Apprentice Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Lydia stumbled out to the well in the predawn dark, grumbling a little as she always did at this task. As the apprentice, it was her first duty of the day to make sure the big water cask stayed full. So here she was, out in the very early morning, lugging heavy buckets to the fountain in the courtyard, where something small and fuzzy chirped at her.

  “Huh?” Lydia shook herself awake quickly. Something small, black, and very fuzzy perched on the edge of the well and made a cute little chirping noise at her. “What are you, little creature? You're adorable!”

  The round little beast's ears, shaped like a cat's but spread farther apart, perked up at the sound of her voice. Its big eyes widened, seeming to glow from within, again like a cat's. But this thing certainly wasn't a cat. It looked more like a fluffy pumpkin.

  Lydia reached out to it and it sniffed her, then rubbed its round little self enthusiastically on her hand. It made a rumbling noise, almost like a purr, but again not quite.

  “You're very cute,” she said, “but you might want to move now, little creature. I have to get water. I don't want to splash you. You seem like a cat, so I'll bet you don't like getting wet.”

  The fuzzy thing chirped again, but didn't move. Instead it rubbed Lydia's arm as she filled her buckets, so hard that she nearly spilled a few times. She finally risked picking up the unknown thing and moving it out of the way, but that didn't help much. It just hopped closer, revealing two little birdlike legs beneath its round ball of a body, and resumed rubbing. Lydia shrugged and finished filling her buckets. She unslung the carry yoke from its position on her back, arranged the four buckets, and lifted them all with a groan.

  “Well, little creature, it was nice to meet you, but I'm going back to the bakery now. Goodbye, whatever you are.”

  Lydia set off for the bakery, buckets swaying and sloshing exactly as they always did. The little beast watched her leave for a moment, then chirped and bounded after her. It bounced cheerily along beside Lydia, keeping up a running comentary with its vocabulary that sounded something between bird and cat, and almost tripped her three times.

  “Hey! Stay out from under my feet!”

  An innocent “Meep!” answered her.

  “Oh, you cute little bugger, why can't you just go home?”

  Home is with you, the adoring eyes seemed to say.

  The black fuzzball followed Lydia into the bakery and proceeded to investigate. She tried to eject it back into the courtyard, but it just bounced back into her arms after landing. She tried to shove it out the back, into the alley, with her foot, slamming the door shut behind it, but it did something and reappeared inside the kitchen.

  “Oh, great. You're cute, you're annoying, and you're magical. Just what I needed.”

  She went back to trying to set up for the morning baking, with no success. When Master came down shortly after true dawn, he found Lydia in the middle of a floury mess, torn between laughter and tears.

  “What's going on here, apprentice?”

  “Oh, Master,” Lydia said, and the frustration in her voice made him even more curious, “this cute little creature followed me back from the fountain this morning, and now it's investigating everything and I can't get it out of here! It tipped over that open bag of flour, and, well,” she shrugged, spreading her hands to indicate the mess on the floor. “You see what happened.”

  Master looked around the kitchen and frowned. “I see the mess, yes, but I don't see a creature. Where is it hiding?”

  “It's not hiding at all!” Lydia exclaimed, surprised. “It's right here!” She reached down and picked the fuzzy ball up, holding it for her Master's inspection.

  “Are you playing some kind of joke, girl?” Master looked puzzled, and his frown deepened. “If you are, it's not funny.”

  “Joke?” Lydia looked at the creature in her arms. It made a cheerful happy sound, and rumbled with its not-quite-purr. “Master, I swear to you, this is no joke. I'm holding the little bugger right now. Can you not see it?”

  “No, Lydia, I can't.” Master stepped forward, the frown easing a little but not going away. He reached out and tentatively felt at the space between Lydia's hands. “How. . . odd. There's kind of a thick spot there, in the air, but I can't feel any creature.”

  “You're rubbing its head,” Lydia said.

  “Magic,” Master pronounced, withdrawing his hand. “I'm going to go get Nana. She'll know what to do with it.”

