he had to admit he looked a lot better than he normally did.
“Pretty good for someone who’s totally useless,” he told himself.
“Are you sure?” the mirror asked soundlessly.
Wiz jumped and gasped. Then he stared. The mirror was angled so it did not catch the full brightness of the sun. It’s surface was dark and cloudy as always.
“Are you sure you’re so useless?” the mirror repeated. The words formed in Wiz’s mind.
“Well, yeah I’m sure,” Wiz said aloud.
“You shouldn’t be,” the mirror said. “You were brought from a long way at the cost of a man’s life. There are a lot of people who are looking very hard for you. I’d say that makes you pretty important.”
Great! Wiz thought. Now I’m getting a pep talk from a Goddamn mirror.
“You need it from someone, bub. You’ve been sulking like a twelve-year-old ever since you got to Heart’s Ease. You need to pull out of it.”
“What’s the use? I don’t fit in here and I never will.”
“With that attitude you’re damn straight you never will,” the mirror told him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been a fish out of water. You’re the guy who spent two years doing software maintenance in a COBOL shop and managed to fit in pretty well.”
“Well yeah, but that was different.”
“Not that different. Wiz, old son, you’ve never exactly been a fount of social graces, but you’ve always gotten by. And you have never, never , given up before.”
“So I should beat my head against a stone wall?”