“Why don’t your neighbours pick up food for you?” I asked as I stood up, swaying. This time there’d been more blood, and I was woozy, swaying side to side like a landlubber on a ship.
“Oh, like they helped me when I was keeling over on the street, you mean?”
The irony. I had Rose, Ariadne, and, most recently, Faolán trying to help me connect with the magic inside, and they’d all failed. While Kaliban needed a much simpler kind of help that no one would give.
“Would you sit down,” he grumbled. “You’re making me seasick.”
I slumped into a chair, pressing my hands into the table in my search for something solid.
“Your magic is still uncontrolled.”
“You said you wouldn’t read me.” I shot him That Look, like Morag when she told me off for drinking too much.
“It’s hard when you shove your thoughts in my face so hard. You have a powerful mind.”
I scoffed and opened my mouth.
“Don’t say it.” He eyed me sidelong as he rummaged through the fruit bowl to see what I’d brought. “You think you’re powerless. I think that’s bullshit. The way you pushed me out the first time you came here…” He shook his head as he buffed an apple on his shirt. “Powerful.” He took a bite, with a satisfying crack of the apple’s flesh. “I’m not trying to read you. I only caught a glimpse.”
I winced and rubbed my temples. “Certain thoughts have been very loud recently.”
He watched me a long while as he chewed. “You have a lot weighing on you.” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard it before—he tended towards Faolán’s gruffness combined with Bastian’s sarcasm.
His eyes twitched, telling me I’d thought that too loud.
Smiling sweetly, I batted my eyelashes at him. “You aren’t like anyone else. You are a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
With a wry smirk, he wiped his hands clean, the apple finished. “Let’s clear your unpleasant memory, then I have a suggestion to calm your mind. Perhaps you can quieten those loud thoughts.”
We pulled two chairs opposite each other, and he hovered his hands an inch from my temples.
I held still, forcing my breaths to slow, conscious that if I turned my head, we’d be touching.
“Ready?”
“Ready.” Biting my lip, I pushed my thoughts towards Elthea’s treatment room. Bright and bloody. The coppery tang in the air. My cries. Leather straps biting into my arms as she poked and pulled at parts of me that were never meant to be prodded.
Kaliban’s presence was a cotton swab wiping it all away.
No blood, no fear, no…
I blinked. Kaliban’s home. How had I…?
He sat back, nodding slowly.
I’d left the Hall of Healing. There was something in there I wanted to forget; I had no idea what. Rubbing my forehead, I nodded. “It’s gone. Thank you.”
“No thanks needed. You brought your payment.”
“I thought fae liked politeness.”
He chuckled. “It’s preferred, but not required. Come.” He led me to the two chairs before the fire.
Although I’d never seen anyone else here, a pair of tweed slippers sat before each chair—one dark purple, the other the same blue-black that Dusk’s guards wore.
“I’ll get these out of our way,” he muttered.
The purple pair he swept away with his foot, but the other slippers, he scooped up like I’d scooped up Vespera when she was a kitten. He placed them beside the fire, then gestured for me to take the chair they’d sat before.
I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was taking someone else’s spot, even though I knew he lived alone. Or at least he did now.
I gave him a small, tight smile.
“Take off your gloves.”
“But—”
“I’m nowhere near you,” he said, sinking into the other armchair. “We won’t touch—I don’t have a death wish. But the marks on your fingers are part of your magic. I want to be able to see them.”
With a sigh, I obeyed. “I thought this was about my thoughts.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You think these things are separate?”
“I think I have no idea what my magic is, just that it’s here and I can do nothing with it… except risk killing someone with a careless touch.”
“Then listen to me, young human. I’ve been doing this longer than your people have been speaking Albionic.”
My eyes widened. “Wait, how old are you?”
“Old enough that I know what I’m doing. Now,” his voice pitched lower, “look into the fire.”
I probably shouldn’t trust the random fae I’d met on the street. But he’d had opportunities to hurt me or steal thoughts from my mind and hadn’t. This couldn’t be any more risky than that.
The flames licked in the fireplace with that odd orange-pink hue. The magic meant they could call the fire into being with a word and extinguish it just as easily. It also didn’t burn flesh and could only escape its fireplace with outside influence. There were no accidental house fires in Elfhame.
“Now what?” I threw him a glance.
“Now, you learn some patience. Stars above, human attention spans are as short as a gnat’s.” He huffed. “You keep looking at the fire. Focus on it.”
I did as he asked, waiting for the next instruction. This couldn’t be it, right?
“Let your breaths slow,” he murmured. “We’re not trying to get rid of thoughts or emotions. They are important and necessary.”
I wasn’t sure emotions were. They were nothing but confusing. Thoroughly impractical.
“But we need some stillness and perspective on them too. We don’t want them to control us.”
That I could understand. I didn’t want anything to control me. Too many things had.
Fear. My father. My uncle.
The hairs on my arms prickled, but I kept my eyes on the flames.
“Thoughts and feelings will come, just acknowledge, then nudge them away. They’ll soon float off, like clouds in the sky.”
Dutifully, I did just that. Goodbye, fear. Goodbye, Father. Goodbye, Uncle Rufus.
“All you need to focus on is the fire. What do you see? What can you feel? Scent, colour, shape—focus on your senses.”
Its warmth pushed away the lingering chill from outside. But I’d thought fae fires scentless. I drew a deeper breath. The hint of woodsmoke and something faintly herbal.
The longer I watched, the more I saw. As well as the coral pink and deep sunset orange, other colours leapt in the flames. Yellow frilled its edges. Sparking green and deep blue tangled at its centre, hugging the burning wood.
There were shapes, too. Just flashing for an instant. Huge hulking beasts with long tusks. The Great Yew, with its split trunk and spreading branches, followed a blink later by Dawn’s Great Oak, upright and proud. A couple locked in a spinning dance.
And for a moment.
A fraction of a fraction of a second.
A fiery crown.
Such strange beauty.
I sank into its crackling show, letting it reveal more shapes and colours.
Gradually, I became aware of the way the fire hummed. As did the world around me. Kaliban’s magic was a constant presence. There was more in the room, different tones—perhaps magical objects like the fireplace and the fae lights. Outside, other pitches merged together, forming a chaotic set of notes.