I dreamed of Akiva. She must have been with the warden council, because there were ten women and three men seated about a round table with her, fidgeting with their various cuffs and handkerchiefs and aprons. I was thoughtfully surprised at the men: despite meeting Gwydion, I’d gotten the impression that warden was a distinctly feminine calling. He was there, too, looking solemn enough to be merely playing at being an adult. I grinned, conscious of a sense of fellow feeling, and wished I could nudge him companionably.
Cassandra was there too, her eyes darting back and forth from warden to warden. Unlike the other wardens, who were dressed more sensibly in plain cotton and aprons, she wore a scandalously gauzy gown that left very little to the imagination. I saw Gwydion wink at her, ruining his solemn air, and although she didn’t return any acknowledgement, at least she didn’t freeze him with a look. That surprised me.
I scanned the faces more quickly than thoroughly, but only those three were familiar. There was something about the tall, severe lady with salt and pepper hair that seemed to jump in my memory, and I studied her narrowly, my thoughts speeding away behind my eyes.
As I watched she banged a gavel on the cedar tabletop.
“Order, please.”
I winced as the gavel connected with that beautiful tabletop, and half the wardens around the table mirrored my pained expression. The businesslike woman said impatiently: “Stop pulling faces every time I bring the meeting to order, Gwydion.”
A voice muttered rebelliously: “We weren’t in disorder, blast you!”
Unabashed, Gwydion said: “It’s a hard thing to watch you ruin a beautifully crafted bit of wood. You do know it’s still running with magic, don’t you, Mara?”
“I do not now, and never will, coddle my wardship and its every twig and stick,” Mara said shortly. “Stick to the business at hand: we’re convened today to begin an enquiry into what happened to Kendra. Who saw her last?”
One of the male wardens, flushing, said: “I think I did. She was helping me to put up a warding around some meat-eating trees that migrated to my wardship.”
“There’s no need to be coy,” Mara said impatiently. “We all know you two spend your spare time with each other. When did she leave your wardship, and where was she going?”
The blush on the warden’s face deepened. “We really were putting up wards,” he said. “She brought a few twigs with her to do the magic but nothing else. She trusted me.”
“Perhaps, but wandering about with no more of her wardship than a few twigs when she has to pass through two wardships to get to yours is hardly wise. I take it she burned out the twigs doing your wards.”
The male warden looked wretched, and I felt sorry for him. He said: “Yes. She burned them up and said that it didn’t matter, because she had to pass through Akiva’s wardship anyway, and that Akiva had something of hers there.”
Mara’s eyes turned to Akiva thoughtfully. “Did she meet with you, Akiva?”
Akiva shook her head, lips compressed, and the male warden sank his head into his hands with an anguished groan. “I should never have let her go! It’s my fault, all my fault.”
“David, control yourself!” Mara said sharply. The warden stopped moaning but didn’t take his head from his hands. I stared at him, fascinated and horrified to see that he was actually crying. My right arm twitched, surprising me with an unfamiliar urge to throw my arms around him and squeeze fiercely.
“There were no traces of Kendra in my wardship,” said Mara crisply, ignoring David. Horned hedgepigs, but she was cold! “So I must assume she disappeared between David and Akiva’s wardship. Are there any objections?”
“Objections?” Gwydion was clearly startled. His gaze swept around the table and then pinioned Mara. “Is it a statement or an accusation? Are you suggesting that Akiva had something to do with this?”
“Of course not,” Mara said patiently. “However, warden law states that in a case of disappearance in a rich wardship, that both the person last seen with the victim and the person to whom the victim was going be remanded in custody. I realise you all think you’re above suspicion, but consider how unlikely it is that this could have been done by anyone but a warden! Until the matter is cleared up we have a very rich wardship now free to be reclaimed. Complain if you wish, but those are the facts of the matter.”
“Who’ll take Kendra’s wardship?” Gwydion’s voice was sharp and only just escaped cracking. “You, Mara? Of course, as our illustrious head, it would be your right.”
