A Blaze in the Dark (A New Dawn #1)

Chapter 37 - Fox

The Pirates are on the rise in the west. Over the summer we had three separate attacks. I lost 11 ships in the harbour, and nearly 52 of Oswald's men.

It was a calm evening in The Antler. Here and there, groups of people were slurping their pints, their chats mumbling and slightly chaotic. Fox didn't care what they were saying. He lay on his belly on the rug by the cosy, crackling fire. He brought two marbles to his mouth and blew out a tiny but powerful flame.

His fingertips grew warm, the glass balls hotter still. As the edges melted and united, he stopped blowing and dipped the marbles in a cup of snow. The orange ball with yellow veins had cracked in a couple of places,  but the white one was still intact. Perfect.

He grabbed the row of four marbles he had melted earlier and pressed the two white balls against each other. Pretending to be a fire-spitting dragon, he used his magic to craft the first part of his marble gate. Soon he would have a marble-made obstacle course for all of his marbles. Or the ones he would have left, anyway.

"You're bad for business, Fox." Mallard's chin rested on his hand, his pinky finger tapping his chin. He was sitting in the red chair by the fire, where Katla always used to sit. "Melting my precious marbles. You're torturing my toys."

"I have to do it." Fox got two more marbles out of his pouch: another white one and a blue one with black stripes. "Falcon wants me to build a track so I can learn how to steer small objects using Air Magic."

"Air Magic?" Mallard gasped overdramatically, as though he was talking to a toddler. "Has Falcon been teaching you Air Magic?"

"A little."

Performing Air Magic wasn't so different from playing with fire, but it required a lot more effort and concentration. Still, he would show Mallard that he was almost eleven and that he didn't need to be baby-ed to. He reached into his pouch and took out Firestone, the prime of his marble collection.

"Are you going to make that fly?" Mallard asked.

"Yes." Fox held the large black marble in the palm of his hand and stared at it, imagining it hovering. Firestone wobbled and jerked, but nothing more than that. He narrowed his eyes so much the muscles in his face cramped up. "Come on. Come on," he whispered.

"Don't sweat it," said the marble merchant. "Air is your connected element, so it's gonna be a little harder to master. Practise will make it perfect."

"But I can do it." Fox stuck out his tongue. Even if it took the equivalent of lifting a rock the size of the tavern above his head, he would carry on until Firestone was no longer touching his skin.

Then, as though the Gods themselves intervened, the marble shot into the air. It crashed into the roof, then onto Fox's head, from where it catapulted into the fireplace. 

His lips were trembling, his eyes threatening to perform the only bit of Water Magic he would ever be good at, yet he didn't need to think twice to dive after the marble. With bare hands, he pushed two burning logs aside and dug into the coals to retrieve it.

When he turned around to show Mallard that he had gotten it, Doe stood in front of him. She grabbed his hands and wiped them clean with a wet cloth. The look on her face wasn't a happy one. "You know the rules, darling. No elaborate magic inside the tavern. If you wanna show your tricks, you'll have to do that outside."

"But you don't want me to go outside at this hour," he protested.

"No,  and it's getting late for little Foxes too. Grab your toys and go to bed, darling." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, which he both liked and disliked at the same time; why he couldn't tell. "Tomorrow is another day."