“You are the master here,” she reminded him. “You are the one who sets the rules.”
Eric snorted, but said nothing.
“It sounds as if that mule Eric found is perfect for you,” Sebastian continued, as the servant set down the first course in front of her.
“I think it’s safe enough for you to go harass the beast and see if she’ll bear your presence,” Eric put in. “Then you can go riding with the girl. Do you good to get your nose out of a book.”
Sebastian made a face, but did not look displeased. “You sound like Father.”
“And this is a surprise, why?” Eric countered. Sebastian looked away.
Eric quickly finished eating and shoved away from the table. “I have a lot of territory to cover tomorrow,” he said. “The earlier I start the better. I was glad to see you aren’t some sort of hothouse flower, Isabella.”
“My stepmother would say I am more like a weed,” she responded in the same spirit. “Good night, Eric.”
Sebastian listened to this exchange with astonishment. “You two are getting along, then?” he asked, tentatively, when Eric was gone.
“Let’s just say there seems to be a truce,” she replied.
He smiled. “Well, then, it’s good news all around today. The Godmother has made arrangements so that you can write to your father and get letters in return.” He reached under the table and brought up a little carved wooden box, just about the right size to hold a folded and sealed letter. “It was on condition that he wouldn’t reveal anything about this, of course. But it seemed heartless to keep both of you so unhappy when something so small would help.”
She took the box in both hands, and found that those hands were shaking. “I — don’t know what to say — ”
“I know this still doesn’t change the fact that — well, we don’t know what is going to happen to you, and won’t be sure for more than two months. You’ve only been here a fortnight. But — ” he shrugged helplessly “ — I think this will make you a little happier. Or him less worried, which will make you a little happier. I hope.”
“I think you are absolutely right,” she replied. She opened the box. It was empty, and would hold no more than a few sheets of paper. “How does it work?”
“He has the same sort of box. If either of you puts a letter in yours, it will turn up in the other one. You can only use it once a day. That’s how it works. I don’t know why it works. It might use Spirit or Air Elementals, or something else entirely. I didn’t go poking around at it.” He grimaced. “It’s not a good idea to pry too deeply into Godmotherly magic. It tends to bite. It doesn’t like being meddled with.”
“I can imagine. Has Father got his box yet?” she asked, excitement filling her. Finally! She had so much to ask him, to tell him —
“I’ve no idea, but I am sure that the mirror will show you,” Sebastian pointed out. And when she hesitated, he waved a hand at her. “Go on, you might as well go. You are just going to sit there quivering, wanting to see, if you don’t.”
She scarcely waited for him to finish speaking before she ran off with the box. Literally ran. The need to finally talk to her father was a terrible ache in her, a literal, physical ache.
She reached her suite and ran to the table, uncovering the mirror with trembling hands. The mirror seemed to respond to her urgency, clearing immediately and showing her father at his desk, a box identical to hers sitting in front of him. He was staring at it with a strained look, as if he was torn between hoping it was what he had been told, and afraid that it was some terrible hoax.
She tore open the drawer of the desk in a frenzy, getting out paper; she practically spilled the ink in her haste to dip her pen and start the letter, and she didn’t even think about what she was going to say. She just poured it all out onto the page, page after page, how sorry she was that she was causing him all this trouble and grief, how much she apologized for putting herself in this situation, how she missed him, how she was watching him in her mirror, what the Godmother had told her, what Sebastian had told her, that she was all right so far —
It wasn’t terribly coherent, and it was spotted with ink blotches and a few tears when she had finished everything that would fit into the box. She folded the pages — written on both sides — and put them inside, closing the lid and holding her breath.
In the mirror, her father’s box suddenly glowed, a soft yellow light.
He started, and wrenched it open.
He pulled out the pages — which, so far as she could tell, were hers! — and began reading them, racing through them the first time, then reading them more slowly a second time, and then going over them practically word by word the third time. His face was streaked with tears before he was through — as was hers — but he was smiling, as well.
He looked up — and the mirror view moved so that he was looking straight at her — and blew a kiss into the air, as he used to do when she was very small and he was going off to the warehouse for the day.