by S. W. Clarke
He swung his head, knocking against his stall door and making a racket with his kicking and whinnies.
I stepped back before he could kick a hole in the door and catch me in the kneecap. “Listen, I know you wanted treats—”
The sound of my voice only got him angrier. He whinnied again, the same ear-piercing noise that forced my hands over my ears. Even then, I could hear him banging against the door. And I could see the whites above his dark eyes as he swung his head around toward me.
A hand fell on my shoulder, yanking me back. “Away from the horse, girl, before it bites your head off.”
Chapter Fifteen
I spun, found myself face to face with a woman almost as tall as the horse. And she was staring down at me just as imperiously as he had.
All at once, I remembered her. She’d been standing outside Umbra’s office yesterday.
She let my shoulder go. “Gods, what do you think you’re doing?”
I rubbed my skin, where her fingers would surely leave marks. She had some crazy grip strength. “Saying hello.” What did it look like?
“Not that one.” She shook her head, her shellacked ponytail swinging behind her head. “Never that one.”
I glanced back at Beauty, who’d settled. He was studying the woman behind me; a low rumble emerged from his throat. “Why not that one?”
“He’s wild, never been ridden.” She reached her fingers out toward him, and he snapped at her before she pulled them back. “And mean as hell.”
I took a step back from the horse. “Why is he here?”
“We capture the wild horses, break them to be ridden. This one’s a particular case—but I get them all to submit in the end.”
I didn’t dare take my eyes off Beauty as I spoke to her. “Do you train them?”
“I try to. Usually I succeed.” She seemed to soften at this admission of her own imperfection. “My name is Quartermistress Farrow, and I teach the students here to ride.”
I glanced around at the other (less angry) horses in the barn. All at once, a gut sense rose in me—I need to be here. “Well, I’m a new student. Will you be teaching me?”
The quartermistress appraised me with clear skepticism. “That depends. Who are you, then?”
“Clementine Cole.” And when that got no response, I sighed. “The witch. I’m the witch.” The only witch.
Her eyes narrowed a degree, and she nodded. I was getting used to that response. “Witches used to ride brooms.”
I hadn’t missed that she’d used the past tense. Because witches were a thing of the past—until me.
“We do,” I said in the present tense. “I’m learning to ride one in my flight class.” Of course, learning was a generous word. More like running in circles, but tomato, tomah-to, right?
“The horses are for those students who cannot fly.” Her eyes were still narrowed on me, but she didn’t look wary. More curious, like Beauty. “So you’re the witch. I have not seen a witch in thirty years.”
I offered a faux-curtsey. “Well, now the dry spell is ended.”
Her hard lips shifted into a small, almost invisible smile.
Ah, at least I’m charming to somebody.
The quartermistress nodded me toward a stall. “Have you ever touched a horse?”
I shook my head, and she led me to the stall door. There, a white horse—a mare she called Siren—regarded me with pale blue eyes and a soft, gentle nicker. A completely different reaction than Beauty had given me.
The quartermistress watched as I extended my fingers toward Siren, and the mare rose to meet me with gentle nibbles. “This one’s too sweet for her own good.”
I slid my hand under Siren’s chin. Her velvety mouth wobbled as though I was tickling her. “Why’s that?”
“She knows how to sweet-talk you out of all your treats. She’d already be fat with them if I didn’t keep an eye on her.” I felt a nudge on my arm, and the quartermistress extended a small carrot to me. “Go ahead, give her one of these. Keep your palm flat—even a gentle one might get you with those teeth.”
I did as she instructed, balancing the carrot on the flat of my palm as I lifted it to Siren. A small nervousness swirled through me, though it was such a simple thing: giving a horse a treat. And yet this animal was enormous. She was powerful. She seemed to me uncommonly smart.
Maybe she was. After all, my cat could talk.
As Siren ate the carrot off my hand, the quartermistress nodded. “You’re good with them.”
I glanced at her, as though looking straight on would reveal something to make her change her mind. “You think?”
“Yes, I think.” The quartermistress passed me another carrot. She observed me in silence as I fed Siren, and then ventured my hand under her jaw. Almost by instinct, I began scratching.
And, unexpectedly, the thought came that I didn’t mind horses. I’d never really gotten the chance to know before, because I’d never met one. And that was one thing I relished: new experiences. Finding out what the world held in its enormous, spinning insides.
And man, did I ever find the spot. Siren’s head rose, her eyes closing as I scratched and scratched.
“Clementine,” the quartermistress said, “have you ever encountered a horse?”
I lowered my hand. “Not before today.”
“You’re a natural with them.” She paused. “After their first semester, students are typically given assignments on campus. We prefer to give them jobs they’d actually enjoy.”
I turned my gaze onto her, waiting.
“We could use another hand in the stables in the spring. It wouldn’t be a pretty job—you’d be mucking manure, brushing the horses…”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said at once, surprising myself. Why did I offer so quickly? That wasn’t like me. It was something about using my hands, my body. I’d always enjoyed physical work; I had a tendency toward motion. And this kind of job would let me release a lot of pent-up energy from sitting in class with Milquetoast.
