The Curse of the Blessed

Chapter Fifty-Four

Lark and the Head Man returned only a short time after they'd left, Reed trailing behind them. The Head Man nodded at Lark and said a few quiet words to her. Her face fell, and she walked quickly but dejectedly back to her family.

"She's not carrying her violin," Bran whispered to me.

I frowned. "Did he take it away? Can he even do that?"

"I-" Bran hesitated. "I don't know."

"Citizens!" boomed the Head Man. He stood proudly on the stage, Reed a few feet behind him. "I made our rules clear only a while ago, when I proclaimed them on this very dias. Blesseds are not allowed to use magic."

He turned and gestured in Lark's direction. "On this day, Lark Ellins dared to work a spell into her music. Because it is possible—and necessary—her violin has been confiscated to prevent her from using her Blessing again.

"I truly regret the difficulties this may cause. I know we have all enjoyed listening to Lark's music for a long time, and we will sorely miss the sound of her playing at our festivals—however, I'm sure we would all prefer to go without than to become cursed again."

A rumble of agreement went through the crowd.

"That's what I thought." The Head Man smiled, the expression almost smug, but just managing not to be. "From now on, any Blesseds above the age of ten whose Blessings rely on the use of a particular object will have that object taken away from them."

"Does that include Reed?" Bran wondered.

Apparently, someone else was thinking the same thing.

"What about your son?" a villager shouted. "Doesn't his Blessing depend on a pen or pencil? Are you going to take that away from him, too?"

The Head Man sighed. "Sadly, writing utensils are easy to get. There is no point in taking away Reed's pen. If I did, and he truly wanted to summon magic, he'd have no difficulty finding a new one. Plus—he's a great help to me in the office. He often needs to use a pen. If I banned him from pens altogether, where would I be?"

He shook his head. "I know this is terrifying for all of us. The very thought of the curse returning..."

He paused, as if he had lost himself in thoughts of the past—though the slight upward tilt of his mouth gave away that he was still scheming. After a moment, he shook himself.

"It's terrifying, safe to say. But, even so, we need to be smart about this, not paranoid. There are many things we could be doing that we're not. We could be exiling all the Blesseds in this town as soon as we realize what they are, but we're not. We could be instituting much worse penalties for the use of magic, but we're not." The Head Man smiled. "I hope you can see that we're doing the best we can with what we've got. The last thing we want to do during these difficult times is lose our humanity."

Beside me, Bran laughed. "Yeah. Because sending children to do their dirty work didn't count towards loss of humanity at all."

A hand grasped my arm. I looked up to see Mam standing there, a stern-yet-fearful look on her face.

"Fyra," she said, gently tugging on my arm, "we need to leave. Now."

I shook my head. "I need to see if Lark's okay."

"She's fine." Mam shot a nervous glance at the Head Man, who was now descending from the stage. "It's time to go home, Fyra." She turned to Bran. "If you want to stay safe, you need to get out of here, too."

Bran looked at her, confusion and a bit of annoyance plain on his face. "She's our friend. I'm staying to make sure the Head Man didn't hurt her in any way."