Mirror Bound

Lukas did add: 'If I can see your Gift, anyone with the talent can see it in you as well. Paul will have to teach you to shield soon, preferably today. Don't trust strangers or even people you know when they offer you things. Predators catch their prey with seduction, at least at first.' That was such a scary and unreal thought that I decided to not ask what a predator was when in a hurry, but just be careful and trust my common sense.

I kissed him, tickling the base of his horns, sending a shock of passion through him. He fired up in a second, lifting me with much more ease than his slight frame and my solid one suggested, and squeezed me, groaning at me: 'Aah, you minx, you tempt me to make you late for work!' I kissed him again, and promised: 'I'll be back before you know it.' And then I left reluctantly.

The twenty minute walk was not as pleasant as it usually was, despite the lovely spring weather. My mind kept going around and around, alternately telling itself that without the so-called Gift I wouldn't even have known about the flaw, and warning me it would be my fault if lives were lost. A bit dis-concertedly I entered the building site, afraid of what I might see.

Most probably nothing remarkable, the building would likely not collapse until the weight of the glass was added, maybe not even then. The structure might hold for months or even years, or not even a day.

And I had to look twice to believe what was really going on: the offending support had been braced with thick temporary beams from four sides, and metal workers were in the process of removing the support itself. A replacement was lying within reach, and a large winch was erected over the site. They were going to replace the faulty support!

I was incredibly relieved and flattered they had taken my concerns seriously, even though I had admitted they were not supported by the facts I had gathered myself. I did hope they'd find a flaw in that support once it had been replaced, and I was dying to get my hands on it, to check it myself with my newly found skills.

As soon as I was spotted, the architect and the overseer came towards me. Seeing the relief on my face the overseer observed: 'Miss Thorn, you didn't think I wouldn't believe you because you couldn't prove your doubts? I had a hard time convincing the parties involved, but the image of the building collapsing that I presented them with, with or without loss of life, was too much for them to bear in the end.'

We spent an hour watching the actual replacement of the large support, quite an operation, and when the flawed support finally rested on the ground, I approached it carefully. It still felt wrong, and I now recognised the buzzing feeling as the typical emanations of cold iron, enhanced to a level that was palpable to me even without going into a trance.

I decided to openly 'feel' the support even though I might fall into a trance scanning it for flaws. If I was to do this more often, the people on the building site would just have to accept seeing me like that.

Doing it in secret would be very difficult on this busy site, and if someone were to see me it might even look like sabotage. So I sat down in a comfortable position and laid my hands on it. The force of the emanations from such a large piece of flawed hard iron hit me harder than I expected, and I had to brace myself not to fall.

My mind had to wrestle the iron to be able to see the dense grid within. It took a long time to scan the entire piece, but I could feel the direction in which the problem lay, which made it easier to find. What I saw filled me with incredible relief and quite a bit of pride: there was a long, narrow cavity throughout the foot of the beam, a casting flaw that reduced the bearing strength of the support to a fraction of the force it would have to withstand to keep the building up once the weight of the glass was added.

I had been right, and I could prove it!

Chapter 11

Coming back from my light trance, I scanned the little crowd that had gathered to watch me work, to find the face of the overseer, and tell him he had saved the building.

Seeing him quite close, he clearly seemed a bit concerned at the sudden weariness on my face, caused by the wrestling match between the cold iron and my magic.

I fixed his gaze in mine, and said in a loud, clear voice: 'John, I need to thank you for your trust in me. You have saved my reputation, the building and who knows how many lives. If you saw through this support at this point here before it is re-melted and recast into something else, you'll find a cavity, a casting error, of at least twelve inches long and three inches wide, reducing the bearing capacity of this support to practically nothing.'

All the faces were a study in amazement. Of course that would only increase when they found the cavity for real. This would either make my reputation as building expert, or get me ostracised from the community as witch.

But for me there was no choice, I had taken this job to save lives, and save lives I would, openly. I didn't stay to watch the support hauled off to the iron works, I knew John would supervise the check himself, his neck was on the block even more than mine. He had bullied his superiors, virtually blackmailed them into complying with his demands to have a safe building. He needed to be proven right as much as myself.

