by Unknown
He was quite smug about it, too.
After following him blindly for about an hour, I was starting to think that he was just messing with our minds—cats were prone to do that—until he jumped on top of a boulder and went abruptly still. His ears swiveled back and forth, but his eyes remained fixed on a spot dead ahead.
I caught up to him, motioned for Cloud to stay put, then clambered up on top of the rock, next to where he sat. “Well? Did you find…her….” My words dried up.
There, not ten feet away, stood a little girl. She had a fishing net at her feet, as if she had been trying to do some catching in the shallow pool nearby, but now she stood directly facing us. Her curly blond hair was a tangled mess around her face, skin slightly red from the sun and dirty with grey streaks, her blue smock and leggings not in much better condition.
But in spite of all that, I recognized her instantly from the image the Gardener had given me.
Finally. Finally, I’d found her.
I was so relieved to see her, whole and unharmed, that I leapt off the boulder without thinking and started toward her. She instantly backed off a pace, eyes narrowed.
“Wait,” Aletha warned me in a low whisper.
I let out a breath and reined myself in. Patience. I had to be patient. Who knew what she’d gone through in the past few days?
“Hey there, sweetheart.” I eased down to one knee in an effort to keep from looming over her. She eyed me with considerable wariness, a fishing knife in one hand. I didn’t doubt the sharpness of that knife or her willingness to use it. Of course, a young girl wasn’t going to pose much threat to me, but the goal here was to earn her trust, not her wrath. Still, I liked this show of spunk. When danger knocked on her door, she met it head-on. This was my kind of kid.
With a thumb, I pointed at my own chest. “I’m Shad. I’ve come on behalf of the magical school, Strae Academy, to come get you.”
At ‘magical school,’ she lost about half of her wariness. In fact, I could’ve sworn from the look on her face that she was expecting me. Her grip on the knife didn’t loosen though. “And her?”
“Ah, I’m a friend of his,” Aletha introduced herself pleasantly. “My name is Aletha. When Shad said he was coming down here to rescue you, I came along because I was worried about him going alone.”
Of course, as a non-magical person, I wouldn’t have a clue about any of this, but I tried saying something I’d heard Garth say before. “She won’t glow to you. But me, the cat, and the white horse will look faintly red.”
Oh, that rang a bell with her, alright. Her eyes went wide in her face.
“…How’d you know?”
“We’re all Jaunten, you see,” I explained with my most charming smile. “A mage, like you, can see the magic on us.”
She didn’t drop her guard altogether, although I was definitely making headway. But then, the Star Order Priests would have been able to do and know the same things I did, so she wouldn’t think it odd for me to know these things. To her, I could still be a danger. I tried to think of a way to convince her to trust me. Odd, as much time as I’d spent on the road actively searching for her, I hadn’t thought I’d be trying to win the girl over.
Alright, when in doubt, start at the beginning. “I’ve been looking for you for a solid week, pretty lady. A Gardener came to me, you see, and told me that a mage had awakened in Chahir. I was to come get you, guard you, and take you to Strae Academy so that you could be trained safely.”
Those stunning blue eyes of hers narrowed suspiciously. “What’s a Gardener?”
“They’re a very special race of people.” I rubbed at the back of my head, wondering how to explain something as complex as a Gardener to a child. “They’re about your height, but they have skin like white marble, and their hair looks more like fine feathers. They are the caretakers of this world. They keep the land flourishing, and healthy, and sometimes they step in and take care of people too.”
Ohhh? She looked excited about this, as if she recognized some part of what I was describing.
“Do they talk in your head?” she asked intensely.
I blinked. How in the world had she known that? “Well, they have to touch you to do that, but yes, they do. They like to speak in images, too.”
“I met one!” Her wariness dropped instantly, as if it wasn’t ever there. “Are you the Guardian?”
“You met one?” Aletha repeated incredulously. “When?”
“A week ago,” she answered confidently. “I was going to run away, like Mama said to do, but then he came and talked to me. I thought he was my age at first, ’cause he was so little, but he was lots older,” she said this as if imparting a secret. “He showed me my cave and said to wait there, as a Guardian was coming.”
Well, well, so I wasn’t the only one he’d visited. “That’d be me,” I said with a slight bow. “Might I know your name, Princess?”
“Shabeccaan.” She took two careful steps forward, eyes scanning my face. “Becca, for short. You…are you really my Guardian?”
“I am.” This poor child. She looked as if she were on the verge of shaking, she was so afraid. How much courage did it take to face two armed adults with only a fishing knife in hand? “I’ll protect you from any harm that comes near you. You have my word as a Riic on that.”
That was all she needed. Tears welled up in her eyes and her knife dropped from numb fingers. I knew what would happen next with absolute certainty and quickly crossed to her. Becca let out a wail, part relief, part despair, and started crying in earnest.
I scooped her up and held her tight. Her tiny arms went around my neck and clung on for dear life as she started crying into my shoulder. My heart went out to her, and I didn’t try to halt her tears, just let her cry it all out. If I had been abandoned by my parents, with Star Order Priests after my life, I’d be crying too.
