by Zoe Chant
But when she slipped down off the counter, her knees buckled beneath her and she was alarmed to find herself suddenly in tongue’s reach of the dogs, who had been milling hopefully around in the kitchen, probably wondering why Ansel had thrown out perfectly good burnt food.
Vesta tried to climb into her arms, her whole body wiggling in joy and excitement, and Fabio licked everything he could reach as Ansel tried to haul them off and help Tadra back to her feet. “Back, Fabio! Vesta, stop jumping, leave it! Bad dogs, get back! Dammit!”
Then Ansel was lifting her back up out of the range of their tongues and carrying her out into the living room to the couch. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously, tucking a stiff, square pillow under her head.
Even signing took too much energy, and Tadra only managed, sorry.
“Don’t be sorry,” Ansel scolded her. “I let you get chilled, and you haven’t had enough food, probably. Maybe smoke inhalation? I’ll air it out a little, make you a snack, some tea? Are you in pain?”
Tadra shook her head. She knew that whatever ailed her, it wasn’t the cold, or the food, or the smoke, but she let Ansel fuss over her and tuck the afghan around her.
“Leave her alone,” he threatened Fabio, “or I will lock you in the bathroom for the rest of the day.”
Fabio sank down with his face on the floor and wagged his tail obediently, but as soon as Ansel had gone back into the kitchen, he crept across the room and crawled up onto the couch with Tadra, one limb at a time like he was sure he was going to be ordered off at any moment.
Vesta whined and paced nervously between the kitchen and the living room, not happy with having either of them out of her sight.
It was worse than the night before. Tadra wasn’t sure if she hadn’t quite recovered her full strength after all, or the sucking, draining sensation was more powerful this time. What was it? Why was she suddenly so incapacitated? Would her vitality ever return?
Even thinking was a chore, and she closed her eyes and drowsed for an indeterminate time.
“Get off,” Ansel was hissing when she woke again.
At first, Tadra was confused, wondering why Ansel wanted her off the couch that he’d so carefully helped her lie down on. Then she thought that he was talking to Fabio, who had taken his allotment of the furniture and then stretched further, crowding her legs almost off the cushions and resting his chin on her hip.
There was another weight at her shoulder, and this one gave a yowl of warning as Ansel pried the warmth of a cat off of her. Sharp claws briefly scratched her arm, and she gave a soundless hiss that was more surprise than pain.
“I’m so sorry,” Ansel said. The cat he was lifting off of her growled in protest and twisted out of his grasp as Tadra opened her eyes. “You looked really uncomfortable.”
The cat streaked out of the room, Vesta hot behind her. Fabio’s tail thumped somewhere down below Tadra’s knees.
Tadra didn’t remember the sign for better, but she tried to nod reassuringly as she struggled to sit up.
Once Fabio’s weight was off her legs, she felt fine again and she stood cautiously. No dizziness or weakness remained. She was a little tired, perhaps, but it was not the bone-deep exhaustion that had hit her so hard earlier.
“You slept for about an hour,” Ansel said, answering the question that Tadra had been thinking. “Are you okay?”
Good, Tadra signed, and then she remembered the sign for better, because it was a progression. Three words had been taught in the same portal-lesson: good, better, best.
Better, she added. She tested her range of motion curiously and shrugged.
Whatever malady had afflicted her, it had passed quickly.
Ansel looked like he was trying to watch her without watching her, as guilty as Fabio eyeing food he knew he wasn’t supposed to want. “I made you some tea, I can heat it back up.”
Tadra nodded and resisted stretching again just to embarrass him for fun.
He chattered helpfully as she followed him into the kitchen, explaining the like-magic box that he used to warm the tea—a microwave—and a little that Tadra didn’t follow involving a dangerous power called electricity. Was electricity this world’s version of magic? Tadra didn’t have the vocabulary to ask all the questions in her head.
One of the whiteboards had been secured to the refrigerator, but she wasn’t even sure what to write. She doodled a little cloud in the corner and then a firebird.
