“We don't trust him, sister,” Bellat said, “and you shouldn't either.”
“Well, I do trust him,” Tabitha said conclusively. “So please, for my sake, will you just give him a chance?”
The sprites frowned and pouted and stamped their feet, but they didn't argue with her any longer.
“As you wish, sister,” Corida said in a cold, hard voice, “but you will see.”
They slunk back out of the tent. Tabitha watched them go and thought forlornly of how comforting she had once found it to have the sprites watching over her as she slept. She wished she could persuade them to go back to the way things had been before. But they seemed determined to dislike Lysander, and no matter what they said, she did trust him. She had been shaken to see him light the fire using nothing more than words yesterday, but his explanation had rung true.
And how Tabitha wanted to believe him... how much it would explain about her grandmother's behaviour! Not to mention that Tabitha could begin to make sense of what she had seen in the woods, if it really was true that there was such a thing as witch magic... and of course she, Tabitha, wouldn't have been able to be involved, because if magic passed down the female line, then she couldn't have inherited any witch magic from her grandmother. Ondine was her paternal grandmother. And Tabitha was sure Ondine would have said something to her if her mother had been a witch.
Tabitha sighed and laid back down in the tent. This was comforting and depressing at the same time. She was happier to think that her grandmother hadn't excluded her because of anything she had done... but if this witch magic was something you inherited, then she never would be able to share in it with her grandmother.
A new resolve to master the learned magic Lysander had told her about hardened within Tabitha. If she couldn't share in her grandmother's witch magic, then perhaps she could impress her with this learned magic. Perhaps she would even be able to help defend her home, if ever she got home... Tabitha sighed heavily again. No matter how hard she tried, the longing to be back home, back in her river, never left her. Knowing that she wouldn't fall back to sleep now, she rolled over onto her front and crawled out of the tent.
To her surprise, Lysander was already awake and sitting by the cold remains of the fire.
“Your sprite friends are clearly in fine spirits this morning,” he said grumpily. “They all spat at me when they left your tent.”
“Where are they?”
Lysander shrugged. “They wandered down towards the river. It makes me nervous, the way they mutter and whisper to one another, like they've got some terrible secret.”
“Oh, don't you start,” Tabitha sighed. “They've already been complaining about you this morning.”
She waited for Lysander to reply, but he remained quiet.
“Obviously I didn't listen to them,” she added eventually, when he didn't reply, “but it would be so much easier if you'd all just try to get on.”
Lysander shrugged again. “Try telling that to them.”
Tabitha padded over to sit down beside him and inhaled sharply. The ground was cold. She wouldn't be surprised if they woke to frost soon.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, “for all of your help. And for teaching me all these things. About the tent and things, I mean.”
Lysander waved his hand.
“It doesn't matter,” he said. “It makes up for upsetting you before.”
“It's okay.” Tabitha gave a small smile. “You were only trying to defend me.”
Lysander went quiet again.
“I tried to tell them – the sprites,” she said. “They'll come round eventually. I don't think they like humans very much.”
“Well they certainly seem very attached to you,” Lysander frowned. “I wonder why...”
Tabitha hesitated, and then everything tumbled out quickly.
“Before, you heard them call me river witch,” she said, stumbling over her words in her rush to get them out. “The sprites think I come from the river, like them. But that can't be true, can it? You said that witch magic passes down the female line, and I'm sure my mother wasn't a witch... I would have known, wouldn't I?” She tried not to sound too hopeful.
Lysander gave her a funny look. It was odd, Tabitha thought. He looked... unhappy?
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes. Yes of course.” Lysander seemed to regain something of himself and offered her a wide smile. “Sorry – I was just thinking about what you said. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me though, I'm afraid. Much as I wish I had some answers for you.”
Tabitha tried not to let the disappointment show on her face. Lysander had helped her with so much already, introduced her to things she had never heard of. She'd been hoping that perhaps with his knowledge of magic he might have understood something about her relationship with the river – to tell her what she was, or why it had stopped speaking to her. Tabitha had never before thought to question her relationship with the river, but now that she knew that things such as fae and witches and magic existed in the world, she wished she knew what to call herself. She had hoped that river witch might be it... but if what Lysander said was true, then that was impossible. She couldn't be a witch. Especially not now that the river had gone silent.
She looked keenly at him, her new, shining golden companion, and thought again how grateful she was to have him here. She wondered again about asking him whether he knew where the Iron City was, but before she could, he had offered her an apologetic grin.
“You look so worried,” he said. “Sorry if I'm a bit quiet this morning – I didn't sleep very well last night after all the excitement. I was a bit worried I'd upset you.”
“No, it's okay!” Tabitha insisted. “I was upset, at first. But I'm so grateful that you've offered to teach me. I'm determined to be the best student you've ever had.”
Lysander gave another small smile, and again Tabitha couldn't help thinking again that he looked a bit unhappy.
“I'm sure you will be,” he said quietly.
“When can we start?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.
Lysander raised an eyebrow. “You don't want to walk on any farther today, then?”