Aletha looked up at the sky. “We don’t have a lot of daylight left. Let’s take cover in her cave tonight and set out tomorrow.”
Not a bad plan. Becca was crying too hard to give us directions to where the cave was, though, so I went with the next best thing. “Tail. Lead us to her cave. Don’t give me that look. I realize you’re not a hunting dog, but you’re the best thing we have.”
He sniffed the air in several directions before sauntering off confidently over the rocky shore, heading for the cliffs. Since I had my arms full, I looked back over my shoulder and ordered Cloud, “Follow.”
We all trailed after the cat like we were playing some sort of follow-the-leader game. Tail didn’t once pause or look uncertain, so in spite of his protests, his nose did as well as any tracking dog.
Becca finally relaxed her death grip on me and eased back enough to wipe at her cheeks with the back of her hand. I dipped a hand into my pocket and brought out a handkerchief, which she promptly used to blow her nose with. After all that crying, her eyes were red and puffy, but at least she didn’t look on the verge of falling apart anymore.
Turning, she looked at Tail with a puzzled slant of her head. “He understands you?”
Hmm. “How much do you know about Jaunten, Becca?”
“They’re scary people,” she responded promptly. “They have magic and they work for the King of Hain. That’s it.”
As rumors go, at least this one had mostly gotten the facts straight. “Well, we can be scary to our enemies. Lucky for you, we’re on your side.” That won a faint smile. “We don’t have magic so much as we’re touched by magic. See, we inherit all of the knowledge of the people whose blood we share. So I know everything that the past sixteen generations of Jaunten knew.”
That impressed her. “Really?”
“Really. Now, because I accidentally mixed my blood up with Tail’s—that’s the cat—he’s now as smart as a human.”
“Really?” Her eyes went as big as saucers. “Magic can do that?”
“We’re just as surprised,” Aletha assured her wryly. “We didn’t know it would work on anima
ls either until a few days ago.”
Becca twisted in my arms to look over my shoulder. “So, the horse is smart too?”
“It didn’t work quite as well on him,” I confided in a whisper. “But he certainly got smarter.”
“Oh.” She pondered on that for a moment. “I guess it works better on cats.”
“Seems so,” I agreed. I wondered at this conversation, as in her shoes, I’d be asking very different questions. But maybe she couldn’t handle anything too serious right now and so chose to talk about different things instead. I decided not to push her. She’d been under too much pressure already.
“What’s your full name?” she asked me.
“Riicshaden,” I responded promptly.
Becca started, jaw dropping. “Like that famous soldier who was locked up in a crystal?”
I was just as startled. That story had made it all the way down here? “You’ve heard of me?”
“That’s you?! How’d you get out of the crystal?”
“A friend of mine got me out,” I answered, deciding on the simple version of the story. “He’s an Earth Mage, so it was easy for him.”
“Oh. Have you been out a long time?”
“Almost two years, now.” It didn’t take a telepath to see what she was thinking. I grinned at her. “You’re really impressed now, aren’t you, ‘cause you have a legend to guard you.”
She nodded dumbly, still speechless.
I just chuckled, my ego stroked that she really had thought that.
“Hey, illustrious soldier, if you don’t pay better attention, you’re going to slip on these rocks and head feet-first into the ocean,” Aletha drawled.
I shot her a dirty look. “You just had to take me down a rung, didn’t you?”
“At the rate you were going, your head would’ve swelled too much to fit into the cave,” she pointed out evenly. Her eyes were laughing at me, though.
Aish. With friends like her, who needed enemies?
“Captain Shad?” Becca ventured in a cautious tone.
“Just Shad is fine, sweetheart,” I assured her. “What is it?”
“Um, you said I’m a mage? Do you know what kind?”
I paused in my tracks and met her eyes. “Yes. You’re a Weather Mage.”
“A Weather Mage,” she repeated in a breathless whisper. “Am I powerful?”
“Amazingly so. Becca, listen to me, as this is very important for you to understand. You are the last Weather Mage. You are the only one in the world.” She looked like I’d smacked her in the back of the head. “Do you understand me? If you are lost, the world will never have another Weather Mage again. Do not, whatever you do, put yourself in danger. Always call for me if there’s trouble. We cannot lose you.”
“I’m the only one?” she repeated, face wrinkled into a bemused frown. “But I thought there were lots of mages.”
“Not all mages are the same,” Aletha explained. “Each mage is capable of only one thing, one type of magic. They can’t do everything like witches or wizards can. You know that magic is inherited?”
She cocked her head. “It is? So my family can be mages too?”
“No, just you,” I corrected her. “You’re the only one in your family with that talent. But it’s very possible for your children and grandchildren to be Weather Mages.”
“Oh.” She chewed on her bottom lip as she thought about that.
Hmm. We might have given her a little too much information at once. It had to be a lot for a child to take in. Most adults needed time to adjust after hearing all of that.
I focused instead on getting us under cover.
