Spell Hunter fr-1

by R. J. Anderson

“All right,” said Knife, “I’ve finished breakfast-now will you let me go?”

  “Not yet,” said Paul, pulling the curtains aside to let in the dim morning light. “This is my mother’s shopping day. We’ll need to wait until she leaves.”

  “I don’t see why. You could just let me out right now.”

  “I know, but I’d prefer to go with you a little way at least. Make sure you get back home all right.”

  Knife blew out her breath in exasperation; for all his politeness, this human was as stubborn as Thorn. “I don’t want to wait any longer. I have things to do.”

  “It won’t be much longer.”

  Restless, Knife paced around the breakfast tray, flexing her injured wing. She could still feel its ragged edge, but it no longer hurt every time she moved. Which was a mercy, because it was bad enough being grounded without having to live with constant pain as well…

  Then a thought occurred to her: Was Paul in pain? Not that it made a difference-he had struck her, and deserved none of her pity. But his face looked especially drawn this morning, his skin sallow and his forehead beaded with sweat. Perhaps she had judged him too harshly.

  “You should lie down,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, not wanting him to think she was softening.

  He wiped his brow on his sleeve, and as his hand fell she saw that it was shaking. “I just need some fresh air,” he said. “I haven’t been outside for two days.”

  “Paul!” came Beatrice’s voice from the other side of the door.

  Paul opened his mouth to reply, then looked startled and shut it again.

  “She almost had you there,” murmured Knife.

  “I’m just going into town, dear. I’ll be back by lunch-time.” She paused, waiting for a reply she must have known by now not to expect. “I’ll bring you back something to read. Good-bye,” she said, and the sound of her footsteps receded.

  “I thought humans were supposed to be kind to their mothers,” said Knife to Paul, who pretended not to hear. He opened the window and stuck his head out.

  “Right, she’s gone,” he said a few moments later, wheeling around. “Let’s go.”

  Knife jumped onto the seat beside him, looping her arm around a steel post for support. Paul barely gave her time to sit down before he began to move again, steering the chair across the room and out into the hallway.

  Opening the front door was simple enough, but they had to take two runs at the frame before they cleared it. Then as Paul’s chair bumped down the wooden ramp and onto the gravel drive, Knife thought her teeth would rattle out of her head. Even when they reached the smoother paving of the road, her jaw still ached.

  “May I go now?” she asked, a little peevishly.

  “Yes,” said Paul, gliding to a stop. “You can go. Sorry to have kept you.”

  Knife hesitated. There was an artificial calm about his manner she did not trust. “Where are you going?” she asked, sliding off the seat and leaping to the ground beside the chair.

  “Not far. Just up the road.” He forced a smile. “I could use the exercise.”

  “Oh,” said Knife.

  “Well, I’m glad to have met you, if only for a little while. Can you get home all right from here?”

  Knife curled her fingers about the unfinished hilt of her dagger, feeling the metal’s hardness against her palm. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Right, then,” said Paul, too cheerfully. “I’ll just go ahead.” His hands stroked the wheels, and the chair rocked into motion, picking up speed as it rolled down the lane. “Good-bye, Knife,” he called back over his shoulder.

  She had thought she would be glad to see him go. But the farther away Paul went the more Knife’s uneasiness grew. She debated a moment, then decided that she would follow him a little way and see where he was going. Not for his sake, of course; just for her own curiosity.

  Instinctively she spread her wings, then grimaced and folded them again. No chance of following him that way. She would just have to run, and hope he did not get too far ahead of her. Knife broke into a trot, then threw caution aside and began sprinting after him.

  She had followed Paul only a short way down the road when he surprised her by turning the chair away from the pavement, bumping down a grassy incline toward the nearby wood. A path led into the trees, but it was rocky and overgrown, barely wide enough for Paul’s chair. Still, he forced his way onward with such determination that Knife had to scurry to keep up with him.

