Foxfire in the Snow

by J. S. Fields

  I stopped at the center table and set all three pouches on the top. Magda stood next to me, her broad shoulders touching mine as she squinted at the three lumps of leather. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

  “How much money do you have on you?” I asked as I eased open the pouch with the red pigment. Inside, iridescent flakes gleamed back at me.

  Magda raised an eyebrow. “Why?” she asked, drawing out the end of the word.

  I smiled sweetly at her. “I just want to know how much of the pub I can destroy.”

  Seven: Air

  “Wait, I’m riding this?”

  “Will it be a problem?” Magda asked, coming over to me.

  She handed me the reins to a horse that was twice my height. Maybe. Maybe it just looked that way because I had no idea what to do with the thing. I had forgotten we’d be riding. I should have remembered, but I’d been too focused on collection and extraction last night, and walking Master Rahad through the steps to make bone oil. I’d barely slept for two nights in a row. Now, rabbit fur lined the collar and hood of my new wool cloak. Now, I had a new foraging knife in my boot and felt like a competent human again.

  Except now, I had to get on a horse and stay on it. That wasn’t going to end well.

  “The pub’s west wall fell in this morning. When the table broke apart, or maybe after you dissolved the bar, it must have sent some of your fungus stuff into the air. We’ll need to be mindful of that in the future.” Magda paused and brushed a leaf from my shoulder while she attached a long, royal-blue cloak with a white ermine hood around her shoulders. It wasn’t that early, but there were no servants about, nor guards. It seemed strange, but then again, what did I know about royal protocol? Definitely less than I knew about horses since all I could do was stare at the thing with my mouth hanging open.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite so…animated.”

  “That’s me,” I said absently. I couldn’t stop looking, wide-eyed, at the horse. With its chestnut-colored, silky coat, it looked expensive, or well-bred, assuming one valued horses by their size. Hopefully, my ineptitude wouldn’t break it.

  Magda must have caught my hesitation. “You know how to ride, right? Or is that another thing Amada wouldn’t tolerate?”

  I laughed awkwardly and toyed with the pouches on my belt. “I can figure it out. I’m just…” I searched for deflection. “I’m just warm in the cloak. I’m not used to such heavy materials. It’s never very cold in the forests of Thuja.”

  Magda’s forehead wrinkled, and she pursed her lips. “The temperature will drop fast as we climb. Keep it on. About the horse—” She patted the thing’s forehead. Possibly its nose. I wasn’t very familiar with horse anatomy. “If you have problems, call up to me. We can ride double for a while until you get the hang of it.”

  Something—nervousness probably—fluttered in my stomach. “Wouldn’t that be hard on the horse?” I asked. My own horse butted my cheek with its nose, and I stumbled backward. “Is it supposed to do that?”

  Magda laughed and nudged me back to the horse’s side. “Put your foot here. No, the other one. Good. Now grab this.” She put my hands on the pommel. “Pull up and swing. There!”

  I clung to the saddle. The ground was a dizzying distance below me. I forced my head up.

  “They’re a lot sturdier than you think, horses,” she said as she tapped the reins. “Yours is male, and called Peanut.” She grinned when I started to protest the absurdity of the name. “It’s a joke, Sorin. Calm down. It’s just a horse. You didn’t used to be this serious.”

  I stopped talking, but I did not calm down. My gods, if I fell from the saddle, I’d crack my head open. Then I’d be trampled by the horse and my skull crushed. Hopefully, some alchemist would be around to use my bones to make oil because, otherwise, that was a terribly wasteful way to go.

  “Head out!” Magda called from the front. The palace gates opened, and she disappeared beyond them. Peanut stayed.

  “Go!” I hissed into the horse’s ear. “You’re supposed to walk now.”

  Peanut’s ear flicked at me, and he turned his head, his eyes unconcerned.