  Nana, when she arrived on the scene in her nightwrap and fluffy slippers, couldn't see the creature either. She could, however, see its tracks, and believed Lydia's tale a lot faster than her husband had. She examined the tracks in the flour closely, little scratchmarks like a bird would leave, then nodded and got off the floor, creaking and groaning about her old bones the whole way up.

  “I think I know what that is, little one, and you might not like what it means.”

  Lydia stopped rubbing the thing's ears. “Why not?”

  “I think you've got a fuzzling there,” Nana said, rubbing at her back. “Now, there's nothing bad about fuzzlings, aside from a love of mischief, but they only show up to certain people.”

  Lydia waited, but Nana didn't say anything more.

  “Well, wife?” Master wanted to know, too.

  “They only show up to mages.”

  Lydia blinked. Mages? What had magic to do with her?

  “What?” Master let loose a bellow. The fuzzling cringed in Lydia's arms, flattening its ears.

  “You heard me, husband. It seems our little Lydia is going to be a mage. The fuzzling picked her, and that means she's got the talent. We've got to send her off to the nearest mage-school. They'll know what to do with her.”

  “What?” Lydia's voice was more of a shriek than a bellow. “I don't want to be a mage! I want to be a baker!”

  “Lydia, dear, you can't leave magepower untrained, you know that,” Nana said gently. “You know the stories.”

  “I know the stories,” Lydia said, “but they have nothing to do with me. I am an apprentice baker, and an apprentice baker I will remain, until my Master sees fit to make me a journeyman.”

  “That might not be possible, Lydia. The fuzzling chose you. It won't go away, and neither will any powers you have.”

  “I don't care. I'm going to be a baker, not a mage. Fuzzling or no fuzzling, I want to learn how to make beautiful cakes.”

  Nana sighed and backed down in the face of such stubbornness, but she know what was soon to come.

  It happened a little over a week later. Lydia, with red-rimmed eyes, formally approached Master Baker Danno and requested release from her apprenticeship.

  “Nana was right,” she said, sniffling. “I can't stay here. I might burn the place down.”

  “We can't have that,” the Master agreed, equally sad, but resigned. He'd talked the situation over with his wife repeatedly and become convinced, even before Lydia accidentally called fire in the flour-laden kitchen, that he couldn't keep his best, most enthusiastic apprentice ever. “I will release you, on one condition.”

  “What?” Lydia half-whimpered, stroking the head of the little fuzzling in her arms. It purred comfortingly.

  “You have to come back to see us again when you're allowed to travel.”

  Lydia blinked against more tears. She'd already cried until throat, nose, and eyes were raw and scratchy, but this unexpected request nearly made her start again. “I'll do that,” she promised, around a big lump in her throat.

  “Nana and I talked about this, you know,” Master said. Lydia nodded. She'd noticed. “We think your best bet is to go with a priest. They're safe, they'll look after you.”

  “A priest?”

  “Yes, there's a temple of Vann out on the edge of town. You know, the harvest god? Of course you do, you're a farmer's daughter. But the priests are nice, and one of them would know where you need to go, and help you get there safely.”

  “Can I say goo
dbye to my family?”

  “Of course. I'll walk with you myself. I need to speak to your father, anyway.”

  And that was that. Alll her hopes, all her dreams, ended in just a few brief moments. Baker Danno walked with her to her home village the next day, a good half day's trek, and she told her family what had happened and where she was going. Her parents nearly burst with pride. A mage, in their humble family! Her younger brothers were jealous, but neither of them could see Meeplar, the fuzzling. Lydia's father thanked Danno repeatedly for escorting his daughter and suggested sending one of his sons as escort, instead of troubling a priest.

  “Could Janos take me?” Lydia said, perking up a bit. She adored her older brother. Maybe a road journey wouldn't be so bad if Janos were there with her.

  “We'll ask him, okay? I can't see why he wouldn't. It's nowhere near harvest, everything is stable in the countryside around here, and his wife won't have her baby until early winter.”