She got to her feet in one smooth motion and reached down into the basket once more. She lifted out the folds of fabric—as she swirled them through the air, Kellen could see it was actually an ankle-length hooded cloak of thin grey wool—and draped it around herself.
And vanished.
"Hey!"
Kellen jumped to his feet in alarm, staggering just a little in the hasty movement. Idalia was gone.
"Like it?"
She reappeared behind him, the cloak draped over one arm. Kellen stared at her, knowing he was gaping at her like a country fool in a wondertale but unable to keep from doing it. This was magic—magic of the sort that only existed in books and scrolls and Festival-day plays!
"It's a tamkappa—a cloak of invisibility. I made it a while back when I was still thrilled by being able to create things with the Wild Magic whenever I wanted to, with no one around to care whether I did or not. When I'm wearing it, no one can see me—or hear me, or smell me. Oh, it has its practical uses. I use it to take game in the dead of winter, when quarry is scarce and easily spooked. It's about the only magical contrivance I have at the moment," Idalia said, her eyes dancing with glee at his reaction.
"Why?" Kellen asked bluntly. "I mean, if you can make more things like that, why don't you? Make indoor plumbing, if you miss it?"
Idalia shrugged. "The thrill wears off, once you get used to the idea that you can work Wild Magic openly, whenever you like," she said simply. "I have everything I need now, and luxuries—well, they don't seem as much of a priority. But that's enough about magic for one day," she said briskly, folding the tamkappa back into the basket. "Wait here, and I'll bring you something to do." She grinned now. "If you're going to eat my food, brother mine, you're going to have to help me put it on the table."
She walked off toward the cabin, carrying the basket.
Kellen watched her go, frowning faintly. After a few moments he sat back down on the stump again, thinking hard. Idalia, he was coming to realize, was very good at changing the subject when it started to get into matters she didn't want to discuss.
And Kellen—as he was also starting to realize—was very good at thinking about forbidden subjects.
Take the Elves, for example. They'd gotten off that subject mighty quickly when Idalia had been telling him her history! But something about everything she'd told him about how she'd ended up here just didn't make sense. Why was Idalia living out here in the middle of nowhere—in a cabin that didn't even have indoor plumbing—when she could be living with the Elves in their Elven city? Everybody knew that the Elven cities were places of fabulous luxury and decadence, where Elven enchantresses practiced their forbidden wiles on any human men unfortunate enough to fall into their perfumed clutches. And, Kellen supposed fair-mindedly, Elven men did the same for human women, if they could catch them.
So why wasn't Idalia still living there? It obviously wasn't because the Elves had a problem with Wildmages. She'd gone to them for help when she turned back into human form, so they were evidently familiar with the Wild Magic and its effects. She must have lived with them at least for a little while afterward. Why hadn't she stayed with them?
Kellen knew a little about Elves from his studies in the City—though, just as with unicorns, when he came to think about it straight on, he didn't know much. And most of that was from wondertales.
Fiction. Probably not a reliable source.
Not that anything he'd learned in Armethalieh—he was coming to suspect—was very reliable.
So what had he learned from his lessons?
He thought carefully. Not much there, either.
What he did know that might be considered potentially reliable came not from his schoolbooks and histories, but from his religious instruction in the Temple when he was much younger. Elves were one of the Non-human Races strictly banned from City lands. Occasional Elven trade goods did still arrive in Armethalieh, by way of the Mountain Traders, though their price was beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest of the Mageborn. Elves lived for a very long time, maybe forever, in forests far to the west. They didn't have any particular magical abilities—not like human Mages—but they were enchantingly beautiful, and if a human ever saw one, the Elf would use that supernatural beauty to lure him to his doom, because, like all the Nonhuman Races, they were essentially inferior and corrupt, poor copies of humanity allowed to exist by the Eternal Light for instructional purposes.
Only they didn't seem to have lured Idalia much of anywhere, now that Kellen came to think of it. And if the doctrines of the Eternal Light were as false as the rest of the teachings of the Mages, then Kellen thought he'd better consider the rest of what he'd been taught pretty carefully before trusting—or acting on—any of it.
"Here you are."
Kellen looked up as Idalia returned with a sack and a small iron pot. "Emya roots. They need to be peeled for stew. When you're done peeling them, take them down to the spring and wash them, then fill the pot with water and bring it up to the cabin. I've got some other chores to do, but this should keep you busy and out of trouble. There's bread and apples inside if you get hungry, and—try not to injure yourself too badly at this chore while I'm gone, brother mine. And remember, a little work is going to help you recover faster."
