6. Three

Three

A Flower Among Weeds

L ily stood in one of the barn stalls, her nose pressed into the sleeve of her gray wizard robe. Although she loved visiting the horses, the stalls hadn't been cleaned out yet and the smell was awful.

"As you can see, the horse's leg is injured. He stepped into a mole hole, more likely than not." The stable master was on one knee beside the dirty white horse, holding a front leg so Wester, the wizard and Lily's master, could see.

"Damn horses are so fragile," one of the stable hands muttered under his breath.

Lily glanced in his direction. "Don't you think you should be doing something other than cursing at injured animals?" she shot back.

He cleared his throat and leaned on the shovel in his hands.

Wester silently urged Lily to come forward. "How do you propose we heal this injury?"

Lily dropped her arm but held her breath as long as she could. Standing closer to Wester, she could see the broken bone in the horse's leg. "Hm. If we mixed thistle root and—"

"Not a potion, Lily. A spell."

She hesitated. She was far better at the potion side of magic than she was at reaching out to magical energy and summoning spells. She could control the potions and the ingredients therein. Spells? They always seemed to go awry. Wester said it was because she was too distractible and needed to train more. Undoubtedly, this need was the very reason Wester had brought her out to the stables in the first place.

Lily had no choice but to finally let out the breath she had been holding and draw a new one—one full of the pungent air—and she wrinkled her nose against it. "A mending spell would be easiest."

Wester nodded, his eyes locked on hers. "Then connect with the magic and heal the horse's leg." He stood and took a step back.

Lily glanced around the barn for an energy source. She wasn't allowed to use energy other than plants. At least, not yet. But she couldn't see anything within the building. She finally looked at Wester, who, judging by the glint in his eye, knew this fact. She had two choices—find an alternate energy source or reach out to the plants outside. Since she wasn't allowed to do the first because she hadn't mastered the second, Lily really only had one choice. Wester had been trying to get her to access further-away sources, but she always defaulted to whatever plant was nearest. Now she couldn't even access plants nearby. Wester was forcing her to reach out to those further sources of magic.

Standing in the barn, in front of her master and three strangers, she had to perform magic she hadn't even successfully accomplished in private thus far.

Lily licked her lips and drew in a breath through her nose—which she immediately regretted.

"That's it. Concentrate," Wester urged.

She could feel the familiar tingling of magic on the tips of her fingers. All around her, sources of potential magical energy radiated—blue: four humans. Yellow: a barn cat, five pigeons in the loft, and...eleven mice. These were the strongest sources, with the humans clearly being the strongest of them all. But behind these auras of light and magic was green: plants.

Confident in her identification of a source, Lily needed to focus harder to strengthen the light and block out the other sources. She closed her eyes to clear other colors, other sources, from her vision—something Wester was bound to mention later. Even though she could no longer physically see the sources, she could see their outlines of energy through her eyelids. She remembered to feel for the green, to concentrate on the familiar, warm sensation of energy. The blur of green quickly took shape into the outline of tall grasses and weeds with...sunflowers! Sunflowers were one of her favorites, especially in the spring when the bumblebees rested their plump bodies on the powdery center.

The green glowed behind her eyelids, and the tangible sensation of magic spread up her hands and arms. Only then did Lily open her eyes. She focused all of her attention on the horse and its broken leg. With one hand stretched to the horse, she drew the energy from the flowers and concentrated on mending the broken bones. As the horse's leg healed, the green light faded until it completely disappeared.

Lily dropped her hand to her side and sucked in a deep breath, not worrying about the scent of the stalls now as she recovered from casting the spell.

"Remarkable!" The horse handler rubbed his hand up and down the now healed limb.

Lily smiled proudly and turned her head to Wester.

The wizard walked past her, patting her shoulder as he did so. He rarely displayed his pride in her, and that was often the best she got, but she was proud of herself today and felt she deserved a proper and formal congratulations.

She followed him out of the barn. "Well?" she demanded.

Wester looked at her from the corner of his eye, and his lips spread into the slightest of grins. "You did it. I told you that you could. You need to have confidence in yourself."

