"Well, at least we don't have to worry about sleeping in someone's house and them calling the guards on us," Chandra told Frostwhite. It had been on her mind that they would need to choose their resting spot carefully so someone wouldn't see and report where they were. With unease in her mind, she walked forward. Decrepit the cottage may be, but it was a shelter. She squared her shoulders and stepped into the gloom. A few steps in and she almost crashed into an old hearth. It was hard to see with the scattered light that sparsely accompanied her through the doorway. She ran her hands along the rough, warm stone. It did not feel as though it was in the same neglectful state as the crumbling stones of the well. Her hands found no cracks and there seemed to be no broken or missing pieces around the hearth. She smiled and marveled at the joy a fireplace in a cottage that was mostly intact could bring. She inspected the area around it and found that none of the trees had broken through, and there were no nests or burrows. At least, when the evening got cold, she didn't have to worry about killing them by trying to get warm.
Over the protests of her aching body, she hobbled slowly from the cottage to gather dry wood. She couldn't have a large fire, and she would have to wait for dark to light the fire. The tree growth around and through the ruins should block the light and night should hide the smoke. It wouldn't be much, but the nights grew cold when the wind rolled in from the grasslands to the east and off the unimpeded landscape of the desert. Any additional warmth would not just be welcome, but necessary.
She paused gathering when she heard small sounds in the trees. Chandra remembered stories about great cats and other predators in the forests. She didn’t know how much was true but knew she was almost helpless in such a strange environment. For a moment, it was like being a child who needed light to comfort her. Though it would be smarter to go without a fire, she wasn’t sure after everything that had happened that she could abstain.
She gathered as many dry twigs and chunks of wood she could find. Chandra was afraid if she wandered too far away she might never find her way back, or someone might find her before she could. Frostwhite nudged her mind and reminded that he was there to help.
Chandra brought her bundle of kindling and wood back to the cottage. In the brick opening, she arranged wood as close as she could remember the kitchen workers doing for cook fires. After much shifting, she settled on the floor and pulled the bread from her bundle. Chandra felt like she could eat the entire thing, but tore off only a small bit. As she chewed the sweet bread, she tried to think and plan.
She wondered how many guards had been sent to find her. Were they following her trail? How quickly they had set out would determine how near they were to finding her. Frostwhite comforted her with his view of the forest.
Chandra nodded. She knew he would let her know if anyone was coming. Warmth and a feather-soft touch in her thoughts acknowledged her belief.
She shivered a bit, though her clothing had already begun to dry. It felt like some of the cold came from inside, and her mind drifted to icy dark eyes. Even death hadn't taken that from Master Dreys. The chill had begun before and remained as the life drained away from Master Dreys’ eyes. She could have never imagined ending someone’s life. Chandra knew her choice had never been an actual choice as much as she knew the memory would haunt her forever.
The way her former Master had looked at her during the battle caused her whole body to shiver. Master Dreys’ eyes had told her more about the man than she had learned in her nineteen years with him. Life had not been without glimpses of his ire, but Chandra never imagined it turned on her. She had assumed he viewed her like a daughter, his apprentice, and his heir.
Though it was strange to think that she had never known her former Master, the sadness that had grown in her began to dry out. Instead, she felt hurt stir into anger like fiery embers in the heart of flame. It was anger at the man who had been her only family. It was him who made her feel like she was more than what she was and then tore her apart when she couldn't be what he wished. Instead of a family, a parent, he had become her jailor and was ready to take anything she could give and toss her aside as though she were the wrapping to his present.
Tears caught in the edges of her eyes like liquid fire to fuel her pain. She felt anger surge and grow inside her like a flame on dry parchment. The thought that her life had meant so little to him that she had been forced to either extinguish his or give up her own made the fire grow.
The tiniest spark in her heart grew. Chandra no longer felt the cold of the night world around her because fire swelled inside her. The flames burned, and she determined she would never again allow someone to have control of her life. No one would ever be allowed to change her like this again.
As she whispered a million silent vows to herself, a weight settled on her shoulders. She turned a burning gaze that guttered out when she saw Frostwhite. His eyes glowed as he looked at her from her shoulder and his feathers shone like pure silver, sparkling in the light.
The realization that flame flickered in the hawk's eyes made her gaze snap to the fire that blazed in the hearth. She didn't remember starting it, but it glowed tempestuously from within the wood and twigs she had settled in the fireplace. Chandra felt the caress of hot air slide across her skin as it drifted out, but she was not chilled any longer. The heated part of her soul warmed from the inside out; the anger only hushed for the moment.
Frostwhite brushed at her cheek with his beak like a kiss of temperance and she smiled. Chandra stood with the great bird’s weight like new gravity on her shoulder. She managed not to grunt but only barely.
“We’ll need a bit more water, and I haven’t a clue what we’re going to eat. All I have is the little bit of bread I took.”
Frostwhite murmured and launched from her shoulder. The push-off almost knocked her over. She stumbled to regain her balance.
“A bit of warning might be nice,” she muttered.
Frostwhite filled her mind visions and sensation. An image of the night world unlike anything humans had ever seen imprinted over her thoughts. The trees were black shadows outlined as if with white thread. Through hawk vision, the shape and movement of everything below was drawn in sharp relief. When a bit of brush shuddered with the night wanderings of a creature, the warm earthy tone of the soil became a visual experience underlined by dark soil and dry leaves. The panorama of the sky narrowed to the movement of prey and tracked it. The wind rushed past the angular body in a speedy silent decent. The rush of cold, invasive wind slid through flight feathers and across the back contour feathers as though the hawk were a blade.
