Dyanara opened the house to the summer breezes and tossed the molded, useless bedding out for the birds to pick apart. She swept out the corners, bartered repair for the chimney, and sent Jacoba around to inform the village inhabitants that they could find her here.
What had killed him, and left this house for her? Such an odd little house, one the bright Jacoba entered unwillingly and only momentarily, where Dyanara found herself turning around, mouth open to speak to someone she was certain was there. Where the evening shadows sometimes held peculiar shapes, and where the brush of a breeze against her arm felt so much like the transient touch of a gentle hand.
She supposed she should be concerned; instead she felt flattered, even... courted. She enjoyed the rare quiet moments of her evenings, when she took the small gray cat into her arms, sitting in her mended rocking chair by the door and the fresh air. The cat sat quietly, kneading Dyanara's lap gently with her paws—except for those moments when she suddenly lifted her head, gave a small mrrp of greeting, and followed something—nothing that Dyanara could see—with her big green eyes. And then would come that touch, a breeze to ruffle the fine hairs of her arm.
The villagers, so long bereft of their wizard, had many needs. She gathered quickly enough that while Kenlan had been a good man, a trusted ally in the daily struggle for survival, his interests had been weighted toward study and innovation. Her own ability to sift her mind's store of practical spells and come up with the right chant for cleansing a crop of black blight or repelling a certain grub won her the instant respect of her customers.
And yet, while bartering slowly stocked her pantry, filled her woodpile, mended her roof and plowed her late garden, Dyanara realized she was not making enough of a difference. How had things gone bad so fast?
A summer morning found Dyanara crouched by the fireplace, patiently waiting for the water to boil her breakfast eggs, picking at a threadbare spot on her knee and knowing she must barter for clothing next. The steeping tea filled the cottage with beckoning spice, and the air was thick and already hot with the promise of the day, Dyanara thought she would cool the tea before she actually drank it. Practical thoughts, all of them. She ran from one to the other, trying to avoid the dream she'd woken from.
The dream—and the man in her dream. Kenlan? He was sandy-haired and several years younger than she, with suppressed excitement in his sharp-edged blue eyes—excitement mingled with something sterner, something that spoke of the knowledge of dark things. And then, fading around the edges and clear reluctance on his face, he'd left. He'd walked by her, brushing against her arm in an intimate way. A familiar touch, as gentle as a breeze.
As gentle as a breeze.
But no memory of a breeze had ever raised such goosebumps on her arms. Dyanara briskly rubbed those arms, and spooned her eggs from the water, knowing they'd still be too soft for her liking but needing to do it, to move away from her thoughts. She went to the table, bowl in hand—and there she froze. She almost dropped the bowl.
There was a blossom on her plate. Fresh white petals edged with scarlet, a mist of dew still lining the inner throat of the bell-shaped blossom... it sat there, a fragrant and flagrant impossibility. A spring offering in high summer. A lover's token.
She touched it. She gently scooped it up in her free hand and brought it close to her face, breathing its scent. And she finally admitted she was not alone in this house.
Jacoba stood in the doorway. "Sennalee's corn's got silk rot," she announced. They came to Jacoba, now, and let Jacoba take the news to Dyanara. Dyanara would have taught the girl herb lore anyway—it was nice to have help in the gathering—but it was clear that the girl liked to earn her way.
But not today. Dyanara said as much, sitting at the table with a stack of Kenlan's books in front of her. "Today, I'm trying to figure out what killed Kenlan."
"Magic he couldn't control, says Balbas," Jacoba offered. She lingered in the doorway, only one small bare foot venturing over the threshold to toe at the board floor before retreating again.
"Does he?" Dyanara said, saving her place in the book with a finger. "Not to me, he doesn't."
"He's afraid of you," the girl said simply.
Dyanara hid her smile and instead raised an eyebrow.
"He is. Ever since the cat liked you. And the house, too." She hesitated, then added, "Lammas Night is tomorrow. It'd be a hurtin' bad sign if Sennalee had to start the celebration with silk rot."
Lammas, the month of ripening. Lammas Night, the dedication to renewal of life and earth. No, Sennalee would not be happy to start the celebration of harvest and life with her corn sickening. "Then we'll have to make sure Sennalee's corn is all right before then," Dyanara said. "But this morning, I'm working on something else."
Jacoba gave her an uncertain look, unused to such delay. "Go," Dyanara said gently. "I'll take care of the corn."
She bent her head back to the book. Another moment's pause, and she heard the careless slap of Jacoba's feet as the girl ran down the path. Sennalee's corn, she told herself, and went back to her reading.
Though the rest of the cottage might have fallen to ruin around them, the books rested untouched on sturdy shelves against the back wall. Spelled against damage from fire, damp, and creature, the books almost hummed to themselves as they waited to be read. Kenlan's neat, tiny script filled the book margins, detailing his thoughts about the theories and spells within.
Dyanara chose volumes at random, skimming, hoping to trip or stumble over something that didn't seem quite right. Something that he shouldn't have been tooling with—and something that might tie into the community's miserable growing season. Something dated from last summer....
In early afternoon, she paused for tea and corn-bread, and to return her first stack of books to the shelves in exchange for her second. In the middle of a deep yawn and well-deserved stretch, she smelled a hint of a newly familiar fragrance. A spring fragrance, bringing immediately to mind a belled, scarlet-fringed blossom, and coming to her on an intimate breeze.
Dyanara dropped out of her stretch, her gaze darting around the cottage. Nothing. She gave the bookshelves a critical eye, and then she saw it. Another blossomed token, sitting atop the spine of one of the thickest books, waiting for her. Dyanara hesitated, and scooped it up with a gentle hand.
The flower turned to mist and fading scarlet; the scent lingered. She looked at her hand, looked at the book again. "I can take a hint," she said aloud, and pulled the book from the shelf.
"Mrrp" said the little gray cat, winding between her legs. Dyanara stepped over it and put the book on the table, opening it to thick pages. The calligraphy was ornate but exacting and easy to read, and when she came to the spell for banishment, she recognized it immediately. No wonder Kenlan was getting pushy; it was a spell for Lammas Night—for releasing souls to the heavens. Souls like Kenlan's, as benign as it seemed to be, that haunted this cottage.
But meddling in souls was no wizard's business.
She stared at the page, thinking about that school-bred injunction. A breeze brushed against her, a suspiciously convenient breeze, and it flipped the thick page over. The next spell was identical to the first but for a single word, which immediately caught Dyanara's eye. Meant for the mage-born, this spell would not free Kenlan's soul, but would instead bind him to the earth again. Give him flesh, and bring him back to Churtna. To... Dyanara, She thought again of her dream, and the look in his eyes as he'd touched her arm. Please, the breeze whispered, playing with the loose tendrils of her braided hair.