A small puppy scampered after them, its tail wagging. It had followed Lily since they'd exited the castle but must have wandered off while they were in the barn. She crouched and scooped him up.

"How am I supposed to have confidence in myself when I constantly fail?"

"Mistakes are desired, Lily." Wester slowed so they were side by side. "You are old enough and have learned this to be true. What is it that truly holds you back?" He stopped walking and faced her. "What is it in here?" He gently tapped his index finger on her forehead.

Lily played with the puppy's floppy ears as she thought on his words. He was right. Lately, she had been terribly distracted. Perhaps it was the spring warmth and glowing sunlight and her desire to be outside the cold castle walls. But she knew the real answer. There was a gaping hole inside of her. A deep feeling that something in her life was missing.

She'd grown up without a father and mother. Wester had taken her in as his apprentice when they'd been killed and she'd been thrown out of her town as an outcast because of her magical talents. He claimed the people in town had been afraid of her, not that she could remember any of these events. Wester said it was too traumatic for her to remember.

But the hole was something more.

She craved adventure beyond the outer walls. Something beyond the mountains in the distance called to her.

Or someone.

"Lily?" Wester asked, drawing her back into the moment.

She finally looked up at him. "I've been having dreams at night. Sometimes, I stand at the window overlooking the mountains to the east and I can swear there is a voice calling my name and telling me to come."

Wester's expression suddenly became solemn. "Tell me more about this voice."

"It's a woman's voice." Lily shrugged, suddenly very self-conscious. "It is only a dream, though."

"Dreams have meanings. You've studied this. What do you think it could mean?" Wester, ever the teacher, began walking again to the castle.

Lily heaved a sigh. "I think I don't have a woman in my life so I'm yearning to have that motherly figure."

"Hm. Perhaps." Wester said nothing more on the subject. "I need you to go through the ingredients and make an inventory of what we need. Maybe I'll even let you collect some of the items beyond the castle walls."

Lily's heart jumped. "You mean that?"

"Absolutely." He nodded, eyes forward.

Lily thought she could skip down the hallway. Instead, she ruffled the puppy's ears and kissed his head.

"You plan on keeping that, do you?" Wester asked when they entered the hallway up to their tower.

"May I?" She grinned and held up the gangly puppy. "I could train him to sniff out certain ingredients, or even practice some of my magic on him. You said it was time for me to begin transforming live things now that I've mastered inanimate objects. And he would be a good companion when you leave on your missions with the king."

"Those are rare." The graying man rolled his eyes and reached out to pat the puppy on the head. "It is a big responsibility to care for a puppy. It will be good for you to learn. Now, go do your tasks. I had forgotten our soldiers were supposed to return today, and I need to be present for the king, should he need me."

Lily pulled the puppy close to her chest. "Thank you. And I will do the inventory immediately."

"Make sure you eat something to recover your strength from casting the spell."

"I don't feel very tired, to be honest."

Wester smirked. "That is because you performed the magic correctly. When you use the energy of other sources, it doesn't drain you as much. I shall see you at dinner." He exited through a doorway.

Lily held up the puppy. "I believe you need a name. Perhaps I should call you...Percy?"

The puppy tried to lick her, wiggling in her hands as she did so. He was a sweet white-and-tan puppy with little tan freckles on his short white nose. She giggled and drew him close enough he could reach her face and give her all sorts of kisses.

"I bet I could turn you into something, couldn't I? Wester keeps telling me to have confidence in myself. What do you think? Could I turn you into a little ladybug?" Lily rubbed her nose against his, earning a lick.

But to her absolute horror, the puppy disappeared in her hands, a small cloud of yellow smoke fading away.

In her hand sat a little ladybug.

"Oh no!" Dread sank into her heart, and fear because she had no idea how she had turned him into a ladybug in the first place, let alone how on earth she was going to turn him back into a dog. "Turn back! Please turn back into a dog."

The ladybug climbed across her palm and she clamped her other hand over it so the ladybug couldn't fly away.

"Oh." She bit her lip. She hadn't felt for an energy source, she hadn't intentionally cast the spell, and yet she somehow felt very tired all of a sudden. "I need to find Wester."