Barb Caffrey's Blog

As promised, folks, here is a snippet from my soon-to-be-forthcoming novel, JASPER’S PROMISE, a novel I wrote in Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic universe with his permission and active encouragement.

A quick summary…(these things are hard for me, but I’ll do my best): Jasper, a fifteen-year-old youngster, loses his mother to childbirth, but before she dies, she tells him about the new university at Heart’s Eye, a community near the desert and one at least five or six days by rail travel away from Newtown, where he, his mother, and his odious stepfather live. There, Jasper can get the training in magic his mother never received…he promises to go (thus the name of the book), to do his best, and he finds his talents and starts to learn about who and what he truly is.

Now, without further ado, here’s Chapters One and Two of Jasper’s Promise:

OoO

Chapter One

My children, we must start my story when my life was at its absolute worst.

My mother was dying; she knew it. She’d tried to birth a baby that was way too big for her, and the experienced midwife (who had a hint of magic talent in her blood) was already out on another call. My mother, Eve, was bleeding to death, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’d tried.

My grandmother was not present as my stepfather didn’t want her there. This had caused all sorts of consternation in the family. But eventually my mother acquiesced, providing the midwife was sent for.

It didn’t do any good, as I said. And what’s worse, my stepfather wasn’t even there to help…though in one way, I guess that was a blessing as I was able to get away from him (finally).

Where was he? At the bar, of course, celebrating the impending birth. He was no help.

Then again, he never was.

My stepfather, David, was a terrible person. He abused me every day. Mom would send me out on errands as often as she possibly could, along with sleepovers at my grandma Hannah’s place, but somehow, David found a way to be cruel and cutting whether he raised the strap to me or not.

Why did Mom marry David? I don’t know. Yes, after my father died, she must’ve been in a bad state. Yes, as the first-ever magician in her own family, her siblings were not comfortable with her, and had sent her away…and yes, she’d been unable to get the proper training, so all she’d learned were scraps of spells. David owned a green grocery, so was reasonably prosperous; more to the point, as my father had died in one of the endless wars long before I became rational or reasonable—that is, before I hit the age of seven—she’d been alone a long time. What she knew was barely enough to keep her out of the gutter, and me alongside her. She knew she needed to give me a proper upbringing…but David almost killed her several times and beat me so badly on more than one occasion, all my grandmother and the local midwife could do was give me painkilling potion and tell me to rest.

Hannah was my mom’s mother, and had disagreed with her own family over the treatment of Mom. She had brought some wealth into the family, carefully hoarded, when she’d married, and when they sent Mom away, Hannah went with her. They’d settled in a dusty town near the Badlands, a place called Newtown that had only been in existence for a few years. Newtown was reasonably fertile and could grow its own food, but it was not a prosperous enough place for bandits to bother us and seemed a perfect place to try to make a new life. Hannah managed, partly because she was quiet (though never mousy) and people tended to overlook her. But Mom suffered for many reasons until David showed up. Hannah never trusted David, even when he brought Mom flowers and candy and took her out to expensive restaurants. (“Something in his eyes,” she told me later.) But Mom was smitten, and as I said before, she also was desperate. She hated being a leech on her mother (though Mom was working as a scribe, the Scribe’s guild said it was fine and dandy for men to be paid three times as much as women for far less work, so Mom never could get out of what sometimes was called “genteel poverty”), and she wanted, somehow, to send me to one of the magical schools.

Yes, I tested for magic early. I lit the ends of my fingers, somehow, so they looked like fireflies; I also could teleport a book or scroll from across the room, providing I really wanted to do it. (The latter exhausted me for hours, after. I had no idea at the time how much mental energy I was putting out, much less the fact that most magicians could not do what I could do, even if they’d been sent to school early.) Mom regretted not getting the right training for herself, though Hannah had of course offered to pay Mom’s way (why Mom had to be so stiff-necked, I’ll never understand), and wanted to do things in the right order: Marry well. Send me off to school to get the best possible training for my magical gift. Then live peacefully and enjoy life with her second husband.

None of that happened.

Yes, she married. But David was a tight-fisted man, and he had a violent and unpredictable temper. Sometimes, he got mad at Mom for not saving money; other times, he got mad because Mom did save money. (“Don’t you trust me to provide?” he’d ask her after he’d hit her so hard, the bruise on her cheekbone looked purple.) The money was not there to send me to Whitehall, or Stronghold, or any of the others. So he said.

Mom was outwardly meek, but inwardly something had stiffened. She wanted me to be properly trained. She didn’t want my magic to get so out of control that I inadvertently became a necromancer. (We had no idea how necromancers came to be, but we had some vague notion that it was due to a power imbalance.) So she started squirreling money away, giving it to my grandmother to hold, in the hopes I’d be able to go somewhere, even at a later age than most, for training.

When she swelled in pregnancy after eight years of marriage, my stepfather rejoiced. He stopped hitting Mom for the duration. (He hit me all the more, of course, but I bit my lip and endured.) He had high hopes for a son—“One that’s good, not like you, you worthless piece of crap, Jasper”—but of course he’d have to take what he got.