“Oh... of course, we could, if you wanted to,” Tabitha said in as indifferent a voice as she could muster.
Lysander laughed. “Let's start here,” he said. “Your little friends still aren't back from wherever they've run off to yet, anyway.”
Tabitha sat up straight, feeling the excitement flow through her.
“Please, tell me everything.”
Lysander pulled the burnt end of a stick from the remains of the fire and began to talk.
“Let's see, where did we get to... I should probably explain a bit more about learned magic before we begin. As I said yesterday, anyone can learn it. But you need to learn the words from the pages of a book, and most of those are long lost, now. So very few know the words. And those who do generally know very few of them... What is it?”
Tabitha was itching to ask a question.
“I hope it's not rude to interrupt,” she said, “but I was just wondering – if most of these books have been lost, then how do people learn the words anymore? How do you know about them?”
Lysander gave her an appraising look.
“Those are good questions,” he said slowly. “The words are most commonly known among the wandering folk, these days. They're helpful when you're out in the wilds every day – as you saw yesterday. When we meet each other, we often exchange words. They're considered very valuable.”
“And what about you?”
“I learned the same way that you're learning now. I met a traveller who taught me, and from there I was able to start swapping words with the others I met.”
“How wonderful,” Tabitha breathed.
It was like a secret community, she thought. Her claim about wanting to learn from the travelling folk retrospectively seemed like the best excuse she could possibly have given to
Lysander for her journey. More than anything, Tabitha wanted to be part of this world in which words were swapped like favours. She clung eagerly onto Lysander's explanation, trying to remember everything he said.
“Among those who know the learned magic, there are also some masters who learn not only the words, but also experiment with the ways in which you can put them together,” Lysander continued. “Like writers of stories building up sentences, or even paragraphs, so that they have a greater meaning than any of the individual words within them. It's said that combinations of words allow you to do new things, but only the masters will attempt this. If you misspeak, things can go horribly wrong. This also makes it very difficult to practise.”
Tabitha nodded seriously.
“So I think today we'll just start with one simple spell,” Lysander said. “We'll pick an easy word. Often ones that correspond to something simple are the simplest – so fire, like I made yesterday, is an easy one.”
“Right.” Tabitha nodded again.
Lysander gripped the stick he'd taken from the fire, and drew a few rough lines on the ground. They didn't mean anything to Tabitha.
“Recognise this?” he asked.
Tabitha shook her head, disappointed, but Lysander was already drawing more lines:
F I R E
And beneath that, he drew some more again:
I G N I S
“How about those?” he asked.
“Fire,” Tabitha said enthusiastically, “and I can read the other word, although I don't recognise it.”
“Good – and don't try to say it yet,” Lysander said quickly. “I want to go through how it relates to what I've written here – ” he gestured to the first lines he had drawn, which Tabitha didn't recognise – “because you need to understand how the word is made up, and what precisely it means. Any subtle changes will change what happens.”
Tabitha was still nodding her head, frowning down at the letters. She was trying hard to concentrate, but her excitement was making it difficult to focus. Although this was clearly going to be a more studious task than she had expected, and there was evidently more involved than simply learning a new word, this pleased her. Strangely, she realised, it reminded her of reading with her mother, in a way that was wonderful and upsetting at the same time. She hadn't had anyone really teach her about these things since then.
“You probably won't be able to do it the first time,” Lysander was saying now, “but don't worry, that's normal. You need to get the inflection exactly right.”
More than anything, Tabitha wished that she had a book to learn from. She knew that if only she had a book, she could master this – her love of words would mean she would know no limits when it came to learning the words, perhaps even learning how to put them together. She was a keen student, and she loved to learn. Perhaps if she worked hard enough for Lysander, he might even introduce her to one of these masters he had mentioned, and she would be able to prove her worth.
Tabitha wondered what her grandmother would say if she returned not only able to talk to the river again, but able to control it; and to conjure fire; and who knew what else when she had finished learning from Lysander. She imagined how annoyed Brigit would be and she couldn't help grinning. But Tabitha checked her racing thoughts and returned to the present. Imagining all of those things wouldn't get her there.
With the focus of mind that those who truly love learning possess, she listened with rapt attention to Lysander's explanation about the word he had drawn on the ground before her.
***
From the cover of a small thicket, Moll was still watching Lysander. And she felt her blood turn cold as she saw him take a stick from the fire and begin drawing symbols on the ground. Surely, he wasn't... he couldn't be...
Moll stopped watching and walked quickly away from the camp, back into the thick of the trees. She stopped when she reached the other side of the woodland and sank down onto the cold ground. Leaves were beginning to drift down from the trees to where they crackled on the ground, and a faint mist was hanging over the tattered fields that stretched away before her. It was quite beautiful, to see the sun come up through the mist, casting pale streaks across the ground beneath the still-dark sky to lie glowing at Moll's feet. But in spite of the sun and the mist, Moll felt quite depressed. Her doubts about Lysander's intentions on this mission were rising.
