"Then I assume it," Elena said, "for the pledge I have made, for the sake of those who will need it, and my duty to those who will call upon me." And as she circled Rosalie's head with the tip of her own wand, she concentrated, fiercely, on doing the opposite of what she had learned to do so far — not to dispense power, but to take it in.
ft was a great deal more difficult than she would have guessed. Not only was she fighting against the training she'd had so far, but she could feel the whole weight of The Tradition bearing down on her in a kind of sullen resistance. The Tradition wanted this young woman for something. It bent its power towards making her into that something. It was like an enormous, blind, insensate beast, pushing her towards that end, and it did not want to let her go down some other path.
But Rosalie did not want to go there. She was happy with her little cottage, her gentle, simple husband, happy to be ordinary and fit in with the rest of the village as a pea fits among its neighbors in a pod. The more The Tradition pushed her, the more she pushed back, and that was what made it painless for her to give up the power that was collecting around her.
Given the amount of it, Elena had a good idea of why she had seemed so distressed. She knew that sort of distant-storm tenseness that the coiled-up power around you made you feel; the sense that there was something, somewhere, you urgently had to do. It was not unlike feeling that a dreadful headache was poised, waiting to strike you the moment you dropped your guard. It wore on you, until all you could think about was this weight on you, the feeling of nerves stretched thin. Slowly, reluctantly, the power let go of Rosalie and passed to Elena —
Where, exactly, it went, she couldn't really tell. But she could feel a sort of weight to it, and felt it join her power, as if she was a vessel, and it was water flowing in from some outside source.
Finally the last of the power was gone. There was no more magic sparkling and glowing around Rosalie than there was around any of her perfectly ordinary neighbors.
Rosalie might not have been able to see the difference, but she certainly sensed it. Her shoulders straightened, as did her back; she opened her eyes and smiled, and her brow was no longer furrowed.
"Well, Apprentice!" she said, her voice bright with pleasure. "I expect you'll not be an Apprentice much longer!"
Elena flushed. "I still have a lot to learn," she murmured, embarrassed, as Madame chuckled.
"We'll be off, then," was all Madame said. "Now that you're sorted. But remember, any craving, and you send to me! That may not sound like much, but believe me, it's important!"
"I will," Rosalie promised.
"All right," Elena said, once they were well out of the village, "what was all that about?"
"Rosalie is a rare one," Madame replied. "In fact, you won't find a girl like her in a hundred years. She's a doubler — when she was younger, before she married her sweetheart, The Tradition was trying to make her into a Fair Rosalinda."
"Oh good heavens — " Elena said, her hand going to her lips in consternation.
The Tradition was not all happy endings. "Fair Rosalinda" was one of the uglier directions that The Tradition could go into — the beautiful peasant orphan girl who is seduced by a King, set up in her own secluded bower, and murdered by his Queen when she discovers his philandering.
"Oh, yes," Madame said grimly. "A fine romantic tragedy, if it were to happen to someone else, long ago and far away...not such a fine thing if it was supposed to happen to you."
Elena had read of several "Fair Rosalindas" already; magic entered the picture only after the poor thing was dead — poisoned or strangled and the body buried somewhere hidden —
But usually, the Fair Rosalinda was drowned. Then a musician would enter the tale. Sometimes he would make a pipe or some other instrument of the reeds or the tree growing from her hidden grave — in the most macabre and disturbing versions, he would make a harp from her bones and string it with her golden hair. And then he would go before the King, who was grieving for his lost love, and when he played, the instrument would have but one song —
"The Queen hath murdered me," Elena murmured.
"I will not have one of those in my Kingdoms," Madame said fiercely. "I found her before the King did, before her breasts began to bud — she, in her turn, had already begun to feel the coils of the power around her and when I had explained something of what was going to happen, begged me to take it from her. Which I've been doing, and I had hoped that when she wedded, The Tradition would give over and let her go. But it hasn't; I had some suspicions as to why, and I think they've just been confirmed now that I know she's with child. Failing to make her a Rosalinda, The Tradition now wants to make her child a Ladderlocks."
"Oh, please!" Elena said, as much in disgust as anything else. "What has the poor thing done to be so put-upon?"
The Ladderlocks story was more fantastical and less — but only a trifle less — unpleasant than that of Rosalinda. The mother of a Ladderlocks child would be overcome with a craving for some out-of-season food to the point where she could eat that and only that. Naturally, the only place her distracted husband can find this food would be in the garden of some Black Witch or Evil Sorceress. He would steal it, be caught, and pledge to give the woman his child to save his own life. On the birth of Ladderlocks — always a girl — the Witch would take her away, lock her in a tower, and among other things, forbid her to cut her hair...and the rest of that tale was familiar to any child in any Kingdom that Elena had any knowledge of. It might end well, but there was often a great deal of horror before the end came —
"I can't even bear to think about being locked up in a tower for sixteen years," Elena replied. "I don't know why the girls don't go mad."