This time, Quartermistress Farrow’s smile wasn’t tiny, or nearly invisible. “Keep out of trouble in the meantime, and I’ll consider it.”
“Sure.” I glanced back at the black horse. “Do you give lessons?”
The quartermistress had noticed my glance. “Yes, but not on that one.”
I refocused on her. “What’s his name?”
A cloud passed over her face, her eyes fixed on the black stallion. “Noir.”
“Black in French,” I murmured.
She affixed me with new eyes. “You speak French?”
“No. I took it in high school.” There was a difference between learning to count to ten and actually speaking French. “I remember the colors of the rainbow. Not much else.”
She exhaled with vague amusement. “You know, my best friend as a girl was a witch.”
I blinked, focusing on her. “She was?”
“Yes. She was very kind—a better person than me.”
“What happened to her?”
Quartermistress Farrow ran a hand over Siren’s mane. “She’s dead.”
Shortly after, I left the quartermistress at the stables and headed to the library. She didn’t seem as keen to talk after I asked her about her childhood friend. And then I’d made the mistake of shifting the conversation to Noir. In fact, she’d very nearly ignored me as I asked where he’d come from, and why he’d been named that.
Note to self: don’t ask Farrow about the black stallion.
But that didn’t mean I was going to stop asking questions. Like I said: once a question entered my mind, it only intensified until it was answered. And what better place to get my questions answered than a building full of books?
Besides, I was late.
That morning, Eva had told me the way to the library before I’d left the dorm. She was a naturally early riser, but preferred to spend her mornings meditating if she didn’t have anywhere to be.
Another thing I’d never known—or would ha
ve expected—was that fae meditate. Well, why not? They probably had existential struggles just like the rest of us. Not beauty struggles, I thought. My roommate woke up as beautiful as she would ever be, which would have made a lesser human jealous.
Not me. I was absolutely a superior, enlightened nineteen-year-old woman who experienced not one bit of envy over my fae roommate’s unassailable physical perfection.
Not one bit.
Across campus, I found the library with ease; it was exactly as Eva had said: “the second-largest tree on campus, after the headmistress’s office.”
Well, I thought as I stared up at it, when your school is hundreds of years old, you’ve got find space for a lot of books.
And I mean a lot. This tree was a behemoth.
Before I could start up the stairs, a horn sounded. And I don’t just mean a bugle. I mean a full-on, Middle Earth-style, riders-of-Rohan blast from a horn the size of a bathtub.
I spun in the direction it had come from. All motion on the grounds seemed to have ceased, the other students pausing mid-step or—in the case of the fae—in midair. I didn’t know what was going on, but I sensed I should follow everyone else’s lead and keep still.
A minute later, hooves rumbled across the ground. They were nearing.
A group of six riders on horseback galloped into the clearing from the direction of the stables; the sight of them set my nerves aflame. They were clad in cloaks, their hair streaming behind them. Some were men, some women, but I didn’t know most. I did recognize Siren as the mare at the fore, her entire bright body extended to carry her rider as far and fast as she could.
The group blitzed by me in a moment, and I stepped back against the tree trunk as all six passed and disappeared down the path and into the trees toward the academy’s entrance.
What was that?
From far above me, a familiar voice said, “Those are the guardians. There’s been a ripple somewhere in the world.”
My eyes lifted, and I found Red the fae floating twenty feet above me.
The guardians. A ripple.
Somewhere, someone was being kidnapped. Someone was experiencing what I had experienced.
As I stared down the path after the group on horseback, I knew I would never forget the first moment I had seen the guardians. And a new conviction entered my mind. No—not a conviction. It felt as unassailable as a premonition.
Someday, I would be among them.
“How often do they succeed?” I asked Red.
“Not often,” he said, his voice softer now. “Not often at all.”
The horn had drifted into silence, and the chirping of birds resumed. The students continued on their way.
I wondered when the guardians would be back.
I turned back to the library. For now, this was my reality.
The library had an unexpectedly humble entrance. Up the staircase, I passed through a single door with a six-foot-high frame. Inside, the entrance was tight; a long counter stretched perpendicular to me, a woman seated behind it with a book held in front of her face.
Around her sat piles of unkempt tomes almost to the ceiling, which itself could only have been eight feet high. This space was almost as small as my bedroom back in DC.
I stepped up to the counter and was about to introduce myself when the woman lowered her book and gazed at me through her black-rimmed glasses.
“Professor Milqueto—” I began, then stopped. “Professor Milonakis,” I said so loudly you’d think the volume of my voice could drown out what came before.
She flinched away a little too violently; I hadn’t been that loud. “Do not yell, Clementine Cole. This is a library.” Given the way she set the book down on the counter and the hardness of her eyes on me, I knew she’d figured out my nickname for her.
Really racking up the fans, aren’t you, Clem?
