The Sorcerer’s Wife

by Dolamore, Jaclyn

  Irik backed away from Parsons, shaking the clothes off her head like a very large kitten trying to extricate itself from a paper bag.

  After a moment, Parsons made a sound of disgust. “All right, then, I’ll do it all myself. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  Parsons climbed the tree, complaining about sap on her clothes. Irik sat on the ground, rubbing her face with her paws. It seemed like she was battling inwardly, trying to summon the courage to change back. Dennis craned forward from his perch, as if this might help him see. It looked like Parsons had unwrapped the shroud.

  “No luck,” she called to Irik. “She’s still half-formed and it’s been a month. All we have is another failed experiment.”

  Parsons climbed down. She crossed her arms. “You have no idea how to replicate shape-shifting magic, do you?”

  Irik paced in the snow.

  “You, or your family, duped Calban,” Parsons said. “And how many people are you going to harm before you admit the truth?” Parsons tapped Irik’s back. “Look at me! Change back into a girl, damnit. It’s your fault that the first one died, do you realize that?”

  Irik growled and lunged at Parsons, knocking her to the ground. Parsons must have had nerves of steel, because she barely reacted to this. She sat in the snow and rubbed her forehead with the back of her palm.

  Irik shifted back, her body sprawled in the snow, a groan of pain escaping from her as she reached for her clothes. She wrapped herself up, and sat huddled for a moment before she said, her voice small, “Of course I realize it. What do you want me to do? Tell Calban I give up? What will become of me then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I can talk to him. I’m not going to be a part of this any more.”

  “I made a promise to Calban and I will keep it. I don’t know why the shape-shifting doesn’t work here. Maybe this was the wrong animal. Maybe the wrappings are wrong. Maybe the prisoners are too reluctant. I just don’t know. But she has wings. If we can keep this girl alive, maybe we can find out how to finish the transformation.”

  “You’re making this up as you go along, and nothing works.”

  Irik got to her feet, shakily. “Well,” she said. “I’ll cut her down.”

  Dennis shifted his position. “I’m going to try to grab her. Cloak me.” He nudged her off his back, not really giving her any time for second thoughts. He started moving the very second her weight shifted onto a branch.

  “Wait,” Velsa said. “I need time to be able to cloak you!”

  “We don’t have time, so do your best.” He kept moving.

  Velsa stayed behind in the tree, her body very still, but her mind sprung into action. She steered her thoughts toward Parsons and Irik, trying to confuse them just enough that they couldn’t lock onto the sight of Dennis. She met some resistance, but still less than she had to fight through with Dennis himself. Parsons and Irik’s minds were like houses secured with one simple lock—any half-skilled thief could bust in.

  Disturbing, really.

  Lucky, in this case…but even now, it felt like cheating to take advantage of Daramons this way.

  Dennis’s boots crunched through dead leaves, his cloak flying behind him in a blur. Irik had just started to climb the tree. He pulled her down and dropped her into the snow like she weighed almost nothing, although Irik was a tall girl. Then he began to climb up himself, the shaking branches marking his progress.

  Irik sprung back into leopard form, but Velsa knew how hard it was for her to shape-shift in and out that quickly. She growled, but physically she seemed weak, and stayed still.

  The top of the evergreen shook wildly as Dennis broke the girl free. He dropped to the ground with the shroud slung over his shoulder.

  This had given Irik just enough time to compose herself; she lunged at him now. He dodged her, dirt flying as his feet hit a patch of muck, and struck back. They were moving so fast, Velsa could hardly tell what was happening. Was Dennis actually fist fighting a leopard?

  Irik staggered back, her tail lashing side to side. Her blood dropped onto the ground. Velsa now saw the small blade in Dennis’s hand. Dennis was holding his arm at an awkward angle like she’d managed to slash him too.

  But rather than fighting back, or running, he had stopped. He sniffed the air. Slowly he approached Irik, like she was a target of a different kind.

  Now, she was a meal.

  Dennis! Come on! Velsa shouted into his mind.

  He let the shrouded girl slide off his shoulder. Irik growled low.