“Your timing was really good,” Ansel said, handing Tadra the cup of tea. “Christmas is in a few weeks.”
The mug was surprisingly hot and Tadra had to dance it in her hand a little. She let her eyebrows ask what Christmas was as she sipped the tea cautiously.
“Christmas is probably our biggest holiday. It falls near the winter solstice, and we give each other gifts and celebrate love and family.”
Tadra pointed at him with more questions in her eyes.
“My family?” Ansel guessed, and she nodded.
“I never knew my blood family,” Ansel said slowly. “I grew up in a foster home—it was great, not like Oliver Twist or anything. Ah, I mean, that’s too obscure a reference, sorry. I was close to my foster family. I never felt like I missed out on anything by not knowing my biological parents.”
Tadra made a fist to her heart.
“You were like that with your shieldmates?”
She nodded.
“I’d normally be getting ready to travel and visit with them for the holidays, but of course, we’ve got the big destruction of the world coming up, and the heroes of the story needed someone to watch the dogs.”
Tadra decided that the tone in his voice was regret and she thought she understood it. As a knight in her own world, facing an enemy of darkness and misery, she had a clear purpose, an unmistakable direction.
Here, stripped of her power, suffering some kind of intermittent weakness, in a place she didn’t know or care for, her path was less clear. She felt sidelined, out of step from her destiny.
She put her tea down on the counter and took Ansel’s face in her hands, surprising him.
“I can’t—! What are you—?”
She didn’t try to kiss him again, regretting her earlier attempt, but rested her forehead on his, trying to share her understanding and kinship through their touch without words.
After a moment, he took her face in his own hands and Tadra could feel the tension ease from him as well as from herself.
When she stepped back, they smiled at each other.
Hungry, she signed, and Ansel sprang into motion. “I’ve ruined the pizza, but I can still introduce you to something called sandwiches.”
Chapter 11
Tadra spent the next two days learning everything she could, furiously stuffing information into her brain from Ansel’s not-magic portals, reading his books, and quizzing him. She wanted to be all caught up when her shieldmates returned, so that she could focus entirely on their pending battle and not be a liability because she could not operate a toaster.
(She only set it on fire once.)
He gave her a tiny phone of her own and showed her how to browse for answers to questions on her own.
“There is...ah...a lot of stuff you probably don’t want to know on the Internet,” he warned her, but when she pressed him, he only looked embarrassed and said something about Rule Thirty-Four.
Tadra preferred to ask Ansel her questions. The tiny screen was hard to focus on for long, it felt so fragile, and it frequently didn’t make sense without his patient explanations, anyway. The scope of the world was vast and confusing, but everything was so interesting. She and Ansel added more and more words to their shared vocabulary, making up as many as they learned.
It was curious to find herself in the role of a scholar, she realized, reading one of Ansel’s faery tale books for clues to how magic worked here. Trey had always been the one most interested in books, as Henrik was in magic and Rez was in healing. She had been the one who wanted to drill
with the sword, or run, or fly.
She suddenly missed them, with a jolt of melancholy so deep and unexpected that she wasn’t swift enough to dash her tears away before one fell onto a brilliantly illustrated page.
It didn’t make a sound, but Ansel, reading across the coffee table from her, looked up and caught her wiping away a second betrayal.
He pushed Fabio, groaning, off his lap and moved to sit next to her.
Sorry, she signed, wiping the tear from the page.
Ansel didn’t speak, only put a hand at her back and rubbed kindly as she pulled herself together. He sat just a little way apart, his thigh not quite touching hers.
Tadra didn’t let herself cry any further—she was a Firebird Knight! Protector of the Broken Crown! She couldn’t snivel like a little girl because she missed her shieldmates. She put the book aside. She didn’t want to look at illustrations that weren’t quite her world and think about things she couldn’t control. She should be practicing for battle, or planning defenses.
Sorry, she signed again, more firmly. Then, Thank you.
“I thought we might go to the mall today,” Ansel said kindly, taking his hand back and standing.
