by J. S. Fields
She threw down her quiver of arrows. “Stay.”
It was an order from the royal daughter. I exhaled and slumped back down against my worn-out legs. No more arrows sang, but the moment Magda disappeared into the thicket of thin trees, the clang of steel increased, along with the snapping of branches.
“Be safe,” I murmured. I wrapped my cloak around myself and tried to warm my fingers. As I pulled the material tighter, the fabric caught on the pouches on my belt. I tugged against them in frustration. Magda was probably right. What good were fungal extracts in an actual battle? A sword would always win because it was faster, came out of its sheath easier, and the user didn’t have to worry about accidentally killing themselves with it. I needed to be armed with something more than my foraging knife, and I needed to figure out how to use it or I’d be relegated to my backside for every minor skirmish.
“Hello, Sorin.”
The voice came from behind me, but no sound accompanied it. No snapping branches, no crunch of snow.
I jumped to my feet and spun. The pain in my legs was immediate, and I fell back down to my knees in a whimper while I stared at the woman in the forest. The voice was so familiar, the notes of jovial dismissiveness so perfect, that it didn’t occur to me to be afraid.
In front of me, three trees back, stood my mother.
Eight: Mercury
Mother was whole. Alive. She wore no coat despite the temperature, and her clothes looked freshly pressed. Her hair sat exactly as it had when she’d left Thuja, the black ringlets pinned to cascade down her back, keeping her face clear.
“Mother,” I choked as I pulled myself up on a tree. She looked bored, it seemed, standing there in the freezing snow without cloak or cape. How had Magda convinced me she would be otherwise? Mother had managed on her own for years. She had taken these trips since I could remember. She didn’t need saving, especially from me.
“What are you doing out here? Aren’t you cold?” Snow had started to fall in pinpricks of white that stuck to my cloak and eyelashes. My rational mind continued to misfire. A part of me wanted to run to her, wrap her in my cloak and cry that she was alive, and safe, and unhurt. Another part wanted to scream at her for her wanderings and secrecy. I had delayed my chance with Master Rahad, my last real chance at an apprenticeship, trailing a woman who needed no help at all.
My rising frustration leaked into tears. I batted them with frozen fingers. Mother, instead of commenting, looked at her arms as if she’d only just realized there should be something covering them. When she looked back at me, her face was still smiling and unconcerned. She didn’t comment on my tears, or my embarrassment, or that she was standing, unaffected by the swirling snow, in nothing but a cotton tunic and leather vest. The image chilled me. She looked like a dream. A mirage. I blinked and wiped at my eyes.
“I’ve been felling. Must have worked up a sweat.” Her voice had little inflection, and when she took a step toward me, I saw that her boots were thin hide and unlined. Her feet had to be nearly frozen.
“Where?” I sounded accusatory. Mother’s expression didn’t change. She never tolerated that tone from me.
She looked back over her shoulder. “Just back a ways. I have something for you too. Something I bought in Thuja that I forgot to give to you before I left. I can give it to you on our way back home. You shouldn’t be out here, Sorin. It’s dangerous. Come.” She turned and headed east, farther into the forest of swirling snow, blackberry, and heavy pines.
I followed. It was automatic, to heed her directions, and Mother always had been a bit…off. It was those parts I usually preferred about her—the parts of her that grinned over new saws, or the color of my fungal pigments on a piece of maple veneer. If she wanted to show me something in this forest, it was certain to be exciting. And if she was here, my trip with Magda was done. We could go back to the capital, together, and leave Magda to her negotiations. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
Crunching steps took me from the edge of the road onto a game trail lined with sorrel of a variety I’d not seen before. I paused. The trees around me were uniformly coniferous, and all had thin stems and some type of shoot damage. There were no hardwoods, not even spindly vine maples. There was no merchantable decorative timber here at all, nor even any of use in marquetry. The berry bushes grew small and stunted, and any fungi in these types of forests were not well suited to the dyes Mother liked.
This was a useless forest for a marquetry woodcutter unless she’d sectioned burls from some unseen redwoods. Did she need help carrying them perhaps? Without a horse, we’d never get them home. Did she have a sled?