The sea was cooler than I’d expected it to be in high summer, and the mist that hit us as we walked close to the shoreline felt like small icicles stabbing into my skin. I shifted Becca from my left side to my right to avoid getting her drenched from all the spray. Aletha had been correct that the rocks were slippery, and I had to watch where I put my feet. Tail, naturally, navigated it without trouble. The two horses trailing after us did slip a little with their hooves scrambling to find purchase. But they managed to get through the roughest spots and back onto the gravelly beach without breaking a leg.
Becca made that squirming motion that all children did when they wanted down, so I obliged and set her back on her feet. She gave me a shy smile, pink in her cheeks, before she darted forward. “This way,” she encouraged over her shoulder.
Aletha murmured from the side of her mouth, “I detect a case of hero-worship developing.”
“Kid has good instincts,” I praised with a cocky smirk.
With a long sigh, she just shook her head. “Poor girl. She doesn’t realize yet what she’s getting into.”
Becca had carved something of a niche into her cave, and it felt strangely welcoming inside. She had a small fire going near the entrance, its flames burning low to avoid letting much smoke out. A shallow depression in the cave floor had been filled with water so that she had her own miniature pool to store fish in. It looked rather empty at the moment, with only one fish swimming lazily about, but she had three cooking on the embers. Before doing anything else, she promptly turned them over with a practiced turn of the wrist, preventing them from scorching.
A little further inside was a nest of blankets and a traveling cloak, all laid out neatly. She had a dress hanging from a rocky protrusion, and it looked damp, suggesting she’d just washed it. I approved of these cleanly habits. At least she’d been raised well.
“Come in,” she encouraged us. “There’s a place at the back where it goes wide,” her arms stretched out in illustration, “and the horses can fit there.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. “Cloud, go with Aletha.”
Aletha led them to the very back, their hooves making sharp clattering noises against the smooth rock underfoot. I snatched my bedroll and saddlebags from Cloud’s back as he passed me and looked around for a place to settle for the night. I didn’t want to get too far from that cave entrance, as someone needed to keep a look out.
To my surprise, Becca went directly to Tail and sank down onto her haunches to put them at eye level. “Hello. I’m Becca,” she greeted.
Tail flicked an ear and bobbed his head to return the greeting.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him in genuine concern. “Do you want some fish?”
The cat visibly brightened. Becca didn’t need a translator to understand that expression and instantly scooped a piece of fish from the fire and presented it to him.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. An instant friendship had just been forged. No matter how much human intelligence he might have had, it didn’t replace his instincts. To cats, whoever fed them was a friend. Of course, by doing that, she’d just volunteered to be that cat’s personal chef for the rest of her life. After all, he had to blackmail me into cooking for him. She was an easier mark.
He daintily devoured the fish in quick bites, picking it completely clean. I kept an eye on them as I settled in. Becca seemed content for the moment to just sit there and watch him eat, occasionally reaching over to stroke his head.
I could hear the purrs from over here.
She had to be starved for human interaction. A week was a long time to go without having anyone to speak to. No wonder she naturally gravitated to the cat.
When Tail finished, he climbed into her lap, rubbing his head against her chest, still purring. Becca openly beamed at him and started scratching under his chin, which really got the purrs going.
Aletha returned with her bedroll and saddlebags slung over a shoulder, took in the sight of the happy Tail, and cocked her head in question.
‘She fed him,’ I mouthed carefully.
Her mouth formed an ‘ahhhh’ of understanding, eyes crinkled up in amusement.
I paused in midstep on seeing that expression. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen from her for some days now, ever since our late-night conversation.
Aletha watched the he
artwarming scene for a few moments longer before turning and making her own spot. I kept an eye on her as I did the same. I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted, or how to go about getting it. And while I was glad to have found Becca, having her here did complicate the situation somewhat.
We still had some food supplies of our own, so we brought them out and started making dinner. Becca hovered near my elbow, her eyes glued to the vegetables and bread that I sliced up. But then, after a solid week of nothing but fish to eat, she would probably give her eye teeth for some variety.
We ate in companionable silence, with her consuming anything we handed over. This lack of curiosity on her part felt strange to me. Did she not want to know where we would go and what we do after this? Or did she feel that she couldn’t ask for some reason?
Aletha must have thought the same things, as she ventured, “Becca, we’ll leave here in the morning and take you to Strae Academy.”
She froze with her mouth full of food. Carefully swallowing, she glanced at both of us, eyes wide with unease. “Where’s that?”
“The very northern part of Chahir, the Isle of Strae,” I answered. What did that expression mean? “It’s a new magical academy that King Vonlorisen had built. The Earth Mage I mentioned earlier, the one that got me out of the crystal? He’s the one that built it, actually, and he runs it now. He’ll take good care of you and make sure you’re trained.”
“So you’ll guard me until then?” Her voice shook as she asked.
It was the nuance behind ‘until then’ that cued me in. She’d been told a guardian was coming to protect her, and I’d said I would do whatever it took to keep her safe, but at no point had I told her how long that would last. Did she think I was temporary? That I was only here long enough to take her to a safe place?
