Mags furrowed his brows. “Keep ye company? Why?”
“Everyone at h-home is always so b-busy,” she replied, head down, voice muffled. “Kaley had to go to w-work at the inn, s-so she didn’t have t-time anymore.” The girl looked up at him for just a moment, then back down again, flushing, and broke into sobs again.
Mags was freezing, but gamely remained. “I don’t know anyone here,” the girl said forlornly. “And I—I—I am not really good at meeting people.”
Mags contemplated the irony of that statement, given that he was so bad at meeting people he could just as well have been invisible.
“S-so when I asked if I c-could bring Bumper, they said yes.” She paused for another spate of tears, and pulled a square of white cloth from her sleeve to dry them with.
Outwardly, he probably seemed calm. Inwardly, he was beginning to panic. :What do I do now?: he begged Dallen. He felt himself floundering. Now that he had gotten himself involved in this girl’s grief, he didn’t feel as if he should extricate himself, but he also didn’t know how to react to it. Some mostly-smothered instinct said comfort her, but how did you do that? He’d never felt that much attachment for another human being as to weep over him, so how was he to sympathize with such an outpouring of grief over what to anyone else would have been a feature at dinner?
“Now I’m all alone,” she sobbed into the cloth.
“Ah, nah, yer a Bardic gel, no?” he responded, before Dallen got a chance to prompt him. “Ye gots lots of friends, surely—”
“No, I don’t!” she cried. “I don’t have any friends! How could I have, when Tobias Marchand is my father?”
She said that as if she expected that answered all questions. Mags’ brow crinkled, but Dallen answered him before he could voice the obvious question.
:Tobias is a very famous Bard,: Dallen told him, sounding suppressed. :I’ve heard he can play almost every instrument there is, and do it brilliantly—and his songs are popular in at least three countries besides Valdemar. And, besides that, he s supposed to be a simply amazing and witty man, able to hold a conversation on just about any subject. I had no idea he had a daughter—:
“Well, yer Da can make sure yer looked out for, no?” he ventured.
She looked up, stricken. “Oh, no!” she whispered. “No. No, I couldn’t call on my father. And anyway, I hardly know him He never spent much time with us, he was much too busy. He’s too important for someone like me to bother.”
Dallen reacted to this with indignation, although it seemed perfectly sensible to Mags. Cole Pieters’ boys knew better than to bother him with anything that did not have to do directly with the running of the mine, for instance ....
Underneath her words, with his protections down, Mags was getting a running match of her thoughts to her words and he felt more and more at sympathy with her with ever, passing moment, for all that they seemed so dissimilar. For the past several weeks since her arrival, she had been too shy to open her mouth except to sing—and in any event, all of the Bardic Trainees at or near her own age already had established groups of friends. She shrank from the mere thought of trying to penetrate those apparently-closed ranks. And as for her teachers ... she was intimidated, not by them, but by how much they expected of her. She was laboring under the burden of her father’s reputation, and that terrified her.
In fact, the memory of that first interview was always lurking in the back of her mind.
“So you are young Lena Marchand.”
“Yes, sir.” The face of the Dean of Bardic Collegium looked down gravely at her. She bobbed her head awkwardly. Lita Darvalis had a formidable reputation; she had Skill, Creativity, and the Gift, all three. Even her father looked up to her with respect, which didn’t happen often.
“We expect great things of you, Lena.” She smiled, but the words practically paralyzed Lena. “You have a formidable legacy behind you.”
Oh, yes. And how could she ever, ever begin to measure up to that legacy? She wanted to fall to the ground and moan in despair. Instead, she shook Lita’s hand, and went to collect her things and be conducted to a room.
The memories and the desperation behind them flooded over him. Here was someone who was feeling just as out of place as he was, and just as unworthy. Suddenly, he didn’t feel quite so alone.
Poor kiddie. She scarcely knew her father any more than Mags knew his, and they were expecting her to be some kind of younger copy of him. Mags sensed Dallen all but spluttering with indignation; Mags ignored him. “If ye need a frien’, Lena ...” he said, slowly, the unfamiliar word leaving a strange, but pleasant, sensation behind it, “I c’ud be yer frien’. If ye want.”
He expected her to look away and politely decline. After all, it wasn’t as if he had anything worth offering to someone like her. So her reaction surprised him.
“You would? You could?” Two bright pink spots appeared on her tear-blotched cheeks. “You’d really be my friend?”
“I guess everyone’d be if they knew ye,” he half-mumbled, staring down at his hands. “Uh ... I guess poor ol’ Bumper there—”
“I wanted to bury him,” she replied, choking down a sob. “But the ground is so hard—”
He almost laughed. “Might not know much,” he offered, but I know diggin’. If yer not too partic’lar about where, I’ll get ye a hole.” When she nodded, he went off to the gardener’s shed and came back with a pickax and a shovel. And of course Mags did know digging; after scraping back the snow in several places and examining the ground closely, he found a spot under a bush that was mostly mulch, and softer than the ground around it. With the pick and shovel, he managed to dig a little hole; the girl carefully wrapped her rabbit in her scarf and laid it in the bottom, then looked at him expectantly.
:You should say something, Mags,: Dallen prompted.
He gulped. What should he say? He was not good with words at the best of times. Finally, he bit his lip and tried to think of what she might want to hear.
“He was a good rabbit,” Mags began desperately. “An’ he was a friend when Lena needed one. Reckon that’s how ye knows a friend, they be there when ye need ’em.” He paused. “An’ Lena’ll miss him. Lots.”
Lena burst into tears again, though it did not seem to be because of anything he said or hadn’t said. He shoveled the mulch back on top of the little body while she sobbed, and patted it flat with the shovel.
“Best go back inside,” he advised her. “Yer goin’t’ get sick, out here in the cold.”
She nodded, and with drooping head and sagging shoulders turned to go back to the building. But then she stopped, and looked back at him, tears still slipping down her cheeks.
“Where can I find you later?”
“Uh—I got a room. In Companions’ Stable. Uh—I’m Mags.”
She nodded gravely. “Thank you, Mags. And thank you for being my friend.”
And with that, she disappeared into the building.
Mags put his protections back up.
:Class,: prompted Dallen, just as the bell rang for the change. With a sigh, Mags gathered up his forgotten books and went back on his schedule.