Pretty Monsters. Kelly Link

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not a small sum of money and even though she’d kept her promise to Onion’s mother. Onion’s mother had smiled often, despite the fact that her teeth were not particularly good.

      “He’ll eat you,” Halsa called to Onion. “Or he’ll drown you in the marsh! He’ll cut you up into little pieces and bait his fishing line with your fingers!” She stamped her foot.

      “Halsa!” her mother said.

      “On second thought,” Tolcet said, “I’ll take the girl. Will you sell her to me instead?”

      “What?” Halsa said.

      “What?” Onion’s aunt said.

      “No!” Onion said, but Tolcet drew out his purse again. Halsa, it seemed, was worth more than a small boy with a bad voice. And Onion’s aunt needed money badly. So Halsa got up on the horse behind Tolcet, and Onion watched as his bad-tempered cousin rode away with the wizard’s servant.

      There was a voice in Onion’s head. It said, “Don’t worry, boy. All will be well and all manner of things will be well.” It sounded like Tolcet, a little amused, a little sad.

      There is a story about the wizards of Perfil and how one fell in love with a church bell. First he tried to buy it with gold and then, when the church refused his money, he stole it by magic. As the wizard flew back across the marshes, carrying the bell in his arms, he flew too low and the devil reached up and grabbed his heel. The wizard dropped the church bell into the marshes and it sank and was lost forever. Its voice is clappered with mud and moss, and although the wizard never gave up searching for it and calling its name, the bell never answered and the wizard grew thin and died of grief. Fishermen say that the dead wizard still flies over the marsh, crying out for the lost bell.

      Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends. No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they’ve tried, they’ve only made matters worse. No wizard has ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It’s better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings.

      “Well,” Onion’s aunt said. She sagged. They could no longer see Tolcet or Halsa. “Come along, then.”

      They went back through the market and Onion’s aunt bought cakes of sweetened rice for the three children. Onion ate his without knowing that he did so: since the wizard’s servant had taken away Halsa instead, it felt as if there were two Onions, one Onion here in the market and one Onion riding along with Tolcet and Halsa. He stood and was carried along at the same time and it made him feel terribly dizzy. Market-Onion stumbled, his mouth full of rice, and his aunt caught him by the elbow.

      “We don’t eat children,” Tolcet was saying. “There are plenty of fish and birds in the marshes.”

      “I know,” Halsa said. She sounded sulky. “And the wizards live in houses with lots of stairs. Towers. Because they think they’re so much better than anybody else. So above the rest of the world.”

      “And how do you know about the wizards of Perfil?” Tolcet said.

      “The woman in the market,” Halsa said. “And the other people in the market. Some are afraid of the wizards and some think that there are no wizards. That they’re a story for children. That the marshes are full of runaway slaves and deserters. Nobody knows why wizards would come and build towers in the Perfil marsh, where the ground is like cheese and no one can find them. Why do the wizards live in the marshes?”

      “Because the marsh is full of magic,” Tolcet said.

      “Then why do they build the towers so high?” Halsa said.

      “Because wizards are curious,” Tolcet said. “They like to be able to see things that are far off. They like to be as close as possible to the stars. And they don’t like to be bothered by people who ask lots of questions.”

      “Why do the wizards buy children?” Halsa said.

      “To run up and down the stairs,” Tolcet said, “to fetch them water for bathing and to carry messages and to bring them breakfasts and dinners and lunches and suppers. Wizards are always hungry.”

      “So am I,” Halsa said.

      “Here,” Tolcet said. He gave Halsa an apple. “You see things that are in people’s heads. You can see things that are going to happen.”

      “Yes,” Halsa said. “Sometimes.” The apple was wrinkled but sweet.

      “Your cousin has a gift, too,” Tolcet said.

      “Onion?” Halsa said scornfully. Onion saw that it had never felt like a gift to Halsa. No wonder she’d hidden it.

      “Can you see what is in my head right now?” Tolcet said.

      Halsa looked and Onion looked, too. There was no curiosity or fear about in Tolcet’s head. There was nothing. There was no Tolcet, no wizard’s servant. Only brackish water and lonely white birds flying above it.

      It’s beautiful, Onion said.

      “What?” his aunt said in the market. “Onion? Sit down, child.”

      “Some people find it so,” Tolcet said, answering Onion. Halsa said nothing, but she frowned.

      Tolcet and Halsa rode through the town and out of the town gates onto the road that led back toward Labbit and east, where there were more refugees coming and going, day and night. They were mostly women and children and they were afraid. There were rumors of armies behind them. There was a story that, in a fit of madness, the king had killed his youngest son. Onion saw a chess game, a thin-faced, anxious, yellow-haired boy Onion’s age moving a black queen across the board, and then the chess pieces scattered across a stone floor. A woman was saying something. The boy bent down to pick up the scattered pieces. The king was laughing. He had a sword in his hand and he brought it down and then there was blood on it. Onion had never seen a king before, although he had seen men with swords. He had seen men with blood on their swords.

      Tolcet and Halsa went away from the road, following a wide river, which was less a river than a series of wide, shallow pools. On the other side of the river, muddy paths disappeared into thick stands of rushes and bushes full of berries. There was a feeling of watchfulness, and the cunning, curious stillness of something alive, something half-asleep and half-waiting, a hidden, invisible humming, as if even the air were saturated with magic.

      “Berries! Ripe and sweet!” a girl was singing out, over and over again in the market. Onion wished she would be quiet. His aunt bought bread and salt and hard cheese. She piled them into Onion’s arms.

      “It will be uncomfortable at first,” Tolcet was saying. “The marshes of Perfil are so full of magic that they drink up all other kinds of magic. The only ones who work magic in the marshes of Perfil are the wizards of Perfil. And there are bugs.”

      “I don’t want anything to do with magic,” Halsa said primly.

      Again Onion tried to look in Tolcet’s mind, but again all he saw was the marshes. Fat-petaled, waxy, white flowers and crouching trees that dangled their long brown fingers as if fishing. Tolcet laughed. “I can feel you looking,” he said. “Don’t look too long or you’ll fall in and

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