J2 everafter fic: Sword in the Stone (pre-slash, PG)
*****
Jensen could live with not being called by his first name. While he didn’t think there was anything difficult or repulsive about “Jensen,” he didn’t mind going by Arthur, or Art, or even Artie. But Wart? Of course, he knew why his foster father Sir Ector and Ector’s son Kay called him that-they saw him as an annoying blemish in their otherwise smoothly running lives.
What crock! If it weren’t for him, nothing would run smoothly for those two men. Jensen cleaned, sorted, carried armor, and did everything but what he really wanted to do, which was train to be a squire. While he was with them ostensibly to learn the skills that Kay apparently already had (though personally he didn’t think Kay was a shining example of knighthood), they always seemed to find other work for them.
“Please Kay, take me with you!” He begged, knowing he was whining but unable to keep the syllables short and dignified.
Kay snorted. “Wart, go back and finish the dishes father left for you! You know he’ll be mad if you don’t do your chores. Besides, you always mess something up when you go hunting. Or when you do anything else, for that matter.”
Jensen frowned, but stayed silent. He knew he was occasionally a little clumsy, but who wouldn’t be in the garments they made him wear as a squire-in-training? Besides, he had to learn. Still, he knew that they had done him a great favor by taking him in and offering to train him as a squire; they could have just adopted someone to do housework without the carrot of training.
But about two minutes into washing dishes, his mind wandered and he found himself looking into the woods just beyond Sir Ector’s property. It wouldn’t take that long, would it? To watch Kay bag a deer, and then rush back and finish the washing up? Jensen looked at the shadows cast by the trees, and judged that if he ran to Kay's hunting spot and gave the man an hour or so to kill something, he’d still be back in enough time to be done with chores before Sir Ector returned.
Putting his mind to it, he snuck out the door and into the woods. It wasn’t hard to find Kay; the heavy-set blond man stomped through the forest so loudly it was surprising he ever caught anything at all. Jensen crept quite close to his foster brother and when the man set up shop near a little watering-hole, he scrambled up a tree and situated himself overhead to watch Kay hunt.
It wasn’t long before a lovely, graceful deer came to quench her thirst, and Jensen’s heart ached a little to think of eating the beautiful animal for dinner. It wasn’t that he was against eating animals; he simply preferred eating creatures that weren’t quite so enthralling to watch.
But he was young and far too interested in the hunt itself to devote more than a passing thought to the unsuspecting victim, so he soon turned his attention back to Kay. His brother pulled out an arrow, put it to the bow and aimed…
And then what felt like a very small boulder crashed onto him from above, as if a higher power had intervened to save the deer's life.
Jensen had leaned too far, and gravity had done its job. He fell out of the tree and right onto Kay, just as the young man was releasing the arrow. His aim thrown off, the arrow pierced the very edge of Kay’s hat and then flew up into the tree, taking his beloved hunting hat with it.
“Wart!”
Jensen gulped. “ I’ll get your hat back, I will. Don’t worry about a thing, Kay.” He shimmied back up the tree before his brother’s rather quick hand could land on his shoulders or ear. Since the arrow had gone up at a bit of an angle, he went out on a branch very high up to get a good view of the woods.
And as the branch broke under him, all he could think was not again!
*
Jeffrey looked at the youth sternly. “Jared Lancelot, what did you do wrong with this potion?”
Jared gulped, and blew his dark hair out of his eyes. “Um, I put in everything as you guided me, awesome and inspiring Master Magician, sir!”
“Sweet-talking me won’t work this time, Jared. Now go outside and gather up the ingredients, and we’ll do it together this time, so we can see where you went wrong.”
As the boy made to leave, Jeffrey stopped him with an outstretched hand. “Before you go, put a cushion right… there…” He pointed to a random spot in the middle of the floor, but Jared didn’t dare question him. He did as asked and then ran out.
It wasn’t long before the meeting Jeff had seen so many years ago came to pass, and it was odd and indicative of the relationship he would have with young Jensen Arthur, the boy who would be King.
