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farmer,” he said. “Ploughed his field and planted his crops.”

“Really?” Cam sat straighter. “You don’t have any shaman blood?”

“None at all,” Sirrin said. “You don’t need blood to learn magic.”

“I thought you had to be born with it.”

Sirrin laughed and shook his head. “Can you imagine? That’d be a nightmare, trying to find the people that could actually use Urspells.”

Cam turned to face Sirrin, crossing his legs under him, his back ram-straight. “You’re telling me that anyone can learn magic?” he asked.

“I’m telling you that you don’t need to have shaman parents to learn magic,” Sirrin said. “The other shaman I’ve met have mostly been just regular folk that stumbled into the art.”

Cam’s mind began to race with the possibilities. “How did you come to it?” he asked.

Sirrin took a deep breath and released a long misty stream. “It’s not a nice story,” he said.

“I’m listening, if you want to tell it.”

Sirrin seemed to gather himself. He leaned forward, picked up a stray rock, and threw it over the cliff. It disappeared off the edge of the world.

“I had a brother,” Sirrin said. “Younger brother named Alfonse. He was a good boy, helped our father in the fields, never once complained. His hands were like iron and he always smiled. My father loved that boy to bits. Everyone in my village loved him, including me.

“We went hunting one day. And by hunting, I mean we walked around the woods with spears and picked berries. Alfonse brought a bow and tried to hit a squirrel or two, but he always missed. That boy was good in a field but terrible with a bow.”

Sirrin stopped his story and smiled out at the valley. The sun shifted in the sky and came out from behind the clouds. Light crested along Cam’s heavy clothes and warmed his bones. But as soon as the sun appeared, it slipped back into gray.

“That day though, we got lucky,” Sirrin said. “Came across this buck, a big bastard. He had his head down, grazing next to a river. Alfonse lined up a shot, really took his time, and loosed that arrow right into the big bastard’s flank. Arrow went right in, sunk down between a rib, but the thing didn’t die. Not right away at least.”

“It ran,” Cam said.

“That’s right,” Sirrin said. “Took off running through the underbrush. Alfonse went after it and I tried to get him to slow down, but my little brother was too excited to stop.”

He paused again and stared down at his boots.

“I didn’t see it happen,” Sirrin said and his voice was softer. “But I heard the crash. I came after him and nearly fell myself, but I stopped just in time. The buck had run off the edge of a short drop next to a waterfall and led Alfonse down with him. I’ll never forget standing at the edge of the drop, my hand gripping a branch, and staring down at the twisted body of my brother.”

“Oh, Urspirit,” Cam said and felt his throat tighten. “What did you do?”

“Climbed down,” Sirrin said. “Picked my brother’s body up. He was still alive, you see. Breathing, but real shallow, like. I carried him back to the village to this toothless old shaman’s hut and threw open her door.

“I begged for help. She got Alfonse down in a bed of straw on her floor and set me to boiling water. I think she did what she could and may have even used a little magic, but it wasn’t enough. My brother died that day on the floor of that woman’s hut and I thought I had died with him.”

“I’m sorry,” Cam said. “Losing a brother like that must have been horrible.”

“It nearly killed my father,” Sirrin said. “Broke my mother’s heart. I was the only thing they had left, and I was a worthless failure. At least, that’s what I was thinking while I sat in that woman’s hut next to my brother. And it was right then that I swore I’d do something more with my life.”

“Did you know you wanted to learn magic at first?” Cam asked.

“Not right away. It took me a while longer. I had to sit with what I saw, you know?” Sirrin picked up another rock and threw it. “I had to think about what I saw her doing. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I went to her and begged her to teach me what she knew. She said no, of course, and I had to go back over and over, until she finally gave me that first lesson.”

“What was it?” Ca masked. “The first lesson, I mean.”

Sirrin smiled and his eyes were far away. “The first lesson was that the Ur can’t fix everything, no matter how hard you try.”

Cam let out his own stream of white cloud breath and leaned back on his hands. They sat in silence. Cam absorbed the story and tried to picture a young Sirrin mourning the death of his brother on the floor of a strange old woman’s hut. It was hard to imagine that Sirrin was ever anything other than what he was.

“What was her name?” Cam asked. “The woman, I mean.”

“Tiscina,” Sirrin said. “Nasty old bastard. But a powerful shaman. Taught me everything I know.”

“I’m sorry she couldn’t save your brother.”

“I am too,” Sirrin said. “But looking back, there was nothing she could have done. He was too far gone when I got him to her hut. And I think even if she had been there the moment he fell, the drop was too long and the damage too much.”

“Sorry all the same.”

Another silence, heavier that time. Cam kicked a rock and it skittered forward through the dirt and tumbled off the edge. The sun pulled out from behind some clouds and licked along Cam’s exposed skin.

He tried to picture the agony of losing a sibling like that, and found it came easily.

He’d felt it once before, when he watched his father die.

“Could you teach someone