by Jessica Daw
For the next few weeks, every day for as long as I’d tolerate it, we tested different magic methods. It wasn’t a matter of a minute to try a method, but of hours. I tried staffs, inscribing symbols, weaving, dancing, making charms, tokens, summoning spirits, eating things like tiny metal or wood shavings. Nothing really called to me. Still, it was interesting, and, as promised, I got to ride Rune every day. The feel of the wind on my face—the mere sight of blue sky—made my heart race and I was sure that if someone cut me I would bleed gold and glowing.
The isbjørn came, after insisting as doggedly as my maid Dagmar ever had that I wear three more layers than I needed, in spite of the enchantments he helped me renew on my parka, which I was also required to wear. He always ran alongside Rune, keeping pace with the animal who had developed an inordinate fondness for my isbjørn and probably would have killed himself trying to keep up with the much faster shifter. After that, we went on daily rides/runs, always side by side. By the end of each day, I was bone-tired and fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.
We continued cooking together—we had to eat, after all. He could eat certain human foods, though he usually had meat or fish as well. I took delight in reminding him of his oh-so-serious promise that he’d help me with nothing when we first arrived. He usually limited his reaction to rolling his eyes and saying it wasn’t too late, though once his reply was to turn my own trick on my and singe all the hairs on my arms. Though, to his credit, he did mix up and enchant a salve to heal the burns on my skin. Which he accompanied with a lecture on wearing my wards, and I began more consistently wearing at least my pendant ward, where most of the basic protection spells were stored in a large emerald.
One day, after being gone on what I’d thought was a hunting trip all day, he returned with a stack of books. “Your education has to continue,” he said by way of explanation. After that, I added an hour or two of studying into my daily routine in the morning. I did it alone at first, then one day while I was reading my books he came in, his explanation limited to, “I helped you build the bookcase.” Then he’d flopped down next to my fire, crackling happily, and told me to read aloud.
One morning, in the middle of an intent discussion about education among all classes, I realized I was happy. Really, truly happy, happier than I’d ever been in my whole life.
“What?” he asked.
“What do you mean, what?” I returned.
“You’re wearing a big, goofy grin and I want to assure you that whatever you’re laughing at me about is completely in error.”
“I’m not laughing.” I bit my lip, and then decided to try honesty. “I’m just . . . happy.”
His gray eyes studied me. “Here? With me?”
“Yes, but don’t get a big head about it, or your fur will be sadly singed.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lena
“You eat so much.” I sat next to him, fiddling with a brittle piece of dill.
“I’m hungry,” the isbjørn replied without lifting his head from the soup he lapped like a dog.
“But no human eats as much as you.”
“I’m not a human.”
“Yes you are.”
He looked up then, but only because the bowl (a mixing bowl, as an average soup bowl had to be refilled four or five times) was clean. “The reason fully shifting is so difficult is because your whole body shifts. Stomach included.”
“Then why aren’t you eating a deer carcass?”
He made a face. “I don’t like eating deer carcass. Your food is infinitely superior.”
Despite my best efforts, I smiled like a child who’d just been given a new toy.
“Lena, it’s not a very high compliment to be told that your food is superior to a bloody deer,” he said dryly.
“Infinitely superior,” I corrected him.
“And you were terrible before I taught you.”
“Isbjørn, it is bad manners to give a compliment and then try to take it back.”
“And it’s bad manners to act like my tutor and lecture me.”
“I can lecture you if I want to. Especially when you deserve it.”
He didn’t reply, staring at my hands.
“What?” I looked down and gasped. The dill, that had been dry and gray, looked fresh and green and vibrant, tiny yellow blossoms on its tips.
“I think we’ve discovered your method.”
It was like I’d suddenly hit my stride. After weeks and weeks of testing all sorts of methods, none of which had worked effectively, learning small spell after small spell and struggling to do each one, it was incredible to find out that I actually had a strength. I worked with plants. I was good with plants.
What had been cooking lessons turned into magic lessons. Our rides became expeditions to find whatever grew in the harsh land surrounding our castle, and we had more success than I would have expected in the depths of winter. The isbjørn even disappeared one day and returned with packets of seeds and bundles of dried herbs and even a bunch of withered carrots.
I learned more with the isbjørn than I ever had with my absurdly expensive tutors. I got quite good at rejuvenating mostly dead plants, and grew a little carrot plant (the isbjørn helped with the bubble of warmth that needed to be maintained around it, but I even learned how to do that myself), and setting things on fire—my personal favorite. I experimented with the basics of healing with plants, the isbjørn disappearing again and returning with a book on herbal magic and medicine. We even made a potion that kept me warm when I went out riding.
Which was becoming less and less necessary.
“How long have I been here?” I asked one day.
He thought for a moment. “Nearly five months.”
To my surprise, I felt a pang at the thought of my time with the isbjørn flying so quickly. “It seems much shorter than that.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” His brows furrowed, making a darling little fuzzy ridge. On impulse I reached forward and rubbed that adorable fuzzy ridge. He started and pulled away. “What was that for?”