*
Jensen smashed through Jeffrey’s roof and fell straight onto a cushion, where he bounced before landing on the hard floor. “Oof!” he cried, as the breath was knocked out of him.
“Hmm, I suppose that wasn’t the best idea,” the man in front of him said as he tapped his fingers against his cheek. “Maybe next time I should try a chair.” As Jensen’s balls tried to crawl into his body, he must have made a sound of horror because the man snorted and continued, “No, I can see where that would be painful too. Oh well, more cushions are the ticket!”
“Do you have a lot of boys falling through your roof, then?” Jensen asked, surprisingly brave for all that he could feel he was in the presence of someone a great deal more powerful than anyone else he had ever known.
His host laughed. It was a rich sound, and the flames in the fireplace seemed to crackle at the sound of it. “Well, one rarely knows when guests will drop in, right?” He bent down to give the boy a hand, and offered him some tea. “I’m Jeffrey the Magician, you know, and I’ve been expecting you.”
As Jensen allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, he gazed at the table, set for two, and all of his favorite items for tea presented as if the host knew just what he liked. He didn’t know why, but he took the man’s invitation and sat down on a comfortable chair and listened as Jeffrey prattled on.
Until things started moving. He’d ignored the chair, sure the old man had pulled it closer to the table with his foot, but it was impossible to ignore the sugar bowl when it began to spoon its contents into his cup on its own, or the milk scamper across the table petulantly when called to duty. When he dropped a tiny piece of cake on the floor by accident, before he could bend down and pick it up a broom shot out of nowhere and swept the crumb away. His eyes opened wider and wider as objects he had been used to thinking of as inanimate moved in a way that showed their independence and personality.
He should have paid more attention to his host.
“Ouch!” Jensen rubbed his head, which had just been struck by a very heavy book.
“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Jeffrey’s stern voice brought him back to his surroundings. It wouldn’t do to cross this man, Jensen realized. “Well, no matter, you’ll have plenty of time to listen while I train you.”
“Train me?” Jensen repeated blankly. “To be a squire, sir?” He was doubtful; Jeffrey was obviously capable of a lot of things, but somehow he doubted the powerful sorcerer had done anything as pedestrian as ride a horse for a very long time.
Jeffrey laughed again. “A squire? No, my boy, you’ve got a lot more in you than that, thank you very much! Now, what time can you be in tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” Jensen asked blankly, his eyes lighting on a clock on the opposite wall. “Oh Morgan, I have to leave. I haven’t done my chores, and there will be hell to pay!” He ran out, ignoring Jeffrey’s protests, and sped down a path through the woods. On his way, he passed an owl sitting on a low branch, very much awake and seeming to watch him despite the fact that it was broad daylight.
The owl watched him go, and then flew into Jeffrey’s home. Morphing into a boy, he gazed up at the hole in the roof and calmly suggested patching it.
“Good idea, Jared,” Jeff said approvingly. “I’ll leave that to you.”
“Where are you going? Jared watched Jeff half-heartedly try to stuff a few things into a bag. “And why don’t you use magic, Jeff?”
Jeff glanced at the mess he’d made and shrugged. Rolling up his sleeves, he closed his eyes and waved his wand in the air for a few minutes, shouting some incomprehensible words that any wizard worth his salt knew made no difference in the casting of a spell at all. He just did it for dramatic effect. Jared sat back and watched as Jeff’s entire house formed a very disorganized line, flew around the room, shrunk to a miniscule size, and went into his bag. He’d never be a sorcerer like Jeff; he could morph into any creature he could think of but he could not cast spells and he was terrible at making potions. Still, he loved to watch magic in action.
And then he gasped as he realized that the cushion he was sitting on was moving too. And suddenly everything started to get bigger, or maybe he was getting smaller! In automatic defense, he shifted back into an owl, but he was already caught in the spell. With little more than a squack, he was put into the bag, which smelled musty but was somewhat comfortable and full of shrunken food. This wasn’t so bad, he thought, and settled down for the adventure that was sure to come.
*
Continued in part 2