The city of Heyde has not changed much. Zak thinks of the Royal city of Andalad, of gleaming marble walls and high towers, of masses of people you can meld into and become part of the crowd. Where you can hide in plain sight. Where no one needs to know your name and your past, unless you choose to tell them.

Heyde is nothing like that. A web of winding streets cuts around the buildings, streets covered in dirty snow. The townspeople turn their heads after him as he ploughs through the drifts, wetting his leather boots and the hem of his robe in the process. They don’t recognize him, and he is neither surprised, nor disappointed. There are small similarities between the man he is now and the boy he was then.

The town square. The church. The City Hall, that was the pride of the city when it was built twenty years ago, but now looks small and pathetic. The castle, that looms over the town, a stony giant with a thousand watching eyes. Under the castle, miles of tunnels and dungeons worm their way through the ground. Zak knows that from personal experience. He has tried to forget about them for the past four years.

No such luck today. Memories in every wall, every street, every filthy cobblestone. His eyes instinctively search for hiding places, corners, holes big enough to provide shelter for a scrawny boy, a bony youth, a skinny young man. There never seemed to be enough to eat in those bad old days.

Even now, so many years into the future, there is still a gnawing emptiness in his belly as he remembers. Three meals a day was just a beautiful dream back then, during the time he was cold and alone in the streets of Heyde.

Why did he ever come back here?

He knows of course. His father finally died. Jemy Baker, the rotten bastard, sent a message some months ago, but it has taken all this time to muster the courage to return to Heyde. In fact, Zak is quite sure he is not ready now, that he will never be ready. But Matt asked him to come up to Taikrat and visit for a couple of days. To get to Taikrat, you have to go through Heyde. It is not like he has a valid excuse not to pass by the city and see his mother.

His feet still remember the way. Turn left after the square, down the street, keep your head down and your eyes to the ground, no one walks with a straight back in Heyde. There are the Tailor’s and the Carter’s and the hire stable. There is the door to the forge. There are the stairs leading up to the flat above.

His ribs remember those stairs. His forehead remembers the wall at the landing. His fingers remember the wood of the door; could still find the handle any time of the day.

Zak stands in the street, staring at that staircase. It could as well have been yesterday he left. It’s still as rickety as ever. He bets the third step from the top is still loose, and the rail outside the door to the flat is still rotten underneath the flaking paint.

Everything inside screams at him to turn around, to walk away, to go back to Andalad and Master Iain’s library. He swallows hard, walks up the stairs, and knocks on the door. The sound is hollow, an echo of a past that should be forgotten.

It’s something of a shock to see his mother again. She was always thin, but now she looks skinnier than ever, every single one of her ribs visible under the threadbare dress. Zak has spent so much time around people like Matt and Caran, Blake, Simon, Brynn and Quinland, people who shine so brightly that you can use their inner light as a beacon. Compared to them, his mother looks like the dying flame of a burnt down wax candle.

She is confused at first. She does not know the man in the fine coat and the expensive robe. Then, recognition dawns in her eyes, and they light up. “Zakary! I thought you’d never come back home!”

She steps aside, urging him to come in. Zak hesitates. He can glimpse the flat over her shoulder and that is enough to tell him that nothing has changed since the last time he went (fell) down these stairs, heard the door slam shut behind him.

If he wants to turn back, this is the time to do so.

A thought flashes through his head, points to the irony that he has been attacked by Samoth witches, waded through dark evil-infested sewers, fought a damned demon, and still can’t bring himself to cross the threshold of the place where he grew up.

This town, this flat stopped being home half a lifetime ago.

His mother’s hands hovers in the air, just above his arm, like she wants to touch him but can’t bring herself to do it. Her fingers are long and slender, looks like his own, only hardened and calloused from a lifetime of hard work.

For a moment, there seems to be something between them, a feeling that if he would just take one step forward and embrace her like any other son would do if he hadn’t seen his mother for four years, then this could turn out all right. Maybe if he just…

His mother opens her mouth, a shaky, somewhat hopeful smile on her lips. “Now that you’re back, things are going to change, I just know it.”

Zak sighs. He has to say it, knows what the reaction will be, but he has to say it anyway.

“I’m not coming back, mother. I live in Andalad now. I just thought I’d stop by and see how you fare.”

His mother’s eyes are large and disbelieving in her emaciated face. That thing, that feeling that was there for a split moment is gone. Everything is back to the way it was.

