by S. W. Clarke
“I work at the stables every morning.” I tried glancing over my shoulder, but my head throbbed too much to do so.
He glanced up into the night sky. “Is this your morning?”
“If you’re up early enough.” I ended up staring down, half-focused on making sure I didn’t stumble over my feet.
Someone came toward us in the night with quick, hard footsteps. When I looked up, the quartermistress blew by us and toward the stables, where Noir was still whinnying and banging around.
“What happened to him?” I breathed to Jericho.
“Looked like a broken leg.”
This was my fault. “That can be fixed, right? He won’t suffer.”
“Probably.”
“‘Probably?’ I thought healing magic could regrow limbs.”
Jericho glanced at me quickly, like my worry had changed the truthfulness of his answers. He needed to shield me. “He’ll be fine.”
I fixed him with my gaze as best I could. “Tell me why you said ‘probably’ instead of ‘definitely.’”
His jaw twitched, and he returned his eyes ahead. “This isn’t common, but...the thing about healing magic is that the body has to accept it. And you picked the orneriest horse in the whole academy.”
I couldn’t tell if my head was spinning from this conversation or my developing concussion. “What difference does it make if he’s ornery or nice? He’s a horse. All biological life forms naturally want to heal wounds.”
We were passing the amphitheater now. “It depends. Maybe the healee and the healer are enemies. Maybe the healee doesn’t want to recover. Mind can overcome matter.”
“How often does that happen? Rejecting healing?”
Jericho tilted his head toward me. “Not often. Rarely, I’d say.”
And yet I sensed in that tilt of the head—and, moreover, the fact that he had said ‘possibly’ in the first place—that he was trying to comfort me right now.
He was trying to keep me from panicking like Noir had been in the walkway of the stables because he sensed how bad I felt about the horse’s fall. He sensed how much I cared.
A brief silence fell between us, which Jericho finally broke with a sharp inhale. “The horse will probably be fine. Let’s just focus on you right now. How’s your head?”
“It’s okay,” I said, though I hardly processed I had said it. My response had been automatic, because I was sunk so deep into my own guilt and rumination that I had almost forgotten where I was.
Noir’s leg was broken. Because of me.
That was my horse. I’d known as much from the moment I had sent my hand on his mane. And his broken leg was my responsibility.
He was my responsibility.
I felt Jericho slow as we neared the medical ward, and we came to a stop just by the tree. “What were you doing in there, anyway?” he asked. “Why that horse?”
“I…” I hesitated. I felt indebted to Jericho for helping me here, and bound to a degree of truth. “He’s my horse—the one I’m meant for. I was going to ride him.”
Even in my state, I could see the cloud cross his features. “That isn’t anybody’s horse, Clementine. He can’t be broken.”
But he can be, I thought with a pang. In more ways than one.
“Thanks”—I stepped toward the entrance to the infirmary—“for bringing me here.”
Jericho tried to lighten his face with a half smile. “Fortunately for you, this place hasn’t got a flight of stairs to climb.” He grabbed the handle, pulled open the door. “Go on.”
When I came in, the fae nurse looked aghast at my bloody state. Her yellow wings fluttered as she ushered me to a seat on a bed and set to work figuring out how bad it was.
It must have been bad, because everything after that happened in a daze. At some point I realized I was dozing off, and then I was on my back. Gauze was being wrapped around my head.
Then, shame still coursing through me hard and fast, I was out. I dropped into a sleep so deep it felt like I’d spent a second in the dreamless void before I woke again to something pressing down on my chest.
Or someone.
Ten tiny thorns pierced through my shirt, and my eyes fluttered open. “Ow.”
Loki sat atop me, slowly kneading his claws into my chest. Behind him, a white curtain had been spread around my bed. “Finally, you’re awake.”
I cleared my dry throat. It felt like I hadn’t had a drink in days. “How long have I been out?”
He kept kneading, his affection making me wince. “Something like eighteen hours. You snored—a lot.”
Eighteen hours? Impossible. I nearly shot up, but I felt so weak—and my head throbbed so hard the moment I moved it an inch—that I only gave a small jerk and grimaced before I settled back down. “Ugh.”
Loki huffed. “You’ve got a bad concussion. You’re lucky you didn’t crack your head open like a melon and leak your brains onto that stone walkway.”
I raised one hand to my head just to make sure it was truly intact. Someone had wrapped gauze all the way around. “Thanks for the visual.”
“That’s how we familiars caution you against making dumb choices. Like the dumb choice you made last night.”
“By using graphic visuals?”
His tail flipped casually through the air. “Yep.”
Then, all at once, the memory of Noir came back to me. Noir falling and trying to rise, and falling again. His screams like a human’s in the night. “The horse,” I breathed.
This time I did manage to sit up, fighting through the skull-splitting pain.
Loki clung to my chest, climbed up onto my shoulder. “Hey, remember what I just said about dumb choices?”
I ignored him, closing my eyes through the pain. I was still wearing the same riding clothes, crumpled as they were. But as I swung my legs out from under the covers, I realized I was barefoot.