I brought my left foot up, momentarily energized by the thought of a burl pile. We’d talked about a marquetry with a swirling lake. A redwood burl, stained with elf’s cup, might just…
No. I stopped myself and lowered my foot. Mother became animated with talk of figured woods. We shared the passion. A pile of burls would be an opportunity for celebration, but the woman picking through the forest ahead acted with eerie calmness.
“Mother?” I called out to her, stepping back as I did so. Suddenly the main road seemed much safer than the game trail, even though part of me wanted to see her eyes light up at whatever wooden treasure she’d found, to forget our house, and our history, and just share a moment of happiness.
“What is it, daughter?” She turned her head to look at me, her smile frozen to her face.
Cold stung my widening eyes. My insides prickled and my chest convulsed. I sucked in air, desperate to stay quiet while my mind cried out. I edged backward. One step. Then another.
“Sorin?” She held a hand out—a hand without a glove, without a trace of frostbite despite the wind and snow. I quickened my backward pace, not wanting to take my eyes from her. Step. Slide. Step. Mother matched my pace, keeping the distance between us constant, and while the wind tossed my cloak around my ankles, Mother’s hair and clothes continued to hang unmolested.
Another step and a blackberry vine grabbed at my pants. I jerked away, snapping off the branch in the process. I looked down at the offending patch, hoping to avoid further entanglement, and when I looked back up, Mother was there. A handspan away. Smiling.
I froze. I forgot the sting of her words in the wave of heat that rolled across my skin, melting snow from my hair and dripping cool water over my eyes. The heat thickened everything to steam, and it clogged my lungs, stealing my breath. I gasped for air in quick bursts as my heart raced. Who was she? What was she? Gods, was I going to die here, in this useless, coniferous forest?
“Sorin?” she asked, her tone too sweet. She leaned in, her nose centimeters from mine. There was no smell to her breath—only heat that compounded to a near boil. “I’ve missed you. We need to talk. I have information on the queen. I know you’re looking for her too. We should move back, though, from the road. I don’t want to be seen.”
Sweat and melting snow stung my eyes, but a drop of sense finally filtered through. I grabbed at my pouches, gliding fingers over each in turn. The heat, this blistering, unnatural heat, was certainly from magic. Little in alchemy caused such an intense exothermic reaction. Not a person then, at all, but likely a sending. A conjuring. Something solid enough to run me through if it wanted to. That was the question, however. What did the conjuring want? Not to hurt me, it seemed, at least not yet. That wasn’t much of a comfort.
I took deeper breaths and tried to slow my gasps. She was finely done, for a conjuring. As she stayed close, awaiting my response, I let my rational mind step to the side to admire the laugh lines, the crow’s feet, the left-cheek dimple, all in perfect placement. Mother’s guild tattoo, even, was there, although as I tilted my head to study it, I realized something was amiss in this perfection.
The tattoo should have been a branch with a cluster of needles at one end and a broad leaf on the other. Mother’s was a rock maple, to mark her residence in Thuja. This tattoo looked different. Its edges bled back into the surrounding flesh. It look
ed…corrupted. Old. A section of the conjuring poorly done, or well done, and there were limits to magic and guild marks.
I rubbed at my neck where my own guild mark should have been. The guild mark was a sacred thing. To have it so distorted… I shivered.
“What do you want, sending?” I said it loudly—much louder than needed. I wanted to hear myself, to hurt my ears. I needed to define the boundary between reality and dreams.
“Sorinnnnn,” the sending breathed into my ear. “Amada’s heir. Neither woodcutter nor alchemist. Strong, to abandon Amada. Won’t you come with me, back to your home? I can repair your house. I can speak about your mother.” The sending’s hand raised to trail a finger along my throat. The heat from her burned my skin and raised blisters. I swallowed a scream and backed into a spruce trunk, the dead branches cutting me through my clothes.
“No?” she asked. Her mouth turned, finally, to a frown.
