“All right, that’s enough for now!” he called, and the horse slowed — slowed quite quickly, in fact, no more than a couple of paces at the trot before he was walking again. And then stopped.
Eric coiled up the line, walking toward her, then held the horse at the bit. He looked up at her with a faint smile on his face. He didn’t look nearly as intimidating with that expression on his face, and with her looking down on him. “Not bad. At least whoever instructed you the first time didn’t give you any bad habits.”
She didn’t answer; she just swung her leg over the pommel of the saddle and slid — a bit painfully — down to the ground.
“Here.” He had pulled the reins over the horse’s head; now he thrust them into her hands again. “Walk him cool — it won’t take long. A good rider never lets his horse stand after he’s broken a sweat until he’s cooled down naturally. It’ll help you work out some of those cramps, too.”
So she limped around the courtyard under his critical eye, until he judged the horse ready to go back to the stable. Then he whistled, and one of the Spirit Elementals came to take reins and horse from her.
She started to head back into the Manor, and noticed he wasn’t following. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
“It’s a full-moon night so I’ll be out for most of it. Sebastian and his servants are seeing to it that he’s locked up, but if he breaks free again, we can’t afford to take the risk of someone else being attacked. The next person might not be as lucky as you were.” He shrugged. “You’d better get inside, though, and tell the servants to give you supper in your room. Preferably in a hot bath. Oh, and congratulations on not growing hair and fangs last night. Looks like you’ll only be our guest for three moons, after all.”
“Erm…thank you,” she said awkwardly, and turned to go inside. When she paused at the door to look back, he was already gone from the courtyard.
It would definitely be an early supper, but she was ready for it, and was thinking quite strongly of trying to sleep early, as well. If she could, with the howling. She wrote her letter to her father and tucked it in the box before she let Sapphire lead her to the bathroom. By that time, she had begun to stiffen up. Supper in the bath had been a very, very good idea. Even better was the rather tall flagon of mulled wine that Sapphire brought her. The servant seemed to have resigned herself to Bella’s male attire; she had taken it away with none of the theatrics she had evidenced when she had laid it out.
One of her own jars of liniment came floating into the bathroom as she got out of the bath. Wryly, she thought how glad she was now she had made so many…though she certainly had been thinking of the horses, and not herself, when she had!
With the liniment rubbed into her sore, sore legs — and the Godmother’s ointment applied to her face — she climbed into her warmed bed, feeling just slightly muzzy from the mulled wine. The last light of sunset was fading from the sky, and Sapphire came to pull the curtains shut over the windows, and light the candles in the headboard of her bed. She had settled in with a book that Sebastian had given her to read yesterday, when she noticed that Sapphire was still there, holding a ball of what looked like beeswax.
“Wax?” she said, puzzled, taking it.
The slate rose. “Ears,” Sapphire wrote.
For a moment, she stared at the word, puzzled. Then it dawned on her what Sapphire meant. “All right, I’ll try it,” she agreed, and rolled the lump of wax in her hand until it was soft, then divided it in two and stuffed it in her ears.
When the howling began, she could still hear it…but it was muffled, and she could even pretend to herself that it was far, far distant — the howl of something out in the woods, on the other side of the walls. Some wild thing, and not a man she knew, trapped in the mind and form of a beast… The intense relief she felt that she was not going to be suffering the same fate was tempered with pity for him, now that she could afford it. Two more months, and she could go home! But he would still be trapped here, a prisoner three days of the month — and right now, a prisoner every other day, as well, by his own decision.
Hmm. We’ll see about that.
The book caught her attention immediately, however, and soon she was too engrossed in it to think much about poor Sebastian — because it was about The Tradition. It went into much more detail than Sebastian had, though that detail was more along the lines of how Traditional power worked in the world, with examples, and possible solutions to common problems. She noted that it must have been written for magicians, not Godmothers, because more than once the solution to a problem stated simply “call on a Godmother”.
She had to work very hard not to get too angry at this faceless thing that they called The Tradition, because of all things, she detested being manipulated, and this was manipulation on the grand scale.
Though if she was going to be honest, she would have to admit that she hated being manipulated in part because she did so much manipulation herself. Pot calling the kettle black, she noted wryly. Still…she’d never manipulated anyone but Genevieve and the twins, and that had been to keep peace in the household. Someone had to, or Genevieve all by herself would wreak the havoc of confusion — not to mention shatter the monthly budget. And…well, she more or less manipulated the rest of the household. She called it “managing,” but there was some manipulation, too. But wasn’t that what a good household head was supposed to do? You couldn’t just order people to get along and expect that they would do it. You had to make them want to.
Oh, yes, there is another excuse. It’s all “for their own good”. Sapphire brought her another flagon of mulled wine, and she took a sip to take the nasty taste of truth out of her mouth. And another, because she knew very well when she got home she wasn’t going to stop manipulating them.
Ugh. Truth was not fun. And often not pretty.
But this Tradition is already manipulating them. I’m just trying to counter it… And that was true — it was right here in black and white. When Stepmothers weren’t Wicked, or downright Murderous, they were generally Vain, Petty and Vindictive. And Stepsisters were perpetually Jealous, just as Petty and Vain, and Greedy. All by herself, without even knowing what she was doing, she had mitigated all of that, so the worst that could be said of Genevieve was that she was lazy and vain, not even Vain with the capital V. And the twins were entirely sweet-natured and well-intentioned. Well, all right, she hadn’t known she was doing all that before now, but now that she knew about the blasted Tradition, she could be more careful about what she did and how she did it. Only for real good, not for my good, and certainly not telling myself that it’s for their good. It was going to be a very hard vow to keep, but she knew she was going to have to do just that.
She sipped and read — the wine did a fairly good job of keeping her from getting too angry — making mental notes as she went along. Finally, the last of the wine was gone and she put the flagon up on one of the shelves in the headboard, and blinked, feeling it hit her with more force than she had expected.
Well, then, time to sleep… She blew out the candles, and set the book aside…and the next thing she knew, it was morning.
For a moment she was confused by how muffled sound was, until she remembered the wax and pulled it out of her ears. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and she groaned as she started to get out of bed, feeling her legs aching and sore despite the hot bath and the liniment.