Free Small Magics by Erik Buchanan Page B

lad. If you can’t take the word of a scholar, whose is worth taking?”
    Thomas managed a smile back, though he was sure Timothy couldn’t see it. “Will we see you at the fair tomorrow, then?”
    “You will. Now let’s wake up that big lump of a friend of yours.”

Chapter 4
    The smithy and the house beside it stood on the edge of town. George’s father had built both with his own hands. Thomas, who had spent nearly half his childhood in and around their house, remembered it very well. It was a pleasant home, well lit and sunny, even in the loft that George used as his room. It was also the single worst place in Elmvale to try to sleep off a hangover.
    The morning was achingly bright, even through Thomas’s closed eyelids. His mouth was dry and fuzzy all at once, and his head felt like Lionel’s hammer was pounding away inside it instead of on the anvil outside. George’s father had always said, “A smith’s work is never done, from break of day to setting sun,” and true to his word, the man was putting hammer to anvil with what Thomas considered far too much vigour for this time of the morning.
    Thomas opened his eyes and discovered that the sun had just cleared the woods and was shining directly into his face. He thought about crawling completely under the blankets, but gave it up. He could escape from the sunlight, but the noise from the forge wasn’t going to stop and it would take far more than the blanket to block it out.
    Thomas cursed Lionel’s industriousness and reached for his breeches.
    A few moments later, his feet bare and his shirt in his hand, Thomas stumbled through the kitchen, into the backyard, and over to the well. He hauled on the rope to bring up the bucket. It was half-full when it came up. Thomas took the few steps to the trough that George and Eileen’s father kept for visiting animals, bent forward, and poured the contents of the bucket over his head.
    The water was cold. Thomas gritted his teeth against the sudden shock of it. His entire body erupted in chills and his head felt like it was simultaneously swelling inside and being crushed from without. He pulled himself away and stumbled back, gasping. After a moment, he forced himself upright.
    The headache was still there, but the world was no longer a blur. The yard was as it always had been: a patch of earth stamped hard by continuous foot traffic and cleared of all vegetation for fear of sparks from the forge catching on dry grass. The smithy still had stone walls blackened by flame and soot and doors wide enough to admit a horse for shoeing. They were wide open, now, and Lionel had stopped his hammering to wave at Thomas. George, working the bellows and showing no sign of disability, did the same. Given how much his friend drank the night before, Thomas wondered how he was standing at all, let alone working away.
    Thomas waved back, then shook the water out of his hair. The movement sent little jolts of pain through his head. He put on his shirt and headed back to the house, hardly stumbling at all until he reached the threshold and tripped into the kitchen.
    Thomas had always loved their kitchen. It wasn’t a large place; the wooden table that served both as eating and working surface took up most of it. The smooth stone floors were always swept clean, the walls wiped free of any grease or soot from the hearth. The shelves were full with plates and bowls and mugs and the pantry off to the side was fairly bursting with food. A good number of Lionel’s customers would pay in barter, and as a result, Thomas had never visited to find a bare pantry. Thomas breathed deeply and smelled what was no doubt a very good breakfast in the making. He turned towards the large stone hearth that took up most of one wall and saw Eileen and her mother both watching him. Her mother shook a spoon at him.
    “About time you woke up,” said Magda Gobhann.
    Eileen’s mother had red hair like her daughter, and was almost the same size, though the