Chains of Gold by Nancy Springer Page A

evidently he found nothing of use, for he put them down at last with a sigh.
    â€œYou say you do charms,” I suggested timidly; it is a bad business to anger a witch, and I had stayed away from talk of magic until then. But I was becoming desperate. “Is there nothing you can say, a spell—?”
    â€œA mandrake can only do so much!” he burst out.
    I gaped, and he turned away sharply, having said more than he intended.
    â€œA mandrake? ” I exclaimed.
    â€œYes. A mandrake,” he responded sharply, turning back and striding a step or two toward me, as if I had accused him of something. “Why do you think I live in earth? Most men are not so fond of dirt.” He touched his low ceiling. “But I go back there, amongst the roots whence I came, and burrow in earth to my knees, to my neck, cover myself with it if I can, for it feeds me better than meat. Are you dismayed?”
    I shook my head, my mouth still agape. “It is just that—I have never seen a mandrake, and I did not know they became so—alive.”
    â€œI am a rather vital one. Rumor has it I am sprung from a hanged man’s semen that spurted onto the ground. His death seed. I am expert with aphrodisiacs.” He grimaced, mocking himself. “You and Arlen do not need that of me.”
    â€œBut, Bri—” I had not called him Bri before, and I stopped, confused.
    â€œWhat? What is it?”
    â€œI do not care if you eat dirt,” I told him earnestly. “You have been good to us.”
    â€œI have my ethics,” he said stiffly. “No heart, not in any human sense, but I have loyalty, ambition, pride in my craft. And right now I have frustration.”
    â€œSo there is nothing more you can do for Arlen.” I said it because it would have hurt him to say it, perhaps as much as it hurt me. I felt the pang like a lance head of despair.
    â€œNo.” He got up, swinging his sinewy arms, brown, knotty arms much like the tough roots that hung down not far away. He faced toward them, and away from me, as he spoke. “I am good for all the everyday magics,” he said, sounding dry, toneless. “Charms for colic and clubfoot and pockmarks, spells for crops or childbirth or calving or spitefulness or the return of unrequited love. I am especially competent in regard to love. But the great things—” He gestured, arms lifted. “—death and healing and redemption—they are not for me. The goddess has charge of them.”

EIGHT
    Arlen was dying. I did not know how I could bear it, but there was no way to doubt it, no room left for hope. He no longer responded to anything, not even my voice, not even the pain when Briony lanced his wounds as a measure of last resort. He lay as if he were already dead, his face no longer flushed but pallid, his breathing shallow and out of rhythm. Briony and I both sat up with him that night, though we knew we could not help him, though he was not even aware that we were there.
    â€œHe should not be taken away for those wounds!” Briony burst out when the hearth fire had burned down to embers, shielding us with shadows so that I could not distinctly see his face. “He should not be dying. The cuts were clean and not very deep. He is young, strong, comely enough for all normal purposes and very much in love with one who is worthy of all love—”
    I looked at him, startled by the sudden anger or yearning in his voice, by the way he fell silent abruptly, as if he had said too much. I wondered if Briony had ever known love, he who dealt in spells of love. How or whom does a mandrake love? A flame flared briefly from the embers to show me his face, but as usual, I could not read it.
    â€œOne who returns his love,” he went on more collectedly. “He has a life of love ahead of him, everything to live for. I cannot understand why he is failing. He is no coward; he fought armed and mounted men for your