by S. W. Clarke
As I sat down in Farrow’s home fifteen minutes later, I sensed that favor still waiting in the wings. Asking me to tea had been a prelude, a way of sweetening me up.
“So,” said Farrow as she poured tea into my cup and sat down in her armchair, “you weren’t able to fire ride during the guardian trials.”
I upturned the pitcher of milk into the tea before me; it swirled in a vortex, turning black liquid to brown. “That’s right.”
“And you still can’t.” She paused, eyes unfocusing. “In class, you can summon the fire when you’re atop the horse, but you can’t make the flame do what you want it to do.”
I lifted the teacup. “Did you invite me over just to let me know I’m going to fail your class?”
Farrow’s unreadable face folded when she smiled. “Hardly. You could pass the class tomorrow—but you’re not aiming simply to pass.”
“No.” I took a sip. “Rathmore taught me to fire ride. I’ll never be satisfied until I’ve done it.”
She set her spoon in her tea, swirled as she studied me. “And do you know why you can’t do it?”
“He told me I had everything I needed. But…” I shrugged. She didn’t know about the Spitfire and the challenge of giving control over to it, and I wasn’t prepared to reveal its existence to her.
“My young fire witch.” She set her cup down, leaning forward. “I suspect Professor Rathmore came to know you better than I do, but I also have a feeling I understand something of your nature as well.”
“And what’s that?”
A wistful look entered her eyes. “You’ve known pain. A great deal of it.”
I busied myself with picking up a sugar cookie, dipping it into my tea. “Haven’t we all.”
“I’m no master of fire riding,” she went on, “but I do know this: it’s a painful art. It’s painful because you must tap into your pain—your anger, whatever thorns still pierce your heart—in order to do it. You must dredge it up fully, bring it into the light. Are you prepared to do that, Clementine?”
I raised my eyes to her, tea in one hand and sugar cookie in the other.
Could I fully tap into that pain without bringing on another panic attack? Could I do so without giving myself over to the Spitfire completely and losing Rational Clem in the process?
I didn’t know. But I knew I had to try.
So what I said was, “Pain? Sure. I’ll just think of mucking Noir’s stall every morning.”
Farrow understood my uncertainty; I could see it in the glint in her eye. “That should do it, then. And as to your original thought, I do have a favor to ask of you. You’re welcome to refuse, but I thought I’d ask.”
I bit into the cookie. “I’m listening.”
“I wonder if you would be interested in teaching a class.”
I lowered my chin to properly meet eyes. “What now?”
“After seeing you ride in the first trial last spring, Professor Fernwhirl came to me with an idea. A good one, I think.”
Professor Fernwhirl hated me. On top of which, she’d tried her damndest to dismount me during that trial.
I waited for Farrow to continue.
“She thought you were a marvelous bareback rider,” Farrow said. “She suggested other students might benefit from the same.”
I laughed. “Farrow, I never knew you to lie. Fernwhirl wouldn’t say that on her deathbed. Besides, the only reason I do it is because Noir won’t take a saddle and bit.”
“She’s certainly not dying, and I daresay I know the fae a little better than you to know when she’s lying.” Her shrewd look had returned. “Even so, I have to agree with her. As a guardian, you’re eventually going to eclipse Akelan, Fi, and Mishka in rescues. They have to saddle up—you don’t.”
“Are you asking me to teach the other guardians?”
“No—they’re already set in their ways. I’m asking you to teach a class of first-years.”
This sounded to me like something more institutional. “You want to change the way the students here ride, don’t you?”
Farrow leaned to within a confidential distance, even though we were alone. “We need more guardians. I’m sure you can see that now. And we need them to be the best at whatever it is they do.”
“You think I’m qualified to teach them. I can’t even fire ride.”
“No one in the world can fire ride, Clementine, but perhaps one or two men. Men. And yet I don’t think anyone here is more qualified than you are. You’re the best rider I’ve seen come through this academy in twenty-five years.”
Farrow wasn’t a woman for compliments. If she gave one, it was lightning in a bottle; I knew she’d meant it.
All the same, this wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t at all like me. I didn’t stand in front of groups and give instructions and tell them their weaknesses and strengths…
“Okay,” I said before I could think on it further.
Why had I said that?
And yet the rational part of me knew at once: nothing was about me anymore. It didn’t matter what my “thing” was. It didn’t matter what made me uncomfortable.
What mattered was defeating the Shade. What mattered was stopping her army from taking anyone else.
Watching that Thai girl disappear through the veil had changed me.
Sitting now in front of Farrow, I finally understood what the feeling I’d carried around for the past week had been.
It was grief, yes. But it was also fundamental change.
“Okay?” Farrow sounded surprised.
“Tell me when to be here, and I’ll teach them.”
“Wednesdays at three?”
I bit into one of her sugar cookies. “Wednesdays at three.”
That was three days from now.
I had gone from delinquent to student to teacher in what felt like a blink—I guess it had been a few years—and suddenly, on Wednesday afternoon, I stood in the center of the riding ring with six first-years all staring back at me.
