Chapter 5
Nerves fill me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s the nice house – the reminder of how much Ruben risked on me – or maybe it’s the thought of poor Noleen and the worry that I might not be able to help her. It’s not like my money and magic are helping me right now.
Worse still is the anxiety that my magic might somehow worsen the situation. It’s not like it’s reliable.
Fear sits heavy beneath my ribs, a pressure that makes it hard to draw a full breath, but I push the sensation down to focus. Hand-wringing won’t help anyone.
Ruben gestures over to the corner of the room, where next to a roaring fire sits the husk of the woman I once knew, her shoulders collapsed inward as if even sitting upright is too much to ask.
Yet knowing her own heating magic, I suspect the flames are more for symbolic comfort than for actual warmth.
Noleen’s magic is a stronger version of Ruben’s. Not only can she warm others, but she can also produce an actual flame. Only small ones, normally on her palm or at the end of her fingers, but even the smallest sparks are enough to start a fire if you’ve got the right kindling.
If Noleen hears Ruben speak, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she remains exactly where she is, her glazed eyes staring at her feet.
‘Mum?’ Only when Ruben kneels down beside her does she finally lift her head.
‘Ru … Sorry, love, did you say something?’
‘Rose is here, Mum.’
‘Rose?’
‘You remember Rose? She lived with us in the slums. She won the gifting. One of us.’
Ruben looks at me and beckons me over with a nod.
A lump fills my throat, and not just because of Noleen’s state and the fact that I have no idea if I’ll be able to help her the way Ruben wants me to, but also because of the words he just said.
One of us. That’s how they viewed me in the slums. And yet what have I done to help them since I was accepted into the Retterheld?
Nothing. That’s what. I didn’t even manage to get the leftover food out to them after the balls due to the rebel attack.
No, my contribution to the people who claimed me as their own has, so far, been nothing.
I’ll change that, I vow. One day, I’ll change that. I’m not sure how, but I will.
For now, I focus on my old neighbour and kneel before Ruben’s mum. ‘Hi, Noleen. It’s—’
‘Rose? Yes, Rose!’ She tries to smile, but she’s too weak. The simple exclamation of my name causes her breath to heave. ‘You did so well, my dear. One of us winning! Imagine! You did so w—’
Her words are stolen by a coughing fit that causes her to double over, her entire body clenching in pain. Worry is etched in every line of Ruben’s face as he grabs a cup of water and tips it up to her lips.
‘I’m going to make you something, okay?’ I speak to Noleen, but I catch Ruben’s eye so he knows what my plan is. ‘Something that should make it a little easier to breathe.’
She nods, still coughing, and pats my hand in acknowledgement.
After finding the matches for the stove – Noleen is in no state to do it for me – I light three of the hobs, then search around for a pan.
‘What do you need?’ Ruben asks as he sidles up beside me.
Noleen’s coughing fit has passed, and she’s once again slumped in her chair, eyes closing, head lolling on her chest.
‘Um, pans,’ I start. ‘I definitely need pans. And a chopping board. If you can grab me the board first and then get some water boiling, that would be great.’
As he sets out to find what I need, I start emptying the contents of my bag onto the worktop, starting with the dagger from Dinah. Somehow, I can’t bear to part with it, even for a moment. Though it is far better suited to stabbing enemies than chopping plants, instinct propelled me to bring it.
‘Wow, that’s impressive,’ Ruben comments on my fancy knife as he places a chopping board down next to it.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I mutter before noting the pans in his hand. ‘Can you fill that big one halfway? We’ll use it to clean. The other one you can put on to boil.’
He does all of that and wanders back to look again at my dagger. He reaches out to touch it and instantly recoils. ‘Damn! That’s hot!’
‘Must be too close to the flames.’ I absentmindedly shuffle the board holding the dagger a little further back from the pans and their fire, just in case. ‘Don’t worry about that now. I need some ice. Can you get some?’
‘Of course. I’ve got an icebox outside,’ he tells me. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
As he disappears through the back of the house, I continue pulling out the contents of my bag.
Now that I’ve seen Noleen, I’m sure that if I went back to the orangery, the magic would be more specific and give me even more ingredients I need. But I’ve got enough to get started. With what I’ve already harvested I can ease her pain and hopefully help her breathing a little, too.
I start with the mottled green leaves of lungwort, which I tear parallel to the midrib into thin strips before grabbing the hyssop. It’s not the leaves I want here. It’s the sap, and there’s not a lot of it.
Thankfully, I have magic on my side.
A buzz of anticipation flickers within me, though excited is the wrong word to use to describe it. It’s not exciting trying to ease your friend’s sick mother’s pain. But to feel this magic thrumming beneath my fingertips, pure and ancient and fully mine, is almost dizzying.
My gifts from the Goddess may not have eased all my worries the way I’d hoped, but this part of my magic – this connection to my past and my mother – is everything I wished for.
I don’t even bother cutting or ripping the hyssop.
Instead, I hover my hands above the bundle of leaves, like I saw Mother do hundreds of times before, and then I let the magic flow through me.