At any rate, when Mom realized she would not survive childbed, she called out to me. (Fortunately, David was still at the bar.) I ran to her; I loved her so much, even though I never said it. “Mom…are you all right?” I asked, knowing she wasn’t. Her overall coloring was bad; she’d gone greenish, somehow, and the blue veins stuck out in her face and neck…she’d lost a lot of blood, I thought, remembering what my grandmother had told me about pregnancy and confinements. And her hair, once her crowning glory, had dulled so much from its original bright red-blonde that it looked like mud, which couldn’t be right, could never be right.

“I will be, soon,” Mom said breathily. “Our ancestors will see me safe, I’m sure.” Then, she struggled, until her voice became her usual one again: calm, measured, and matter of fact. “Son, you need to leave now. You can’t help me, here. You shouldn’t stay, either, for obvious reasons.”

I gulped and nodded, but Mom wasn’t finished.

“Your grandmother has something for you. Then, you are going to head to Heart’s Eye.”

“What’s that?”

“A different type of magical school,” Mom said, gripping my hand with as much force as she had…which wasn’t nearly enough. Still, I was riveted. “They want magicians and nonmagicians to work together—”

“Mundanes? Like David? Yuck!”

“Or like your grandmother,” Mom said, steel in her voice. “Even so. They train people to do all sorts of things, and they’ll help you get the skills you need to live a better life, far, far away from David.”

“You’re sure I…can’t help you? With my magic?” I’d do anything for Mom. Even use my unpredictable magic, if it worked…

“Healing spells are some I never got a chance to study. They won’t work right for me. That’s why I never taught them to you…but son, my time is about to run out. You must leave now.”

I kissed her on the brow and hurried out. I hated having to leave her there. But she’d asked me to go to my grandmother’s house; if that was her last wish for me, I damned well was going to follow it.

I went out through the kitchen door as the cook had already gone home. I hoped I’d avoid David, as he and Grandma didn’t get along, but knew I’d be all right once I got to Grandma’s house because Hannah had one of those new blunderbusses everyone was talking about. That was a type of “gun” – I’d never heard that word before Grandma told me about it—that would shoot David at close range and not miss. While I hated my stepfather and didn’t think the world would mourn him at all, I didn’t want Grandma to get into any trouble, which she might if she shot and killed David. Thus my caution.

As soon as I was out, I realized it was twilight. Good. Easier to hide in the shadows, especially with one of the scraps of spells my Mom had known and had taught me. The toughest thing about using that spell was to stay calm. It was a misdirection spell, and it would not work if you were overly nervous, anxious, or worried. (Later I found there were other versions of the spell that would, but I did not know them at the time.) I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until I was at Grandma’s door.

 I knocked…then Grandma opened the door and said, “Jasper! It’s about time!”

Chapter Two

My grandmother bustled me inside and had me sit down. Small, but mighty of heart, she did not mince words. “Your mother isn’t well,” she said, reading the information off my face.

“No, she’s not. And the midwife is out of town doing Goddess-alone-knows-what, while David is drinking in the bar, toasting the other idiots,” I said with disgust. “I didn’t want to leave, though…I wanted to help her!”

“She knows that,” Hannah, my grandmother, said with infinite gentleness. “She had a premonition, Jasper. She knew she’d not survive this birth, one way or another. And she also knew that you must leave this place to get the training you need…the training she, herself, was not able to get.”

“Why aren’t you with her now?”

“I need to give you a few things, and then I’m going over there. With my blunderbuss, if you must know,” she said with a slight smile.

That made sense to me. David was no threat to her, that way.

“Here,” she said, handing me a bag full of coins of various types and denominations. “This should get you to Heart’s Eye.”

“What’s that? Mom said something, but I didn’t understand…why should I go there?”

“It’s a new type of magical school called a ‘university,’ and they take everyone, magicians and nonmagicians alike. They’re trying to build something new. They don’t charge for learning, either, the last I checked.”

Interesting. They could train me? But I had another question for her, as before my mother had mentioned it, I had never heard at all of Heart’s Eye. That meant it must be very far away. “Where is it?”

“It’s in the desert, kind of,” Hannah said. “I have only heard of it. Never been there. But it’s said to be on the very edge of a desert.” Then she handed me another bag full of cheese, raisins, and bread. “This should help you on your way. The less food you have to buy, the better off you’ll be when you get there. Be wary of any food that’s given to you and use the water purification spell my daughter taught you.”

That was one of the few full spells Mom knew.

She then handed me yet another bag filled with my clothes—I didn’t know how she’d grabbed them without me noticing—and a few of my favorite books, before saying, “Now go, grandson. There’s a stagecoach down the way that’ll take you to the nearest train station.”

“But that’s three towns away! How can I—”

“I’ve already paid,” my grandma said. “Go. Now.”

I went, but my heart was heavy. I couldn’t help my mother, who would die…my grandmother was going to be the only one at my Mom’s deathbed…and I felt like a complete failure.

Yet they believed in me, or at least that I deserved a chance to become something else, something other than what I already was. I had to go and try.

But that didn’t mean I liked it. And I wasn’t going to pretend I did.

OoO

So, there you have it. What d’you think so far?

I’ll be posting more in two days. Until then…go, Brewers, go!