Akiva’s eyes turned on him, and her dry voice, unexpectedly amused, said: “Oh, we can point fingers as long as we like, Gwydion. But I speak for Mara here: let her control the wardship at least for the present. We’ve never had reason to doubt her motives.”
“How will you like confinement?” Gwydion’s voice no longer had the sharpness to it; instead, it was amused. He must be quite fond of her, I thought.
Akiva smiled. “I have a new apprentice, as you are very well aware. It will be a rest for me from her exuberance, and a chance for her to prove she can keep the wardship a few days without major disaster. So far I am not overly hopeful.”
Gwydion threw back his head and laughed. “What has she done this time?”
Cassandra’s violet eyes darted toward Gwydion and Akiva, darkening with anger. “Why are we speaking about a stupid little chit of a girl? I came here to talk about Kendra, and now I am bored. I will not stay.”
Mara held up one hand. “We still have more to discuss, Cassandra. Gwydion, try to stay on topic for more than two minutes . . .”
I rose to consciousness gradually, the voices fading as I rose. Remembering my dream-laced dragon-fever, I didn’t doubt that I’d dreamed truly, and I woke scowling in sleepy resentment.
My waking was accompanied by a feeling of nausea. I found the room distorted around me and blinked my sleepy eyes, but when I squinted around again the room was still blurred.
Horned hedgepigs, what was going on? The window was somehow too long and smaller at one side, and the panes wobbled as if they weren’t quite solid. I gazed around me suspiciously. While I looked at one section of wall it seemed to sit still as the rest of the room seethed in my periphery, yet when I looked slowly and deliberately around the room again, it was still. I wandered through the house in my slip and cape, touching walls and window frames that felt solid to the touch but moved alarmingly in the corners of my eyes. I sat down at last in Akiva’s chair, dizzy and ill, and pulled the cape tighter around my shoulders. There was no doubt that something was very wrong with the house, but I couldn’t tell where the fault lay. There was no emanation of magic from any point in the house that I could find, and although my inexperience made it difficult to say for sure, I came to the conclusion that the problem lay outside the house.
I didn’t eat much in the way of breakfast that morning: I was afraid that it wouldn’t stay down. The shifting walls reminded me unpleasantly of being at sea, and I’d never been much of a sailor: it was the one flaw in my piratical plans. Still, I managed to gulp down a piece of dry toast before I made my unsteady way out into the garden, where everything was mercifully steady and solid. In fact, the garden looked so very normal that I thought for a moment it had escaped the general force of twisting magic that was wreaking havoc in the house.
Normal, that is, until I saw the salamander that was stretched out luxuriously on a hot rock in the aloe bed. The aloes were radiating with a gentle glow of warmth that became scorchingly hot once I reached my hand between them, and the salamander churred contentedly up at me, flicking a white-hot tongue lazily at my fingers. I snatched my hand back with a yelp and put my burnt fingers in my mouth, feeling aggrieved, but the salamander only purred at me again. It sounded smug. I left it to sun itself in peace and moved around the garden to check on the other plants. The climate controlled garden beds were each more than half in the land of their origin and fuzzy round the edges, but the rest of the garden was only a little more active than usual. I thought, puffing out my cheeks in relief, that at least I knew how to fix that. As Akiva had said, it required nothing more than a steady hand and not too much power. I made my way purposefully around the garden again, setting things briskly to rights: beans to their poles, tomatoes to their stakes, and cucumbers to their frames, wary not to come too close to the salamander again.
When I finished my rounds of the more everyday plants I found that the salamander had left its garden patch completely, and that it was not the only animal to do so. Two young, unsteady, deer-like creatures were prancing down the middle stretch of the back garden, all gangling legs and knobbly knees. Their hide was mossy green and feathery rather than hairy, and two little horns rose atop each delicate head, radiating a pale, pearly green that reminded me of young saplings. I stared at them for a long, perplexed moment. I didn’t know which garden bed they had come from, much less how to get them back into their original habitat.
