Black Spring by Alison Croggon

frowningly asked whence they had come and whether Damek had suffered mistreatment. We all started, unable to know how to answer without delivering an outright lie, but Damek steadfastly denied any abuse and claimed they had come about from a fall during play. The master studied Damek skeptically, and I was sure that he didn’t believe him, but since it seemed that all was well, he forbore to say anything further.
    This time, to Lina’s delight, the master stayed at home for the entire summer. He spent much time in his study going over the accounts, and when he emerged, he was often gray-faced with exhaustion. I still have the ledgers and once went through those for that year out of, I confess, a vulgar curiosity. The southern estate had suffered an early frost followed by unusually severe tempests, which had devastated the vineyards, and there had been besides an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the cattle. The bulk of the annual income came from that estate, and those disasters I think accounted for his presence, as the accounts also showed that when he was away from the Plateau, he led a life of considerable extravagance — indulgences to which his finances would not stretch that year. We believed that his constant absences were due to what we all vaguely referred to as “business,” but the plain truth was that the master had no great love for the Black Country. Ties of blood, honor, and money kept him here, and those bonds, which he could not break, were twisted tightly with threads of resentment or even hatred. Of course I only understood this much later. I don’t think even my mother, his most faithful servant and perhaps one of the few people besides Lina who really loved him, knew this.
    As the spring turned toward summer, the rains abated, and it was as if a heavy lid had lifted off our heads and we could stand tall and breathe freely. The Plateau was then at its most beautiful. I know you think it a grim and ugly place, but to my partial eye, even its winter dress has a rugged grandeur. When the many-hued grasses are strewn with wildflowers dozing in the sun and the mountains rise in the distance like benign gods, their gray shoulders thrusting into white plumes of cloud, I think even you would say that the Black Country is a misnomer. Then this place is all color and light. The air has a special clarity which picks out the edge of every blade of grass and gives all colors a muted radiance, so that each object seems to glow from within. There is no place like it in the world.
    For all the relief of the sunshine and the general harmony in the house, there was a troubledness to this time that, looking back, seems like a foreshadowing. The Wizard Ezra again came to our house, and although he was not permitted over the threshold, the master spoke with him for some time. I was polishing the table in the front room and could not help but watch them with fascination, ready to duck if either turned my way. I couldn’t hear what they said, but both were stiff and angry. I thought the master won that encounter: finally the wizard turned and stalked back down the path, dragging his poor little mute in his wake.
    I assumed the argument was about Lina, who was oblivious to the scandal her presence caused. Her behavior was outrageous even if she had not been a witch; when she was free of lessons or the other tasks like needlepoint that my mother considered essential qualities of a lady, she ran wild about the estate with Damek and would come home with her dress torn and her hair in tangles. She was now reaching an age where these actions in a girl are seen as the signs of a wanton and are a dishonor to her household. Even the master, who in the softer regions of the South had looked on Lina’s behavior with a lenient eye, began to be alarmed: in the North, such behavior is not merely ill advised but dangerous.
    The chief peril was, of course, the Wizard Ezra. Like most northern wizards, he used his powers seldom, but