"Some of them do," Madame confirmed. "I know of one who hung herself with her own hair."
Elena shuddered, and looked away for a moment.
"And then there's the dozens of poor young fellows who die at the hands of the Dark One before one of them manages to get to the tower," Madame continued, frowning fiercely. "A Ladderlocks is nothing more than bait for a deathtrap, and I won't have one of those in my Kingdoms, either!"
Elena nodded, knowing that even when a young man managed to get to the tower, climb the hair, and win the maiden, he still might not escape the Witch unscathed. They were almost always caught, and sometimes the poor young man who fell in love with Ladderlocks found himself blinded by the thorns around her tower, or sometimes worse than that. A Ladderlocks tale often had more tragedy than triumph about it.
It was a tale best prevented.
"I wish I knew why The Tradition was so set on having her" Bella replied. "But as long as I keep draining her, at least until her first-born is actually born, the magic won't attract the other half of the equation."
"The Evil Witch." Elena nodded. "She knows, of course?"
"I've drummed it into her head often enough," Bella said grimly. "And it will have to be her that prevents it; her husband is kind, sweet, gentle, handsome as the dawn, and as dense as a bag of stones. She loves him, but she knows very well that he is prime material for the loving but stupid husband who climbs the wall around the Witch's garden to steal her rampion. And it would not matter how many times she warns him about it, he won't remember. The Tradition can shove him about like a coin in a game of Shove Ha'penny."
At that moment, Elena felt a surge of anger at The Tradition, that faceless, formless thing that pushed and pulled people about with no regard for what they might want or need. She met Madame's eyes, and saw that same anger there.
"Yes," Bella said, softly, only just audible over the sound of hooves and wheels on the hard-packed road. "I hoped you would feel that. I hoped when I took you as my Apprentice, that you were cut from the same cloth as me. Some Godmothers are only willing to assist in the making of the happy endings. I am of a different mind."
"There will be no Fair Rosalindas in my Kingdoms," Elena said, just as softly, but just as firmly.
Madame gave a quick nod, as
if she and Elena had just made a pledged pact. And perhaps, they had.
"Good," was all she said, then she turned her attention back to the road.
Madame changed the topic to something innocuous. Nothing more was said on that subject.
But then again, nothing more needed to be.
As harvest turned towards autumn, the days became noticeably shorter, and the air grew chill at night, Madame took to leaving Elena in charge of the cottage for several days at a time. "Keep Randolf company," was all she usually said, before she went off on whatever mysterious errands were taking her away. "He gets lonely sometimes. He'll chatter at you about plays he's been watching; just nod and make appreciative noises, even if you can't understand half of what he's nattering on about."
Elena was growing very fond of the Slave of the Mirror by this point; Randolf was perhaps the most artless person she had ever known. Despite everything he saw, and everything he had lived through, he maintained a kind of innocence. He had no pretenses, nothing about him was a sham.
Furthermore, he had beautiful manners, and was perfectly pleased to give her the one set of lessons she found it difficult to accept from anyone else in the household — the lessons in what he called deportment and she called "fitting in."
Madame just simply seemed to change everything about herself without thinking, depending on what costume she wore, from dotty old peasant woman to gracious Lady of exalted breeding and impeccable pedigree. Lily had just laughed when Elena had broached the subject, and advised her to "just be yourself, and be damned to them as doesn't like it."
And the haughty Rose, Elena thought, would be so critical that the lesson would get lost in the criticism.
Ah, but Randolf had not only been watching Kings and Queens for two hundred years or more, until recently he had been the prized possession of several queens of the evil sort. So, when Madame Bella was away, Elena would spend several evening hours in her sitting room, not merely keeping Randolf company, but learning from him.
"Just what does Madame do, off on her own of late?" she asked him one night, after a long and complicated session on Precedence. Randolf was not showing her anything but his own face at the moment; she had gotten so used to conversing with a disembodied head that it no longer seemed at all odd.
"Oh, you could ask her yourself, it's no secret," Randolf said airily. "But I can tell you easily enough. She pays visits around to other magicians in her Kingdoms; she's likely to start taking you about once you've mastered enough that you can meet them as an equal rather than an Apprentice. And she likes to keep an eye especially on the ones she's turned."
"Well, I can see why," Elena replied, struck that the answer hadn't already occurred to her. "Good heavens, the last thing she wants is for one of them to turn back!"
"Hmm, that would be a nasty surprise," Randolf replied. "I do suggest to her that she could do so just as well through me, but she seems to think that the personal touch is more effective."
"Using both would be a better idea, it seems to me," Elena said judiciously. "After all, even though you might get a better notion of something odd going on by being there yourself, people are on their best behavior when visitors arrive. It's when they're alone, or think they are, that they let things slip."
Randolf tsked. "Truer words were never spoken," he agreed brightly. "Like that little pair of turtledoves from the Christening you went to! Bless their hearts, they're so like every other pair of new lovers I've ever watched — they so want people to believe that everything is always perfect in their little world! If there was anything wrong between them, you wouldn't see it unless you had me look in on them."