  Eventually the forest thinned, and they entered a clearing where a weed-ringed pool lay at the bottom of a slope, half hidden by stooping elms. Knife looked about, frowning. Why had he come here?

  “I’ve always loved this wood,” Paul said aloud, startling her. “It was my favorite place as a kid. I tried to build a house in that tree.” He pointed to the stoutest of the elms.

  “You knew I was here?” said Knife.

  His mouth bent wryly. “I guessed you might come along. But you’re going to be disappointed. There’s really nothing here to see.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  He shrugged, his eyes sliding away from hers. “Just a whim. I wanted to look at the old place again.”

  Knife nodded distractedly. She walked to the top of the slope, damp earth squashing between her toes. If Paul was telling the truth, then humans were even stranger and more impractical than she’d thought. He’d had enough of a struggle just getting down the hill-how did he think he was going to get back up?

  “Knife?” said Paul. “It’s all right, you can go.” Then, with a hint of desperation: “Just-go now. Please.”

  Knife did not look back; her eyes were fixed on the pool. It was perhaps thirty crow-lengths wide, and so murky that her eyes could not penetrate its surface.

  “I used to swim here when I was young,” said Paul, rolling up behind her. He sounded resigned; he seemed to have realized that she had no intention of leaving. “It wasn’t half so muddy then-or perhaps I just didn’t care how muddy it was.” He gave the wheels another push, and the silver throne lurched past her.

  “Paul,” said Knife sharply. “You’re too close!”

  For the rest of her life she would never forget the look he gave her then. There was pity in it, and a touch of regret; but on the whole it was a look of terrifying serenity. “Yes,” he said, and with a powerful thrust of both arms he propelled himself straight down the slope.

  His wheels hit the mud at the pool’s edge, slowed, stuck fast. Paul toppled out of the chair and hit the oily water with a splash. His legs were dead weight, and he made no effort to move his arms. He simply relaxed into the pool…

  …and was gone.

  Knife stared at the ripples spreading outward across the gloomy water, the last flurry of bubbles as Paul’s bright hair sank beneath the surface. Her throat closed up, and a dull pain spread beneath her rib cage.

  There was nothing she could do. With her crippled wing she couldn’t fly for help, and she was far too tiny to rescue him by herself…

  Knife’s shoulders slumped. She turned away, took one step-then spun around, hurtled down the slope, and dove straight into the pool.

  Her hands swept circles through the grainy water, searching the spot where he had sunk, but touched nothing. She broke the surface for a gasping breath and dove deeper, flailing in all directions; but she snatched at emptiness, and when she came up again she found nothing but black water running from her hands.

  One more time, she pledged silently. Come on, go! Again she dove, as deep as she could, kicking a little sideways this time. Her left arm sliced down through the water And her hand closed on something soft. Paul’s shirt. She grabbed it with both hands and hauled, legs thrashing, every muscle strained to its limit. But even as she struggled, she knew it was hopeless: She could never hope to lift him so much as a beetle-length, let alone drag him to the surface. She had to let go, before she drowned as well.

  Yet something in her refused to give up. She tugged again, fiercely, as her vision
filled with sparkling lights. A million tiny moths fluttered beneath her skin, and she felt as though her lungs were bursting. Was this death?

  Still clutching Paul’s shirt, she gave one last kick-and shot upward, shattering the pool’s surface. She flung her head back and gulped air, then scissored her legs, propelling herself and the limp body in her grip toward the shore.

  Her feet touched bottom almost at once. She stood up and dragged Paul through the shallows to the edge of the pool. His face was spattered with mud, eyes closed and mouth hanging open. Pulling him as far as she could up the shore, she wrenched him onto his side and began to pound his back. He lay motionless as she thumped him, and she feared that she had reached him too late. Then suddenly he coughed, and water gushed from his mouth.

  She waited until he had stopped coughing before rolling him over again. His eyes remained closed, but when she laid a hand on his chest she could feel his breathing, ragged at first, but growing deeper. She slapped his cheeks. “Paul. Paul! Can you hear me?”

