If Shiara noticed, she said nothing. She and Wiz still talked magic, but now it was no longer an everyday occurrence.
What Ugo noticed was anyone’s guess. Probably a great deal, but the goblin kept his counsel and grumbled about his chores as always.
Like a small boy with a guilty secret, Wiz went well beyond Heart’s Ease for the first test of his new system. He found a sheltered glade surrounded on all sides by trees and bushes. There he set to work on his first real spell.
There was a jay’s tail feather lying on the leaves, slate blue and barred with black. Wiz picked it up, held it by the quill and slowly and carefully recited his spell.
Nothing happened. The spell had failed! Wiz sighed in disappointment and dropped the feather. But instead of fluttering to the ground, the feather rose. It rotated and twisted, but it ever so gently fell upward from his hand.
Wiz watched transfixed as the feather wafted itself gently into the air.
It wasn’t much of a spell, just enough to produce a gentle current of air which could barely be felt against the outstretched palm. But Wiz was elated by its success. He had actually commanded magic!
They marked Mid-Winter’s Day with a feast and celebrations. Ugo cut a large log for the fire. They had mulled wine flavored with spices, nuts, dried fruits and delicacies. With the nuts, fruit and spices Moira whipped up what she called a Winter Bread. It reminded Wiz of a fruitcake.
“In my country it is the custom to give gifts at this time of the year,” Wiz told them. “So I have some things for you.”
Wiz was not very good with his hands, but from a long-ago summer at camp, he had dredged up the memory of how to whittle. He reached into his pouch and produced two packages, neatly tied in clean napkins for want of wrapping paper.
“Lady,” he said, holding the first one out to Shiara. She took it and untied the knot by feel, fumbling slightly as she folded back the cloth. Inside lay a wooden heart carved from dark sapwood, laboriously scraped smooth and polished with beeswax until it glowed softly. A leather thong threaded through a painstakingly bored hole provided a way to wear it.
“Why, thank you Sparrow,” Shiara said, running her fingertips over the surface of the wood.
“This is for you,” he said holding the second package out to Moira. Inside was a wooden chain ending in a wooden ball in a cage.
“Thank you, Sparrow.” Moira examined her present. Then her head snapped up “This is made from a single piece of wood,” she said accusingly.
Wiz nodded. “Yep.”
She stared at him gimlet-eyed. “Did you use magic to get the ball into the cage?”
“Huh? No! I carved it in there.” Briefly he explained how the trick was done.
Moira softened. “Oh. I’m sorry, Sparrow. It’s just that when I see something like that I naturally think of magic.”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t make you a model ship in a bottle.”
“No,” she said contritely. “I’m sorry for believing you had gone back on yur promise not to practice magic.”
“It’s all right,” he mumbled uncomfortably.
In spite of that, the holiday passed very well. For perhaps the first time since he had been summoned, Wiz enjoyed himself. Part of that was the holiday, part of it was that he now had real work to do and part of it—a big part of it—was that Moira seemed to be warming to him.
Wiz was chopping wood the next morning when Ugo came out to see him. “More wood!” the goblin commanded, eyeing the pile Wiz had already chopped.
“That’s plenty for one day,” Wiz told him.
“Not one day. Many day,” the goblin said. “Big storm come soon. Need much, much wood.”
Wiz looked up and saw the sky was a clear luminous blue without a cloud in sight. The air was cold, but no colder than it had been.
“Big storm. More wood!” Ugo repeated imperiously and went on his way.
Well,
thought Wiz, it’s his world. He turned back to the woodpile to lay in more.