Scowling at the countryside before her, Moll flung herself backwards and laid flat out on the damp morning earth. She longed for the cold seeping into her back to clear her head, to give her some clarity. But everything still seemed so muddled.
She didn't want to believe it, of course. Lysander was her friend. But Moll wasn't sure how much longer she could wait for him to show some sort of sign that he was still loyal to the Iron Court. She didn't even know what she was waiting for, exactly. But that was exactly the point – what was he waiting for? And why on earth did it look as if he was teaching some of the old words to the girl? No – surely, he couldn't be. Moll must have been mistaken. At least Lysander didn't seem taken in by the three fae who appeared to be part of this strange new company of travellers. So he had retained some of his senses, at least.
But he did seem very taken in by this young, dark-haired girl. Moll didn't know Madeleine as well as Lysander did, and Magnus hadn't warned her that the girl Lysander had been sent after was related to her in some way. But it was clear to Moll that this must be a relation of Madeleine's, which she supposed explained the Iron Court's interest in her. She was the spitting image of Madeleine, in fact. Moll wondered whether this was what had swayed Lysander.
Either way, she sighed, rolling over onto her front and staring back into the dark woods, that wasn't enough of a reason for Lysander to hold back now. Not when his orders had been very clear.
Reluctantly, Moll considered that her own orders had been very clear, too... But she was still unwilling to believe that Lysander really had defected from the Court. It seemed so impossibly out of character. Perhaps this was still all leading up to some grand plan of his.
She could still wait a little while longer to see what came of this, Moll thought uncertainly. Just a little longer.
21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tabitha was growing increasingly frustrated. She was a good student, she knew she was. And she had thought that she would be good at this – she had always loved books, loved words, and had read voraciously since she was a child. But she was quickly becoming aware that in order to master the spells Lysander was trying to teach her, being able to speak was equally as important as being able to read, and there Tabitha found herself falling short.
Tabitha had never been particularly aware of the concept of an accent before. But now that she was spending so much time concentrating on speech, she couldn't help but notice the difference between her sharp pronunciation of words and the soft, rounded way in which Lysander spoke. She had not anticipated just how difficult her own voice would make it for her to pronounce the required sounds correctly. And without being able to do that, Tabitha hadn't been able to produce so much as a single spark. They had had to take a step back in their lessons, and Tabitha found this most frustrating of all. She was sure that Lysander could never have had to do this with a student before.
He had been ever so patient with her, of course. When it had become clear that she was struggling with the sounds in ignis, Lysander had suggested that they instead start with the alphabet, and Tabitha had recited it over and over again, but to no avail. There was just something off in the way that she was pronouncing the words. It was difficult for her to admit it to herself, but Tabitha had to confess that even to hear Lysander make the sounds as he spoke each letter aloud, she couldn't quite get her head around what each sound was.
Now she was sat in the tent on her own, sulkily muttering under her breath. She knew it probably wasn't doing her much good to learn this way, but she was growing impatient. As she continued to stumble over one letter and then the next, Tabitha
finally let out a frustrated groan and flung herself backwards onto the floor. Perhaps Lysander just wasn't a good teacher, she thought savagely, and then immediately regretted it. It wasn't his fault she was struggling. He had been so patient with her – so kind to teach her at all, really, when she had nothing to offer him in return. Tabitha reached habitually up to her necklace and ran her thumb over the stone, trying to calm herself down. She wished her mother could have left some better instructions with her grandmother. Or even her father, she thought – but that thought was too painful, the grief too recent, and Tabitha quickly put it out of mind again.
She wasn't sure why, but as Tabitha ran her thumb back and forth over the rough-and-smooth texture of the stone, she felt her breathing slow, her mind still, and her body relaxing. Perhaps her mother had done the same when she was still alive, Tabitha thought. She longed for the stories they had read together and wished she could escape to the library. She wondered what her mother would think if she could see Tabitha now, disheartened and lying on her back in a tent in the middle of nowhere. She would be disappointed, Tabitha frowned. She needed to pull herself together.
Tabitha sat up and allowed the stone to drop down against her chest. Then inspiration struck. She might not be able to go to the library now, but she had brought one small part of the library with her, hadn't she? If she couldn't get anywhere with her lessons right now, then maybe she could read for just a little while.
Tabitha pulled out A Compendium of Faerie and let it rest in her lap for a moment, her eyes closed, the book heavy across her knees. She could almost be back in the library with the heavy, sweet smell of the old books thick in the air around her, and a view out across the landscape for miles around. If she looked out of the window she knew she would see the river, that thin silver ribbon that she loved so dearly... It almost felt as if she was back there now. Tabitha thought of how dark the water could be at the shore, of the water lapping at the banks of mud, thick and gleaming beneath the thin layer of sparkling surface water. She thought of what it felt like to push a little boat out onto the river, of gliding out across the water as the familiar salt wind tousled her hair. And Tabitha thought of her father, pointing out the little differences that she eventually learned to spot on her own, explaining how to read the tides, and laughing together as spray wetted their faces...
The River Witch Page 16