“When you shove your eyebrows together, there’s this little fuzzy ridge. It’s adorable.”
His expression went strange. “Don’t touch me.”
I cocked my head. “I’ve touched you before.”
“It annoys me,” he huffed.
“Then why haven’t you said anything before? I use you as a pillow when we’re reading, and I’ve ridden on your back on more than one occasion. Besides, we live alone in a castle and spend most of our time together. I’m bound to touch you every now and again.”
He grunted but didn’t respond.
“Why does it bother you? Afraid I’ll make you sick?” I asked with a grin, definitely teasing now.
“Maybe I just don’t want you touching me,” he muttered.
“If you have an aversion to me, you’ve hidden it very well,” I commented, poking his wet black nose to demonstrate my point.
He went cross-eyed to follow my finger, then opened his mouth, like he wanted to wanted to say something. I waited. He closed his mouth.
“Wait. Does this have something to do with why you won’t demanifest in front of me?” My Binding tingled in warning. I’d gotten quite good at dancing around the forbidden topics, thinking of them as the no’s—no name, no place of birth, no station of life, no family, no location, no disobeying about safety, and no leaving the isbjørn. Still, I didn’t think that question counted as fitting into any of those categories.
“Maybe I’m ugly and embarrassed about it,” he suggested in a growling mutter.
“As if I’d care if you were ugly. Though I doubt you are—ugly people aren’t as cocky as you.”
“I am a very talented magician. I could be cocky about that.”
I shook my head. “You’re cocky because you’re handsome. No, that’s not why . . . why won’t you demanifest in front of me?”
“Why do you care all of the sudden? I’ve always been isbjørn with you, all th
e time. Nearly five months.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think of it. Now it’s bothering me. It’s odd. Isn’t it difficult for you to stay isbjørn all the time?” It wasn’t entirely true to say I hadn’t thought of it. I had, but I hadn’t brought it up for one reason or another. It was his strange reaction that was making me press the point.
“Not particularly.”
“Because you’ve been doing it so long now. It was at first, wasn’t it?”
“When I first began fully shifting, which was long before I met you.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventy-five,” he said promptly.
I glared at him.
“Twenty. Almost twenty-one,” he told me much more reluctantly.
“Twenty? How did you get so good at magic?”
His shoulder blades twitched in a shrug. “Practice.”
“Meaning you were rich enough that you didn’t have to farm your own food. Titled?”
“Stop it, Lena.” His gray eyes narrowed fiercely at me.
“Why?”
“Why does it even matter?”
Not meeting his eyes, I said, “When this is over, I don’t want to never see you again. I don’t have any other friends.”
“We’re friends, then?”
I flicked my finger at him, sending a thimble-sized ball of flame at his face. He diverted it and it went out. “Maybe. Are we?”
“I don’t know if we can be friends if you keep lighting me on fire.”
I picked up a dead leaf and blew it towards him, turning it into a fist-sized ball of flame. He diverted it again. I caught it and started spinning it.
Showing off his superior magic abilities, he said a word in Nyputian, dozhd, and it fizzled out into a miniature raincloud, which floated over my head and began dripping on my hair. “Get rid of it,” he instructed.
Concentrating, I pulled out a small bundle of dried grass and tapped the cloud, telling it firmly to “Go away, stupid cloud.”
Isbjørn chuckled at my method.
“It worked,” I said defensively.
“It often does. That doesn’t make it less ridiculous.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, and then remembered something he’d said. “Wait, you said almost twenty-one. Is your birthday coming up?” The Binding squeezed my right arm painfully, making me gasp. “I take it back! I’m sorry!”
“It’s alright, I don’t think that matters.” The Binding released when he said those words. Stupid Binding listened to the isbjørn defending me but not to me defending myself. “April twenty-first.”
“What’s the date today?”
“April second.”
“We only have nineteen days?!” I leapt up, clapping my hands together. “We have to do something great!”
“Are you going to involve me in the planning for my own birthday?” he asked.
“Don’t think I can’t tell you’re pleased, Isbjørn. And I don’t know how I could possibly plan a surprise party when we’re together all the time. Now what do you want to do for your birthday?”
He couldn’t hide his toothy smile. “What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” I said airily. Something I’d read in one of my books on a day when the isbjørn was gone hunting came to mind, combined with the four turrets that stood at the corners of the castle. “Have you ever gone wind gliding?”
His smile widened into something that I was sure would terrify even the bravest of souls. “I can’t say I have.”
The rest of that day was spent reading the rather sparse account of wind gliding in one of the books the isbjørn had brought me, discussing theories and ideas, and drawing up wings until our candles were messy lumps of wax.
We spent the days leading up to the isbjørn’s birthday experimenting with wind. The first few times I tried to direct wind, my heart pounded, dragging my memory back to the day when I’d blown my own mother down the stairs, making my stomach twist in sick knots. When I started crying after my best success yet, the isbjørn connected the dots and became surprisingly sensitive and helpful. With his help, before long I realized I had as much of a talent for manipulating wind as I did for manipulating fire. My stamina to perform magic was improving, to my immense satisfaction.