I pushed past the deer-things, discovering to my cost that they had a goat-like appetite for foliage and the cotton of my shift alike, and stopped in dismay when I came upon the patches of garden that they had already passed. They had mown a great swathe of destruction through the garden as they played, leaving broken twigs and torn up plants strewn in a trail behind them. I followed it backwards in the calm of despair and at last found the section of garden that began the carnage. So that was where they’d come from!
I tried to herd the deer into it as they leapt and bleated, springing to impossible heights whenever I thought I had them cornered, or skipping nimbly through a gap that I’d thought much too small for escape. There was simply no containing their exuberance. They kicked up their heels at the salamander, who seemed to laugh at me, and as I chased them madly round the garden, exotic birdcalls and growls multiplied in the morning air. Patches of the garden snowed on me as I dashed through them, while others blasted with hot, dry desert air. Plots of humidity left droplets of moisture on my skin as I dodged through them, and at one stage, a huge, brightly-coloured bird flew past my head, squawking in a manner most truly piratical. My shift grew steadily dirtier and more ragged, but I didn’t dare take the time to dress fully because the garden gave the impression that it would wait for nothing in its bombastic growth.
Giving up on herding the two green deer, I tried instead to concentrate on containment, but the animals didn’t want to stay in the back garden. The garden fence had begun sneakily to meld with the forest. Already one section was more akin to long, oddly pale grass than the original white picket fence, and the entire back section had turned into a row of milky ash saplings. As I watched, a fist-sized marmoset leapt for them with an excited chattering, and promptly disappeared.
I flopped down on my back with a yell of despair. Unfortunately, I was just a little too close to the salamander, which seemed to be following me, and promptly burned off a chunk of my hair. There was a moment of heat and fire and mad beating at my hair before I flopped back into the grass with a groan, ignoring the nasty smell of burnt hair. There was no fixing this: Akiva would come home to a madhouse. Even the cottage itself was beginning to show signs of disappearing into the forest. I contemplated the sky above me in dumb resignation, surrounded by a cacophony of tropical and subtropical animal sounds, and felt hot breeze tickle my neck. I sat up, wide awake and elated all at once. Of course! Bastian! If anyone but Akiva knew how to bring things to rights, it was Bastian. The last I had seen of him, he was swimming in a deceptively placid-looking stream three wardships away; but with Akiva’s wardship in such a state of excitement and powerful disorder, it shouldn’t be too difficult to send a call that would pass through several wardships. And I had Akiva’s hood, now.
I leaned forward, propping myself on my palms, and felt a tracing burn along my wrist as the salamander’s tail brushed my arm. I barely felt it. I punched into the system of forest lines that bunched in a tangling mass beneath me, sending out the call for Bastian. The garden bucked and seethed under me, and in the confusion I felt the power of Akiva’s hood stretch and sharpen as though it were waking from a deep sleep. The forest was masterless, furling its tendrils out wildly, and I understood in a flash of grim inspiration that the wardship was mine for the taking. The hood belonged to the warden of the forest, and the lines around me were reaching mindlessly for a warden to tend them. The realization left me breathless and suddenly frightened. Akiva hadn’t left me the hood to keep me safe. She had left it because she was prepared for the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to return as soon as she hoped.
I abandoned my call and gathered the threads to myself, straightening and then sending them back out again, bringing order from confusion. It was almost like dismantling one of Cassandra’s traps, or fixing a knotted piece of forest. I didn’t notice that I’d closed my eyes until I saw a figure in glowing gold magic standing before me, highlighted against the velvet darkness of my closed lids. I opened confusingly heavy eyelids to see its outer form. A dirty face, growing with corn-gold stubble, grew fuzzily into focus before me, its hazel eyes narrowed with concern.
“Bastian!” I slurred. I seemed to be floating a foot above the ground but I was too weary for the fact to make as much of an impression on me as it should have. Horned hedgepigs, but I was tired!
Bastian’s brows had a crease between them. “Gently now, little witch.”
I tried to tell him not to be silly, but my mouth wouldn’t make real words. The world swayed once, and I swayed with it. I felt Bastian’s hands seize me about the waist just as I lost concentration and fell, then there was only deep darkness.