I inspected the new support, found it flawless, and decided there and then to check the cast iron parts before they were used from now on. If I still had a job tomorrow.

Pretending nothing had happened, I discussed the glass panelling schedule with the architect and the contractors. They looked at me with a mixture of awe and doubt, which I ignored. When the inspection was done, I decided to call it a day.

The use of magic had tired me, and it was nearly time anyway. I asked the architect to send a messenger over as soon as the results of the test were known, and he promised. He could clearly see the results of my struggle with the iron, for he asked: 'Shall I send someone with you to see you home safely? You look very worn out.'

I thanked him for his concern, but politely declined, I would be fine once I got some sleep. And I felt much better already when I left the building site, relieved the danger had been averted, and only slightly concerned about the consequences of my open use of magic. I counted on people not wanting to believe in the supernatural, denying what they had seen and only believing the result. The lovely spring day soon caught me in its spell, and I decided to do some shopping straight away, to stay outside a little longer.

This made me feel for Lukas, cooped up inside, stronger now and aching for a good run to stretch his legs and get rid of some of his accumulated energy. Maybe I could feel the structure of his horns too, discern if it would be safe to trim them. But the very thought of taking his horns, his manliness, from him made me sick to the stomach, and I decided to get him some nice cheese and olives to make up a little for the things he missed.

When word came later that day that a large casting error had indeed been found in the support, the news spread fast throughout the small world of the builders in town. As I had hoped, my discovery had been credited to some sixth sense, and my reputation as building inspector was made.

My boss apologized for advising me to ignore the feeling, and my services were in high demand. Checking metal for flaws became easier and less tiring quickly, and Paul had started my education on shielding after a hint from Lukas.

Lukas sat in on these classes, improving his English by listening and asking questions, and preparing for the possibility of his own talent awakening further. We filled our days with work, learning or teaching magic, socialising together. Paul and I stayed on much the same footing, stealing a kiss now and then, hugging and sitting together and holding hands, as if we were teenagers in love for the first time, desperately in love but way too shy to do something about it.

I got used to Paul taking a lot of time before he moved our intimacy up a notch, enjoying his attentions and still making passionate love to Lukas regularly.

Lukas became ever stronger, but his restlessness increased linearly to his strength. I felt very sorry for him, but I couldn't think of a solution to his problem besides trying to make his 'captivity' bearable.

Then one day I came home from work, and something was not right, all was very quiet, when usually I could hear the furnace roaring or a hammer ringing or the sound of filing. Lukas was quite an able craftsman himself by now, and well on his way to his own style.

He helped Paul with his commissions, and in return got instruction and materials to make his own pieces. They had made the promised centre piece for my living-room together in the first week, a semblance of the mirror but made of metal instead. The workmanship was superb, and obviously still Paul's, but Lukas was developing a distinctive style of his own now.

He had sold some pieces through Paul, and had given me a share of the income for food and rent, and kept some to invest. But he was not really happy, he clearly felt caged, with early summer on us. He never took it out on me, he just became quiet, only seeming to come to life when we were making love and he could exert himself.

The silence was deafening, and it gave me an uncomfortable feeling, a kind of prescience of something bad. Climbing the stairs, I came to my own door, put my bag and my coat where they were supposed to be, then ran down the stairs again to Paul's door. I didn't even have to knock before he opened it, and he did not look happy.

'What happened?' I gasped, now stressed to my limits with anxiety, 'something bad has happened, hasn't it? You look fine, so it's Lukas. Where is he?' Paul, looking grey and very tired, didn't try to calm me down but rather went in, expecting me to follow him. We took the stairs down to the living area, and I followed Paul to the sofa with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Lukas was hanging on the couch, conscious but moaning in pain. His face was grey. I ran towards him and kneeled before him, taking his hands. When he looked up to see me, I nearly fainted. I saw his head with his now plentiful tight brown curls, but one of his proud horns was missing, and in the place of the other there was a bloody cloth. His hair was matted with blood, and he looked more dead than alive.

