“Uh…I take it the
proposal didn’t go as planned?” Darby asked as he wrung his boney hands against
his middle.
“It was a
disaster.” Chris marched into his bedroom in search of another change of
clothes.
“What happened?”
Darby’s short, skinny legs stumbled over each other in attempt to keep up with Chris’s
wide strides.
“She said no,”
Chris snapped. “Actually, her very words were—If you would consider working under my father as the Financial
Advisor’s Assistant to the king, I might consider your proposal.” He made
the tone of his voice a little higher to sound like a woman. Over his shoulder,
he threw Darby a stare. “Apparently, being a schoolteacher isn’t good enough
for Rosanna or her family.”
Tears swam in
Darby’s eyes. He slowly shook his head. “Oh, how sorry I am for this, my
friend.” He wiped his eyes. “This is all my fault. I fear I’m not very good at
being a soothsayer. If I hadn’t encouraged you to talk to her or court her…” He
hitched a breath, which elicited a high pitch sound, and slapped his hand over
his mouth. Tears filled his eyes faster.
“Darby, it’s not
your fault.” Chris needed to calm his friend down before the poor man swooned
from stress, which he’d done several times before. “I was the one who wanted to
get to know her. If I didn’t want to meet her, I would have ignored your
advice.”
Sighing heavily,
Darby shook his head as his breathing regulated. “From now on, I shall just
stick to dabbling in magic and leave my soothsayer hat buried in the ground
where it belongs.”
Chris chuckled.
“Yes, stick to your magic. The more you practice, the better you’ll become.”
Darby scurried
back into the other room, so Chris closed the bedroom door and proceeded to
change his clothes. He and Darby had been together for years. They met at an
orphanage. Both were amongst the oldest children in that center. Darby was only
older than Chris by five years, but his deformities made him look like an old,
hunched over man. Darby wasn’t exactly bald, but the hair on his head sprouted
in different areas, and over the years, it had grown longer. The man’s arms and
legs were twisted, but he could still manage to walk and use his hands. And
although most children found him repulsive at first, Chris knew they would just
have to get to know him in order to realize what a special person Darby O’Brian
really was.
He definitely kept
Chris entertained with his magic. After all of these years, the poor man could
still only call himself an apprentice. Darby tried hard, but most of the time,
his spells didn’t turn out exactly right. In the end, the mayhem Darby caused
made them laugh.
After Chris
shucked his dirty clothes and dressed in clean ones, he joined Darby in the
main room. His friend stood by the stove, stirring a spoon in a pot. Well,
actually, the spoon was stirring itself while Darby was staring out the window.
Chris grinned. His
friend’s magic could handle smaller tasks, thank goodness. “What are we having
to eat?”
Darby jumped as if
startled and stretched his hand toward the spoon, but instead of grasping it, he
managed to knock it away from the pot. Flying through the air, the spoon spun,
flinging food around the room.
Chris ducked.
Thankfully, the sailing food particles didn’t dirty his clean clothes. Darby
squealed and raced after the spinning spoon, his hands clumsily trying to grasp
onto the utensil that was clearly still under a spell because it wouldn’t stop
swirling.
Hiding his smile
behind his hand, Chris moved to the stove and peeked inside the pot. Carrots
and potatoes floated in the boiling thin sauce, along with a few chunks of
meat. They couldn’t afford much, and they had to make the meat last as long as
they could.
Grunts and groans
from Darby jerked Chris’s attention to his friend. Running with hands in the
air, he kept up with the flying spoon, but was too short to touch it. And
jumping was out of the question for this little twisted man.
Chris chuckled and
moved to help. When the spoon flew past, he grabbed it. Immediately, the spell
that had been around the utensil broke, and the spoon was now just as normal as
the others in the cupboard.
He handed it to
Darby. “Here, I believe this is yours.”
His friend’s face
turned red. “Indeed, it is. Thank you, Chris.”
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