  Don’t hurt her, Velsa pleaded.

  There was no response.

  “Damn,” Velsa whispered. Parsons was edging toward the girl. Velsa knew Parsons had a teleportation stone. If she put a hand on the girl, and decided Irik could fend for herself, she might be gone in a flash.

  Velsa used telekinesis to knock Parsons back into the snow. Still, this wouldn’t buy more than a minute at best.

  Dennis pounced on Irik’s back and sunk his teeth into her neck. Irik screamed. Parsons was wildly rummaging in her pockets.

  Velsa dropped to the ground, praying that her skeleton was tough enough to handle a fall.

  It seemed to be. She struggled to her feet. “Dennis!” she shouted. “Stop it! Stop!”

  Parsons stared at Velsa, but Velsa never quite met her eyes. Somehow, she felt that it would be easier to make Parsons forget her if they never locked gazes.

  Dennis drew back from Irik with a growl that hardly seemed human. He wiped his mouth. He looked dazed, more drunk than he had from the liquor. At least he had drawn back, but she needed more than that.

  Velsa recalled the image she had plucked from his mind before, of his mother embracing him. In desperation, she threw it back at him, and this seemed to return his focus.

  Parsons was holding up an orb that must contain some sort of threatening magic. “Velsa?” Then, to Dennis, “Who are you?”

  Dennis licked his lips and glanced back at Irik, who was hunched on the ground, now bleeding from both neck and front leg, growling a warning.

  “An Earth man,” Parsons said to Dennis. “Are you kidnapping the prisoner?”

  “That’s right.” He scooped up the girl and held out the knife. “I know you killed the first girl.”

  “We didn’t,” Parsons said. “She killed herself when we didn’t know how to change her back. If you don’t give me that girl, we’ll never be able to figure out how to complete the transformation.”

  Irik’s paws spasmed like she was trying to change back, but nothing happened. She let out a cry and rested her head on the snow. More blood dripped off her neck, spattering the white.

  “Irik?” Velsa asked, worried for her. But Irik was a Daramon—she should heal on her own, with time.

  Parsons looked torn, but she glanced at Irik. “Did he hurt you?”

  We need to just get out of here, Velsa told Dennis. We can’t let them remember us and the longer we remain, the harder it will be!

  For one eternal second, Dennis still seemed to hesitate, like Irik’s blood still held the greatest attraction. Then, he grabbed Velsa and threw her over his other shoulder.

  She pushed her way back into Irik and Parsons’ minds so they would forget the encounter. Their resistance had risen with their tension. She projected a brief vision to them of everything that had just happened, and then imagined scrubbing it out. In these moments, she wished she had been able to train with one of the Halnari. She could only work on instinct, and instinct went far with telepathy, but she hardly felt sure that the job was thorough.

  She clutched her head. She had done all she could, and as the adrenaline of trying to escape faded, guilt welled up in its place. She had tampered with other people’s minds, and Irik was a friend. Maybe Parsons was even a friend, of sorts.

  Dennis was running along a stream, surprisingly sure-footed considering how rocky it was. They didn’t leave any tracks on the rocks.

  Velsa wasn’t fond of the indignity of being hauled around. But she
had to give Dennis credit. He had not hesitated to save the girl.

  “You don’t think I’m going to turn into a leopard now? Because I drank her blood?” he asked.

  “I doubt it. Maybe a half-leopard.”

  “That’s even worse.”

  He must have run for another half an hour before she saw a stone building up ahead. Another ruin, its stacked stone construction mostly intact, but a tangle of brown vines threatened to draw the building back down into the forest. The roof was made up of criss-crossed branches and an oiled leather tarp. It was just a small structure, maybe some sort of guard post for a long forgotten road. Outside the building was a campsite: a fire pit and a spare shirt and trousers thrown over a branch to dry.

  “Here we are,” Dennis said. “Home, sweet home.” He put Velsa down, and stepped through the doorway of the stone house. It didn’t actually have a door, just hinges suggesting one had existed once and another tarp fastened with hooks. The windows were similarly open to the elements, with cloth pinned into them to keep out the worst winds. But he did have a pile of furs in the corner, where he put the girl down gently.