I wasn’t a born teacher. If I was going to do this, I had to do it my way.
“Well,” I said, “quit gawking and show me how you all ride.”
They didn’t move.
“Don’t you want to know our names first?” a blond girl said from where she stood next to Siren.
“I want to know how you ride,” I said. “I’ll learn your names when you screw up and I have to tell you about it. Until then, you’re going by your horses’ names.”
A brown-haired boy made a face.
I smiled at him. “Hey Minibar, we all screw up. I do it every day. Now I’d like to see you start screwing up by trying to mount your horse.”
“But I haven’t got a saddle or stirrups.”
“Aside from the fact of that being the point of this class…” I stepped up to Noir. “Neither does he, and he’s a hell of a lot bigger than that one.” With the one-two hop, I leveraged myself up onto his back.
It was at that moment, sitting atop the enormous stallion, I became a god to them. They all began struggling to mount their horses in the same way I’d done, though not a one of them actually succeeded. Some even fell in the dirt.
But like I’ve said: I do respect consistent, unsexy effort more than just about anything else.
At the end of the first class, I found Mishka standing at the fence line, watching.
I dismissed all my dusty recruits, led Noir over to where Mishka stood. “Hello, Crest.”
“Hello, Spark.” A faint smile appeared. “Your horse might be more than twice my height.”
“He’s nothing to fear.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid.” She stepped closer, reached out an open palm with oats in it; Noir stuck his face right into the handful. “Makes him all the better for chasing.”
I had forgotten—Mishka was a chaser.
“Did you come to ride?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking.” Her eyes shifted to me as her empty hand lowered. “You’re a chaser now, Clementine. Would you l
ike me to show you what that means?”
“I thought I knew what it meant.”
“You can’t defeat one of them without another element at your side.” She set one hand on the fence, stepped close. “If we’re to defeat the creatures, the chasers must work together like an oiled instrument.”
Except the other chasers were missing. “Is it just you and me today, then?”
She nodded. “We must have our own synchrony. Our own way of coordinating. As you must with each other guardian, chaser or no. You never know whom you’ll end up with.”
Mishka couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. She was also, I felt certain as she gazed up at me, a powerhouse.
And that was confirmed when we were atop our horses.
An hour later, she galloped Minibar through the forest ahead of me with her black braid flicking through the air like a whip. “Alongside me, Clementine!” she called back.
I navigated Noir past trees, swerving him to catch up to her. “That’s not as easy as it sounds,” I called back.
“We’re coming up on the creature in ten seconds.” She pointed through the forest. “If you aren’t with me by then, we’ll miss our chance.”
What choice did I have? I pressed my heels into Noir’s side and left the navigating to him. A moment later, I ducked hard to avoid a low tree branch that would have taken off my head.
If I survived training with Mishka Reddy, I knew I could survive anything.
Chapter Seventeen
As she and Minibar galloped alongside me, one of Mishka’s hands left her reins. “I’ll freeze the creature. When I have, you spear it with fire through the chest. Understood?” Her voice passed close then far away, shifting as trees swept between us, branches and leaves.
But I had caught her instructions.
Spear it with fire. I had never practiced spearing anything.
This seemed to me where Goodbarrel’s precision and control came in. A shame I couldn’t light up more than two of my fingers.
It didn’t matter now; the practice dummy we had set up in the woods had come into view.
In an almost cinematic moment of elegance, Mishka sat up, both hands leaving the reins. She reached into the air, drawing water from nothing but the atmosphere. With one hand twining the water into a spin, she sent it rushing toward the dummy, now only a few hundred feet away.
It surged at him with a spearheaded tip, lashed itself around his body. With a jerk of her arm against her side, Mishka froze the water like ropes around his chest.
“Now,” she yelled.
Now. The time was now.
That was when I reverted to using my lizard brain. It was a stuffed dummy we were capturing, but the note in Mishka’s voice carried such intensity, I just acted.
My hand went overtop Noir’s head, palm flat, and I sent a jet of fire soaring, expanding through the air in the dummy’s direction.
When we passed the dummy, only smoke surrounded it. Leaves burned. A large, flaming tree branch had fallen. The chest hadn’t even been touched.
Mishka yanked her water free. It flowed back around her as we slowed our pace, if only for the horses’ sake. They breathed hard beneath us, Noir shaking his head as we came to a trot.
“So,” I said. “Better than last time.”
Mishka had regained her reins. “Yes, better than last time. This time you managed to shoot before we reached the dummy.”
I’d wanted to forget that first try. “Timing isn’t my forte.”
“It wasn’t your timing.” Mishka slowed Minibar to a walk, and I did the same. “I asked for a spear of fire, and you gave me a plume.”
“I haven’t practiced spears much.”
“How much have you practiced them?”
No use in lying to her. “Not at all.”
Her eyebrows went up as she glanced at me. “But you’re a third-year. You should have been taught a simple spear throw in primary school. And at the very latest, you should have learned it last year.”
“My fire magic professor last year was…different. I have a feeling we weren’t learning the usual stuff.”
Rathmore had taught me about the Spitfire. About overcoming my worst emotions. About controlling the creature inside me.
