Chapter 3

C HAPTER 3

Hester came awake in the night because something had ended.

At first her sleep-fogged brain thought that it might have been a sound. Had there been rain? Had she woken because the drumming on the roof had stopped? No, there wasn't any rain last night, was there? It was clear as a bell and chilly from it.

She lay blinking up at the ceiling, the posts of the bed framing her vision like trees. What had stopped?

Fear took her suddenly by the throat, a formless dread with no name, no shape, only a sense that something was wrong, something terrible was coming this way. Hester gasped, reaching for her neck as if to pull off a murderer's hands, but there was only the darkness there.

She was in her own room, in her own bed, in her brother's house that had been her father's house and her grandfather's before him. She knew exactly where she was. If it had been a nightmare, she could have shaken it off, but she was firmly awake now, and the dread was not receding.

Something was coming. It would be here before long. Not tonight, perhaps not even tomorrow, but soon.

Ah, she thought, remaining calm even in her head. It was my safety that ended. Yes, of course.

Hester had felt such a nameless fear once before in her life, when she looked into the eyes of a young man that her parents had picked out for her. She had gathered her courage and cried off the wedding. It had cost her dearly but she stood her ground in the face of all opposition. Her parents had raised her to be good and biddable and not cause a fuss and it had shocked both them and Hester herself to learn how much stubbornness she had saved up over the course of those years.

Years later, when the young man's proclivities came to light, she was held to have had a lucky escape. By then, of course, it was much too late. She had been branded a jilt and she was not beautiful enough to tempt any other suitors, nor was there enough money in the family coffers to tempt their pocketbooks. She had been considered firmly "on the shelf" by the time that word came down of what he had done, and the hanging that had followed.

Her father had apologized. Her mother hadn't, but Hester had no longer expected such things.

This had the same taste, the same sense that doom followed and she had only a little time to avert it.

"All right," she rasped aloud. "All right. I hear you. I'm listening."

Acknowledgment seemed to be all that it wanted. The dread released her and Hester gasped in air, feeling sweat oozing from her skin and soaking into the sheets.

She wished suddenly, powerfully, that Richard were there in the bed beside her. They had been lovers a decade earlier, and then he had offered her marriage and she had turned him down, not willing to have him sacrifice his prospects out of pity. He was Lord Evermore to most, with an immense estate and money enough to set half the matchmakers in the city baying at his heels. He needed an heir and a spare and a woman young enough to give him both.

Hester did not exactly regret that choice, but it would be so much easier now to roll over and shake him awake and tell him that she'd had a nightmare. His arms would close around her, and she would lean her forehead against his shoulder and breathe easier. It would have been good to have.

But I don't have it. And whatever is coming, it seems that I will have to deal with it myself.

Hester sighed. She was fifty-one years old now, and her back ached and her knees ached and when the barometer plunged, she found it easier to use a cane. She did not want to be standing in the path of the storm.

And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, she thought, and rolled over, and tried to get a little more sleep before something terrible arrived.

In the morning, Cordelia saddled Falada and rode him out of the stable. She took nothing with her, because she had not dared to plan anything in advance. She did not even dare to think about rebellion. She simply rode away, in the opposite direction from her rides with Ellen, staring at the road between Falada's ears.

They went for perhaps three miles, as far as they had ever gone from home, and then Falada stopped.

Cordelia squeezed with her knees, and clucked her tongue. He did not move.

She got off his back and tried to lead him. "It's all right," she said. "Come on." Her voice was shaking for reasons that she didn't dare think about. "Come on, Falada, good horse."

He did not move. She tugged on his halter and he set his feet in the road and did not move.

"It's all right," she told him. "We're going away. You and me. So she won't make you do anything that will get you killed."

He might as well have been carved of quartz.

"We can't stay. She'll make you obedient again, and I can't stop her."

Falada did not stir a hoof.

"We'll go another way," she said, and tried to lead him off the road.

Again, he did not move. Not forward. Not back.

She tried to push him, with her merely human strength. He did not yield.

She actually thought about getting a stick and hitting him, but no. Not Falada. He was her friend, and you did not do that, not to animals, not ever. Some people used a riding crop, to be sure, but Cordelia would have cut her arm off before she put a mark on that shining hide. But I have to save him. I have to do something.