Mall. Tadra wracked her brain. Had he mentioned a mall before? She stood with him.
“It’s a place with many stores,” Ansel explained, before she had to ask. “I still need to get everyone presents for Christmas. I was waiting until they left, I figured I’d have plenty of time, but...well, you showed up rather unexpectedly.”
Tadra cocked her head at him. There was a whiteboard beside the couch where she’d been sitting. Ansel had talked a little about Christmas before, but… presents? she wrote.
“Gifts. It’s a Christmas tradition to buy your friends and family small and thoughtful tokens.” Ansel’s whole face softened; the idea clearly brought him great pleasure. “You can help me pick a few things out.”
What if? Tadra signed. She pressed the back of her hand to her head and feigned weakness. She hadn’t had a spell since her second wave two days before, but she didn’t want to be caught somewhere unsafe if it happened again.
“If you get dizzy, I can carry you back to the car and take you home at any moment,” Ansel promised.
Tadra shook her head to think of someone carrying her. She didn’t think she could get used to the idea of being helpless; it was completely counter to her nature.
“I’m hoping that it was just because you were in glass for so long,” Ansel continued. “Maybe it was just a passing thing.”
Maybe, Tadra signed. Maybe it was because Ansel wasn’t her key, she thought, but she didn’t try to sign that. Even if she’d had the words for it, it felt wrong to say.
“You’ll want a jacket,” Ansel said, and he opened the closet in the entryway to show a collection of outer garments in many sizes and colors.
Tadra would have made a noise of appreciation if she had been able, reaching at once to a collection of thick, black leather coats that hung together to one side. She pulled the stiff arm of one of them out. There was a brilliant red bird embroidered at the shoulder. A golden griffin, a blue unicorn, and a green dragon adorned pairs of matching garments.
“Heather made these for you guys,” Ansel said, grinning at her. “It’s the closest thing we have to decent armor that you can walk around town in. We don’t want to actually hurt any of the humans before we can get the dours or whatever out of them, but they’re going to be doing their best to hurt us. Them, I mean. Padded leather seemed sensible.”
Tadra trailed her fingers over her shieldmates’ coats, grinning in pleasure, then gave hers a tug to pull it off the hanger and pull it on. It was big across the shoulders, but there was a belt to snug it close at the waist. It fell to the tops of her thighs, and had big pockets, both inside and out. The belt was sturdy enough to hang a weapon on.
She twirled to show it off and Ansel wholeheartedly approved. “Heather said she could bring it in if you needed, but she didn’t want to before she could fit it to you exactly.”
That made sense; armor should be fitted to a fighter. The arms were a little loose, but the length was good, and there was a collar that could be stood up. Tadra flashed Ansel a delighted double thumbs up and to her surprise, he laughed uproariously.
“Ehhhh!” he said, returning the gesture. “I’ll have to show you episodes of Happy Days. I’m sorry so many of our jokes are so obscure!”
It was strange, Tadra thought, exactly how much humor they shared, considering that they were still finding the common ground to build it on. They laughed over the same kinds of bawdy jokes, enjoyed clever wordplay, and took the same sort of joy in the antics of the pets and each other. Part of it, she thought, was that he was never unkind with his amusement. He didn’t ever mock or tease, and he never took pleasure in her discomfort, even when she knew she must be ridiculous.
Ansel put on a very plain jacket by comparison, a puffy-looking orange and blue quilted thing with no particular styling.
Hat? Tadra signed at him. She had her own already on, a knitted cone with a puffy tassel at the top. She had learned her lesson from her first uncomfortably cold trip outside, and several since then, walking the dogs with Ansel.
“I’ve got this awesome fro to keep my ears warm,” he scoffed, patting his hair.
Tadra eyed him curiously. His hair was so different than her own, in a thick, curly mane all around his head. Sun, she signed. Your head, your heart. Keeps you warm.
Ansel looked like he decided not to say something and took keys to the conveyance down from beside the door.