  “Go!” I jostled my hips in the saddle. The horse snorted. I tried again, more forcefully this time, bringing my legs into the movement. When my heels connected with the horse’s side, Peanut whinnied and finally moved forward. I gripped the pommel, reins wound around my wrists, and prayed to whatever gods there were that I stayed upright, especially if Magda was watching.

  *

  I fell off just as the sun hit midday position.

  It wasn’t Peanut’s fault, despite his size and refusal to follow the most basic of verbal commands. We’d been on the main road for almost four hours, heading steadily upward, and my thighs were done. The capital expanded throughout the foothills, and the elevation increased almost the moment we left the city walls. Thick conifer forests bordered the road and pass. I was glad of the cloak well before the first hour passed.

  Now, the wind stung my fingers. I’d wrapped my hands in the ends of my cloak, but that made it hard to hold on to the saddle. I’d tried to shift, to get a better grip, while at the same time, Peanut had sidestepped a large rock. My thighs should have gripped, but they didn’t. I slid right off the saddle. I didn’t hit the ground as hard as I could have, however, since my wrists were still caught up in the reins. That left me dangling from a horse with biting tension on my wrists.

  “Whoa!” Magda must have heard me fall.

  I hadn’t called out, hoping I could sort it before she saw and save myself the embarrassment, but my legs refused to support my weight. Magda rode back, dismounted, and, once my wrists were free, helped me to stand. I kept my head down. I didn’t want her to see my embarrassment, nor the way I set my jaw against the pain in my legs. My thighs felt rubbed raw, and even my spine tingled from the tortured hunching I’d regressed to halfway through our ride.

  “Are you all right?” she asked in far too serious a tone.

  “I’ll figure it out.” With her help, clutching at her sleeves, I stood. “See? Fine.”

  Magda looked dubious, and I scowled when I realized she was suppressing a smile. “You have any magic potions to help your legs adjust?” she joked as I wobbled.

  “I’m an alchemist,” I corrected as I collapsed at her feet on the frozen road. I again tried to push up against rebelling thigh muscles. When my legs once again gave out, Magda lowered me to the ground.

  “So, no magical cures then?”

  “Magic and alchemy are completely different things. I’m not interested in defying the rules of the world.” I looked up to curse Peanut and saw Magda’s amused concern. At least she wasn’t laughing. She could have this riding business. Once we finished this ridiculous quest of hers, I was never getting on a horse again. Alchemists didn’t need to ride horses. They had solvents, which were much less likely to toss you onto the ground. “If I wanted to be someone’s amusement, I could have stayed in Thuja,” I said sourly.

  Magda sobered and knelt next to me. “We need to make the village by nightfall, which is sooner than you might think at this elevation. Let me help?”

  I shrugged. Magda and I had ridden a hobbyhorse together, once upon a time, through the palace gardens. The queen had commissioned it for my sixth birthday. How different could this be? It was embarrassing, sure, especially after my talk in the pub, but at this point, I was so cold I’d take the extra body heat, embarrassment or not.

  Magda put an arm under my knees and another under my arms and picked me up from the ground. I was too surprised to object and was immediately swept into the smell of leather and the wintergreen oil Magda used on her hair. The smithy had given her unusual upper-body strength, and she carried me with little effort toward her horse. I kept my eyes on the clasp of her cloak, intent on not looking down toward her breasts or up at a face that had captivated me from my earliest memories. My heart beat wildly from Magda’s arms, from our proximity, and from how utterly incompetent
I looked. I couldn’t walk. Magda was being reasonable, but as I rested my forehead against her shoulder, each step she took was a further reminder of how she thought I needed protection.

  “I’ll do better tomorrow,” I muttered as she set my foot in the stirrup and helped me mount the horse. She tied Peanut’s reins to the back of her saddle, then settled in behind me, the reins in one hand and her other arm wrapped around my waist.

  “Tomorrow, I don’t need a rider.” She kicked the horse, and we started climbing again. It was much warmer with her behind me, though I still needed to bring my cloak around my hands. “Tomorrow, I’ll need your insight on Amada, and that will likely also involve walking, so try to relax for the rest of the trip.”

