Page 110 of The Black Witch

I sit down on my bed, chastened by guilt. “I never meant for this to happen.”

“I know,” Wynter says, her expression pained. She sighs and looks down at Ariel. “It is my curse to know.” She turns to face me once more. “This is not all on your shoulders, Elloren Gardner. This is but one terrible cruelty in an endless string of terrible cruelties stretched out over all her years.” She goes back to stroking Ariel’s hair. “Her mother had her committed to the Valgard asylum when she was but a young child. She was so horrified that she had given birth to one of theDeargdul...an ‘Icaral,’ as you call us. The asylum kept Ariel in a cage. She was two years old.”

I swallow hard, my throat going dry. The desire to avert my eyes is gone. I need to see this for what it is.

“It there anything I can do?” I ask hoarsely.

Wynter looks back down at Ariel and mournfully shakes her head from side to side.

And so I do the only thing I can do.

I sit in silence as Wynter sings to Ariel in High Elvish, standing vigil with her, the room softly lit by a single, guttering lamp, a Watcher briefly appearing on the rafter above.

We remain by Ariel’s side all through the night, waiting for her to come back to herself. Wynter sings, and I silently pray. And we wait.

Until a few hours before dawn, when Ariel’s green eyes finally flicker open, dazed, but whole once more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Poetry

I’m more aware of the changing season this year than in years past. My breath now puffs out in small clouds as I scurry over the fields from the North Tower to the University grounds, knuckles smarting from the icy air.

Perhaps it’s the furious pace of production in our apothecary lab—autumn is prime time for apothecaries. The Black Cough, lung fever, chilblains, suffocative catarrh, the Red Grippe—they all creep in with the cold, reveling in the stale air of crowded, stuffy rooms with windows shut tight.

In Metallurgie, the Snake Elf forces me to work at a breakneck speed, allowing me scant time and inconvenient hours to prepare metal powders for chelation agents in medicines, grading my papers (barely passing) with a stern hand. The dislike for all of the Gardnerians in his class is subtle, but quite evident in his star eyes—and his dislike for me is the most intense of all. Only Curran’s small kindnesses—sliding notes toward me, quietly sharing lab results—make the class semibearable. Especially with Fallon’s continuous, low-grade bullying.

Mathematics and Chemistrie are also demanding, although Professor Volya is uniformly fair. Only Professor Simitri remains magnanimous and forgiving in his approach, my classmates in his lectures reserved, but blessedly cordial.

And regular letters continue to come from Aunt Vyvian, describing how easy, luxurious and happy my life at University could be if I would just agree to wandfast to Lukas. My cloak pulled tight in my constantly chilled lodging, I take each letter and throw it into our messy fireplace, taking advantage of the fire’s brief flare to warm my hands.

Early morning has a strange stillness to it now, as if the entire world is holding its breath, waiting for something. Only the great Vs of geese break the silence, sounding out their distant call.

Flee while you can. Winter is looming.

* * *

“How are things with the Icarals?” Aislinn asks one day in Chemistrie lecture.

About a week has passed since Ariel’s kindred was killed, and my North Tower lodging remains a tense but newly silent place. My bruises and cuts are mostly healed, thanks to the ministrations of Priest Simitri’s personal physician and a strong healing liniment I mixed up in the apothecary workroom.

“I only go back there to sleep,” I tell Aislinn. “And Ariel’s gotten very quiet. Mostly she just lies around. She never speaks to me. Never looks at me.” I glance furtively around the mostly deserted Chemistrie lab, my voice low, scholars slowly filtering in. “Seems to like the chicken I stole for her, though.”

“Do you think she’s safe to be around?” Aislinn asks, concerned.

“I don’t know.” I pull out some parchment and my pen and ink. “Wynter stays close to her. She seems to be able to keep her relatively calm.”

Wynter and I are increasingly on speaking terms, although I try to give her space, not wanting to have my mind read. She is, in turn, extraordinarily careful not to touch me. We exist in a polite, wary orbit of each other. I’m becoming increasingly curious about her, however, finding excuses to wander past as she draws. She no longer waits until I’m asleep to work on her art, and I steal glances of her beautiful sketches, which are mostly of Ariel and the chicken or of Elfin archers.

“I hardly ever see Ariel anywhere but in the North Tower,” I tell Aislinn. “But she turned up in Mathematics a few days ago.”

Aislinn’s eyes widen at this. “You’re kidding.”

I shake my head. “It was a huge surprise.”

“What happened?” she asks, and I launch into the story.

* * *

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