Carrot

Chapter 1

Flames. They were everywhere, reaching for the toddler as she cowered in what had once been the nursery of her home. She was completely alone.

Not far away, an apparently human boy with red hair lazed against a wall, trying to decide whether it was worth his time to help with the blaze. He had just decided that it wasn’t any of his business when a disembodied head appeared in front of him.

“Garen Ruy Connolly, you get into the building and save that little girl right this instant!” the head ordered. It was the head of an elderly man with pointed ears and spectacles. It wore a nightcap and a very disgruntled expression. “And when you’re done saving her, get your lazy phouka arse over to Canal Street. I need to talk to you. Bring the girl.” With that, the head disappeared.

Garen (for that was the boy’s name) looked perplexed for all of three seconds, then grabbed a pail of water from a bystander, dumped it over his head, and ran into the burning building.

“Damn Jeremy. Couldn’t even have said where the kid was, could he?” he muttered as he ran up the stairs to the second floor. At one in the morning, the girl was most likely to be in the nursery, asleep. Of course, under the present circumstances, she could be anywhere.

The wooden doors, where not on fire, were swollen from the heat and nearly impossible to open. Garen found himself forced to charge them, adding to the aches and bruises already littering his small frame. After three doors revealing only guestrooms, he found the nursery.

The girl he’d been sent to save was unconscious on the floor, no more than two years old and wearing a soot-stained pink frock. Garen frowned, hoping that she wasn’t dead yet, and grabbed her. Out in the hall, the stairs were in flames. The boy tried to remember if he’d seen another set somewhere in the house. Nothing came to mind.

“Alright, kid. We’re gonna have to take the hard way out,” he told his burden. He went over to a window and wrenched it open. “Hai! We’re up here!” he shouted down. Cries of surprise and shock came filtering up over the noise of the flames as the firemen brought a trampoline over. The boy grabbed the toddler and jumped out the window, curling around her to protect her from the fall.

“Good work, kid!” one of the firemen shouted, patting Garen on the back as he disentangled himself from the trampoline. “What’s your name?”

“Don’t have one,” Garen lied. He concentrated for a moment, pulling a sheet of illusion over himself and his charge to make them inconspicuous. Still holding the girl, he escaped into the dark city.

Ten minutes later, he knocked on a door in a back alley in Chinatown. The door was opened by a little old man in a nightshirt whose head bore a strong resemblance to the one that had ordered Garen into the house to save the girl he now carried.

“Jeremy, you could at least have told me where she was,” Garen said, a bit peeved.

“You got her out, didn’t you?” Jeremy returned. “Bring her inside, and close the door behind you.” With that, the little old man turned and hurried up a steep flight of stairs. Garen juggled toddler and door for a moment, then followed him.

At the top of the stairs was another door, which Jeremy opened to reveal a small, crowded room full of books and magical artifacts. It bore a strong resemblance to another room that Jeremy had lived in, a small cottage in the moors near Inverary, Scotland, over four hundred years earlier.

“Put her down over here,” Jeremy ordered once he’d locked the door. Garen obeyed, carefully placing the still unconscious girl on the table.

“What are you going to do with her?” he asked, a bit nervous.

“I’m going to cast a spell connecting you two. If she’s hurt or distressed, you’ll be alerted.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve had word from Maggie that she’s going to be important.”

Maggie had been dead for over four hundred years.

“Didn’t know you were in touch with the dead,” Garen said, trying not to show his displeasure that Maggie had contacted Jeremy and not him.

“I had a feeling that something was going to happen, so I called up her shade,” Jeremy explained.

Garen frowned. “You’ve got no right to do that.”

“Of course I have the right. I’m a mage. Mages do that sort of thing,” said Jeremy. “Besides, the dead can see much more clearly than the living. She’s been keeping an eye on you, you know.”

Garen nodded. Only a few years back, Maggie’s shade had shown up just in time to save his rear—literally.

“You know what I think of dealing with the dead,” the boy continued anyway. “What’s gone is gone, and should stay gone unless it chooses to come back by itself. It’s none of our business.”

Jeremy laughed. “Still an innocent, even after all these years,” he said. “The dead are just like the living—pawns to be played. Anyway, Maggie told me that this girl has a very important part to play in your future, and that it’s absolutely crucial that she be kept safe. Naturally, I felt the need to arrange things so that you would take care of her.”

“You started the fire, didn’t you,” Garen accused.

“Now, now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Jeremy said consolingly. “Humans are perfectly capable of making their own mistakes. The result is the same, however. You find yourself with the girl in your care, and I arrange it so that she stays in your care until she’s old enough to marry and have children.”

Garen didn’t like it, but he had no choice.

“Did Maggie tell you what the girl’s name is?”

“Of course she did. It’s Alissa VandenBosch.”

“Think she’ll mind if I change her last name to Connolly? Just so we’ll match, see. If I’m taking care of her, I should probably make it look like we’re related in some way.”

A small cry came up from the girl on the table. “Mama?” she asked.

Garen went over to her. “Mama isn’t here right now, but I’m going to take care of you instead, alright?”

Alissa nodded solemnly. “Till Mama gets back?” she asked.

“Till Mama gets back,” Garen promised.