“In Andalad? What is there for you in a place like that?”

“I’m training to be a magician. I found someone who’s willing to take me as an apprentice.”

“But… but the forge! It’s your heritage, Zakary! It’s everything your father worked for!”

She doesn’t have to tell him. The forge was his father’s life, the only thing he cared about. It’s been in the family for generations, been inherited from father to son, from mother to daughter. And here is where it all ends.

“I won’t have it. I’m a lousy blacksmith, and I’m an even worse businessman. I’m not going to take over here, mother. You could as well sell the forge, get some money to fix this place up.”

Zak’s mother opens her mouth, as if to say something. No words come out. There is nothing to say about a betrayal like this one. Zak knows that with those few short sentences, he’s broken her heart, and he can’t even find the energy to feel bad about it. He remembers the way the roof of the forge felt over his head, remembers how the iron in there made his mind muddy and clumsy. He was never able to think properly inside those walls.

His mother finally finds her words again. “I take my hands from you now, Zakary!”

She sounds so exasperated, like all her hopes and dreams has suddenly been vanquished. Thin and pale, a transparent ghost with no real substance. His eyes meet hers.

“You did that long ago, mother.”

Zak searches for something in the depth of her grey gaze, something that he might be able to take for regret, guilt, anything that can confirm that he is the one who has been right all this time. There are no such things.

He closes his eyes, searches for the Magic, wraps it around himself like protective armour. Golden tendrils of power, his to command, more comforting than any human embrace.

He doesn’t know what he hoped for, coming back here. Maybe he thought that his father’s death would finally give her some backbone, some will to get her own life. Maybe he thought that the only reason for her to be so afraid was his father’s stifling presence. Wrong, all of it. Lela Smith did not fear her husband. She fears the world.

Zak looks at her, takes in her appearance, the slumped shoulders, the dejected set of her jaw. A woman who let life defeat her. Suddenly, all he can feel is pity, and he hates himself for it.

“I’ll send money”, he says. “Get the staircase mended before you fall and break something.”

Then he turns his back and walks away. He knows how it will be. He will send money. She will put it away and never use it. Too proud to take charity. He cannot buy himself free of this place, but he will try.

There are some things you can’t run from no matter how hard you try. They’ll always catch up with you in the end.

It’s cold. Heyde is always cold. He pulls the coat tighter around his shoulders and walks back to the square, head down, hair hiding his face. Plof plof plof is the sound of his boots in the dirty snow. Heyde is always cold and wet and dirty.

From the square, Zak follows the northbound streets. No one else will be going up to the mountains this time of the years. He will have to use his feet.

He hates walking. It’s ironic, considering the years they followed Caran around. Walking leaves too much time to think. He blanks his mind and start thinking about Magical theorems, and Samoth poetry, and whether or not he might convince Brynn that roast potatoes is a very good thing to have for dinner.

He is not thinking about staircases and closed doors. He is not thinking about cheap attic-rooms in the winter with no heat and almost no food because all the money went to pay the weeks’ rent. He is not thinking about persistent coughing that scratch the lungs and the throat and never ends. He is not thinking about that at all.

In the summer, it takes three hours to walk from Heyde to Taikrat. In the winter it takes four. It’s dark when he arrives. Like every time he comes to this mountain village, he wonders how anyone can choose to live here. But there is light in the windows, warmer somehow than the light in the windows in Heyde, even though Taikrat is further up north. For some reason, Taikrat never seems to be cold, even in the middle of the winter.

The house, the smooth, worn-down step-stone in front of the door, and he won’t even have to knock, because Matt has probably heard him coming already. It’s eerie sometimes, the things Matt can hear.

The door opens, and he could almost believe this was then, because the left side of Matt’s face is grinning just as wide as it used to. Zak is tempted to look at that side only. The other side can’t grin anymore, can’t smile or laugh. He forces himself to look anyway. Matt would be hurt if he didn’t, and he’s hurt enough people as it is today.

“Come in. You look cold.”

Zak smiles and hopes the smile reaches his eyes. “You know me. I’m always cold.”

“There’s a fire going. How was Heyde?”

“Same old.”

There is something expectant in Matt’s eye, waiting for him to say more. Zak breathes in, preparing to let a stream of words spill over his lips, the age-old sign that everything is fine with him.

No words come. Matt frowns. “That bad?” he asks, and for a moment Zak hates that Matt knows him so well. He shrugs, trying to leave it behind, doesn’t want to bring worries into this house, this haven.

