Page 112 of The Black Witch

I, in turn, dive into furiously scribbling notes on the distillation of essential oils. We’re about half an hour into the lecture when a neatly folded piece of parchment is tossed onto my papers from the direction of the Lupines. I look at it curiously.

It readsAislinn, in neat, attractive script.

Confused, I glance over at the Lupines. Diana seems clearly annoyed about something, and Jarod appears to be concentrating on the lecture.

I hand Aislinn the note, needing to elbow her to break her reading haze. Her brow furrows in puzzlement as I give it to her.

Aislinn quickly opens the neatly folded note. It reads:

What are you reading?

Jarod Ulrich

We both give a start, Aislinn’s eyes flying open wide. We glance over at the Lupines in unison. Jarod is focusing straight ahead at Professor Volya with an expression of unbroken concentration. I turn back to Aislinn. She’s now staring sideways at Jarod uneasily.

I can’t imagine that she’ll respond. After all, she’s afraid of him. He tried to help her twice, once when she dropped her books, another time when she spilled a vial of Ornithellon powder. Both times, he appeared wordlessly by her side, and both times, his attentions made Aislinn obviously fearful and uncomfortable.

But this time she surprises me.

Aislinn quickly writes the name of the poetry book on the paper, as if she has to act fast before she loses her nerve, then places the note firmly before me. I gape at her, dumbfounded, wondering if she’s taken complete leave of her senses. She gestures sharply toward the Lupines with her chin to spur me on, her brow knit hard with tension. For a few seconds we silently argue, but she remains resolute. I sigh deeply in reluctant surrender, shooting her a look of utter disbelief. The next time Professor Volya turns her broad back to us, I pick up the note and toss it onto Diana’s papers.

Diana glares at me, rolling her eyes disapprovingly, then hands the note to her brother.

Jarod takes it nonchalantly, his eyes never leaving the front of the room. He opens the note without looking at it, then lets his eyes flicker down briefly, his expression neutral. He pulls out a fresh piece of paper and begins to write as if he’s taking notes from the lecture. Aislinn and I watch him out of the corners of our eyes as he folds the note and places it in front of his sister, ignoring Diana’s irritated huffing as she defiantly folds her arms in front of herself, letting the note just sit there, unmoved. She shoots her twin repeated, hostile looks, but he calmly keeps his eyes straight ahead. Finally, when I think I’ll die from curiosity, Diana gives in, picks up the note and throws it at me.

I immediately pass the note to Aislinn and she eagerly unfolds the paper. “What is it?” I whisper.

A look of amazement spreads across her face. “Poetry!” she gasps.

I glance over at Jarod. He’s still pretending to be engrossed in the lecture.

Aislinn impatiently flips through her poetry book, biting on her lip in consternation, until she finds what she’s looking for. Then she places the note on the open book and moves them both toward me for my perusal.

The poem Jarod has written, an ode to the beauty of autumn, is identical to the one on the printed page. I look over at Jarod again, and there’s a small smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Aislinn carefully refolds Jarod’s note, places it as a pagemarker in her book and pretends to focus in on the lecture, her eyes glazed over with surprise.

* * *

I turn to Aislinn at the end of class, dumbfounded. “I cannot believe you are passing notes with a Lupine male.” I stare at her, amazed. “I thought you were terrified of them.”

Aislinn turns to me, her silver Erthia sphere necklace catching the light, her expression riddled with conflict, as if faced with a world suddenly turned clear on its head. “There’s been a mistake. There has to be some mistake.” Her eyes flicker to where Jarod stands with his sister. She looks back to me and shakes her head, but her gaze is full of certainty. “Elloren, it’s impossible to be evil and uncivilizedandlove the poetry of Fleming. I’m sure of this.”

I look toward Jarod just in time to see him briefly and discreetly meet Aislinn’s gaze and smile. Aislinn returns his smile shyly, colors then quickly turns away, hugging her poetry book close to her heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Stick Magic

“There’s something strange about you and wood.”

I pause, my hands coated with esmin bark powder.

Only thedrip, drip, dripof condensation from a distillation tube breaks the silence of the deserted lab. Tierney and I are the last scholars here at this late hour, finishing up work that takes twice as long without wand magic.

I’ve known for some time that Tierney’s noticed. It’s like something in me is waking up, and it’s more than just the echo of my grandmother’s power in my blood. I’ve always had fanciful imaginings about source trees, but the more time I spend in the apothecary laboratory, and especially in the attached greenhouse, the stronger my strange leanings have become.

And Tierney’s noticed.

She noticed when the small, potted Gorthan trees from the inaccessible northwestern forests opened their flowers at the brush of my hand. How a fiddlehead fern once reached up to curl lovingly around my finger, the small plant’s waves of adoration washing over me. She knows that I don’t have to label any ingredients that come from trees now. That I’ve learned to read mixtures intuitively, and can easily and effectively stray from the stated formulas more and more.

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