Along with working with wind, we worked on wing designs. I was tried, once, to tell the isbjørn it would be easier to fly as a man. “I mean, I’m assuming you weigh less as a man.” I specifically didn’t ask a question, to avoid the Binding squeezing.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re going nowhere, Lena. You’re not going to convince me.”
“But it’s going to be so hard to design wings for an isbjørn,” I tried again. It was true, which I thought should have gotten me more points.
“No. Besides which, I’m sturdier as an isbjørn. I’ll be fine if I fall.”
“But what if you fall and I need help landing?”
“You won’t fall.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Lena, trust me. I have full confidence in your ability to bend the wind to do your will. I have much less confidence in your ability to bend me to do your will.”
I grumbled at that comment, but the idea passed. We designed three different sets of wings for each of us, based on our research, which was helped greatly by a book the isbjørn brought after another day of hunting, with beautiful drawings of birds from every clime. I would have become suspicious of his hunting trips, which often included new books or other items we needed, but he always brought back enough dead animals that I shrugged and decided just to be grateful.
The wings were made from fabric and flexible wood and I thought they were beautiful. I’d asked, at one point, if we could change our arms into wings. I knew full-body shifts were dangerously complex, but thought, if it was only arms . . .
He’d smiled, then with magic flipped to a page in the bird book diagramming all the muscles and bones and sinews and veins of a wing. “Memorize these until you know them as well as your own name, and memorize the corresponding parts of your arm, and then you could try shifting.” So we stuck with the fabric and wood wings.
Then it was my isbjørn’s birthday. I rose well before the sun, which was more of a feat in late April, the sunrises earlier every day. Though it really wasn’t much of a feat, since I’d hardly slept the whole night, far too excited.
I snuck downstairs and into the kitchen, starting a fire with ease that would have shocked me my first week or even month at the castle. Once the fire was crackling happily in the fireplace, I went into the pantry and lifted the trap door to the cellar. Lined with ice, the cellar was where the isbjørn kept anything perishable, mostly meat. I found some fresh halibut, smiling to myself as I carried them up the narrow ladder back to the pantry and to the kitchen. The isbjørn had once told me, rather inadvertently, that he could eat his fill while on the hunt. Any meat he brought back, he brought for my sake. Except now I insisted he bring some for himself too because I didn’t like eating by myself all the time. Besides, I knew he preferred cooked meat over raw.
Armed with the halibut, I went back to my fire and seared the fish over it. Once seared, I transferred them to a pot with spiced water and covered it, banking the fire so the pot would simmer. The isbjørn loved braised fish.
With the savory scent of halibut and rosemary filling the kitchen, I opened the book I’d brought with me, flipping to the spell I’d marked earlier. Working quickly, I followed the instructions with militant precision.
If I’d been working the spell with the isbjørn, I would have insisted on explanations as to why the certain ingredients were chosen and certain steps had to be taken, but this was a surprise and asking would defeat the purpose. I could venture a few guesses—the wood was to be used for the energy of the spell, the wildflowers for the beauty, the slips of paper for the form. Despite the isbjørn’s warning against altering spells without being sure what all components were, I made a tiny addition of my own, whispering a fe
w words in Nyputian—it was habit now to use the isbjørn's favored language for spells—and dropping in a bit of string, cut from the end of the string I pulled across the doorway.
I heard him lumbering down the hall and my heart started pounding with excitement. I could always hear him approach now—there wasn’t much else to hear. Crouching, I waited, a huge smile on my face.
He bumped into the string, and barely had time to mutter, “What the—” before the spell went off, exactly as I’d planned it.
Happy Birthday, Isbjørn burned in the air, dancing and winking in wildflower shades. I jumped out and shouted the same message, “Happy birthday, Isbjørn!”
He broke into an enormous grin, every last one of his white teeth gleaming against his thin black lips, gray eyes alight with surprise.
The fiery words shifted to images I’d drawn of the two of us flying. “It’s going to be the best day ever!” I proclaimed, then leapt forward and hugged his big, furry neck.
His laugh reverberated through me. “Good morning to you too.”
I squeezed him one more time before dancing away. “I have everything planned! Are you hungry?”
“Very,” he assured me.
“Perfect!” I declared, clapping my hands together.
“You do realize it’s my birthday, not yours?”
I waved my hands impatiently. “I never cared for my birthday. It always meant a long, boring party with boring people who didn’t know anything about me except that I was the crown princess and wasn’t allowed to work magic. But this will be the most perfect birthday party ever!”
Something I couldn’t quite read in his eyes made me think he’d contradict me, but he just shook his head slightly, and said, “I really am hungry.”
“Right!” I jumped over to the pot, forgetting to wear a mitt to lift the pot’s lid, hissed in pain as my palm burned, then used my skirt to lift it.
“Are you alright?”
