Page 2 of Wings of Frost and Fury
She finally turns toward me and lifts her arms a little. They’re much smaller and closer to her body than those of most people. At age eighteen, she has arms not much larger than those of a tiny child. She has only three fingers on her right hand and two on her left, all of which are partially formed.
Katlee has learned to function beautifully despite the challenges she was born with, and I’ve always admired her creative solutions for performing daily activities. I’ve comforted her when the cruelty of the world made her cry. But mostly we laugh, she and I. We laugh at expectations and demands. We rebel against the standards to which other people want us to conform.
She has asked about my magic before, cautiously and curiously. With her, I don’t mind answering questions… which is why her frustration surprises me, because she should know better. Despite how much I would love to do what she asks of me, I can’t. It’s not possible.
“I’ve told you, my magic doesn’t work like that,” I remind her gently. “I’m not a healer. And even the best healers are limited in what they can do for systemic conditions or long-term issues.”
“You think I don’t know that? My mother has taken me to dozens of healers.” Katlee smiles wearily. “She has spent all her earnings and much more trying to ‘fix’ me. We’re so far in debt, Thelise. We’re losing this house. By the end of the year, I will have to move away. I’ll have to leave the only home I’ve ever known.”
The news startles and angers me. “Your mother.” I vent a frustrated scoff. “Your mother is a—” I cut myself off, clenching my teeth.
“She’s a bit of a cunt, yes.” Katlee shakes her head with a sigh. “She’s doesn’t accept me… never has. She just wants my differences togo away,to be erased.”
“Isn’t that what you’re asking me to do?”
“Not really.” Her forehead creases with thought. “How do I explain this? I understand my body the way it is. I appreciate it. I’ve lived for almost twenty years with it, and it’s been good to me. But I wantmore. I want new capabilities. I want to remove barriers for myself. I want something else, and I can see the chance for a change. I’m desperate for it. And yetyou, with everything you are and everything you have… you still won’t help me.”
Tears prickle against the edges of my eyelids. “I don’t knowhow, Kat. If I tried to grow and extend your arms, I could kill you.”
“Maybe I’m willing to risk it.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You don’t mean that.”
“Today, I do.”
“I can’t. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Because you won’t study spellcraft like your father wants you to!” she exclaims. “Because you don’t want to be bothered with actuallyhelpinganyone. You just want to float along through life doing a few pretty tricks. That might have been enough when we were children, Thelise, but we’re eighteen now. We’re practically adults. Like it or not, your gift comes with responsibilities to those around you.”
“It’s not that simple.” I leap off the bed and walk to the window, brushing the curtains aside with an angry sweep of my arm. “Maybe I would start out by doing good things, helping people. My father used to do that, too, or so I’m told. But change is inevitable, Kat. When people know you can perform wonderful deeds, they start offering you a lot of money to do terrible ones. Eventually you get desperate enough to take the offer, just once, even if it goes against your moral code. You get paid, and then you realize how well you could have been living, this whole time. You become addicted to it. The power. The money. The acclaim.”
“You’re not your father. You could be better.”
“No, I couldn’t,” I say softly. “I know myself.”
She scoffs. “We’re eighteen. We don’t know shit.”
“I thought I knewyou.” I let the curtain fall and face her, tears still brimming in my eyes. “If anyone has the right to ask this of me, it’s you. And if anyone should know better than to ask, it’s you. Like I said, if I attempted some sort of regenerative spell for your arms, you’d probably die. I won’t do it.”
“You could study. Search the spellbooks, both in your father’s library at home and in his study at the palace.” Kat’s eyes are desperately bright. “Maybe the answer doesn’t lie with healing or regeneration. Maybe it lies with transformation. Remember how you turned that venomous snake we found in the cellar into a kitten?”
“It took me days to figure out how to do that.”
“So take a few months to figure this out. All you have to do is transform me from one version of myself into another.”
When she puts it like that, it sounds within the realm of possibility. But I’ve never heard of any sorcerer accomplishing such a thing.
“You’re just right the way you are.” It’s a reassurance and a final plea.
Katlee senses the cracks in my resistance. “Maybe… but I crave more.When I’m married, as I hope to be, I want to hold my own children safely in my arms. I want transformation. And if you’re truly my friend, you’ll support me in this. You won’t hold back any knowledge or resources that could help me. Isn’t that right?”
Her words fall through the air between us, heavy with duty, with obligation.
Isn’t that right?
What does supporting her mean? What do I owe to her, and how do I reconcile that with what I owe to myself?
“I’ll think about it.” I speak the words in a strangled tone. “I have to go.”