Any control I had over my breathing was lost. What would work against such a creature? The blue-green elf’s cup? I had no solvent carrier. The red flaming dragon pigment? Maybe, if she was, in fact, solid enough. The yellow then, golden mango fungus. It could coat, maybe bind. The conjuring looked like it had at least partial solidity.
It closed the distance between us again. “Daughter?”
I yanked my third pouch from my belt. Keeping my arms low, I pulled at the ties, making sure to keep the opening pointed away. The wind died. This close to the conjuring, it deflected around the both of us. Even a small flick would work.
“Get away from me,” I stuttered at the thing reached out again. I raised the pouch and tilted, ready to empty the contents. “I’ve no business with—”
“Sorin? I told you stay put.” A gloved hand fell on my shoulder. I screamed, dropped my pouch, and pulled left, falling lengthwise into a blackberry bramble. The thorns tore at my face and hands, snagged on my burned neck, and I screamed again as the branches held me like hands. It had me! It had me and it was burning and—
“Sorin!” It was Magda, her hands out, trying to calm my flailing, panicking limbs. “Calm down! Everything is all right. I’ve taken care of them.” Her words settled around me, yet I continued to pull. Seams ripped.
Magda eyed me, stepped back, then reached for my pouch, which lay half open on the sorrel in front of her.
“No! Leave it be! Mother!” I turned as much as I could, hoping Magda would follow my gaze. She had to run. I was caught but she could still get away, and Mother…Mother!
Except…except the conjuring wasn’t there anymore. Where she had stood was simply a cluster of vine maples covered in light snow. I settled into the thicket of thorns, sinking deeper. I hadn’t imagined it. There were no footprints, but I could still feel the heat on my face and the sound of her words—her voice so perfectly that of Amada the master woodcutter. Fluid ran down the side of my neck, likely from a heat blister. My heart still pounded. It had been real.
Magda pulled her hand back from the pouch and regarded me with raised eyebrows. “Sorin?” she asked hesitantly as she knelt and offered me a hand.
I reached for her in as much as I could. Our hands clasped, but I was too deep in the thicket to be pulled free. With a shake of her head, Magda removed a short knife from her boot and began to cut.
Tears dotted my cheek, stupidly, but I had no way to wipe them away. Magda didn’t speak as she unwound me from the brambles, although her occasional glances served only to make me feel more self-conscious.
When she pulled the last branch away, I wiped the shame from my face and knelt next to my pouch, careful to close it properly. I was lucky. I’d only been able to half fill it last night, and nothing had spilled with the fall. Yet my hands still shook as I tied it back to my belt and tried to rake the snow and bits of thorn from my clothes.
“Was that one of the poison ones?”
I finally met Magda’s eyes. I saw her concern, but behind it lay fatigue and very clear anger. Though it could have been directed at me, or our attackers, and the look on her face made me want to slink back into the blackberries.
“They’re all poison of a kind,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve again. “Best not to touch them at all.” I checked the pouches one final time, making sure they were all secure. When my eyes came back to Magda, I finally noticed the blood that coated her face and the tears in her tunic and cloak that were from more than arrows.
“You—” I began.
“You were never one for crying,” Magda said, turning the conversation again. “I didn’t think you’d be so skittish. Why did you wander off? You could have been hurt. You promised me you wouldn’t wander.”
I looked down. Her bow and quiver were missing, and her thigh had a long gash in it.
“I’m sorry. I…was thinking and…” I didn’t know how to finish. I hadn’t realized the ache in my chest came, at least partly, from my mother’s disappearance. Still, it felt silly to be so afraid of a sending. The things had no real power. They could burn, to a point, from the magic residuals, but they couldn’t lift or throw, and they certainly couldn’t wield a knife. Well, they couldn’t wield a knife well. What were a few boils, compared to an arrow in the chest, or being crushed by one’s horse? I’d been useless in the real battle and useless in a pretend one as well. I didn’t need to highlight my ineptitude by mentioning the magic. I drove the conversation back. “Did we win?”
Magda chortled. “They’re all dead, so I suppose we did. Highway robbers, nothing more. Not even very good ones. Likely just local misfits. They seemed more interested with leading me on a chase than taking our purses. Come on, let’s keep going.”