  I turned back to look at her. Her face was bland and stiff, which had always meant mischief. “What?” I asked.

  “I could tell you a story to pass the time,” she said. The side of her mouth quirked.

  “Okayyy,” I drawled. “What story?”

  Magda’s voice turned higher, and she flared her left arm out wide like a bad stage performer. “Iana, my super great-grandmother, came from some glacier town that doesn’t exist.”

  I closed my eyes and groaned. “I told you that story one time to get you to sleep because you were trying to dare me out into the royal forest again. The actions made you pay attention.”

  Magda smirked. “Oh, I know. I remember it well.” Her voice went high again. “Because Iana’s town, you see, is lost to history.” She made a brushing movement with her arms which was probably supposed to represent time passing. I’d have opened my hands up like a book, but it was silly to compare pageantry on horseback.

  Magda continued, doing her best to imitate my ridiculous childhood rendition of the forming of the three countries. “It was a town hidden beyond Miantri. The king’s army took her to train on the farms. She became a master of the light sabre and small sword instead of being apprenticed. Then at fifteen, the king picked her for transfer because he was really bad at fencing and wanted those skills for his own.”

  She made a stabbing motion and gave a fake groan.

  “You’re really bad at this,” I told her.

  “Hush. Then she got all mad and escaped, and she went back onto her glacier and found the biggest of the magic amulets, which you swore didn’t exist but have now been literally attacked by a palm tree, so I’m guessing you changed your mind on that one. And she broke it because the amulet held magic in the water, which is how the king could do the transfers, to begin with, because it got the spell he needed into everyone’s body.” Magda paused and whispered into my ear. “It still amazes me how you can have such an eye for detail in woodwork but not in storytelling.”

  “That story doesn’t have any relevant details,” I muttered back. “Amulets are amulets. They’re just holders for magic, and the king put a big one in a glacial lake that fed every major river and thereby poisoned all of Gasta Flecha so he could steal people’s skills instead of earning them himself. What more do you need to know?”

  Instead of responding, Magda went back to her—my—story. “Iana broke the amulet with a sword she’d imbued herself. With herself.” Magda said the last part with an involuntary shudder. “Then she killed the king because he was gross and magic, and took his throne. She divided old Gasta Flecha into three separate countries, one of which was Sorpsi, made the guilds, and kept the witches forever separate because of their involvement in the subjugation of Gasta Flecha’s women. And because you hate witches and always make them the villains of your stories. The endddddd.” She finished the last word with a deep, bellowing voice.

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. It was ridiculous how easy we could become ten again.

  “You know there’s more to the story than that, right?” Magda asked me in her normal voice, suddenly much more serious.

  I shrugged and turned back around to face the winding road ahead. There was more to every story. Like how a witch—some friend of the queen’s—had come to Mother’s house when I was fifteen and offered to magically remove my breasts. Like I needed correcting. Like I was broken. I shivered. Those kinds of details just didn’t need repeating.

  I forced myself to focus on the present. There were mostly spruce trees now, lining the path, and some firs farther back. It wasn’t snowing, but the needles were capped in white and the horses’ hooves clacked on the frozen ground. I wanted to relax into her and the smells of our shared youth, but I couldn’t. My apprenticeship dragged at my mind, pulling me away from Magda and the easy friendship she offered.

  “What is the trade in Miantri?” I asked her, for Mother had never seen fit to have us visit the town proper.

  “They trade mostly in furs and lumber, although they’re right up against the tree line. They’re only a few kilometers from our border with Puget. We have one night there. We’ll have to leave in the morning to make Celtis, the capital of Puget, in time for the negotiations.” Her horse jumped a fallen log that crossed the road, and I fell back against Magda as she tried to keep me upright. Her arms tightened around me. I welcomed the additional warmth.

  “The grandmasters?” I prodded, hoping for more information from the sheets than I had managed to get on my own. It’d be great if Mother happened to be at this first village, and I could gather her up and head back to the capital. Then she could go to the guildhall, and I could be done with this whole mess.