  The room was dim, but she could see that he had accumulated some tools, pots and pans, and even had a decorative evergreen branch adorned with ornaments made from pinecones, berries, and a rodent skull.

  “You like my tree? I should take it down.” He laughed dryly. “In America, in December, we celebrate the Christmas holiday. The night before, we cut down an evergreen to decorate with glass ornaments and candles. Not squirrel skulls, but I thought it was a nice touch.”

  “I like the squirrel skull,” Velsa said.

  “It’s one of those little things I do to remind me of home. I should take it down, but it’s so damn cold the thing seems to stay green forever.”

  “Sounds like a nice custom,” Velsa said, but then he looked annoyed like he regretted explaining any of it.

  He peeled the white fabric away from the girl’s black wings, revealing her fragile figure. She was no larger than Velsa. The wings replaced her arms and hands. If she were to wake, she would be rather helpless.

  “Maybe it would have been a mercy to let them have her, to see if they could fix this…,” Dennis said.

  Velsa felt a little sick, just looking at her. “Either way, we rescued her. We should probably try to wake her up and find out how this happened. It would be important information to pass to Flynn, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s a shame,” he said. “She’s a looker otherwise.”

  “As if that makes it more of a shame? You do know, don’t you, that people here can shape shift and look almost any way they want?”

  He shrugged and grabbed some matches, lighting one of his cigarettes.

  The girl was so pale that all her veins stood out against her skin. Dennis’s eyes traced the line of blood in her neck.

  Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. How could Velsa leave them alone? “Don’t you dare,” Velsa said.

  “Mph,” he half-agreed.

  Velsa touched the girl’s mind only to meet the deep space beyond dreams. Magic had a hold on her.

  Come on…please wake up. We need to know what happened to you.

  Velsa felt a flutter of awareness.

  Or maybe—no, flutter wasn’t the right word. More of an attack of awareness.

  Velsa had a feeling this girl was going to wake up furious, and that made her hesitate.

  At least she might not give Dennis an easy time if he did try to drink her blood.

  You deserve a chance to tell your story, Velsa coaxed. To fight for yourself.

  Fight… The voice answered distantly.

  Yes, Velsa coaxed. You’re safe now. If you wake up, we can find a way to help you get revenge.

  The girl suddenly gasped like she hadn’t breathed in weeks. Her eyes flew open and Velsa wondered if Dennis still thought she was ‘a looker’. She was very different with her eyes open—her eyes were almost all black, very piercing and wild. She flailed, flapping her wings a moment before she seemed to suddenly realize they were wings.

  She shrieked. She tried to stand and stumbled as if her balance had changed from what she remembered, then spat a curse. “What have they done to me? Those bastards!”

  “Shut up, don’t scream!” Dennis grabbed her mouth. “We just rescued you from the people who did this to you!”

  She bit the hand. He snatched it back, then seized her shoulders, holding her to the ground. “You were hanging unconscious in a tree,” he said. “I cut you down, I carried you here, and now you’re not going to scream.”

  With a grunt of exertion, she summoned a wind to shove him back.

  She was a sorceress, then.

  Velsa stepped forward to try and break them up, but when the girl shoved Dennis, he managed to exercise some restraint and didn’t retaliate.

  “I’ll stay quiet,” she said, breathing hard, the cold air making puffs of each exhalation. She was trembling all over, despite her harsh tone.

  He shook his bitten hand out. “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “Cold, yes…”

  Probably in shock, too.

  Dennis gave her his cloak. “They already killed another bird girl,” he said.

  “I’m not a bird girl,” she snapped.

  “Please, we’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” Velsa said, trying to keep both of them on track. “Can you tell us what led to this situation?”

  The girl closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I was in the Wodrenarune’s navy—”

  “The navy?” As far as Velsa knew, Kalan only allowed men in the military besides a few notable figures.

