Phony Potions

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The play began. An elf strutted out onto stage, his clothes shabby and common. He declared loudly to the crowd about his humble origins and the tedium of working on the farm. His lineage was only known as far back as his grandparents, being a nameless farmer like so many others. I rested my chin on my palm heavily. Not another farm boy story...

This farm boy, however, had forgotten ancestors that were sorcerers. He was Enchanted, and discovered this while reciting some poetry. Although the initial casting had been problematic, it led to him having to prepare for a Proving, the journey all sorcerer elves go on between childhood and adulthood.

The kids sitting off to the left pretended to cast spells on each other. When one of them tripped, the fake spell casting session boiled into an all-out brawl. I couldn't tell if they were fighting within the family, or if all the bored kids from the seats nearby had decided to join in.

The exhausted mom unlatched her younger boy's clinging fingers from a braid of her hair and kept staring forward. I'm pretty sure she wasn't even watching the show, she was enjoying being able to sit down.

"Why do elves have so many kids?" I asked, watching the chaos.

"Why do the ungifted Elves have so many children?" Winsor asked, grimacing at the tired mom. "I dare not venture upon their motivation." He cast his hands over the unsuspecting crowd and spoke a spell: "Unruly children who fight and bite, you know your behavior is not right. With the crowd sit and cheer, with others' enjoyment do not interfere."

I watched, awed. Dozens of kids stopped beating the snot out of each other and sorted out seats. Some even sat on one another's laps, cooperating quietly.

"But as to the sorcerer elves, the answer is readily apparent, isn't it?" Winsor asked after the spell was finished.

"What?" I blinked.

"The large families of the sorcerer elves, they are easily enough justified." He gestured toward the stage, the heavy bottom of his sleeve swinging out dramatically as he did so. "When one considers The Proving."

I watched the play. The elf was in a training sequence, throwing small 'fireballs' at a beast made of burlap and hay tied to the end of a broom swung around by a wizened old coach. The actors were using simulated magic. Despite all the Arcanacrats in town, they weren't going to get a real sorcerer to perform in some town's play for the ungifted. The fireballs exploded into harmless bits of colored fluff that rained down on the audience, which the kids in the front row grabbed anxiously from the edge of the stage, laughing and giggling.

"The woman to whom I alluded earlier, the one I am fond of... she will set off for her own Proving this fall." Winsor mused sullenly. "Her family's already lost five children. Three elder brothers and two elder sisters. She who holds my deepest affections hostage would have been saved if she had been able to marry a firstborn sorcerer, but the groom made their would-be marriage day ruinous as he does all days. In consequence, she must Prove like all her siblings before her." He inhaled sharply. "...and that directly will lead to her demise. A flower crushed senselessly beneath the foot of arbitrary fortune and ill tempers."

"People die on Provings?" I scrutinized the stage. "But... all the Provers I've ever heard of were great and powerful sorcerer elves, they demolished the dragons."

"I have observed that the truth is never extracted from only the words spoken, but also the silences left unsaid." Winsor chided me. "There isn't much motivation to spread the reputation of the Provers that fail. Nay, the elves quietly mourn their lost children and hope the next in line will be successful." He turned toward the stage, but his eyes were distant. "It may be brutal, but the ones that survive truly make their society magnificent. It's been said that Majikast main population is elves... sometimes I wish that human sorcerers did Provings as well. Every generation we grow in number but fall in glory.."