She put her arm around my shoulders. I let her lead me from the woods. The sorrel thinned as we reached the gap in the canopy, which made the ground feel too firm under my fur-lined boots. “You didn’t answer my question,” she murmured when I pressed into her side, suddenly very cold. The smell of wintergreen filled my nose, and the ermine on her cloak tickled my cheek. “Why did you wander from the road? Were there more bandits? Did you see something?”
“It was nothing. A mirage, or probably just fatigue. I’m overtired, and you were right; fighting doesn’t suit me.” We reached the edge of the road. I paused, pulling myself from Magda’s arm. Her horse was there, snorting but still, and Peanut…his blood had already frozen to the ground.
Magda stepped in front of me. Her eyes narrowed. “What did you see, Sorin?”
“What don’t we have any guards with us?” I countered, perhaps a bit too childishly. It was easy to fall back into old patterns. “You could have been killed.”
Magda looked pointedly at my pigment pouches. “You’re saying those aren’t enough?” When I didn’t rise to the bait, her jaw set. “What did you see? Please, I don’t want it to be a command.”
I imagined myself sticking my tongue out before I closed my eyes, letting the memory, the word “daughter,” swirl behind my eyelids and prick my skin. Mother was many things—loud, obnoxious, ambitious—but not bigoted. I’d never been her daughter, and that word had dropped from our collective vocabularies in my twelfth year. It was problematic, in terms of lineage and inheritance rights in Iana’s queendom where daughters were the sole inheritors, but there had never been any discussion of trading me out for a definitively gendered foster. She had no reason to call me daughter now, even in jest. She knew the damage that word caused and how it had kept me shut from the world.
“It was nothing,” I said finally. When Magda crossed her arms, I sighed and tried again. “I thought…I thought I saw Mother. But she spoke incorrectly. It was just…magic. Maybe old magic. There’s probably another of the king’s lost amulets around. He buried hundreds of them, right? Anyways, I’m fine.”
Magda looked past me, back into the forest. The sun had gone below the canopy, and I could no longer make out the snow on the trees. “I don’t trust the woods this close to the glacier either,” she said. “I’ve seen what those amulets can do, even before I saw the
damage from the palm with Master Rahad. Mother had a collection of them.” She put her arm back around my shoulder and led me to her horse. I mounted on my own, the adrenaline steadying my aching legs. Magda cursed as she tried to bring her left leg up into the stirrup.
“Magda—” I started.
“No! I’m fine, and we need to get to the town.” She managed to hook her foot in, but her eyes squinted and her lips curled as she pushed off the ground. “I’m fine,” she breathed, more to herself this time. She tried again, and I grabbed for her right arm and pulled her up and into the saddle.
“Thank you,” she said as her arm again found its place around my waist and the horse began to move.
I smiled, warm with the proximity. “The bandits?” I prodded loosely.
“Poorly trained,” Magda returned, matching my tone.
I sniffed. “You’re not going to give me any details, are you?”
Magda leaned in and spoke close to my ear. “I’m not the only one keeping secrets. Tit for tat, alchemist.”
She was right, but it still felt unbalanced, and I shouldn’t have needed to bargain either. A funny smile crossed her face, and I rolled my eyes. Teasing. Right.
“Can we talk tonight, once we arrive?” After a pause, I added, “Not about hair.”
“Maybe. If things are calm.” Magda’s voice turned serious all of a sudden, and heavy. It might have been fatigue, or the wound in her leg was deeper than it appeared.
I settled back into the saddle and nodded silently. Snow began to drift down as we continued on the gradual uphill trail, and I raised my hood. The white rabbit fur caught the flakes before they hit my face and turned to distorted crystals as the heat from my skin partially melted the snow. As I was bundled against the weather and swaying on the horse, exhaustion pushed my mind to wander ahead to Miantri, and what manner of witch lived there who could conjure with that level of detail, with or without an old amulet.
Not all the masters were missing, it seemed. At least one remained nearby and was very interested in me.