  “As a sorcerer,” she said. Her accent was very familiar to Velsa, the working-class lilt of the river traders who ran between Atlantis and Peris Pellin, the nearest city to the Miralem capital of Otaré. Her voice almost sounded Miralem because of this proximity. “Women are allowed in a few divisions. My training is in navigational magic. Anyway. I was in prison for killing an officer on the ship. He entirely deserved it, by the way. And well, technically, I didn’t kill him, I just threw him overboard and the ocean killed him.”

  “See, I don’t think I’ll be drinking her blood,” Dennis said.

  “Drink…my blood? Gods, why would you drink my blood?”

  “He’s harmless,” Velsa said hastily. “He’s undead and has a condition. Please, go on.”

  “In prison, they told me they were experimenting with shape-shifting magic, and if I cooperated, I’d be able to turn into a bird and I wouldn’t have to stay in prison. It didn’t sound so bad. Who doesn’t dream of flying away sometimes? And I would’ve done just about anything to get out of that prison.”

  “Can you change back?” Velsa asked.

  “I—I don’t know, I haven’t tried, I—” She gulped down a few panicked breaths. “What if I can’t?”

  “I’m sure there is a way,” Velsa said, trying to sound soothing, but the panic coming off the young woman was palpable.

  “What do I do? Until then? I need my arms,” she said, in a much smaller voice.

  Velsa imagined that every Fanarlem slave had experienced having their hands removed as a punishment. She had, a few times, at the House. Grau was appalled when she told him, but for her, it was mostly just boring. Fanarlem didn’t actually have to do anything. She never had to eat or drink or remove her clothes, and so she was not especially helpless without her hands in a safe environment. Flesh and blood people had so much more to attend to.

  But permanent transformation. That was something she had dreaded deeply. Someone could buy her and remake her into something she didn’t recognize. A man might model his concubine after a lost love or a favorite actress. There was one particularly disturbing story the girls used to whisper, about a Fanarlem girl whose master detached her arms and legs so she couldn’t use them, but he kept them close to her so he could dress her up and pose her, treating her like she really was a doll. As a girl, Velsa used to rewrite t
he endings to those upsetting stories, where the girl managed to escape through some clever means and a sympathetic friend, but as she grew older and her own fate drew close to being written, rewriting the endings no longer held any satisfaction. She could only to try to block out the nightmares.

  “What is your name?” she asked the girl.

  “Kessily…”

  “I’m Velsa.” Exchanging names might add a whiff of normalcy to their meeting. She nudged Dennis.

  “Dennis Faraday,” he said.

  “You have skill in magic,” Velsa said. “That might help. My husband is a sorcerer, too. He might know something about how you could change back.”

  Kessily probably guessed that Velsa and Dennis didn’t really have much guarantee of safety to offer, considering the primitive icebox they were conducting operations from, but she still breathed more calmly. “I—I guess it’s still better than prison… Fresh air is—good.”

  “I hate to say it…” Dennis shoved a hand back through his hair. “But we’d probably better take her to Flynn. She needs more help than I can offer. And you need to get home, don’t you?”

  “Yes…,” Velsa admitted. “The sun’s going down. Grau will be worried sick if I’m out so late, and I’m not sure I want to explain this to him yet. Can you handle taking her to Flynn?”

  “I’ll scope out the situation…but I’m not sure when they will meet in the caverns. I don’t dare go into the city. Can you come back tomorrow?”

  “It’s the week’s end. I’m not sure.”

  “Some help you are.” But he smiled slightly.

  “I never expected all of this to happen. Maybe I could send Sorla.”

  “Well, don’t do anything risky. I know this place isn’t exactly a grand hotel, but those furs ought to keep her warm, and—I can catch a rabbit or something. Make a stew.”

  Velsa’s eyes flicked back to Kessily, who was hunched, breathing hard. Fighting off panic. “You’re leaving?” she asked Velsa.

  “I have to go home before it gets dark, but I’ll be back…”

  “How do I eat with—with wings?”

  “It’s a stew,” Dennis said. “If you can pick up a bowl, you can slurp it.”