I softened and unclenched my hands so I could put one on Ceres’ arm. “They’re wonderful. Strong and healthy and smart. Maybe…maybe one day I could take you there…”
The faun opened her mouth eagerly, closed it again and bit her lip, then just said, “Perhaps I’d best take this beast out. Come on, you ruffian.” She patted her leg and Sir Toby followed her out the door. I tried eating a few bites while they were gone, but the food turned my stomach, so I bathed instead. By the time they returned, I was feeling better.
“Thank you for doing that,” I told her with a smile, squeezing water from my hair with one of the soft linen towels she had stacked on the shelves above my desk. I had wrapped another around my torso, under my arms, and I watched Ceres’ eyes drift down from my face, then widened in silent alarm. Following her gaze, I was mortified to see that Devil’s fangs had left an angry, red bite mark on the top of my breast.
“Oh!” I yelped, slapping my hand over it. “That, uh…that was Toby…”
Ceres’ eyebrows shot up into her curly hair and she clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Not my business, of course, but…you mind yourself around that monster. He’s never been anything but trouble.”
I could not even muster a word in my own defense, and Ceres left the room in silence.
“Don’t worry,” I mumbled to myself, glancing out at the balcony. “I’m sure he’ll make himselfveryscarce now…”
I spent the rest of the morning in bed, recovering from my own questionable decisions. In between brief naps, I read my mother’s history book and drank copious amounts of ginger tea. Around lunchtime, Sir Toby and I went down to the kitchen and assisted Ceres in preparing a small, simple meal. While she insisted Oberon was not at home, the fact that she had cooked for several people made me suspect otherwise. The tower’s only other permanent resident was Simeon, and I had never seen him eat anything she prepared. My theory was that he gorged himself on mice and voles every night in his owl form, but I was too squeamish to confirm it.
Not wanting to confront her on the issue of Oberon’s presence, I packed a small picnic basket, and Ceres gave me the location of a hot spring nearby, like the one behind the waterfall in the Hollow. Sir Toby and I made our way there in no hurry, and when we arrived, I spread a blanket out on the bank of the springs. While I soaked my aching legs in the warm water and watched the clouds drift by overhead, Sir Toby took a swim and chased frogs. By the time he got bored and sprawled out for a nap, I was already digging into my meal of wild apples, brown bread rolls spread with soft, truffle cheese, and honeyed almonds.
After a long stretch of nearly becoming lost in the blue-gray sky, I realized that I’d never experienced this level of solitude and freedom at the same time. Whenever I was alone at Locksley, it was within the walls, and there was always a Sister or two around every corner. But whenever I’d gone into Nottingham, I’d been accompanied by Will or Tuck, or visiting patients in their homes. Being alone and uncaged was such a strange sensation that I sat up, fighting back a surge of anxiety. Sir Toby was snoring loudly on a flat, warm rock nearby, but lifted one head briefly to look at me.
“Useless animal,” I laughed.
I closed my eyes and called up my magyk. Instead of carrying it inside me like a sword and shield, however, I wove it together with my healing gift and spread it out over me as a blanket. I sent it down into the warm water of the spring and allowed it to pool in my feet, then pulled it slowly back up through my ankles, calves, and thighs. The amount of tension it melted away from my muscles wasincredible, and by the time it reached my chest, I almost laughed out loud at how much lighter I felt.
“Maybe Oberon was right about not using you as a weapon,” I said aloud.
But when my eyes fluttered open again, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I was no longer lying on the bank of the hot springs, but on my back beneath a massive red deer. The stag looked down and startled, leaping away with a loud bellow, and I threw my arms over my face and curled into a ball. A moment later, when I uncurled, however, I was back at the hot springs. Heart hammering wildly, I sat up and looked around. Sir Toby was still napping on his rock, and everything else was exactly the same.
“Did I…?” Before I could start thinking too hard about it, I lay back down and closed my eyes, trying to replicate the same conditions—feeling the flow of the Arden beneath me, the steady stream of life and power and magyk. I reached for it and tried to imagine myself as a boatman on the Channel. Whenever they allowed their barges to catch the steady, sluggish current of the massive canal, it allowed them to move easier, and gave the donkeys or mules a slight break from towing. That current was what I needed. I found it, dipped my foot in, and imagined Aliena’s cottage.
My efforts were rewarded by a loud scream.
“I did it!” I cried, surging off the bed where I had appeared and spinning unsteadily in the center of the room. “I actually did it!”
“May! What on earth…” Aliena was sitting at the table with her lute perched on one leg, but she set it down and stood up. “Where did you come from?”
“From the Bower!” I squealed, grabbing her hands and spinning us both, causing her sheet of white hair to flow out in a wave. “I finally got it!”
“Traveling?” she asked with a laugh. “The magyk?”
“Yes!” I ripped back the curtain over her doorway to see Lord Balthazar’s little herd of red deer grazing across the creek and waved to the young stag I’d startled a few minutes before. “My apologies, sir!”
“May, hold on!” Aliena called as I walked outside, practically giddy with excitement. “What happened to you last night? You seemed awfully upset when Robin took you home.”
“Oh…” I deflated a little and twisted my hands together. “Well, I was…just exhausted…and a little drunk.” I glanced up the hill toward Devil’s tree, wondering if I should attempt an apology.
“I see,” Aliena said with a kind smile.
“Did…did he come back last night?”
“No, not to the party, anyway. I thought…maybe, well…” She waggled her eyebrows.
“What do you take me for?” I asked, attempting to look at least somewhat offended.
“I take you for a beautiful young woman with no attachments, who has a handsome, devoted bodyguard worshipping the very ground she walks on,” Aliena said, crossing her arms. “Anyway, I was just making tea, so you’re going to help me drink it and we’re going to talk.” Grinning like an idiot, I followed her into the cottage. Once we were both sitting at the table, I stirred some honey into the peach and elderflower tea while trying to think of ways I might deflect the conversation away from me and Devil.
“Do you…have any attachments?” I asked, just as Aliena opened her mouth to say something. “I mean, you’ve lived here a long time. Haven’t you met anyone?”
She appeared a little chagrined, but sighed, “I do not think I am built that way. I hardly think about it though, and I am perfectly content with what I have: music and good friends.”
