Patricia Briggs - Wolfsbane

There was almost a sensuous pleasure in working with the wood. Oak had a sparkle to it that always made her feel as if she ought to glow with joy while she worked with it. Not that she could do much more with it than look. A few shapes, some basic spells, and a little inventive lock picking—that was about as far as her command of magic went. That didn’t mean that she couldn’t enjoy it for its own sake.

“Now that you know the wood beneath you, children, I want you to concentrate on yourselves. Feel the texture of the floor against your skin, the fabric that separates you from the support of the wood. Ideally, of course, there would be no fabric, but I understand that you humans are sensitive about exposing your bodies. As I discovered in training Aralorn, the distraction of the clothing is less by far than the distraction of not wearing any at all.”

“Not to mention it’s warmer this way,” murmured Aralorn, her eyes still closed.

“Enough, child. I am the teacher here. You will merely listen and absorb my wisdom.”

“Of course. I shiver at your feet in humble awe at the—”

“Kessenih”—he interrupted—“would be happy to take over the training of you; I believe that she offered to do it the last summer you came to us.”

Kessenih, as Aralorn recalled, had wanted to peel the skin from her feet and make her walk back to Lambshold—who’d have thought she’d have gotten so upset over a chicken egg in her shoe?

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Halven had changed, she thought. He’d always been cold to her, though he’d sponsored her training. After a moment she decided it could be that she, herself, had changed. As a child, she’d always been too much in awe of Halven to tease him. She’d never been able to relax around him, but now . . . everything crystallized, like a wooden puzzle that suddenly slid into shape.

It felt odd seeing herself in the way she had always been able to look into wood, to feel her heart beat and know why it did. Like an outsider, she could see into the fears and petty angers, touch the bond that tied her to her mate.

“I’ve got it ...” It startled her so much that she sat up and lost it again, but she laughed anyway.

“So you did,” said Halven, sounding pleasantly surprised. “See if you can explain it to Wolf. Sometimes two talk better than one.”

“What did you find?” asked Wolf.

“My center,” she said, sounding as shocked, as elated as she felt. “I’ve always been able to sense it well enough that I can use magic, but it was never clear. Like being in a boat and knowing that there’s water under me, but not being in the lake myself.”

“So this time you fell in?” Wolf sounded amused.

Aralorn grinned at him. “And the water was superb, thank you.”

“You,” said Halven to Wolf, “have no sense of center at all, that I can see. Without centering, it is impossible to be grounded—to be aware of yourself and your surroundings at a level where it is safe to work green magic. If we can get you there, then having your magic run amok should no longer be a problem.”

He ran a hand down his beard. “For human magic, this is not necessary—you control the magic with your thinking self. Like working a logic problem, with just a touch of artistry to give it form. Green magic is just the opposite. Your . . . emotions, your needs , generate the magic with just a touch of conscious control. Aralorn has been working half-blind for most of her life, and you are wiggling puppet strings without knowing which string is connected to which puppet.” He looked pleased with his analogy, savoring it for a moment before turning back to Aralorn. “You found it once—do it again.”

It took her a while before she could do it reliably, but once she had it, Halven went back to work on Wolf.

If it had been difficult for Aralorn to relax into her center, it was nightmarish for Wolf. Control had been his bulwark for most of his life, a defense against the things he had done and what was done to him. Unless he could give it up, he would never be able to control his magic: a paradox he understood in his head, but not in his heart, where it mattered.

It made for a long afternoon. By the end of it, he was sweating, Halven was sweating, and Aralorn was exhausted, but Wolf came out of it with a better sense of self, if not precisely his center. An achievement that left Halven nodding grudgingly.

“At least,” he said, helping Wolf to his feet, “you know that there are strings on your fingers now. If you don’t know what they do, you can elect not to tug on them.” He sounded almost as tired as he looked.

“Thank you,” said Wolf.

Halven smiled slyly. “Couldn’t do less for my sister’s daughter’s mate, now could I?” He slid from old man to bird shape. “I expect you to keep her in line.”

“How?” asked Wolf, amused.

Halven let out a bark of laughter. “Don’t know. I’ve never seen it done. Open the shutters now, and I leave you children to your rest.”

“Well,” Aralorn said after Halven had left, “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

Wolf gave her what might have been a wolfish smile without his scars, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. “I could eat a sheep.”

“You think so?” she said thoughtfully, pulling on her boots. “I’m not so sure; the local shepherds are awfully quick with their arrows.”

He laughed, changing gracefully into wolf shape.

Most of the family was already eating when they made it to the great hall. Aralorn slipped into her old place between Falhart and Correy. Nevyn, sitting directly across from her, pointedly didn’t look up when she sat down. Freya shrugged apologetically once and otherwise ignored her husband’s distress.

“. . . when I came out of the village smithy, there was my meek and ladylike wife screaming at the top of her lungs.” Falhart stopped to eat a bite of food, giving Aralorn a quick view of his wife on his other side with her head bowed and a flush creeping up her cheekbones.

“I thought something was wrong and was charging to the rescue when I realized what she was saying.” He cleared his throat and raised his bass rumble to a squeaky soprano. “Three geese, I tell you! I need three. I don’t want four or two—I need three. I don’t care if they are mated pairs. I am going to eat them, not breed them!” Falhart laughed.

Aralorn was too tired to join in the usual family chatter and picked at her food. The familiar scents and voices, some deeper now than they had been, were soothing.

She let her eyes trail across her siblings with the magic she’d been working all day. She’d occasionally been able to use her magic to look deeply into a person, but never for more than a moment or two.

It was an odd experience, her senses interpreting what her magic told her sometimes as color—Falhart radiated a rich brown that warmed those around him. Irrenna was musical chimes, clear and beautiful. Even though he sat at the far end of the table, Aralorn could feel Gerem’s magic flickering eagerly, vibrating on her skin like the wings of a moth. One of the little children, a toddler, had it, too. She’d have to remember to tell her father . . . She turned abruptly and caught Nevyn staring at her.

Wide-eyed, she saw what Halven had meant when he’d said that Nevyn was broken and poorly mended. She had no experience to interpret what she saw, but it was like looking at a tree split by lightning. As the thought occurred to her, that’s what she saw, as if an illusionist had superimposed the image over Nevyn’s human form. One side of the tree struggled to recover, but the branches were gnarled, and the leaves were edged with an unhealthy gray. The other side was black and burnt.