Chapter Four
The flight to the burrow court library felt longer than usual, the feeling of Derran’s lips at her temple refusing to leave her until transformation consumed her thoughts. By the time she reached the door, she had gone over all the things that might happen inside, most of them humiliating.
She might fail outright. She might half-transform and get stuck with some reed bird’s feet and the rest of herself unchanged.
She might forget the sequence of the magic and knock half the reference shelves over.
Karai might watch all of it with that intolerably level expression of his and say something brief and accurate and in such a gentle way that it made her want to throw a dictionary at him.
None of those possibilities improved when she stood outside the library and found herself thinking of the last several weeks.
Not of the councils. Not of the books.
Of avoiding him.
Avoiding both of them, truth be told. But Karai had always been the one who taught her magic, and with that came an unavoidable closeness.
He corrected by touch, by taking her wrist and turning it, by standing behind her to guide the motion of a spell until she could feel the pattern of it.
By wrapping his arms around her and holding her in place when the frustration overcame her and objects started shattering.
He had done so before without ceremony and without trouble. But lately they had both been careful enough to turn even learning into a form of distance. She had forced herself into calm, forced herself to stay away from his arms, so successfully that she had learned nothing new in at least a month.
Now she had marched herself straight into the heart of the problem and called it duty.
She put her hand on the latch. Then she took another breath, pushed open the door, and went in.
Karai had done exactly what he said he would do.
By the time Ina entered the library, one of the long tables had been pushed aside, most of the leather chairs and little tables with lamps removed, and a clear space opened on the floor between the hearth and the wall of books on the other side.
A folded blanket lay off to one side for no reason she could see.
Three books already waited open on the table, weighted at the corners with each other’s heft.
Karai stood beside them with his sleeves turned back and one hand resting on the nearest page.
“You expected wreckage,” Ina accused.
“I prepared for it.”
“Flattering.”
His eyes glittered brighter than dawn’s first rays as he replied in his quiet way, “Practical.”
She shut the door behind her and came farther in. The library had a familiar scent of paper and wood that reminded her how it had been her home for months. The afternoon light of the burrow city lamps fell across the table in long bars. It made the painted pages stand out more clearly.
She glanced at the books. “You found creatures already.”
“I found creatures that belong to the marsh and are not too large to be troublesome indoors.”
“That sounds cautious.”
“It is.” He looked at her. “It should help you avoid… frustration.”
“I never.”
The hint of a smile came to his face then, as they both clearly remembered multiple such occasions of her becoming frustrated and the resulting destruction. He gracefully said nothing.
She came to stand at the table and looked down.
One page showed marsh snakes in careful painted coils, each scale marked in green-brown ink.
Another held two turtles, one broad-shelled and mud-colored, the other spotted yellow at the throat.
On the third page was a set of herons in different positions – standing among reeds, lifting from the water, folding their necks to strike.
Ina went to that one without a second glance at the others.
Karai noticed. “Of course.”
She looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re choosing the most awkward shape on the table.”
“I am not.”
“You are,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Snakes are long and simple. Turtles are bulky and slow, but compact enough to make them an easy option. Herons are all legs, neck, balance, and temper.” He smirked a little. “Perfect for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “That sounds very much like an insult to herons. And your queen.”
“It’s an accurate description of herons. And my queen.”
She pretended not to notice how he looked at her then, too much interest in the sly smile forming on his face.
Ina studied the painted bird instead. It stood in shallow water with one foot lifted, neck curved, beak pointed toward some unseen thing below the surface.
It did not look simple. That only made her want it more.
“I’m doing the heron.”
Karai crossed his arms. “A snake would be easier.”
“I don’t want to arrive at the first ball of my reign as a slimy old snake.”
“No one said that has to be the form you use at the ball.”
She clicked her tongue, wondering if he was trying to frustrate her on purpose. “We both know I only have enough time to learn one animal between now and the ball.”
He gave her one of those looks that meant he thought her reasoning poor and her stubbornness unavoidable. “Very well. Heron.”