There was something tickling my nose. I squinched my eyes and wrinkled my nose as Bastian’s voice said: “It’s going to have to come off, you know.”
I opened my eyes to find that my head was resting in the crook of Bastian’s arm, and that he was tickling my nose with the tail of my plait. As I glared up at him he gave my nose one final tickle, and let go of my plait.
“What will have to come off?” I asked, wriggling to sit up. Bastian seized my plait again and yanked me back down.
“Stop wriggling,” he commanded.
I subsided back into the crook of his arm, from whence I could conveniently glare at him.
“It’s no good scowling at me after you’ve sent a shockwave through half the forest after me. I thought that Cassandra had got to you.”
I gazed up at him unblinkingly and said: “I had a problem, but I fixed it.”
“That’s one thing,” Bastian told me grimly, and held my left arm to the light where the salamander burn was an angry red; “But this is another. Who did this to you?”
“The salamander,” I told him pertly, misliking his tone. “That’s why there’s a hole in my hair.”
The grimness went away from Bastian’s face, and he laughed. “You look like a scarecrow, little witch. The whole lot will have to come off.”
I felt the damage with tentative fingers and cheerfully acquiesced.
“Now,” I said buoyantly, “I can finally start being a pirate.” It made me laugh, because now at fifteen my childish dreams of piracy on the high seas were fading to amusing memories, impractical and nonsensical. I had begged Mother for years to cut my hair to a more piratically practical length, but now that it would finally have to be cut, I had outgrown the dreams.
“I should have thought of this years ago,” I told Bastian.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Why piracy?”
“It’s how I’m going to keep Gwendolen in pearls and satin,” I explained, allowing myself the nonsense of pretending. “That was before she decided she wanted to get married as well as have fine dresses and jewels.”
“What a shame,” Bastian mocked, turning my head away and gently untangling my plait. His long fingers tugged softly at knots, and singed portions of hair wafted to the grass. “You’ll have to get married, too.”
I shook my head vigorously, sending burnt strands of hair flying, and Bastian seized my head with one hand. “Oh, no. I’m not going to marry. Pirates don’t.”
“Very true,” he agreed. His fingers held my head firmly while he unravelled the last of the plait, and the remaining whole strands fell about my waist. “Very sensible of you. Now, little witch: scissors.”
We used Akiva’s sewing scissors; and great, long hanks of butter-coloured hair fell to the grass to join the burnt strands as Bastian snipped. His fingers threaded through my hair, carefully and surprisingly proficiently; and before long my hair swished in an excitingly short way just below my ears. Bastian stepped back to critically survey his handiwork, and nodded.
“That will do, I think. You scrub up quite nicely when your hair isn’t in great big tangles and you’ve gone to the trouble of washing your face. It’s a pity we had to cut it, though.”
“I like it this way,” I said. I felt daring and oddly free. I shook my head until I was dizzy and my hair floated around my face like thistledown.
“Ah, well, it will grow back,” Bastian murmured, more to himself than me. “Stop tossing your hair, little witch; you make me dizzy. You look like a proper urchin.”
I tossed my head once more to show him that I could do as I chose. “Well, so I am.”
“So I see.” Bastian’s voice was dry. He gathered the strands of my hair from the grass, ignoring my head toss. “Now, little witch– what does Akiva mean by leaving you alone?”
“I’m not alone,” I said absently, turning away from him to gaze around the garden. Now that I was not half fainting or otherwise distracted, I realised that I was feeling rather queer.
Bastian threw an impatient look at the two green deer that were cowering behind a tree, and said: “That’s hardly the point. Where’s Akiva?”
“Hush,” I told him, tentatively exploring the change I could feel not only in the garden but in myself. I shook off the hand that Bastian laid on my arm and walked away, stretching out both hands as if I could physically feel the difference.
Behind me, Bastian said, as if stunned: “Did you just hush me?”
“You’re distracting me,” I complained. “Stop talking.”
“I hardly know whether to be offended or to congratulate you,” said Bastian, his voice particularly growly.
“Don’t do either,” I murmured. “Just be quiet.” There was a lightness and clearness to the forest air that was both distracting and invigorating me.