  He did not respond. With her smallest finger she wiped the slime from his lashes, looking for some glimmer of consciousness beneath those lids. “Paul, please-”

  His cheeks puffed out in a last, weak cough; he stirred, and opened his eyes.

  “Aaaah!”

  Alarmed, Knife snatched her hands away from his face. Only then did she realize what had made him cry out, and she stared at her filth-spattered palms in disbelief.

  “You,” croaked Paul. “You’re-”

  “I’m big,” said Knife blankly.

  “You’re human,” said Paul in a voice husky with wonder, and his cold fingers brushed her cheek.

  Blood surged into her face; she jerked away from the touch. “I am not!”

  “Your hair…” He lifted a strand. “It’s blonde, instead of white. And your eyes look…lighter. Sort of gray.”

  “Stop it.” She slapped his hand away. “I may be your size, but I am not human. It must be a trick of the light.”

  “Then where are your wings?”

  Slowly Knife reached back and felt between her shoulders. “They’ll come back,” she said, fighting to keep the uncertainty from her voice. “As soon as this-whatever just happened-wears off.”

  Paul looked about to object, but was interrupted by another fit of coughing. “Magic,” he said weakly when he had finished. “You know, that thing you aren’t supposed to have?”

  The reproach in his tone snapped her back to herself. “Paul McCormick,” she exploded, “you are the most fly-brained, stone-stubborn, rabbit-witted-”

  He gave a rasping laugh. “You dove in after me. What does that make you?” He moved to sit up, but she pressed his shoulders down with her hands.

  “Don’t you dare. You’ll stay right here until we’re both rested, and until I get your promise-no, your oath-that you’ll never do anything like that again.”

  He glared up at her, rebellious; she stared down at him with equal determination. At last he turned his face aside. “Fine,” he muttered.

  She caught him by the jaw, forcing him to look back at her. “Swear,” she said.

  “I swear never to try and drown myself in front of you again.”

  “That isn’t enough. You know what I want. Say it.”

  “That’s all you’ll get!” He struggled against her grasp, then fell back panting.

  “Why did you do it in the first place?” demanded Knife. “If you really wanted to die-”

  “It’s not my fault you wouldn’t leave! Anyway, how was I to know you could change size? You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t lie,” Knife said stiffly, letting him go. “I’ve never done magic before. I didn’t know I had it in me.” She stood up, wringing water from her sodden tunic. “And now I’ve probably used it all up, saving your miserable human neck.”

  Paul was silent.

  “How much time do we have until your mother gets back?” Knife put a hand to her hair and let it drop, disgusted. “I can’t believe you used to swim in that hole.”

  “Neither can I. And she won’t be home for a couple of hours.”

  “Then we’ll have enough time to get you back to the House. And if we’re lucky, she’ll never guess what you tried to do today.”

  “How long will you…stay like that?” Paul asked, raising himself up on his elbows with difficulty.

  “I don’t know. So we’d better hurry.” She strode to the edge of the pool and yanked his wheelchair free of the mud. “Come on.”

  It was hard going back up the hill, though not as difficult as Knife had feared. She might be the size of a human, but Paul’s shocked reaction when she picked him up and lifted him into the chair made plain that she was stronger than an ordinary human woman would be. So while she had to put all her weight behind the wheeled throne in order to push it up the slope, she did not worry that her strength would fail-only that her muddy feet might slip and send both her and Paul tumbling to the bottom again.

  When they reached the crest, Knife paused to catch her breath, rubbing her aching palms against her thighs. All the way up the slope she had kept her head down, focused doggedly on the task at hand; now at last she could relax and see how far they had come.

  “We made it,” said Paul shakily.