I heard myself crying out: 'What have you done?' It was Lukas himself who answered me in a near-whisper: 'I wanted to go outside, so I had Paul trim my horns as he trimmed my feet. It didn't work out as I planned.'

He held his arms out to me feebly, so I sat next to him and took him in my arms. Then I looked at Paul and asked him: 'How bad is it? Will he..'

Paul, looking nearly as bad as Lukas in stress and guilt, shook his head. 'I don't think it's that bad, but he has lost a lot of blood and he is in terrible pain. He needs a doctor, but how could we? It's just too dangerous.

The pain medication I have doesn't seem to work, and I'm afraid of infection. I'm so sorry Melissa, you trusted me to take care of him, and I failed miserably.'

I just couldn't understand why Lukas hadn't asked me to examine his horns first, I had a solid reputation now for seeing through all kinds of materials. Of course I didn't know if I could see through horn as well as metals and stone, but I could have tried, and I said so.

Lukas seemed to shrink into himself even more as he answered weakly: 'I didn't want you to know, I thought you'd try to stop me, you never wanted to even discuss it.' It pained me to see him cowed as well as terribly hurt, and my fear and shock took over and I started to cry quietly.

He was right, I had never wanted to discuss it, even when I could see how unhappy he was. In a small voice he asked: 'Will you stroke me a little?' I caressed his curls, his stubbled cheeks, his dear face. I needed the comfort myself. What if we lost him, what would I do?

Paul had sat down next to me, and comforted me as I held Lukas. My stroking seemed to help Lukas' pain, or maybe Paul's medicine had finally started to work, for Lukas slowly relaxed and dozed off. His breathing was regular, his pulse was strong, and his temperature was normal, so I willed myself to calm down and weigh the options.

I said: 'Will you tell me what happened Paul, and do you think I should 'feel' the stumps to see if I can learn something more, of what to do now?' He nodded, replied: 'I'll tell you first, then you decide.

We had breakfast in my kitchen as usual, then worked on that big boiler together. Suddenly he told me he saw no possible way to ever find his home again, time, place or reality, and that he was desperately unhappy despite having you to love and nice work to do. So he had decided he would adapt to our society even further, having already gotten used to wearing clothes, having learned English and a craft to make a living at.

He now wanted me to remove his horns so he could exercise outside and be among people. I didn't want to do it at first, not without you present and approving. But he told me he was his own person, and I couldn't deny that. He told me it would be easy, he drew a mark on each horn to where it would be safe to cut it. Any shorter, he said, and it would bleed and there would be a hole in his skull as result. That didn't do much to give me faith, but he was so sure it would be fine, I did it.

I'm starting to think he 'nudged' me into it, gave me a little mental push. If so, he's very subtle, for I never noticed. Also, it's not very ethical, we don't allow it in our community.

Anyway, I marked the horn clearly where he had indicated, and he braced himself against the anvil. I used the fine toothed saw. The first one went reasonably well, except that he hadn't told me it would hurt like hell.

He didn't scream but I could tell he was in agony,. I couldn't stop with his horn half through though, that would be asking for infections.

The first one done, the pain seemed to go away quickly, and the stump did indeed disappear under his hair. He wanted me to start on the other one straight away, I protested, but I agreed anyway.

I think we'll have to have a talk about ethics as soon as he's a bit better. I didn't even notice, I realize only now. The other one hurt even worse, and when it came off, blood spurted out and he fainted. I managed to stop the flow, but he had lost a lot of blood and when he came to he was in agony and very weak.

I couldn't see a hole through his skull, but it can still get infected, threatening his life.' At this point I decided it was time to touch the stumps, trying to 'feel' their structure. I started with the one that had been a success, if one could call this mutilation a success.

I could feel Paul steadying me, and searched through the curls to find the stump and touched it. I did feel something, there was no grid or tone, but a structure like roof-tiles, layer over layer of flattened shapes. This was the outside layer, the dead horn so to speak.