With that she walked off, leaving Kellen staring down at a knife— his own penknife, as a matter of fact—an iron pot, and a burlap sack half full of lumpy brown roots.
They were going to eat these?
He picked one up and inspected it dubiously.
"Good eating, those."
Shalkan appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, reached over Kellen's shoulder, and plucked the root delicately out of Kellen's hand.
"Mmm… crunchy," the unicorn observed, mouth full.
"Hey! I'm supposed to be peeling those for dinner," Kellen objected.
"Then I suggest you get started," Shalkan said imperturbably, mouth still full.
Kellen looked around. Idalia was nowhere to be seen. He sighed and reached for another root, watching Shalkan out of the corner of his eye lest the unicorn steal this one, too.
Shalkan looked perfectly healthy. Idalia hadn't said anything about healing him; either she hadn't needed to, or she hadn't felt it was worth commenting on.
"I'm glad you're okay," Kellen said, feeling awkward. "You… are okay, aren't you?"
The unicorn, mouth still full, let Kellen's question pass without comment.
I guess that's a "yes," Kellen decided, and bent his head to the task at hand.
He quickly realized what Idalia had meant by her parting comment. The brown exterior of the root was slippery and tough, hard to cut into. It was going to be quite easy to cut himself while peeling these things if he wasn't careful. The interior was waxy and white, smelling faintly of apples and onions. Kellen supposed that cooking would improve it.
"So," Shalkan asked when he'd finished chewing. "Is freedom everything you hoped it would be?"
"It's different," Kellen said, hoping he didn't sound too grudging about things. Shalkan's continued presence in his life was another thing he wondered about. It was all very well to assume that the unicorn was here to make sure that Kellen kept his half of the magical bargain he'd made, but surely Shalkan had other ways of knowing that, even from a distance? Was there another reason that Shalkan was sticking so close by—and was there even the faintest possible hope that Shalkan might tell him what that was if Kellen asked him directly?
Probably not.
"And now that you have it, you don't like it?" the unicorn asked archly.
"I said—ow!"
In his moment of irritated distraction, the knife had slipped, scoring a thin slice across the end of one of Kellen's fingers. Kellen stuck the wounded digit into his mouth and sucked on it mutinously. "I said," he mumbled around the finger, "that it's different."
The pain subsided. He removed the finger from his mouth and inspected the cut. It wasn't very deep, and the bleeding had already stopped. Kellen took a deep breath, knowing already from the unicorn's tone that Shalkan wouldn't stop prodding at him until he was properly answered. "I don't know yet whether I like it—being free and out of the City—or not. I don't know much about it yet. But I know one thing; it's better to be here than dead. And I know another; it's better to be myself, with all of my memories—or most of them, anyway—and my mind intact, than to be Lycaelon's obedient puppet with half my mind gone. Now, since I don't have a lot of choice about being here and 'free,' I guess I'd better try my best to like it, hadn't I?"
"A good answer," Shalkan said, nodding. "And lesson number one about surviving in the Wild Lands, Kellen: always pay attention to everything around you and especially to the task at hand."
Then Shalkan added, soberly, "Even—or perhaps especially—when people try to distract you from your purpose."
WITHIN a few days, the rhythm of the days with his sister had settled into a pattern. They rose at an earlier hour than he would ever have considered possible in the City, but Kellen rapidly came to appreciate the sheer beauty of the dawn here in Idalia's forest. There were no bells, but every day began with a chorus of birdsong long before the sun was visible, with mysterious threads of fog weaving among the quiet trees. The light gradually increased, and there was a sense of anticipation in the air as the new day began. Then, suddenly, the glory of sunrise—and Idalia took care that they both paused for a moment to appreciate and evaluate it, for the sunrise often gave a clue to the weather for the coming day.
Then he joined her in putting together breakfast, watching and learning the art of cookery, which at the moment was as esoteric for him as that of magick would be for the common Armethaliehan. Then—then the day's work began, a series of alternating chores and lessons in various aspects of the Wild Magic. And even if he didn't consciously remember her from his childhood, there was some sort of visceral memory remaining that made Kellen feel more comfortable with Idalia than he had ever felt with anyone else.
That was a bit unnerving at first, but it did make life with someone who was otherwise a total stranger a lot easier. Though life in the Wildwood was hard, based on unremitting physical labor dawn to dusk, Idalia didn't ask any more of him in the way of physical labor than he could do, though she certainly didn't ask any less, either.