A lump was rising in her throat, and then her mother caught her shoulder and said, "What's going on here?"

Cordelia whirled around, shocked. It took her a moment to say, "Mother? What are you doing here?"

"A very good question," said her mother. "Where were you going?"

"I wasn't—I wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to see what was down this road—I've never gone—but Falada wouldn't move—"

There was no way that her mother could be there by accident. She was miles from home. Her mother was on foot.

"Of course he wouldn't," said her mother, sounding amused. "He knew something was wrong."

She stepped to Falada's head and scratched under his chin with her nails.

Falada stretched out his neck and blinked his eyes and made a soft hwuff of pleasure.

"Were you trying to run away?" Evangeline asked.

"No!" said Cordelia. She hoped it sounded like shock. "No! If I was running away, I'd—well, I'd have taken food, wouldn't I? Or water or clothes or something. And I wouldn't! I mean, I love you. I'd never run away."

Her mother laughed. Cordelia dared to hope that her answer had been good enough. Please, please, let her believe me…

She could not imagine the punishment for trying to run away.

"I know that's not true," said her mother. "He tells me everything, you know. He is my familiar, after all."

It meant nothing. It was monstrous to the point of being meaningless. She did not know what a familiar was, but she knew that Falada could not possibly talk to her mother. She had whispered every secret and every fear into his mane and that would mean that her mother knew them all.

It could not be true, because the world could not be like that.

And then her mother stroked Falada's nose, and he turned a sly eye toward Cordelia and snorted, and Cordelia realized that she was hearing the sound of a horse's mocking laughter.

He thinks that's funny.

He's been telling her everything all along, and he thinks it's funny.

The image came to her of Falada and her mother laughing at her together, and Cordelia thought that she might faint.

"Oh, don't look so stricken," said her mother briskly. "I'm your mother. Do you think I don't know all your little secrets already?" She rolled her eyes and mounted Falada's back, then reached down a hand to Cordelia.

Cordelia took it. She could not seem to breathe. The touch of calico under her arms, when she held her mother's waist, was like sandpaper, and the sharp, woody scent of wormwood closed around her like iron bands.

"So you thought you were saving him, did you?" Her mother shook her head. "Silly child."

"I… I…" Cordelia could not muster a single defense. Her mind was completely blank.

"I made you," her mother said, looking straight ahead. "I made him and I made you, and you belong to me. Don't forget it."

They rode double back to the house. When they were cresting the final hill, the white outline of the house before them, her mother broke the silence, saying cheerfully, "You know I'd never let anything happen to you. Falada will keep you safe. He'd never let you get lost."

Cordelia nodded. She's rewriting it in her head already, then. I was getting lost, not running away.

Relief washed over her and settled in her chest. Her mother did this sometimes, recasting the past into a shape that she found more congenial. This time the changes seemed to benefit Cordelia.

The closeness between them, as she held her mother's waist while Falada carried them toward their front door, gave Cordelia the courage to ask, "Mother? What's a familiar?"

"Like a spirit," said her mother. "Or a tame demon, sometimes. A sorcerer makes one out of magic, or catches one, or binds one. Falada's mine."

My mother is a sorcerer. Falada is her familiar.

She let those facts roll around in her head while they rode up to the stable. Falada's hoofbeats were muffled on the packed earth floor.

"Are familiars all horses, then?" Cordelia asked, when she was finally allowed to dismount. She fought to keep her voice casual, as if it hardly mattered.

Her mother laughed. "No, and wasn't it clever to make him one? So useful to have around. No, most sorcerers are so unimaginative, assuming they've got the power to call one up at all. Always nasty little devils with claws. And witches are worse—cats and dogs, the lot of them, not a drop of imagination between them."

"Are there any others around here?"

Her mother's head snapped up. "Why?"

Oh damn, damn, I shouldn't have asked, I should have stopped at two questions, I shouldn't have tried for a third… There was a look in her mother's eyes that she didn't like at all. She cast about wildly for an answer. "There was a dog that barked at Falada a few months ago. I thought maybe it was a familiar."

This seemed to be a good enough answer. "No," said her mother, turning away. "Falada would tell me if he saw one. There're no other sorcerers around here, and the only witch is on the other side of town and she's drunk half the time and senile the other half."

Cordelia nodded politely.