Right,” I offered by way of an apology; I tended to keep my ‘sorries’ close to my chest. And really, this didn’t merit one.
She gave a long, slow blink. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here to meet someone at the library.” I glanced around. “Is this it?”
She let out a breathy, careening chuckle—clearly the laugh of a woman who’d practiced in the mirror and didn’t otherwise get many occasions to laugh. “Oh, heavens no. This is just the circulation desk.”
She pointed. On the far wall, another door sat closed with the promise of unknown quantities of books behind it.
“Oh.” I paused. “And you’re the librarian, too?”
Milonakis narrowed her eyes like she wasn’t sure whether I was insinuating something about her fitness to work in a library. Though the truth was, she struck me as the perfect librarian. “Yes. As you’ll learn, the professors and students alike have additional assignments on campus.”
So they were understaffed—which explained why Torsten was my combat instructor.
“Great.” I inclined my head toward the far door. “So just…head that way?”
She gave a slow, dubious nod. “Just head that way.”
As I made for the entrance, she called out, “Clementine?”
I turned and found her with one finger in the air, which she pointed at me like a wand. “The Room of the Ancients is off-limits to first-years.”
“Sure,” I said like I knew which room that was. When she kept staring at me, her finger still pointing, I grabbed the door handle and made a quick exit from the circulation room. That finger gave me chills. Maybe Professor Milquetoast had more spice than I’d thought.
As I let the door close behind me, I took a backward glance at the room I’d just stepped into.
And then I did a double-take.
And then I just stood there like I was about to be the subject of an abduction, gawking up at an alien spaceship descending from the sky with its floodlights directly on me.
Actually, this wasn’t that dissimilar. Because past the stories and stories of circular bookcases ringing the walls all the way up to some three hundred feet above me, another flock of those blue lights were pinging around up there. And their soft light shone down on me.
That phrase came floating back into my head—what I’d heard from one of the wisps: Shadowend. You return to the ancient place.
A half-circle staircase connected one story to the next, with a floor built in at each level for students to pass along the bookcases until they found what they wanted. Each level also bore at least two rolling ladders, which remained fixed to the bookcases.
This wasn’t a library. It was a natural wonder.
And at this time of the morning, the place only had a few students seated in various armchairs and at tables around the ground floor. And they were all studiously bent over their reading.
I also spied another door on the far side of the room. It was tall and elaborately carved, with a rounded top and gold leaf embellishment. I approached without even thinking; I had a thing about closed doors.
But when I came close and set my fingers on the knob, a sudden chill filtered into my fingertips and up through my arm. I jerked my hand away with the strong sense that I’d been repelled by magic.
The Room of the Ancients. No doubt this was it.
“Already getting into trouble?” a voice said from behind me.
I turned and found Aiden North with an armful of books and a sharp-nosed look. “Color me shocked to find you’ve asked me to meet you at six in the morning.”
He lowered his chin. “Actually, it’s six-thirty, and you’re late.”
Chapter Sixteen
Aiden North was my magical history tutor. And he was unequivocally a morning person.
“There’s not a class for magical history?” I asked as we sat at one of the circular tables lining the first floor. He set down the armful of books between us with a thud; no matter, we were the only two students in the library. “Preferably a class that meets at a reasonable time?”
“Us mages learn this stuff in second grade,” he said. With two
words and a flick of his hand, he conjured a pot of steaming tea, two cups, and a plate of biscuits on the table. “So no, there’s no class for what I’m going to teach you.”
I stared at the food. “How did you do that?”
“Conjuration.”
I took a biscuit, bit into it. Delicious. I was starting to hate him less. “But you’re a fire mage. Conjuration is air magic.”
He poured two cups of tea, pushed one toward me. “Doesn’t mean we can’t learn simple air spells, too. I can’t cook salmon like Vickery, but tea and biscuits is easy enough.”
I sipped the tea; it was already pre-sugared to perfection. “So I’m functionally as educated as a seven-year-old?”
He half-shrugged with a You said it look.
“Have you ever tutored anyone before?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said vaguely, masking the rest of his answer with the teacup at his mouth.
I finished off the biscuit and surveyed their spines of the books. I lifted the top book away, blowing dust off it. Whatever was written on the front might have been Greek to me. “This one isn’t even written in English.”
He lowered the cup. “That’s right. It’s in Old Faerish.”
I glanced up at him. “Does that mean there’s a New Faerish?”
“Well, it’s just called Faerish.”
“Is that the faefolk language?”
His lips curled. “Good guess, pupil.”
I set the book down with a thud. “If you’re going to be my history tutor, let’s set down some ground rules.”
“Isn’t that my job?”
“No—this is a partnership.” I gestured between him and me. “We’re equals, which means no calling me ‘pupil.’”
He sat back in his chair. “How are we equals?”
“Because I’m going to tutor you, too.”
One eyebrow raised. “In what?”
I clasped both hands atop the table. “In how to be a normal human being.”
He snorted, though a glance of worry did shoot across his features. I had clearly hit on something. So I went with it.