  Magda pursed her lips. “Sorin… Yes, but this is just between us, all right? We don’t need to start a panic.”

  I looked as serious as I could at the woman who, the last time I’d seen her, had snuck a toad into the cook’s breadbox to see if we could hear her scream on the other side of the castle. “I promise not to start a panic.”

  Magda shook her head, but I caught the edges of a smile on her lips. “The grandmaster of glass was spotted in a pelt shop in Miantri, missing four fingers.” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes refocused on the road.

  “And?” I prodded.

  Magda let out a deep breath. “He had a woman in tow.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s a tradesperson account, and a hurried one at that. It’s enough to identify our glass grandmaster because of that mole on his chin, but not the woman. She was too bundled around the face, apparently. They said she was disoriented.”

  “Why? It can’t be that cold, can it? Do you think she had hypothermia?”

  “It is that cold. Note how your back is welded to my front.”

  I scowled, hoping that hid any blush that might decide to bleed onto my cheeks.

  “Fine. It’s not that cold. Maybe he just lost those fingers due to torture. The cooper’s guild has never been on speaking terms with the glassblowers, so this might just be standard guild rivalry, noting how close we are to Puget.”

  Turning in the saddle to look at Magda was making me motion sick. I turned back around, but not before she finally looked at me. There were small crinkles in the far corners of Magda’s eyes, and a smile played at her mouth. Mischief. No different now than when she was twelve. I fought a smile.

  “You’re keeping your hair pretty short these days, Sorin. For the trade, or otherwise?”

  My smile fell away. “Stop it, Your Highness. If this was just coopers, we wouldn’t be going to Miantri. Is Mother there, or the queen?”

  Her body straightened at the title, and she pushed farther back into the saddle. “The grandmaster was the only one who could be tentatively identified. Ignore the woman. She died a few hours after they hit the town. All the other details are vague, and I’m not going to pass them on.”

  “Uh-huh,” I muttered. “We’re chasing ghosts in a mountain town for fun then. Right.”

  “We don’t know anything about her, Sorin.” Magda’s voice was trying to soothe. “All of our grandmasters are missing, as are most of the masters, and over half are women. It could be any of them or just a regular woman. She could be anyone.”

  “
Just a village woman doesn’t warrant investigation by the royal daughter,” I shot back. “The queen’s favorite woodcutter, on the other hand, or the queen herself…”

  An arrow ripped the air. Peanut screamed, and I heard flesh hit the ground.

  “Down!” Magda cried. She slipped from her horse and pulled me from the saddle, my legs still raw and useless. She slammed us both onto the dusty snow. My head didn’t hit, thanks to her arm, but pain still shot up my side.

  “What—”

  “Stay down!” Magda jumped to her feet and pulled her sword from its tie on her horse. The horse snorted and stomped in disapproval. Magda transferred the sword to a sheath on her belt, then pulled a bow and nocked an arrow.

  To our right was Peanut, on his side, with an arrow through his eye. The ground fogged red beneath him as heat from his blood steamed the snow. Arrows shot from the canopy, one hitting Peanut again, and the other just missing Magda’s head. She motioned for me to retreat further, and I finally listened. I clawed my hands at the frozen ground, fingers burning in the snow as I pushed back toward the scrubby trees. I wanted to help, could help, but with swords and arrows, I’d never get close enough to anyone to use the extracts. Maybe I could pick them off one by one if any came back out to the road. Maybe film their boots to the ground, or—

  From the other side of the road and well into the forest came the clashing of metal. More arrows soared, tearing through Magda’s cloak and across her left thigh. She brushed unconcernedly at the wound and started across the road.

  “I can’t just stay in the open. I need to go in after them.”

  “I could come from behind, take one of them by surprise,” I yelled out to her, pointing to my pouches.

  Magda yelled back, from the other side of the road as she ran. “No. Stay.”

  “I can help!”