When the fire was blazing, the company warmed their toes as they emptied the saddlebags that had returned with Nostradamus and ate the remains of the ham, bread, and onions.
Grayling jumped to her feet, shuddering. Some vermin was crawling up her arm! Spider? Rat? Flea? “’Tis this Pook, Gray Eyes,” said a small voice. And there he was, pink nose, and pink ears, and more whiskers than any mouse truly needed. “Has that horrid creature gone?” He twitched his tail, charred at the end where the flames had found the raven.
“Aye,” Grayling said, “truly gone, and you are come back safely.” She settled back down by the fire, and the mouse curled against her neck.
“This Pook should not have abandoned you, but it is difficult for a startled raven to stay in a pocket.” Pook twitched his nose. “Might there be a crumb of something to eat?” Grayling gave him a bit of bread, which he nibbled before climbing into her pocket. She heard a tiny sigh and then a tiny snore.
“Was that mouse talking?” asked Phinaeus Moon, his voice quavering with alarm, suspicion, disbelief.
Grayling had forgotten that he was newly come. “Aye, he was,” she said.
“A mouse? But how?”
Grayling told again the story of the mouse and the potions. “And now whenever he be fearful or excited, the shape shifting takes him. He finds it thrilling, he says, but confusing.”
Phinaeus Moon stared at her. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were wide as dinner plates. “Who are you folk?” he asked at last. “A lady of surpassing loveliness, a mischief-making girl with powerful magic, a weather charmer, a bearded wizard, a talking mouse, and you with the courage to face a hideous serpent?”
So Grayling had to begin from the very beginning, with her mother calling to her. He listened and nodded until she finished.
Sylvanus lit a pipe, and Grayling smelled dried mint, sage, and angelica root. “Until you, I had not met someone glamoured to be a snake,” Sylvanus told the young man. “Could you feel it happening? Did you know how you appeared to others?”
“I felt little different. A bit queasy and dizzy perhaps, as if I had overdrunk of honey mead, but little different except that I moved as if through soup, a thick and warm soup—my granny’s dried pea with bacon perhaps.” Phinaeus Moon licked his lips at the memory. “Even my horse bellowed in fright and ran, the cart bouncing after him, and my companions fled. I looked into a stream and saw, oh, how very different I was. I wished I could run from me also.” He shivered. “I am no beauty, I know, but to be horrid, repulsive . . . and all thanks to this meddlesome, irksome girl.” He glowered at Pansy.
She glowered back at him. “I could likely cast a glamour again,” she said, “so I suggest you stop calling me names.”
“Pansy was cruel and malicious,” said Auld Nancy. “We will teach her to use her skills wisely, Sylvanus and I, or she will be put to work in the Nether Finchbeck laundry, washing the socks of adolescent magicians.”
Said Sylvanus, “The second most important rule about magic is to know when not to use it. We shall attend to that anon.”
Pansy frowned.
The fire took to smoldering and smoking, and Auld Nancy coughed deeply as the smoke circled her head. “Black clouds and ashweed, begone from me!” she shouted, waving her broom. A small shower of rain fell and cleaned the air. She sat back, satisfied.
Grayling stirred the fire and added small twigs and branches. The fire settled down, and so did they all.
“I don’t suppose,” asked Phinaeus Moon, “any of you could conjure me a horse? I must get back to the city.” He looked around. No horse appeared. “No, I feared not. ’Tis afoot for me.”
“What awaits you in the city?” asked Auld Nancy. “A banker? A tailor? A lover?”
“Paper,” he said. “Fine paper that I make myself.” He stretched his hands out before him. “My hands tingle, longing to feel again the slippery rag slurry that dries into paper. That, too, is a sort of magic. My paper is unequaled in the kingdom—heavy, soft, creamy, and thick.” His eyes grew dreamy. “Paper not to be used for registers or accounts or lists of provisions: two pounds of flour, a tub of pig fat, and a turnip. No, elegant paper that should be saved for royal decrees, sacred texts, or”—here he looked at Desdemona Cork—“love letters.”
Desdemona Cork twitched her shawl, and Phinaeus Moon blushed.
Grayling rolled her eyes. “Can you not leave it for a moment?” she hissed to Desdemona Cork. “Must you enchant everyone?”
Desdemona Cork pulled her shawls tightly around her. “’Tis not something I do, but something I am.”
“Why, then, are you not something useful?” Grayling asked. “Why are none of you useful? What value is there in your magic if you can do nothing with it?” She roared in frustration. Where was the help she had expected from the others?