iii.

I was already faint from splitting my food with the little brat. I'd been worried I might starve before I found a buyer. My fatigue made the long, winding cobblestone path surreal. I climbed those stones through splotchy shade cast by the flowering trees lining either side of the path. Petals fluttered off, sprinkling the air with pleasant, dreamy scents. I stopped and inhaled. The ache in my arms lessened, even as the little Giant baby kicked against me.

"Shush." I patted the downy hair on the top of her head. Her wet, orange eyes blinked at me and she gurgled, reaching up and grabbing my sleeve. She pulled, much stronger than a normal baby, and as my seam tore I'd laughed. A little bit more damage, compared to what she'd already done to me was worth the reward I was about to get.

I stammered through my introduction at the door, the Assistant basically had to lead every word out of me. I'd never been inside a sorcerer's mansion before and had no idea how to act. Even he was imposing, his clean pale clothes, his tidy nails, his articulate and clipped speech. Even being a lowly servant to an Arcanacrat, you lived well.

The lobby of the mansion was about as big as my parent's farm house had been growing up. Another servant, this one a well-fed young woman, had immediately attended to me, dusting travel soil off of me and the Giant baby. Then we had been escorted, politely but forcefully, to a secondary room so none of the other guests that might come calling would get the wrong impression. That made me laugh. The Assistant hadn't even bothered lying to spare our feelings. That's how far below the spell caster that owned this place I had been – still was.

I sat at first on the fine but uncomfortable chair in the smaller drawing room. My eyes skimmed the books on the shelves. I read some of the words. 'The,' 'Nature,' 'Season,' 'Cold,' 'Weather,' 'Sun,' the basics I'd picked up in my few meager years of schooling. Others I'd stopped at and sounded out, unfamiliar to me. It'd been about three years since I'd really bothered to read anything besides signs. I bet this sorcerer read all the time. I bet he even read fiction.

As I saw the Giant baby getting into a vase full of ferns, I quickly climbed off my own chair and sat down next to her. I was exhausted beyond all reason, but I had to try and distract her. We went through our litany of games, that while time consuming, had made the time on the roads admittedly pass faster. Peek-A-Boo had been one of her favorites. She also enjoyed it when I counted her toes. I'd picked up enough sleight of hand while fancying I could someday become a cutpurse (before realizing I was far too old to learn) to trick a baby that I was finding stuff behind her ears.

I became so engrossed in entertaining that when the door opened, it took me off guard. A small child burst into the room. He tilted his head and then sat down next to the baby. I'd wondered if if this was the sorcerer I'd come to sell to. He certainly had not had his Age Day to become an adult yet. He hadn't even grown any of his adult teeth yet. He couldn't rule the city.... Could he?

"Ugh." He groaned. "Not another baby."

"Excuse me?" I asked. He had a plumpness in his cheeks and a gentle roll to his well-fed stomach beneath the fine clothes that hinted he was a sorcerer's child. He huffed impatiently at me.

"I said, 'not another baby." He jabbed a finger at her. "We got one this year. We don't need another one. I'm supposed to be the kid!"

"A Giant baby?" I asked, nervous. Was this a thing? Did lots of people bring Giant babies to sorcerers? Was it like a city warming gift? The boy shook his head.

"No, just a normal baby." He'd pouted before crawling around on his hands and knees toward the baby's distracted face. She gurgled at him. "This one is way more better than my lame little brother. He can't do anything. Especially not glow."

"Oh?" I asked. The kid's head bounced up and down in eager insistence.

"Uh-huh. He can't even cast the simple spells, since he can't talk yet."

I smirked.

"I can't cast spells, does that make me lame?" I asked.

The boy eyed me warily. He went quiet longer than expected, rubbing his chin with his pink fingertips. Eventually, he'd clucked his tongue, an unusual gesture for a little kid. And finally, he shook his head.

"No, that makes you normal. Like the kids in the town." He nodded with affirmation. Then he leaned in close, cupping his hand near his mouth.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

Kids. Only they would trust a complete stranger as a confidant.

"Sure thing." I played along. I leaned down a little, and he whispered into my ear.

"Sometimes I wish I was a normal person still."