"If you ever see another sorcerer when you aren't with Falada, you must tell me at once, do you understand?" Her mother reached out and seized Cordelia's wrist in a bruising grip.

"Y-yes, Mother."

"Don't trust any of them. They'll only want to use you for their own purposes. And don't even think about keeping it a secret from me."

"No, Mother." Cordelia had no idea how to tell if someone was a sorcerer, and struggled for a way to ask without making it a question. "I… I don't think I've ever seen one. I don't know what one looks like."

Her mother sat back, lips pursed. "Hmm. No, I suppose you wouldn't. I picked a good town to move to. Hopefully that luck will hold. Larger cities mean more sorcerers, and we want to avoid them at all costs."

"Yes, Mother," said Cordelia, who had pushed her luck as far as she dared.

She wondered, as she climbed the stairs to her room, what her mother had meant by "use you for their own purposes." It seemed that there was little enough about her worth using, unless someone needed dishes washed.

A day ago, she would have said it aloud to Falada, turning the words over and trying to puzzle out the meaning. But a day ago the world had been different and Falada had been her friend, and tears slid down her face and dropped, unnoticed, onto the bed.

She tried to remember every secret she had ever whispered in Falada's ear. There were too many, going back all the years of her life. Small ones, like tests failed at school, coins kept to buy a piece of penny candy. Big ones, like riding with Ellen.

How lonely she was. How afraid.

Even one secret was too many.

She felt as if she was coming up from being obedient again, and she swore that she would not scream.

Despite her mother's statements, Cordelia was still surprised two days later when her mother announced that she would be marrying a man in a city near the coast and was going to go see to it. She left Cordelia a few coins and rode off on Falada, her chin high, while her familiar moved like silk beneath her.

Cordelia stood in the doorway and wondered what that meant. Would this man come here? Would she be expected to cook for three? She dreaded the thought. It would be very like her mother to come home with a guest and wonder why there wasn't a steak dinner waiting on the table, and blame Cordelia for the lack.

Worse yet, she might be expected to talk to him. Cordelia dragged out her old primer from school, The Ladies' Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, by Miss Florence Hartley, with its yellowing pages and firm, no-nonsense block letters. She read the paragraphs about how to speak to adults until she had committed them to memory. " Let your demeanor be always marked by modesty and simplicity. Avoid exclamations, they are in exceptionally bad taste and are apt to be vulgar in words. Above all, let your conversation be intellectual, graceful, chaste, discreet, edifying, and profitable. "

"Now, if only I knew how to make my conversation edifying and profitable," she muttered to herself, embarking on a thorough cleaning of the spare bedroom, just in case it was required to hold a potential husband.

In the end, her mother vanished for nearly three days, and Cordelia actually slept with the door closed the second night. The only light came from the moon through the window. Wunderclutter hung in long chains from the upper sill, casting slithery shadows over her bed. It was supposed to drive off evil spirits and dark things that might walk in the night.

Cordelia wished that she could hang it all around the house and keep her mother away.

And Falada. Her stomach roiled with humiliation at the thought. Falada is worse.

The day after her mother left, Falada had returned, no rider on his back. Cordelia assumed that wherever her mother was, she had sent Falada back to watch Cordelia. Spy on me, more like.

He'd walked calmly from the road and into the stable, and Cordelia didn't venture down there to check on him. She hadn't ridden him since that day, and the loss felt like liquid filling her lungs, like she could no longer get a deep enough breath. She missed Ellen. She missed riding even more. Before, when it seemed as if the pressure under her skin would cause her to split open, she would have climbed on Falada's back and galloped across the fields. Felt free for a little while, even if the ride always ended back at her house with its eternally open doors.

Now, when she felt that way, Cordelia gripped her temples and made a sound instead. Not a scream, which would have summoned her mother, but a small, shrill noise, like a teakettle whistling. Like the teakettle, it seemed to release some of the pressure.

With her mother gone, Cordelia could have really screamed. She tried it, experimentally, into her pillow, louder and louder, and then the scream broke into a laugh and she rolled over in her bed, feeling giddy and brave and wild.

It would not last, of course. Her mother would return, tomorrow or the next day or the next, possibly with a new husband in tow. But for the moment, the closed door was a balm and Cordelia slept deeply, without dreams.