It starts as a tingle in my palms before spreading to my fingers with a rush of heat, like blood returning to a limb gone numb.
As I look down, the hyssop is practically floating in a glistening pool of its own sap.
I smile in satisfaction. Next, I take a handful of purslane seeds. The tiny things scatter everywhere as I try to put them on the board, and I use Dinah’s dagger to control them with the edge of the blade. Oddly, the knife isn’t even warm now.
When the seeds are finally gathered in a little pile, I switch the blade onto its side and crush them. I’m probably watching with even more curiosity than Ruben. Given the magic imbued in the blade, I’ve no idea what to expect.
I wait with prickling anticipation … only for precisely nothing to happen.
It’s like using any old knife, but I’m fine with that.
It gives me a chance to use my magic again.
Once again, I call it forth and a minuscule amount of moisture is drawn out of the seeds, only to expand on the chopping board.
‘The seeds hold sap inside, but they don’t like to give it up,’ I explain to Ruben as he watches on in awe. ‘Magic helps.’
‘That’s incredible. You really are phenomenal.’
With an unexpected sense of pride, I tip the seed husks into the pan with the lungwort while blanching two petals from a yellow agrimony flower. They’ll stay on the ice until the very end, when I’ll drop them into the tonic just before Noleen drinks it.
‘What’s it like?’ Ruben asks as he watches on. ‘Having your magic back. Do you like it?’
‘Do I like it?’ I parrot in surprise.
‘Yeah.’
I consider the question. ‘I’m not sure. In some ways, it’s like it’s always been there. Like it was just waiting to return to me. But it’s more powerful now.’
‘Because you’re older?’ Ruben questions. ‘Or because the Goddess gave it to you?’
‘Both, I think.’
‘Maybe at some point you’ll show me what you’re capable of. Besides making seed sap,’ he says with a grin.
‘Hey, that’s harder magic than you think,’ I laugh back. ‘Way harder than something like this.’ I move my hand to the pot of mint on his window ledge, splay out my fingers and twist my wrist. Instantly, the plant grows to double its height.
‘Shit!’ Ruben laughs. ‘Though maybe you could do it with something a little scarcer. Mint grows like a weed, anyway.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll just get rid of it, shall I?’
This time I twist my wrist in the opposite direction and the foot-high bush shrinks down, smaller and smaller until nothing more than a seedling remains.
‘Now you’re just showing off.’ Ruben’s chuckle is infectious, and it’s only when I feel the ache in my cheeks that I realise I’m grinning too.
It feels good to do this. To play with magic the way I would have done when I was a child.
And at least now I’m not worrying about Kay or William or crying over Kyor.
I have a purpose, and only now do I realise how much I needed that.
‘You’re amazing, Rosey,’ he says, and the soft wonder in his tone makes me uncomfortable. I’m nothing special.
‘That needs a little more time to steep,’ I tell Ruben briskly. ‘Are you okay if I look at your mother? See if there’s anything else I can do?’
‘Anything. Anything you can do will help.’
My mother’s healing ability hadn’t come to full fruition until she was in her early twenties, a few years before she had me, by which time her green abilities were already formidable. Her speciality was in what she called ‘flow’ in the body.
She could fix a broken bone and heal a wound, but she also had the power to create more subtle changes. To help a body return to its natural rhythms. Just like with our spell work, it wasn’t always visually impressive, but the relief she could bring to people was immeasurable.
With the touch of her hand, gallstones would move painlessly out of the body, or an insomniac would find reposeful sleep.
Swelling and clots would disappear as she restored the flow of blood, and then, of course, there was her ability to assist with childbirth.
To aid the unborn to flow easily and painlessly from its mother into the world.
Most times, anyway.
That power, combined with her knowledge, green magic, and general spell work, made her one of the most invaluable healers Wrohelm had. Of course I don’t know if I’ve inherited even a fraction of that magic, but now, with Noleen, it might well be the time to find out.
‘Use what you’ve got.’ That’s what Mother would always tell me. ‘The body wants to be at ease – at harmony with its magic and itself. Find the place where that happens, and the magic will do the rest.’
As I approach the now-slumbering Noleen, I notice the way her jaw is chattering, even in sleep. The action catches me by surprise. With her magic, I didn’t even know being cold was possible for her.
With my pulse drumming in my ears, I gently run my hands around her body, not sure what I’m hoping to feel.
Come on. Flow. I think the words rather than speak them, reaching out with my magic, but there is nothing for it to grasp. I push, trying to spark something, anything, and find only absence.
I go cold.
There is no magic within her.
Nothing to awaken.
My stomach lurches as I realise the weight of my flippant thought.
The absence feels inherently wrong, like the grate of an out-of-tune violin in a string quartet. It is utterly jarring and terrifyingly familiar. I’ve lived with that same absence this last decade and more.
‘Rosey? What is it?’ Ruben’s face is blanched as he looks at me. ‘What is it? What do you feel?’
Lowering my hands, I turn to face him, trying to control the tremble in my voice.
‘There’s no magic, Ruben,’ I whisper. ‘Her magic. It’s gone.’