“It hasn’t improved much”, he answers, making his voice light. Zak is good at voices. Matt is still frowning, but won’t persist. That’s the good thing about Matt knowing him so well. He won’t nag. Caran would nag, like the big sister she is, but Matt won’t.

“Let’s not stand out here in the snow”, says Matt, frown smoothing out. “Dinner’s on.”

“Good, I’m starving. Roast potatoes?”

“What else? Come on in.”

The three-room house is not big compared to Master Iain’s. On the other hand, Master Iain’s house is huge. There was a time when this house felt large, but Zak was smaller then. The roof is low, the windows small, the furniture a jumbled mix of human- and dwarf sized chairs and tables.

Brynn stands in front of the fireplace in the kitchen, stirring something in a pot that smells good. He looks up when Zak’s enters, and smiles. Brynn is older now, his hair and beard almost entirely grey.

Zak nods a greeting, takes off his coat, and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door. Then he proceeds to take his boots off. He has to fight with the bootlaces for a while. They’re frozen stiff and is almost impossible to get undone, but he’s grateful for the small respite.

When he raises his head, he can be Zak again, that little part of himself that he keeps hidden behind all the masks and all the roles. This is the one place in the world where he doesn’t have to play theatre. This, and Master Iain’s library. Everywhere else is just a stage, a play, an act.

Brynn’s roast potatoes don’t taste exactly the way Matt’s father used to make them, but it doesn’t matter. That was then and now is now. The soup is hot, the bread is fresh, the bottle of rather expensive wine Zak brought from Andalad is just perfect when it’s been heated a bit by the fire.

For a little while, everything is all right with the world. A meal in the company of old friends. Talk of good memories. He tries to keep the bad away, doesn’t want them to taint this evening.

But when Brynn has excused himself and went to bed, and Zak and Matt are left alone in front of the roaring fire, with yet another bottle of wine, those memories fights their way up to the surface.

Zak’s ribs can still remember every single step of that rickety staircase.

Matt gives him a sideways glance, notices his sombre mood. He sips his wine and starts to talk.

“You know, back then, I asked dad why you couldn’t come and live with us, and he said that all families had to deal with their own problems. You know what our dad was like, Zak, both me and Caran took everything he said as law.”

Matt’s voice is quiet, almost apologising. There’s so much regret in it, and Zak can’t stand it.

“Well, he was right most of the time”, he says.

Matt shakes his head. “Not in that particular case. I can’t really blame him for not wanting any more trouble on his hands, but he was wrong. I should have been more stubborn that time. Maybe things had turned out differently.”

“Nothing’s your fault, Matty. You and Caran and your father did what you could. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

“We should’ve protested the very fist time you turned up on our doorstep beaten black and blue. We were lousy friends.”

“You’re the best friends I’ve got. Always been.”

They stare at the fire. It’s the same colour as Matt’s hair, as Caran’s hair. Zak wonders if that’s why they never seem to be cold, and comes to the conclusion that he’s getting a little drunk. It doesn’t matter. Right now, drunk is good. Makes it easier to think.

“Do you ever wonder…” starts Matt, but doesn’t finish the sentence. Zak

“If things had been different? No.”

It’s a lie. He has wondered thousands of times. If he did not have the Magic, he could have been a blacksmith. Maybe, just maybe, he could have made his family proud.

“Family pride should go both ways.”

Zak’s head darts up. He didn’t even realised that he’d muttered the last under his breath, and Matt, who can be so perceptive when he wants to, of course picked it up.

Their eyes meet. Matt’s brown gaze reflects the fire in his hair. He’s angry, Zak can tell, and he doesn’t want his friend to be angry over something like this.

“It doesn’t matter”, he says. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago, and you can’t change the past.”

“You can’t run from it either”, says Matt, the hypocrite, who’s spent the winter holed up here in the Northern Mountains when the whole of Andalad, except maybe for prince Aidan, is waiting for him to come back.

“No”, says Zak. “There are things you can’t run from.”

There are things you can’t run from. You have to face them instead, look them in the eyes and don’t back down, because the moment you fold, you loose.

But no one ever told him it would be so hard. Right now, running feels a whole lot easier.

The End (or something…)

Well…that turned out to be more depressing than I thought it would be when I started writing it. But this is the somewhat darker style I’m thinking about for Book 2, and the rewriting of Book 1. What do you think? Like it? Hate it? What about the present tense?