Chapter 32 The One Where There Are More Friends
THE ONE WHERE THERE ARE MORE FRIENDS
After the concert, the boys sleep for nearly a full day. I take advantage of their absence and spend as much time as I can practicing with my new sword. The rest of the time, when I’m not eating meals, I admire it while trying to read in my room.
The sword is a saber, slender, curved, and well-balanced.
It’s not overly long, but it is long for my short frame.
Longer than my broken piece of broom handle, at least. The handle is also a little too big for my hand, but I know it won’t take me long to get used to it, especially if I can continue to find time to practice.
By the end of the day, my whole body aches from the time spent practicing. That night, I’m exhausted enough that I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, I wake up later than normal with my body punishing me for the sudden increase in activity. I can’t help but groan as I sit down at the breakfast table. Only Lent and Fem are left at the table by the time I get there, and I feel their eyes on me as I start to eat.
“Everything ok?” Fem asks, his voice worried.
“Fine,” I grumble back, “I must have just overdone it yesterday.”
I look up to see a look of confusion on Fem’s face, but Lent jumps in, saying, “Maybe it was summoning a demon by yourself?”
I glare at him and wonder if he’s going to make a big deal about it.
I couldn’t believe they all laughed at me after the concert during the carriage ride home. Yet again, I clearly did or said something wrong. When I see Lent’s face, though his brows are raised and one side of his mouth is tilted up in an uneven grin.
I make a growling sound at him, and he laughs.
Relieved I’m not being scolded, I return to my breakfast. The room is quiet while I finish my meal, and I enjoy the companionable silence.
As I finish eating, Fem says, “I thought maybe the three of us could spend some time with those new books you found before the concert?”
I look up hopefully and see Lent looking at Fem with his brows raised in surprise while Fem continues to look at me appraisingly.
“I’d love to,” I say breathlessly. I quickly stand and scrape off my plate before he can change his mind.
He moves us to the floral room, and we spend some time gathering the books we brought and stacking them in neat piles on the central table between the couches.
After a short silence as we each take a book and begin scanning through them, Fem says, “How did you even choose this one?” There is a presumptuous tone to his voice.
Before I can respond, Lent cuts in, “Hey now, Fem, we had our own method, didn’t we, Chaosta?” As he says it, he winks at me.
I laugh and say, “I mean, honestly, I just followed my instincts.”
Fem glances at me thoughtfully and then looks at Lent as he says, “Did you choose these or did she?”
Lent pauses and glances at me, his cheeks going pink. “She did,” he finally says.
“Hmm,” Fem says and continues to page through the book, which seems to be called Weather It Will.
After a few minutes, Fem looks as though he is about to put it down, but then he freezes. I see him lean closer to the book and stare at the page. Then he reads a passage about how we draw power from and give power to the weather.
Lent listens thoughtfully.
None of it makes sense to me, but as he finishes reading, he looks up at us, his eyes slightly wide. “There are notes in the margin," he says, “including a rune I don’t recognize.”
He turns the toward us so we can see. Sure enough, in small, dainty, faded handwriting in the margin, there are a couple of notes and an odd, twisting shape. He pages through the rest of the book, but there aren’t any others.
The thoughtful, appraising look is back on his face as he looks at me. “Good find,” he says. “We’ll show this to Malam when he’s here later.”
“Malam will be here today?” I ask. I want to thank him for my sword. Of course, I don’t plan to mention that to the boys since they clearly think it couldn’t have been him who gave it to me.
“Yeah,” Fem says, “we started the summoning ritual this morning. We need to make up for the time that we lost to our concert preparations.” As he speaks, he marks the page and continues to look through the rest of the book.
The rest of the day passes in a similar fashion. The boys find passages to mark, and I find a couple more margin notes, but only one more that includes a rune.
By the end of the day, the three of us have several passages we’ve marked, and yet we have barely begun on the massive pile of books we bought. Fem and Lent stand and stretch. I join them, groaning as I stretch my tight, tired muscles.