Finally, with gargantuan effort, I stood. And then I nearly fell back onto the bed, but braced myself against the frame before I lost my balance. “Where are my shoes, Loki?”
The cat hopped off my shoulder and onto the bed. “If I tell you that, you’ll put them on, won’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But if I don’t tell you, you’ll probably hurt yourself trying to find them.”
“Probably.”
He sighed. “Why couldn’t the last witch in the world be dull and lazy? And obsessed with cats.”
I turned a circle. No shoes in sight. “I am obsessed with cats.”
He hopped off the bed and slipped beneath it. “You’re obsessed with the identity associated with being a cat owner.” When he came back out, he was dragging one of my boots by the lip. He dropped it on the floor and went to retrieve the other, mumbling, “There’s a difference.”
It took everything I had to bend over to get my shoes on. I didn’t have time for debating with Loki when my head actually felt like a splitting melon. When I staggered to my feet again, I clutched my head through the pain.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part came when I finally staggered out of the infirmary, Loki in tow, and walked over to the stables. There, we found Quartermistress Farrow standing at the entrance to Noir’s stall with her arms folded and her lips a hard, straight line.
That didn’t bode well at all.
When I came up behind the quartermistress in the walkway, I found Noir.
He was on his side in the bedding of his stall, covered in shavings and sweat. Someone had attempted to gauze his back leg, which hung at an odd, ugly angle. The gauze lay around him, pink with blood where his bone protruded from his leg.
And despite that, he was still trying to get up. At least, he did when he saw me. But it was a feeble attempt; he swung his head, pushed halfway up on his front legs, and dropped back into the bedding.
“Shh,” Quartermistress Farrow said to him. “Quiet now.”
“Quartermistress,” I breathed.
She spun on me, one hand going to her chest. “C
lementine. What are you doing out of the medical ward?”
“They let me go.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the horse. “What’s happened to him?”
She turned back to Noir. “He’s hurt. Quite severely.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, grimacing. I sensed she wasn’t sugarcoating this because I had been responsible for it. This was my doing. “How bad?”
“Bad, Clementine. He slipped on the walkway when he reared and now has a transverse fracture to his back left cannon bone.”
I barely opened my eyes wide enough to see her. “Translation?”
She sighed. “If we didn’t have healing magic, his prognosis would not be good.”
I opened my eyes a little wider. “But we do have healing magic.”
“Yes, but…”
I took another step forward. “But what?”
“He’s not accepting it.” She gestured toward the horse, whose eyes were so wide I could see more of the sclera than the irises. “He won’t let me close enough to even try.”
I set my hand on the stall door as Loki brushed against my legs. “I know how to handle him.”
Her eyebrows rose halfway to her hairline. “Is that so? You nearly got yourself killed, and you put that horse in a great deal of pain.”
“That was because someone stepped out in front of him in the darkness.”
She didn’t seem impressed by that. “I’m afraid you’ve lost all rights to care for these horses—or to be in the stables at all, for that matter.”
That stung, but I didn’t stand back. “Just let me get in there with him. I can help.”
“How can you help?”
“That horse is my horse.” I clicked my tongue twice, and Noir’s ears perked toward me. “I’m a witch. Some witches ride horses. I almost had control of him last night.”
She pursed her mouth. “‘Almost’ only counts with horseshoes and grenades.”
I blinked. “What?”
“It means you either did or you didn’t have control, Clementine. There’s no ‘almost.’”
“I did,” I said. “I would have.”
The quartermistress turned toward me in full now. “Clementine, a witch hasn’t ridden a horse except in history books. And for his part, this horse has suffered enough.” She lifted her left hand; the ring finger was encircled with gauze. “He’s wild—he can’t be ridden, or even touched. See here...he nearly bit my finger off when I tried to help him.”
She paused, and I didn’t want her to say what it was clear she was about to say.
White heat flared in me, coupled with a tinge of desperation. “So? Try again.”
“To what end? We can’t keep him anyway, Clementine.”
My throbbing seemed to recede as adrenaline kicked in. “How long does he have?”
Clementine…”
“How long before you put him down? Tell me that and I’ll go.”
The quartermistress sighed, turned back to the stall like she didn’t want to be looking at me as she spoke. “He’s not eating, not drinking. He’s in a great deal of pain.”
I waited for her to finish.
She gazed down at the horse. “We’ll give it until the morning.”
I stepped back, turning, my brain already firing off. “Thank you.”
I had one day. Less than that. But I had accomplished much more in a single night than the quartermistress could imagine.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I didn’t go back to the infirmary. I hated hospitals, and I didn’t want—or need—to spend another eighteen hours in there. The sun was nearly down again, and Noir only had one night left.
One night before the quartermistress would put him down.
Loki trotted after me as I walked back toward my dorm. “Clementine.”
I didn’t stop, or even slow down. “I don’t want to hear it, Loki.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to tell me I was foolhardy and there’s nothing I can do for the horse, and I’m a bad cat owner to boot. That I didn’t tell you the truth about what I was up to, and I should have.”
