Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles) (20 page)

All the previous evening, as the three of us sat before the fire, I had turned over Val’s words, thought about him, considered what he told me and what he kept back. While I don’t agree with what he did, I can understand why he did it.
 

He will leave soon, and I don’t want us to part on bad terms. Last night he had barely acknowledged me at all, his attention focused on his carvings. I had felt awkward, too acutely observed to find a way to break the silence between us in Stormwind’s presence. Now I watch him from the corner of the cottage, wondering how to begin speaking to him again.

He has taken off his cloak, his work having warmed him enough against the chill winter air. He moves methodically, the chips occasionally flying from the wood in little showers. I watch him split a short length of trunk in half and then quarter it. Then he sets his ax down and looks up, catching me peeping around the corner at him. I flush with embarrassment, stepping back.

“If you’re going to watch me,” Val calls, “you may as well make yourself useful.”

So, while he chops, I stack the wood by the cottage wall and help him haul larger pieces over to be cut. The work is good, and while my muscles ache and my steps slow over the course of the afternoon, I am glad to be doing something.
 

“Would you just sit down?” Val finally snaps, pointing at a log he has yet to chop. “I don’t want you falling over from exhaustion. Mistress Stormwind would have my hide.”

I laugh. He smothers a smile and turns back to his chopping.
 

“You never told me your name,” I say as he finishes the log he’s on. He shrugs. “I started calling you Val because that’s what Kol called you. Is it really your name?”

“It’s close enough,” he says, hefting another piece of wood.

“You know my name,” I point out. “And both of my parents’ names.”

He doesn’t answer until he has split and chopped the next log. As he tosses the pieces onto the pile beside the stump he says, “Valerius.”

I hug my knees, grinning up at him. He pretends not to notice. “And you’re about twenty-five years old.”

He slides me a long look.

“Well, aren’t you?”

“I’m a breather,” he says with great patience. He seems to say that quite a lot.

“So?”

“Breathers age more slowly than humans. It has been a long time since I was twenty-five.”

I chew my lip, recalling vaguely how he had called me “little one” at first. It’s hard to reconcile those first images of him with the breather before me now.

He chops another log. “Did Mistress Stormwind say anything about your hair?” he asks.

I grin, unaccountably amused. “What hair?”

“That is, in fact, my concern.”

“You haven’t considered the benefits of being bald,” I tell him. I list the advantages, ticking them off on my fingers, “No lice, no worries about how to tie it up, no need to dry it in winter, nothing for anyone to grab you by, and,” I pause, trying to come up with one more reason.

“Nothing to keep your brain warm,” Val supplies.
 

I laugh.
 

He returns to his chopping and doesn’t speak again. I watch him, breathing in the scent of just-cut wood and letting myself rest in this moment, this new memory that I will be able to look back to once he’s gone.
 

That night, while Val sits with his bits of wood, carving, Mistress Stormwind introduces me to the art of spinning, which she can do wonderfully and which I cannot do at all. She uses the wool she has collected from her goats, and I realize unhappily that she has three large bags set aside for her winter spinning, work that I must now learn to do as well. By the end of the night I am able to produce spans of yarn as long as my hand and as lumpy as bad porridge. Val watches with great amusement.
 

“What are you grinning about?” I snap at him.

“Nothing at all,” he says solemnly.

“I suppose you know
exactly
how to spin,” I prod. “Why don’t you show us how good you are?” I hold my spindle out to him.
 

Mistress Stormwind watches me with an expression of faint disapproval.
 

“All right,” Val says and plucks the spindle from my hand. In the space of three breaths he has spun an arm’s length of thread that even I can tell is as fine as any Mistress Stormwind has made that night.
 

“Good enough?” he asks with a wicked smile.

“Terrible,” I tell him, snatching the spindle back.
 

“It just takes practice,” he consoles me. “You should have plenty of time for that here.”

“Thanks a lot,” I grumble. He smiles pleasantly and returns to his carving.
 

Later on, as I lie in my little patched-together bed of blankets and straw in the loft, I wonder how a breather learned to mend roofs and chop wood and carve little creatures and, strangest of all, spin wool. Most men I have met could not spin any more than I could before tonight, even if they could do the rest. Perhaps in all his traveling, he came across a land where the men did the spinning rather than the women. I fall asleep still musing over the possibilities.
 

In the morning, Val is gone.
 

I know it the moment I wake, an almost physical awareness, as if the air I breathe has lost its moisture, or a color had disappeared overnight so that, on waking, I find a world without amber or topaz, or amethyst.
 

I check for the horses behind the goat pen where we had corralled them every night. They are gone, as is the gear we had stored beneath the roof’s overhang. I follow the path up to the woods, and then farther, watching for where the horses’ hooves had bit into the dirt or sunk into wet patches.
 

At the top of the ridge I stop. The trail continues, descending and winding through the trees. He must have left before the dawn, careful of seeing even a moment of the sun’s light on what would have been the fourth day of his stay. I turn back to the cottage, wishing I had said good-bye last night.
 

Mistress Stormwind stands at the table when I enter, her hands dusted with flour, a round of dough before her.
 

“He didn’t say good-bye,” I blurt from the doorway.

“You’d better have your breakfast. There are plenty of chores to be done before we can get to your studies.”

I let myself glare at her back for a moment before serving myself a bowl of oats from the pot by the fireplace. When I bring it to the table, I notice an object waiting where I normally sit.
 

“What’s this?” I set my bowl down and pick up the piece of wood, turning it around in my hand. It’s one of Val’s carvings, small and compact as they all are.

“I suspect it’s his farewell,” Mistress Stormwind says. “He left it there this morning before you came down. I assumed he wished for you to see it at breakfast.”

I set the carving next to my bowl and study it as I eat, running my fingers over the sleek head and rippling feathers, the wood smooth to my touch. It is a little crow with its head bent down against its breast, its beak holding a key. I can’t keep from smiling.

I slip my crow into my skirt pocket when I am done, holding it tight in my hand. “What will you teach me first?” I ask Mistress Stormwind.

“Discipline.” She eyes me severely. “Everything you have told me about your castings indicate sloppy use of energy. You will learn to be exact and careful in all that you do.”
 

I find myself wishing I’d followed Val. Although, considering I nearly toasted myself with my last spell, I suppose she has a point. I push myself to my feet, “Yes, Mistress Stormwind.”

“You have not fed the chickens yet, or milked the goats.”

I almost laugh. Somehow, though her words are hardly gentle or loving, they have a comfortable ring to them that I can’t quite place. It’s like a memory that’s more dream than real: beneath the scent of ash I catch a trace of a familiar place, a home I may have never had.
 

I cross to her and hug her quickly, before I lose my nerve. She stands stiffly, her brow creased in surprise.
 

“Thank you, Mistress Stormwind,” I say, and go to see about the chickens and the goats.

I hope you enjoyed
Sunbolt
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Coming Soon:

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(Click to add it to your To-Read Shelf on GoodReads)

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