The contact was broken when Frostwhite struck his prey. Chandra jumped and yelped when the hawk dove at the small creature, thankfully missing the moment of capture and death. She shuddered and fought to hold in the bile that rose from her stomach.
“A lot more warning actually."
Her body stopped trying to remove what little food was in it as she drank some water to wash the acid in her throat away. She was aware of how animals hunted, but she had never seen one creature kill another. To Chandra, death was something that happened away from her bubble of existence and she was having a hard time reconciling to the change.
Chandra gathered more water, removed the bucket from the rope and lugged it inside.
“So, you’ve decided to seek out your destiny, have you?”
17
Chandra dropped the bucket on her foot and yelped. The voice came from the deep recesses of the dilapidated structure, where light from the fire did not reach. Chandra lifted her foot to rub the big toe. Her entire foot was already painful with blisters and scrapes from the day's journey and now she worried she had broken her big toe.
“Close the door, you’re letting out the warm air,” the voice grumbled.
Chandra opened her mouth to remark with something sarcastic about broken doors and where the hot air was actually coming from, but restrained herself. She reached down to pick up the bucket and when she stood, she saw that the door was whole and open. Chandra put her palm against it to make sure it was really there before grasping it to close the door behind her. She turned, pressed her back against it and wondered why she so willingly shut herself in with some random stranger.
“I’ll not bite,” the voice said, and a match flared to life in the darkness, illuminating the hunched figure toward the back of the one-room building. An old woman in a long shawl lit a lamp and the back of the cottage brightened. The inside was warm and now filled with whole and comfortable furnishings. It had a lived-in look that directly opposed the exterior of the building. The room looked nothing like what she had seen before going to fill the bucket with water.
“I was only looking for shelter for the night.”
“If that were true, you would not have made it through the door,” the old woman said and walked toward her. Chandra breath whistled in between her teeth.
“Don’t be alarmed; I know how I must look.”
The woman had long, scraggly white hair over an old patched shawl and rough clothing. She was hunched and walked with a limp. She looked as though she had crawled in from the grave itself. Her skin was yellow like parchment and everything she wore was tattered and frayed at the edges despite numerous patchwork.
The shock was her eyes, though. They were colorless. Her eyes were twin balls of pure white with no discernible iris or pupil.
“I am a blind old woman. You have nothing to fear from me,” she told Chandra and chuckled softly as she reached the lamp out for the young woman to take.
Petulance took her voice before maturity could silence it and Chandra muttered, "I'm not afraid of you."
The woman said nothing as a smile drew up her sagging cheeks. Once Chandra held the lamp, the woman shuffled away and the darkness in the back of the room swallowed her. Chandra heard her moving around and saw her return with two roughly-hewn chairs. The old woman dragged them up to the fire and sat down in one before motioning to the other.
“Have a seat.”
Chandra sat down in the chair and found it to be more comfortable than it looked.
“If destiny did not bring you here, what did?” the woman asked as she sipped from a mug in her hand that Chandra had never seen her get. The contents steamed and lifted the scent of mint tea to her nose. A loud squawk echoed in the darkness above them, and the woman paused with the mug at her lips.
“The ecru?”
“If you mean a white hawk, yes. I thought he was leading me to shelter,” Chandra said. She grumbled the last, thinking she would not have followed if she had known they would end up in the company of an old woman who didn't even offer tea as she sipped it. The woman chuckled beside her and Chandra had the uncomfortable feeling that her unspoken words hadn't gone unheard.
“It is a shelter of sorts. No one who wishes you harm will find you while you are here,” the woman said. She took a long drink from her mug before saying, “As far as hospitality goes, it is only given when deserved. You may make your own cup of tea.”
Chandra narrowed her eyes at the woman, her lips drawn down, her voice silent.
“You need to learn to not project your grumbles, child.”
Chandra had a desire to sit and ignore the woman, but a cup of tea sounded too good to pass up. She nodded, lifting her aching body and the lantern to the back of the cottage for a cup. After a few moments of quiet searching in which she came off no closer to tea than she had before, she dropped her shoulders and looked at the old woman for a moment. She couldn't make the words come to ask for help and instead settled to sit on the floor beside the hearth.
“How did you become a keeper of an ancient one, Chandra the Lost?”
Though she was startled to hear her name on the woman’s lips when she had not given it, Chandra knew somehow to not feel surprised. She had a feeling that if this old woman sought any information from her, she could take it. The mage instructors seemed to have some affinity for seeing what their pupils thought, though Master had been better than most. Chandra never learned how or if she could block the intrusion. A small thought tugged at her.
You knew not to look in Master Dreys' eyes at the end.
She nodded to herself, but looked at the crone in the seat across from her and wondered if it was possible to make eye contact with an iris and pupil-less blind woman.
“He found me. Why did you call him an ancient one?”
“Hmm, I guess that is something you did not come across in your reading, then.”
Chandra's mind flashed the image of curved script and odd spellings in a journal that had talked about the strange, wild cat. She wasn't sure she could explain it to the woman nor was she comfortable that there was too much she did not know about her friend.
The old woman held the mug and looked into the fire for a few minutes. Chandra studied the way the light outlined the marks of time in harsh relief and wondered how old the woman really was.
“I suppose I will have to teach you this as well," she nodded and took a sip of her tea before setting it on a plain, dark table beside her chair.
“There has always been magic in the world, but there was a time when humans did not wield it,” she began. “The first of the mages was an anomaly. Magic and those who had it seemed to appear out of nowhere. The first ones were very powerful. Too powerful, most would say. It was a blessing for humanity that the first ones didn't understand the whole of their abilities or life might have ended.