"Don't you like the mansion and the powers?" I asked. He must have discovered his magic recently.

"I don't like being cold. Or different." This kid was not joking, but sharing this secret with the most heartfelt sincerity.

"Aren't you used to it? You were born this way."

"Not really." A pause. "It's lonely being enchanted. Sometimes I dream I am normal, and I hate it when I wake up."

"Sometimes I dream I have magic, and I feel the exact same way. Let's trade," I teased.

"You're dumb. That's not possible."

"You!" A sharp voice snapped from the doorway. The kid fell backward, his hands hitting the floor. He scrambled to his feet and brushed off his finery. I'd jumped, too. The sorcerer that had stepped through the door was clean with a neatly angled brown beard and a good smell preceded him. I bit back my bitterness that someone just five years or so my senior had all of this, and hadn't done anything to earn it besides being born with the ability to alter reality with rhymes.

"F-Father!" The kid stammered. "I thought you were——"

"I just now managed to get your brother to stop crying," he said struggling to keep his voice even. He was shivering. He rubbed his arms. The lady servant draped a scarf silently over his shoulders, and it hadn't settled before the man had grabbed the kid by the ear violently. This cold man shook his son. "It's the oddest thing. I take a little break from the construction, since you know I'm working myself to near frost to finish this city for us, and I decided to step in to visit my sweet baby. I went into his chamber to check up on him before this meeting——" The sorcerer man nodded curtly to me, before addressing his son again. His beard point like an accusing arrow at the boy's forehead. "——and he's napping contentedly. And I give him his favorite toy, the toy dog he loves to gnaw on. And he starts wailing."

"He'll cry over anything won't he?" The kid had whimpered, not even fighting his dad but hanging there at the end of his fingers like a dead catch.

"Hmm, yes, he was being fussy. So I checked the toy... and you know what I found?" His voice grew dangerously low. The kid swallowed.

"Uh..."

"Zanthachaun pepper." The sorcerer man had hissed. The kid's face faded white. "Zanthachaun pepper, one of the gifts the foreign dignitaries brought to commencement of construction last month. You had hidden it in his teething toy and when he bit, it burst open."

What? All of this had been this month? I stared out the window in astonishment. For ungifted, this would take decades.

"Well, babies, they'll just get into anything won't they—?"

"If this child is lying, soon he will be—"

"Nononono!" The kid wailed, shaking his head, trying to shout over his father. "I did it! I did it! Don't kill me!"

"I won't." He let go of the ear, and the kid reached up and touched it gingerly. "Are you sorry?"

"...if he were tougher and not such a baby...."

The sorcerer man clucked his tongue.

"I suppose it's still beyond your comprehension to realize the folly of your actions."

Realizing he wasn't out of trouble yet, the kid tried again.

"I... uh... was just trying to share... the neat pepper. I mean, you know, we don't get them too often and they were going to go bad or something ..."

"Oh, I had no idea you liked them so much." The sorcerer's eyebrows raised high as he regarded his son. "Well, in that case, you deserve a reward for being so generous instead of a punishment for being wicked, don't you?"

"Yeah!" The kid said, brightening. "I didn't do anything wrong!" he added. The man grimaced thoughtfully.

"Well, time for your reward."

A crooked smile crossed the kid's face, like he couldn't believe what he was getting away with. He tried to calm himself, to no avail, and ended up bouncing from one foot to the other in unbearable excitement.

"He who claimed the pepper was a gift, from punishment to reward my actions shall shift. And so let the taste tingle his tongue the whole day, taking many hours to fade away."

The kid's face twisted, and then color rose to his cheeks. He stuck out his tongue and backed away, as if his tongue were biting him.

"Ow!" He whined. "Ow! Ow!" Tears seeped from his eyes and snot from his nose. He tugged at his dad's clothes, begging for the spell to be undone between sobbing hiccups. "Ith spithy! Ith spithy!" he'd said, mangling the words in his pepper-inflicted state.

"Well, if I were you, I'd either find some water." He'd smirked. "Or try a counterspell to undo it."

"Not fair! Not fair!" The kid cried and ran out of the room, the door slamming behind him. As he left, I heard a muffled, "I can't feel my tongue!"