Fem looks as though he’s about to ask me again why I am stiff. Thankfully, though, Reem interrupts by coming to the door and reminding them that they have preparations to make before Malam arrives.
Once they’re downstairs, I want to disappear to practice with my sword and work out the stiffness, but I linger in the entry hall for a few minutes, waiting for Malam.
Finally, I hear him walk through the front door and head that way.
When he sees me, he relaxes and closes his eyes for a second as he says quietly, “Thank the dark gods.”
Before I can overthink it, I go to him and wrap my arms around him, mumbling, “thank you for the sword,” against his torso.
He stands stiffly, but then I feel his arms wrap around me in a brief and still rather stiff hug. After a moment, he takes my shoulders and gently pushes me back, scanning my face.
“Will it do for now?” he asks. “It isn’t what I wanted to give you, but I knew time was short, and it was a spare I had on hand.”
I nod, and I can feel a massive smile splitting my face. “It’s perfect,” I say.
He actually smiles at that, and then, with an awkward squeeze of my shoulders, he looks behind me to the basement door and says, “I must go.” With that, he steps around me and heads through the door, closing it firmly behind him.
Not wanting to waste any time, I disappear to my bedroom to collect the borrowed sword. Then I go to the large empty room and practice until my muscles cramp. I sleep well that night, the physical exhaustion keeping the worst of the dreams at bay.
The next few days pass in much the same way. Most of the time, I don’t see Malam since I escape to the upstairs room with my sword immediately after the boys head downstairs.
I know somehow that I need to take advantage of every moment.
Something is driving me beyond my general interest in being stronger, and while I don’t understand what or who it might be, it is a vicious taskmaster.
I fall into bed every night, exhausted and sore.
My hands split open before calluses can form.
I cover them in bandages and pretend I’m covering paper cuts.
Fem looks doubtful but doesn’t pry beyond the occasional, thoughtful question.
Meanwhile, Fem and Lent continue to review the massive pile of books with me, but also begin to show me bits of dark magic.
I learn from them that anyone can be educated on runes and how to use them to create magical effects. However, there is danger in practicing incorrectly or making errors, so they warn me against trying without formal instruction.
On the second day, as we are discussing runes with some of the time we’ve carved out for it, Fem says something that reminds me of a dream I had. Since I know better at this point than to try to recreate the rune in any way, I tell them about the dream and try to describe the rune to them.
They both look at me blankly for a bit, and then Lent says, “I don’t recognize that shape at all. Are you sure you’re describing it right?”
“I think so,” I say and try to look through the other runes they’ve been able to show me to find something similar.
I find a couple with some similarities and point them out, but Lent seems unconvinced.
Fem looks thoughtful, but in the end, without being able to recreate the rune, it’s too tough to explain. Since it is too risky to recreate a rune without knowing what it does, we finally let it go. Instead, we continue on with our lesson.
Irealize, as the days pass, how much I enjoy both of their company.
Lent’s humor and irreverence make everything fun.
The caring I feel from Fem leads me to enjoy his company just as much, even though he is always serious.
The two of them provide a sense of support I wouldn’t have realized I was missing if it weren’t for the slow recognition of how much better I feel in their company.
For the most part, I don’t see much of Reem or Dio. I sleep in, and they wake early, so they’ve already eaten when I get to breakfast. Then the rest of the day, while Lent, Fem and I look over our pile of books, the two of them are off doing whatever it is they do.
After a few days, when I see Dio at breakfast, he almost seems happy. Not to see me, of course, I still feel his signature glare, but as he leaves the room, talking with Reem about how much progress they’re making, “toward the cause,” his voice is less snarly than it has been.
The knot of emotions in my chest tightens. All I can hope is that the research I am doing isn’t the reason things have turned around for him. He clearly doesn’t deserve that.