He came up next to me, his tail upright as he jogged along. “No to the first two, but yes to the last two. It’s my obligation as your cat.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Well, are you in the mood for a plan?”
I stopped hard, gazing down at him in the semidarkness. “A plan? Since when do you have plans?”
His green eyes almost glowed. “Listen, I wanted a dull and lazy witch, but I got you. And like it or not, familiars do take on some of their witch’s traits.”
My eyebrow rose. “Is that so?” Then, “What’s this plan? It better not involve salmon pate.”
He glanced over his shoulder to check that we were alone in the clearing before he turned back to me. “Eva has healing magic.”
I blinked. “She does?” Even as I said it, I remembered Aiden saying something about Eva knowing her way around healing.
His whiskers flicked. “Yes. She came to the infirmary while you were passed out. She healed you. You woke up an hour or so later.”
“Eva healed me?” I turned my eyes up toward our dorm, gratitude filling me even as Loki’s plan was already writing itself out in my mind. “So we need her help.”
“Yup.”
When I came into the dorm, Eva was hunched over a textbook. Her hair was a mess; she had clearly been studying for hours and hours.
I stepped in with Loki and closed the door behind me. “Hey.”
She spun, her eyes bloodshot with strain. “Oh, Clem! Did they already release you? How’s your head?”
And with that, our disagreement over Murkwood’s book was forgiven.
I sat down on my bed. “I’m fine.” I paused. “But Noir isn’t.”
“Noir?” Her wide eyes appeared uncomprehending. “Oh, the horse who fell?”
So she heard.
“Yeah.” Loki hopped up beside me as I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “He’s broken his leg, Eva. The quartermistress is going to put him down tomorrow.”
Eva’s hadn’t went to her mouth, and she leaned against her desk. “That’s awful.”
Now was my moment.
I gestured to Loki. “I heard through the grapevine that you used healing magic on me.”
Her eyes flicked to Loki, back to me. “I was trying to keep that a secret.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. I wasn’t supposed to be messing with your recovery. Plus I’m still just a novice at healing, and I didn’t know how you would feel about me doing that without your consent. Your body accepted it, though.”
“She’s a natural,” Loki whispered to me. “I saw.”
I sat forward. “Listen, Eva—I need your help again.”
She set reluctant eyes on me. “Does it have to do with the horse?”
“It does.”
“You want me to sneak into Noir’s stall and try to heal him, don’t you?”
I nodded.
She sighed. “Clem, I don’t know animal healing. That’s different from healing a human—it’s a sub-specialty.”
“We have to try.” I swallowed, realizing I needed to be honest with her about why. “That book you found on my bed—The Witching World. It’s the only book the academy has on witches. And from it, I learned that not all witches ride brooms. Some are meant for horses.”
Her eyebrows lowered, a soft empathy coming into her eyes. “You believe Noir is your horse?”
“Yes, I do.”
I could see the tightness in her chest. Finally, she exhaled. “I’d help you if I could, but I can’t heal a horse.”
“Can you learn? Maybe the library has a book—”
“The library’s closed,” she said. “And anyway, that’s really rare magic, Clementine—there’s a reason why only Quartermistress Farrow knows it.”
“Ah,” Loki piped up from his seat on the bed, “but not as rare as
she thinks.”
We both turned.
“Is he talking to you or just meowing?” Eva asked.
“Talking,” I said.
Loki sat up until he was seated like a proper cat. “Think back, Clem. Headmistress Umbra has a lot of books packed into that office.”
As he said it, my mind was already tracing back to the memory of visiting Umbra’s office. I returned to the moment my eyes scanned over all the books that first time, and I stopped at the snapshot of that bookcase.
Incantations, conjurations, illusions…
“Animal healing,” I whispered.
Loki’s tail twitched. “Bingo.”
When we knocked on Aiden’s door, he took a good minute to open it.
And when he did, I understood why.
“Sleeping?” I flounced his bed hair. “Really? It’s only like, nine.”
Aiden glanced from Eva, down to Loki, and finally to me. His lidded eyes widened. “Clem? But you…”
“I know exactly what happened. I lived it, it sucked.” I glanced around. “Can we come in?”
Aiden sighed, looking between us. “You’re not going to go away if I say no, are you?”
I grabbed Eva’s shoulder. “She’ll try to, but I won’t let her. So no.”
When Aiden had let us in, I set my hands on my hips. “You have a single room?” I had never actually been inside his dorm before.
He shrugged. “Student ambassador privileges.”
I made a face as he sat down on his bed. “You get a lot of privileges for saying ‘hi’ to people.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his pajama-clad legs. “Is this what you woke me up to say?”
“It was my charming preamble, all right? Listen, does that master key you have open the door to Umbra’s office?”
He looked wary. “It does.”
“Good. We need to borrow it.”
“Please,” Eva added, clearly embarrassed by my lack of social grace. “We’d really appreciate it.”
Aiden raised his eyebrows at me. “Really? You just expect me to give it to you?”
“Yeah.” I glanced around. “So where is it?”
Aiden shook his head. “Got to do better than that, Clem. I need an ironclad argument.”