Horned hedgepigs! I had done it. I was warden of the forest. Order had been re-established all around me, bringing with it an odd sensation of weight about my shoulders. I could sense the lines that ran through the forest without trying, as if they were a constant thought in the back of my mind. The garden was back to normal even if it was riddled with exotic animals, and the back fence was white picket once more. I felt a rare sense of accomplishment that caused a smile of grim triumph to curve my lips.
Then fingers closed firmly on my wrist, and I was swung around to face Bastian, who seemed to be struggling between amusement and impatience. “Little witch, although I appreciate the fact that you’re the first woman ever to hush me, I want a straight answer. Where is Akiva, and why did she leave you alone? You could have run into any amount of trouble.”
“I’m not a woman,” I pointed out, but since this didn’t seem to placate him at all, I added: “Akiva had to go because a warden disappeared. And I’m perfectly capable of being left alone by myself, thank you.”
“Of course! Which is why a call for help threw me off my feet half an hour ago and left me thinking you were dead or dying!”
“Anyway,” I said, ignoring what seemed to me to be unjustifiable anger; “You can’t tell off Akiva for leaving me by myself when I only met you because she did.”
Bastian looked down at me a little grimly. “That, Rose my lovely, is the point. There are more dangerous things in the forest than I.”
I gave a crack of laughter, again surprising myself at how much I sounded like Akiva. “You’re not dangerous at all!”
“Once again, I don’t know whether to be offended or to congratulate you,” remarked Bastian, but his eyes were amused. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted.”
I looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Bastian said, grinning. “That’s what makes it so insulting.”
“You’re having a joke at me,” I accused, hands on hips.
“The joke is entirely on me, believe me, little witch. Now, suppose you tell me just what you were doing when I arrived post-haste to rescue you.”
“The garden tried to merge with the forest,” I explained. “The other wardens seem to think Akiva had something to do with her friend disappearing and I think they’ve put her somewhere inside where she can’t reach the energy lines. I called for you because everything was collapsing and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You were doing well enough when I got here,” Bastian pointed out. “Well, if we discount the floating and fainting.”
“I think that was because it was bigger than I expected,” I said thoughtfully, creasing my brow. “I only understood it properly when I punched into the forest lines to call you. I was going to send out another call to tell you not to bother coming but you got here too quickly.”
“Quickly?” The ghost of a smile played about Bastian’s mouth. “No, I didn’t get here quickly. The forest was standing still– or at least, so it seemed to me. Akiva does not look after you nearly well enough.”
“I don’t need looking after,” I said again, impatiently.
Bastian gave a short laugh and said grimly: “That’s the biggest piece of nonsense I’ve ever heard. You’re as helpless as a babe in arms.”
“I broke part of your curse!”
Bastian’s grin was pointed. “And for your pains you were very nearly eaten.”
“But I didn’t get eaten!” I said triumphantly. “So there!”
“The point remains valid,” Bastian said indifferently. He had crossed his arms and was leaning his hips against the picket fence. “You need looking after. Or perhaps locking away where you can’t get up to mischief–” he broke off suddenly, and tipped his head to one side, wolf-like, before sharpening his gaze toward the front of the cottage. “Someone’s coming.”
I looked around the side of the cottage without much interest. “It’s probably Kelsey Hale. Akiva had some medicine for her.”
“It doesn’t look like a Kelsey Hale,” Bastian said, and there was something of a growl in his voice.
I craned my neck to see, and exclaimed in surprise: “It’s that boy again!”
Bastian’s eyes narrowed. “What boy?”
“The stupid one who was trying to cut down a tree too near to deep forest,” I told him, starting toward the front gate, my interest piqued. “I’d better go see what he wants.”
Bastian hauled me back by the collar of Akiva’s hood. “Not so fast, little witch.”
“I have to see what he wants,” I argued, wriggling vainly.
Bastian’s fingers didn’t loosen. “Not like that, you don’t.”
“Like what?” I demanded, still struggling.
Bastian looked pointedly down at my dirty shift, and raised his brows. “Go put some clothes on, little witch.”