It had taken a year, and I still wasn’t sure if I had a handle on it.
“You learned with Callum Rathmore, did you not?” Mishka asked.
I nodded.
“I did always find him strange.” She sighed. “Well, so be it. Clementine, it’s crucially important you learn acute control of your magic. These creatures move fast, and they aren’t much larger than humans. You can’t simply incinerate them in a ball of flame.”
“Can’t I?”
She jerked Minibar to a halt. “Not unless you’re prepared to take the life of a kidnapped mage in the process.”
I stopped, turning Noir to face her. “It was a bad joke.”
That seemed to soften her. “Until you’re better with your flame, you and I will practice a special coordination. You’re the fastest among us on your horse, and so you’ll be able to get the closest.”
I liked where this was going. “So I’ll get close enough that I can’t miss.”
“Precisely.” She turned Minibar around. “This time, you’ll pull ahead of me. I’ll direct the water from behind, and I’ll time it to freeze the creature in the moment you’re about to pass it by.”
“Works for me.”
She didn’t set off just yet. “You need this kind of coordination with the other chasers. Ideally you’ll have an understanding with all the guardians, but the chasers especially.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Soon,” she pressed. “You never know when the next rescue will come. We’re already overdue for one.”
As if feeling Mishka’s intensity, Noir stamped beneath me.
My fingers tightened in his mane. “I promise I will.”
She gave a single nod, turned Minibar back toward the dummy. “Let’s go, then.”
I set off after her, my eyes again on her braid as she pressed the horse to a gallop. Mishka couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or two, but she wore this mantle effortlessly. It was obvious she cared. Perfection and precision mattered to her, because getting it right meant saving a life.
The Clementine of two years ago—the nineteen-year-old who’d been kidnapped that night—would have been grateful for how seriously a woman like Mishka took this job, even if the Clementine of two years ago was directionless, angry, impulsive, and imprecise.
It was because I was so impulsive and imprecise. That was why a person like Mishka mattered in my life.
In one moment, chasing after that whipping braid, she became a role model to me. Just like Eva and her thoughtfulness. Just like Aidan and his studiousness.
Her voice ripped me out of my head. “For gods’ sake, it won’t work if you don’t pass me!”
I leaned close to Noir’s neck. “You heard the woman,” I murmured down to him, squeezing my heels into his sides.
He had. His neck stretched out, and we pulled past Minibar within a few seconds.
“Good,” she called from behind. “Now be ready to decapitate the creature on my call.”
The dummy had come into view. One of my hands left Noir’s mane, lighting with flames.
Wait. Wait on it.
Noir and I were only a couple dozen feet from the dummy, but I had to wait for her call. I had to tamp down my impulsiveness.
I had to trust her.
Just in time, the water shot past me and whipped around the dummy. It was as precise as Mishka herself.
This was the moment.
It was also when she said, “Now!”
I whipped the flames out toward the dummy’s head as we sailed by. A thump sounded in our wake, and when I glanced over my shoulder, the straw-stuffed head rolled on the forest floor.
Farther behind, Mishka smiled.
After Inverness, Eva had been pestering m
e to poke at Frostwish. To get her irritable enough to reveal her inner feelings, maybe even her secrets.
And of course, I’d just stared at her. Swung a finger between us. “Did you and I switch bodies?” I was the one who was supposed to goad other people into making bad decisions.
All the same, Eva was right. After Frostwish had potentially seen the deceiver’s rod, I needed now more than ever to know more about her.
In my next class with Frostwish, I did my best to draw her in, to embroil her. To pierce her cool veneer. Of course, the fae held up well—I knew after Inverness how good she was at holding her secrets tight to her chest.
It was during that class that I finally managed a tiny crack in her shell.
We’d been going back and forth about hexes as a dark art, and I threw out, “I’ve begun to wonder if hexes shouldn’t have died with the rest of my kind.”
Ora Frostwish was normally a quick reply. This made her pause. “Your kind?”
“Witches,” I said. “Both air and fire.”
“Why would you say that?”
“My roommate, Eva.” I chose my next words with care. “She told me hexing is a dark, corrupting art. That it’s only meant to hurt people.”
Frostwish’s face darkened. “Evanora Whitewillow said this?”
I nodded.
“And what would the lavender-haired fae know about hexes?”
“I—”
“Nothing,” she cut in. “She has a formalist’s understanding of them. A modern understanding, simple and uncomplicated. That’s how fae these days prefer things.”
Now we’d gotten fully away from my practice and into Frostwish’s mind, which was exactly where I wanted to be. “And you aren’t a modern fae?”
She flicked a dismissive hand. “Attempt the paralysis hex again.”
“Sure.” I lowered my chin as though to hex her. “Before I do, where would you say this particular hex falls on the scale of corruption?”
“Gods.” Frostwish’s wings fluttered; now I knew I’d properly annoyed her. “It isn’t the art that’s corrupting. It’s the desensitization to suffering that might occur as a result of practicing it.”
I resisted a victorious smile. We were getting somewhere. “What’s the difference?”