The inside was clearly living tissue, a flow of small bits of several different shapes and sizes beneath the 'roof' of roof-tiles. The flow went round, coming up and going down. I got a colour impression of clear red. I felt no wrongness or weak points, though the top layer of roof-tiles was damaged.

This stump seemed relatively unscathed, despite the pain Lukas suffered. I decided to use the feel of this stump to compare the damaged one to.

Chapter 12

When I came back to myself, Paul was holding me tenderly, his worries and weariness finally getting the better of his self-control. I realized he had been through a lot, too, having done this to his friend, seeing him terribly hurt and having to deal with the consequences, and only now realising that he had been manipulated into doing it.

I decided to take a few minutes to comfort him first, Lukas was fast asleep and he didn't bleed through the cloth. It was Paul's turn now. I turned towards him as well as I could, and returned his embrace, guiding his head to my shoulder and stroking his curls, kissing his face and finally, his lips.

He answered my kiss eagerly, though not exactly passionately, the situation was too serious for passion. When we both had received some comfort from our intimacy, we broke off the kiss and turned our attention back to our dear friend.

I carefully removed the cloth and braced myself for what I would get to see. The wound started to bleed again sluggishly, and I put the cloth back, keeping pressure on it until the bleeding stopped again. I said: 'This won't work, I'll have to work around the cloth,' and I did.

Touching the stump, I started to look for the similarities with the healthy one, and soon found the same roof-tile structure around a flowing centre. But of course, the roof was missing here, and the flow was directed upward mainly instead of going back down again. Without the cloth, my dear lover would bleed out, that much was clear.

One of the components of the flow, biggish squares, were stuck together in several places, apparently trying to repair the damage, but not succeeding because the power of the upward flow was too strong. There was no sign of infection yet, bleeding was the main problem, and I thought the square parts would be able to stop the gap with a bit of help.

I knew what to do, and Paul would have to deliver it.

Back with Paul, I told him: 'I've seen what the problem is, and without your help he will bleed out. His body is trying to stop the blood-flow, but the gap is too large and the flow too strong. We will need to help it.

You will have to make a cap for the stump, directing the flow in the horn down again. The square bits in his blood will then close the leaks and hopefully keep infection out. I don't think Paul understood what I said, but he was eager to do something to help.

He asked: 'Do you have silver or gold? Copper and even bronze are poisonous when in direct contact to blood.' I didn't hesitate for a second and told him: 'I have a jewellery-case in my cupboard in the bedroom. Take what looks the purest to you and use it to save Lukas.

The cap needs to close the hole, you're the artist, you can make it work.' Paul replied: 'I will bring it here and we'll select the best parts together. You know metals as well as I do by now.

I want to take some extra time to make the cap beautiful, Lukas wouldn't like to wear something that is just functional, can we spare the time?' I checked his vitals, deciding the bleeding had stopped and finding his pulse still strong and said: ' Yes please, Paul. He would appreciate that. Would you mind carrying him upstairs to our bed first?

He cannot stay on a couch, he will have to rest for some time I'm afraid.'

Paul looked at me apologetically, and replied: 'I know I promised you not to show you my bedroom until I was ready to become physically intimate with you. Will you mind my breaking that promise under the circumstances, and take Lukas to my own bed instead? It is large enough for all of us, and he will need a lot of care that will be easier to share.'

Touched, I told him: 'I will not mind at all, I didn't want to impose upon you but it will be much easier to share.' I didn't think Lukas would be up to much lovemaking in the state he was in. 'Could you move him first, and then hunt out the jewellery and make the cap?'

In answer, he carefully lifted Lukas off my lap, giving me time to get up and keep the pressure on the cloth covering the wound. Lukas mumbled a little when he was lifted, but he did not wake up. He was not very heavy, being so skinny, but I didn't feel comfortable lifting him up a stairs, and Paul was very strong from his work at the forge, so he carried Lukas upstairs easily, opening the door of his bedroom with an elbow.