Ina leaned over the page. “What do I have to do?”
Karai moved to stand beside her, close enough that she was suddenly aware of the space he took up and had to make herself keep looking at the bird. “Transformation is harder than light, wind, or fire because those are forces you direct outward. This is not. You’re changing the shape that holds you.”
“Is it harder or easier than healing?”
“It could be both.”
She rolled her eyes again. “A serious answer, Karai.”
“It is serious.” He put a finger on the page beside the painted heron.
“Healing might be harder than this. Healing asks for precision inside another living body, with all the knowledge of that structure. But once you know the general structure of one fairy body, for example, you know the structure of them all. Healing, therefore, requires more general knowledge,
and in that way it might be easier. In turn, transformation asks for precision inside your own body. For you to know your own body, and the body of the specific creature you want to turn into. You failed at healing because you wanted results before you understood general structure.
You might fail here because you want results before you understand specific structure.”
Ina glanced at him. “You might have phrased that more kindly.”
“I might have phrased it less kindly.”
She let that pass because it was true.
He tapped the painted heron again. “You need three things. First, the creature. Not the name of it. Not a vague picture. The creature itself.”
He turned the page and showed her another heron, this one in flight, wings broad and neck tucked back. Then another, standing with its reflection broken across a pool.
“You must know what you mean to become,” he said. “Its body, how it stands, how it moves, the shape of the head, the length of the legs, the joints, the weight. If you only think bird, you will get confusion. If you think heron but picture it poorly, you will either fail or make a mess.”
“A mess of what sort?”
“The sort I prefer not to see in my library.”
That kept her attentive.
He drew out two more books and opened them as well. One had smaller field drawings with notes around the edges. Another showed the skeleton beneath the bird’s form, the long bones of the legs, the sweep of the neck, the beak’s narrow architecture.
Ina bent over them, reading, looking, turning pages back and forth.
The herons differed more than she expected.
One had a heavier beak. One stood lower in the body.
One folded its neck in a way she would never have guessed from watching it from a distance.
Karai said little while she worked. Now and then he pointed out a detail she had missed.
“See the foot. That joint is higher than you think. The eyes are set farther apart than a fairy’s.”
At last, she straightened and rubbed one thumb against the heel of her hand. “All right.”
Karai did not move from his place. In his soft, gentle, yet commanding way, he told her, “No. Sit.”
She glared at him.
“You know the pictures better than when you arrived,” he told her, still soft. “You don’t know them well enough yet.”
For a moment she considered ignoring him. Ignoring him and trying the magic anyway, whether he liked it or not.
But she knew already what he would do if she took a step away.
He would take her gently by the hands, and he would sit her down, and he would look at her with that frustratingly perfect face of his.
He would be kind, and he would be comforting, and his eyes would blaze with a fire she recognized in her own body.
And she knew, with aching sureness, that she would crack under that gaze.
So, to avoid it, she sat.
He brought her more. Marsh paintings. A children’s natural history copied badly from an older work, useful because the poses were plain.
A sketchbook from some long-dead scholar whose drawings were ugly and exact.
Ina studied until the herons began to seem less like a single kind of bird and more like a set of physical decisions.
At length Karai said, “Now the second thing.”
She looked up.
“You must remember yourself.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That seems manageable.”
“It’s not as easy as it sounds.” He closed one of the books and laid his palm flat on the cover. “When you transform, you are not dismissing your body and borrowing another one. You are carrying yourself through the change. That includes what is on you.”
Ina frowned. Then she understood. “Oh. Clothes?”
“Yes.”
She glanced down at her dress.
Karai, very decently, kept his eyes on the books. “If you imagine the heron and forget yourself, the spell will take the easiest path. You will become the creature. Your clothes will not.”
“And when I change back?” she asked, already imagining the answer.
“You’ll find them on the floor where you left them, assuming no one has taken them.”
Ina folded her arms, sighing. “That would be very unfortunate at a ball.”
“It would be memorable.”
She gave him a withering look. “That’s not the kind of memorable I’d like to become as queen.”