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MAUDE and Arthur began their lessons, and Maude proved to be a good student, quicker than Arthur even suspected. They continued meeting every evening, though both of them showed the signs of too little sleep and, if one knew what to look for, magic exhaustion in the coming weeks. While most villagers were curled comfortably in their beds, Maude and Arthur worked through every spell Arthur knew, ceasing only once they had reached their limit for the night (for magic always has a limit, you see, some expenditure on the magician’s part that ensures he does not use it too often or too flippantly. Magic does not wish to be used for ill, though many magicians have used it for such. Those magicians often take to their beds for weeks after their great display, though the stories never tell this detail.). Maude and Arthur used their staffs, disguised as walking sticks, to help them back to the village, for they were nearly too tired to walk.
At times, they had so used everything within them that they considered sleeping on the banks of the river, but Arthur knew better than this. There were other secrets that could be discovered were they to do something so rash, for in his heart, Arthur was falling in love with Maude, and Maude with him.
Some nights they sat on the riverside, and instead of practicing magic, they talked. They talked of his travels, the sights he had seen, though Maude noticed that he never said much about his birthing place. She talked about her father, which led to talking of her mother.
“Your father is a skilled woodworker,” Arthur said.
“He says the same of you,” Maude said. “I have heard him in conversation with other men in the village.”
“And he has treated you well, I suppose?” Arthur said.
“Well enough,” Maude said. “Though not so well as when Mother lived.”
“And your mother?” Arthur said. “You knew her?”
“For too little time,” Maude said.
“You got your gift of magic from her,” Arthur said.
“Yes,” Maude said. “My mother was a Prophetess for a time. The king would bring her to his castle and give her great gifts to tell him what would happen in his future.”
“What kind of future?” Arthur said.
Maude knew he was asking how far her mother could See. A prophet’s power was measured by how far into the future they could See. “A month or two, so I have heard,” she said. “I was too young to remember. I mostly remember the food.” Arthur looked at her. “The king paid us in food. So our table was not so empty as it is now.” She looked toward the waters, stilled in the silent night. “It was a different time, I suppose.”
They were quiet for some minutes, and then Arthur said, “What happened to your mother?”
“She grew ill,” she said. “A burning fever took her.”
“And no one could heal it?” Arthur said. Maude heard something in his voice. She turned to him. His eyes were shadowed. Troubled.
“No,” she said. “We do not have healers in White Wind.”
“Every village has healers,” Arthur said.
“Ours died of the same fever,” Maude said.
Arthur was silent.
“What is it?” she said, for she could tell that there was something.
Arthur shook his head. “An oddity,” he said. “Do you not agree?”
Maude supposed it was. She said so. But Arthur did not say anything else, and so she let the wondering slide away.
“How old were you?” Arthur said after a time. “When your mother died?”
“A girl of seven,” she said.
“Well,” Arthur said. “Shall we begin tonight’s lesson?”
“Yes, I suppose we shall,” Maude said, for she did not steal from her house and risk Arthur’s life to talk about her mother. They climbed to their feet, Arthur helping Maude wipe the grass from her skirt.
She loved him even more after that night.
And there were other nights as well. Nights when Arthur touched Maude’s cheek for the briefest of moments, nights when she wondered if, perhaps, he had grown to love her as she had grown to love him. Nights when they lay beneath the hollow, a hole carved in the treetops where they could gaze at the stars, their hands touching at the fingertips. Nights when the magic did not matter so much as the presence.
They practiced for hours upon hours, every evening, treading back to their sleeping places only when the night had grown considerably darker and even the creatures of the forest did not stir, when all was silent and still around them. Arthur taught Maude more in a few hours than her grandmother had ever taught her in months of instruction, back before she had disappeared without a trace. Maude’s magic, it seemed, merely needed an awakening. Arthur was a good teacher. He gave her magic the rest of what it needed, and soon, she was as skilled as he was.
Maude clung to his instruction as if, to her, it meant the difference between life and death.
And, perhaps, one day it would.