"Is there anything wrong?" Elena asked, suddenly anxious. She felt rather — proprietary about those two. She didn't want there to be anything going wrong between them —
Randolf laughed. "Bless you, sweetheart, not a bit of it! In fact — well, look for yourself!"
The mirror went to black, and for a long moment, Elena thought that Randolf was having her on, for there didn't seem to be anything at all in the mirror. But then, her eyes gradually adjusted, and she realized she was looking at two deeper shadows silhouetted against the night sky.
Then the moon rose, a huge and golden Harvest Moon, flooding the top of a tower upon which the two were standing, close together.
Arachnia had changed.
It was a subtle change, but to a Godmother's Apprentice, quite noticeable. Her hair was down, cascading over her shoulders and down her back; she still wore black (at least insofar as it was possible to tell in the moonlight) but the lines of her gown were softer. In fact, everything about her was softer. Elena got the vivid impression of a fortress whose walls have not been breached, but eroded, and covered with vines and flowers.
As for her Poet, there were changes in him, too. He stood straighter, and yet there was an easiness about him that had not been there before. In his case, Elena had an image of a man who has put aside a mask he no longer feels compelled to wear.
As Elena watched, Arachnia leaned her head on the Poet's shoulder, and he snugged his arm around her waist as they watched the moon rise. A moment later, she turned her head a little, and he turned his face to meet hers; their lips met, and —
— and at that point Elena couldn't tell if it was the Sorceress who flung herself passionately into the embrace, or the Poet who crushed the Sorceress to him. Probably both. All that she knew for certain was that the two silhouettes became one, and from the way the one was moving, it might not stay upright for very much longer —
And she felt heat rushing to her cheeks, a tightness in her chest, and a slow tingling excitement all over, but particularly centered at the cleft of her legs that —
"Thank you, Randolf, I believe I understand you," she somehow managed. She wasn't sure how. Her throat felt very thick, and her face very warm.
Randolf's guileless face emerged from the blackness. "Nothing wrong there!" he laughed. " Unless you're fussy enough to insist on a wedding before the — "
Her flush deepened, and she licked her lips; now it wasn't excitement that filled her, it was frustration, and an emotion she was vaguely surprised to recognize as jealousy. It took a lot of self-control not to snap at him. "Of course not," she said, immensely proud of how neutral her voice was. "If you insisted on that, there would be a lot fewer babies born in these Kingdoms."
"I expect they'll have one eventually, though," Randolf continued artlessly. "Wedding, that is, not a baby, though they'll probably have one of those, too. More than one, if they keep on like that all the time."
The jealousy grew, and she finally took herself in hand and mentally sat on it. After all, what right had she to be jealous? "Well," she replied, trying to sound as light and carefree as possible, "if they do that, it will certainly keep Arachnia out of any more mischief."
She couldn't bring herself to say anything more, but fortunately Randolf, who was by nature oblivious to human emotions, began nattering on about something else, and she was able to get herself back under control again. She was even able to laugh at some of his outrageous jokes before she excused herself for the night and went off to her rooms to prepare for bed.
But she did not read as she usually did; instead, she pulled the curtains wide and sat in the window-seat of her bedroom, staring out at the rising moon. Somewhere under that moon, Arachnia and her Poet were locked in a passionate embrace. Elena knew very well what that kind of embrace led to; by the time she'd become "Ella Cinders," no one in the household had cared what she saw. Servants had little or no privacy, and when coupling went on, it happened wherever they could find a corner where they wouldn't be disturbed. The cook and old Jacques had rutted shamelessly in the kitchen, the maids had done it with the footmen in the laundry. No one paid any attention to Ella; it was up skirts and down drawers, and away they went — on a heap of linen, against a wall, a pile of hay in the stable —
Oh, she knew what went on — what was going on, somewhere out there, under that b
right moon. And that was what she was jealous of.
Because that wasn't just lust; that was love. Only love could soften and strengthen two people the way those two had been. Only love could have turned rut into passion. And it had been passion between them. She had no doubt of that. Just the memory of it made her heart beat faster, her knees feel weak, and that flush and tingling spread all over her body.
She couldn't say it wasn't fair — first of all, what was fair? Arachnia had endured a horrible childhood, much worse than Elena's, if Madame was to be believed. Maybe she'd done a deal of harm, but not as much as she could have, and anyway, she was making up for it now — so who was to say she hadn't earned her happy ending at last? Not The Tradition, and not Elena, and anyway, it was a Godmother's job to make the happy endings, not take them away from someone. Plenty of people got happy endings that some might say they didn't deserve.
Oh, but —
But what? asked a ruthless, inner voice. Are you going to try to claim that what you have now is not a happy ending? Look at you! Fed, housed, clothed beautifully, with work in front of you that means something —
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