  Knife looked up, shielding her eyes against the sunlight. High overhead two crows were circling, but for the first time in her life, she could watch their flight without fear. A squirrel scampered across her path, all soft fur and bright eyes. Trees, grass, wildflowers-everything around her seemed lovelier and more meaningful than ever before, and it was hard for Knife not to wonder if this might be the way the world was meant to be seen. After all, it was a lot easier to appreciate a landscape when you weren’t worried that something in it was going to kill you.

  But there was no time for sightseeing; they had to get back to the House. She turned to Paul, only to find that he had already wheeled his chair back onto the road and was pushing it homeward with brisk, determined strokes. She had to run to catch up with him.

  Once they reached the House, Knife fetched the garden hose from the side of the house and sprayed the chair, Paul, and herself until she had washed away all trace of mud. Then they went inside, where there were towels to fetch, laundry to gather, and wet floors to mop; and by the time Paul agreed they had done enough and took himself off to a hot bath, Knife was more than ready for one herself.

  Yet even as she lay in the McCormicks’ upstairs tub with the warm water lapping over her skin, Knife could not relax. The feeling of the porcelain against her shoulders reminded her of her missing wings, and all the worries she had tried to suppress bubbled back to the surface of her mind. She might not be the first faery since the Sundering to inadvertently cast a spell, but she was surely the first to turn herself human. What if she ended up stuck this way? Or worse, what if she shrank to her natural size, but her wings never came back?

  Hastily Knife pulled the plug and stood up. Her tunic and breeches were still damp, but she wrung them out as best she could before wrestling herself into them. She might not know what would happen to her next, but when the magic wore off-if it wore off-at least she would not be caught unprepared.

  By the time she made her way down the stairs, Paul was waiting at the bottom. “Sorry about all that,” he said, not quite looking at her. “You can go now.”

  “Back to the Oak? Not at this size,” she replied. “Besides, I’m not going anywhere until you-”

  A tingling chill ran through her body as she spoke, and the room reeled around her. When her dizziness subsided she lifted her head, to see Paul staring down at her from a mountainous distance.

  It’s worn off, she thought, her relief oddly muted by disappointment. She struggled to her feet-and froze as something rustled behind her. Her wings lifted, spreading wide…

  “Great Gardener,” she whispered.

  “Well,” said Paul in a flat voice, “that solves one problem.”

  Excitement rippled through Kn
ife, making her lighter than air. She leaped from the floor and soared toward the ceiling, ducking the light fixture as she swooped past Paul into the corridor. Rolling and twisting, she tested her wings from every angle, then turned a somersault and pulled herself up to a hovering stop, giddy with delight.

  Then she caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror. Her wings might have returned to her whole, but they had also changed. They seemed paler now, more fragile; less like paper, and more like glass. And now that the first thrill of flight had passed, she could feel that her wing muscles were not as strong as they had been. Already her shoulders ached, and keeping herself suspended in the air was an effort.

  But even so, she was flying. And that meant that she was still the Queen’s Hunter, free to return to the Oak and take up her duties. It was more than she had dreamed possible, and as she spiraled down to land on the end of the banister, Knife smiled.

  Paul smiled back, but his eyes remained somber, and Knife’s happiness drained away as she realized how he must feel. What would it be like to be broken beyond hope of healing, and have to watch someone else celebrate being made whole?

  “Tell me,” she said quietly.

  “Tell you what?” He swung the chair around and began rolling back toward his bedroom. Knife sprang into the air and followed.

  “Back there,” she persisted as she landed on the top of the wardrobe, “at the pool. Why did you try to kill yourself?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No,” said Knife. “And there are a few other things I don’t understand. Why won’t you talk to your parents? Are you angry at-”

  “No!” He spun the chair away from her. Knife launched herself from the wardrobe and bounced onto the corner of his bed.

  “Look at me!” she insisted.

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Maybe not, but you will.” She stalked to the edge of the mattress, as close to Paul as she could get without touching him. “I saved your life today. You owe me.”

  “Fine. What do you want? More knife blades?”

  “No.” Although the offer was tempting. “I want to understand.”