May I? Tadra wanted to know.
“Drive?” Ansel asked in horror.
He had shown her a video game of driving, and it didn’t seem all that difficult. Tadra nodded eagerly. She wanted to try absolutely everything that this world had to offer.
“Let’s work up to that,” Ansel said. “It’s a lot harder than it looks.”
Tadra sighed and pulled her hat down over her ears. So much about this world was!
Chapter 12
Ansel wasn’t glad that Tadra couldn’t speak, but he did like that it gave him a perfectly reasonable and utterly platonic reason to watch her all the time.
It made driving a challenge, however, because he wanted to gaze at every fascinated expression she made with her face and her hands instead of paying attention to the traffic. He nearly ran two red lights on the way to the mall. It didn’t help that the streets were slushy with new snow.
Ansel went over the things that he thought were important to warn her about as he parked. “Try not to touch things, or wander off. It might be crowded, so stay close to me. There will be a lot of noise and bright lights and interesting things. If we get separated, find a Santa Claus and stay with him, I will come and find you there.” Ansel had shown her pictures of Santa Claus and attempted—poorly, he feared—to explain the mythology. “And above all, do not shift. People here do not change into tiny sizzling swans and it would draw a lot of unwanted attention.”
Tadra nodded impatiently, and he locked the car and turned to take her into the mall.
She at least looked like everyone else, wearing jeans and light winter boots. Her leather jacket was open, and she had a knit hat over her loose hair. She looped her hand into his elbow and stayed rather closer to Ansel than he’d meant to imply she should.
He didn’t mind it in the slightest, though he thought he ought to, and he smiled when one of the barkers just inside the door offered them a jewelry store coupon, “to get a gift for your girlfriend!”
Tadra exchanged an amused and rather wry look with him at that, and he politely turned the coupon down.
The mall, which was frenetic at the best of times, was in the throes of those madcap weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was a giant, tinsel-covered tree in the middle of the rotunda, and a Santa Claus was posing for pictures with a lengthy line of ill-behaved children and tired-looking parents. There was loud Christmas music from every
store, overlapping in a din of sound like an ocean undertow to the chatter of all the shoppers and sellers.
“I have a list,” Ansel said sympathetically. Tadra looked like she was shell-shocked, gazing around in wonder, her reservations clear on her face. “We shouldn’t have to stay long.”
But his plan to leave quickly was thwarted by Tadra’s interest in absolutely everything. She dragged him into the gourmet chocolate store and when they walked out with a five pound sampler bag, Ansel counted himself lucky that it wasn’t worse.
They stopped in a bath boutique next.
Tadra smelled every sample that was out and tested the hand lotion.
“Pick one out if you like,” Ansel offered, when she was drawn to a wall full of bath bombs.
She smelled several and selected one that was cinnamon and clove, half-closing her eyes in pleasure. He went to pay for it, passing cash over the counter to the clerk.
“You want a bag for tha—” the clerk trailed off and Ansel turned to find Tadra starting to put it into her mouth.
“It’s not food!” he warned her.
Tadra froze with it nearly at her lips. She smelled it again, her eyebrows skeptical, then licked it defiantly.
The clerk choked with laughter at Tadra’s expression of disgust and quickly coughed to cover her outburst. “Your change is sixty-seven cents,” she said in a strangled voice as she passed the coins across the counter.
Tadra, looking as if she’d just been betrayed, dropped the bath bomb into the offered bag, then pointed the coins as Ansel was about to drop them into the charity box on the counter, signing a question.
“I’m donating the change to—” Ansel peered at the sign. He was still trying to banish the memory of Tadra’s tongue. “Dogs for blind children, I think?”
Tadra shook her head, then pointed at the coins inside the clear plastic box.
“Oh, money?”
The clerk was staring across the counter at them with real confusion now.
“Let’s talk as we walk,” Ansel suggested. He gave the clerk a broad smile that hopefully said We’re just eccentric and not You should probably call mall security now and hustled Tadra out with him before she could try to eat anything else.