I stopped wriggling and glared up at him instead. While my shift was certainly grubby and tattered from my exertions this morning, it was of sturdy, decent cotton, and it was a very far stretch to imply that it was indecent. Even my bare arms were covered by the hood.
“You’re a fine one to talk!” I told him indignantly, bare chested as he was. “Besides, I’ve been standing here with you half the morning dressed like this.”
“That’s different,” said Bastian, but he looked goaded.
“It’s not at all! Let me go!”
“You, Rose, are going to go and get properly dressed.”
Before I knew what was happening, Bastian had seized me by each shoulder. I was pushed toward the cottage door at a forced march.
“Horned hedgepigs! Let me go or you’ll be sorry!” I yelled, but Bastian only laughed, and advised: “You may as well stop wriggling. I’m not going to let go.”
I was being pushed through the back door when bright threads of gold began to trace through Bastian. Linked to the wardship now, I saw them with startling clarity although Bastian was behind me. His hands dropped from my shoulders, and braced against them as I was, I fell backwards into him. We tumbled back into the garden and I heard Bastian howl: “Not now!” as a blinding surge of glittering gold energy shocked through the garden. When my sight cleared Bastian was back in his wolf shape, with traces of gold still glinting in his pelt. He looked annoyed, and I couldn’t help chuckling my glee.
“Rose,” he said warningly; “Into the house, now.”
I laughed again, this time a gurgle of mirth deep in my throat, and took to my heels, because he couldn’t stop me now.
As I ran, giggling, Bastian called threateningly after me: “Rose! Come back here, you pestilent child!”
I ignored him. The boy at the gate had just shouted for admittance: he must have discovered that he couldn’t pass the Keep Out spell on the gate. It would only open from the inside, or to either Akiva or myself.
Bastian shot past me in a blur of grey and disappeared over the fence while I made my way to the gate, rather out of breath. I assumed that he was going away in a sulk. I was wrong. A moment after I reached the gate, while my fingers were still on the latch, he leapt, growling, onto the path behind the woodcutter boy.
The boy said: “Quick, get back into the house!”
“Don’t be silly!” I told him crossly, pushing past him to face Bastian. I shook off the hand that tried to pull me back, and addressed Bastian. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Bastian gave toothy grin. “Step aside, little witch. I won’t hurt him, I just want to frighten him.”
I glared at him. “You’re such a nuisance today!”
A tentative hand pulled at my hood, and the young man said: “Are you talking to the wolf?”
“Of course!” I said, turning to him in some surprise. “Can’t you hear him?”
Bastian, with a look of malicious enjoyment, said: “Didn’t I tell you? You’re the only one who can understand me without magic.”
The woodcutter lad shook his head in wonder. “I hear your voice. The wolf growls, but he doesn’t speak.”
“Ignorant whelp!”
The boy eyed Bastian nervously. “Does he want to eat me?”
“No. He’s cross because he thinks it’s indecent for me to talk to you in my shift. He’s trying to scare you away.”
The boy grinned. “Well, so long as I know he won’t eat me, I won’t be afraid to come back. It’s a very nice shift, anyway.”
“There, I told you,” I said to the still-growling Bastian.
“I came for Kelsey’s medicine,” the boy explained. He offered me his hand. “I’m Gilbert.”
I offered my own hand in return. “Rose.” I rather expected to have my hand shaken, but instead Gilbert bowed and kissed my fingers, smiling up at me while Bastian snarled.
“I’ve been looking for you ever since you disappeared into the forest. If I’d known, I would have come for Kelsey’s medicine before this. I thought you were the fairy queen, the way you vanished into the forest that day.”
“I’m Gwendolen’s sister,” I said, ushering him into the front garden.
Bastian would have followed close behind but I shut the gate on his nose, feeling as though he deserved to be annoyed.
“She’s the tiny one with gold curls,” Gilbert nodded. “My brother wants to marry her.”
“Everyone does,” I agreed cheerfully. Gilbert held the front door open for me, and grinned.
“Not everyone,” he said.