FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 5

There were myriad responsibilities now, and Rose was kept busied. People liked her poultices and tea blends best simply because they were made by mage-trained hands. Every ache and weakness in this refugee town stood out in Rose's mind, the whole of Fenwater bristling with worries like thorns. She remembered the herbal blends well enough. She had always found those intuitive. Now she dug under mage supplies for more dried burdock, averting her eyes from the crystals and the training pendulum, making a small, shivering promise to herself: she would try to use these other mage things, eventually. She would need to master her plantcasting, and hone her bright and darkcasting, and perhaps learn other elements, too.

This was the full weight Father had carried. His voice rang in Rose's head, talking about the respected ways of things; she recalled the look of the training floor and the weight of a casting crystal. Someday, she would need to use every tradition-steeped skill that Father had overviewed in brief. The thought sent Rose back to the mortar and pestle, to fill it with simple roots and stems and crush them as thoroughly as she could.

Messengers landed in the street, bringing condolences. The leader Ethan sent a particularly well-worded piece, recited careful by a graceful-moving korvi: he had confidence in Rose's abilities and he wished her well, since a new mage formed the beginning of town's own legend.

Rose bled inside. When the messenger took off, his every wingbeat moved the air of a town without a true leader. She wished, sudden and acrid, that she had asked good Ethan for help; for training; for someone else to take this mage position because she was no maker of legends.

Moments later, Rose was summoned to look at the mint harvest and see if it would suit a cough remedy. Silently, she thanked the gods for sending a distraction.

An eightday passed. The wind stuttered, enough to wake Rose and leave her staring into the teeming nightdark, listening to her own tense pulse and spreading her airsense out into the forest. Breezes showed her pictures, sluicing around shapes to outline every stem and leaf, clinging damp and cool in every crevice. With its movement and its chill, the air frowned a warning.

She would start advising other aemets to stay in, Rose decided the next morning. The main street was already lacking in wandering neighbours, other aemets likely sensing the same trouble Rose did. But she had treated more coughs in that morning than fair odds could explain: a solid decision needed to be made. She would ask her villagers to rest and drink tea today. She would pay attention with every sense and be ready, as ready as anyone ever could be.

She paused in the street when she noticed the wind again. Stirring gusts drew closer in the distance, resolving into a sleek, seven-limbed body: a korvi was approaching. Rose hurried to meet the newcomer, the scarlet-feathered, bead-glittering fellow landing at the far end of the main street. She walked quick, her shoes knocking dirt away in plumes; she put on a smile just in time, as the korvi man noticed her.

"Ah, dear friend," he cried, making elegant show of bowing, fanning his wing feathers open. "If ever I've been glad to see a face, bet a treeful of apples I'm glad to see yours! Is Arnon about?"

For one awful instant, Rose was hollow.

"Apologies," she said, "But he's not."

"Oh, curse the rocks in my head! Of course he's not about, I heard that news! The poor fellow! Forgive me, but I'll hold tight to that and make sure not to forget it again!" The merchant blinked at her, eyes wide as a duskmouse's. "Have we met properly?"

"I don't believe we have."

She got a grin for that, two broad-flashing rows of the korvi man's teeth. "Then allow me to start over, friend!" He bowed again. "Syril of Reyardine. Ask for the name, whatever you need. I did mean what I said about being glad to see your face but, you understand, I'm glad to meet everyone."

His wings fanned wider this time, and his bow dipped deeper. Rose couldn't help wishing he would stay. There ought to be more colour in this damp little village, she thought. There ought to be more flame and friends and life.

"Welcome to Fenwater, good Reyardine," she said. "I'm Rose Tellig."

Syril looked at her more closely now, as though sifting faces in his memory. "Ah, Arnon's daughter, yes. Frightfully sorry about your loss, Rose! I was just telling a friend of mine that Arnon Renhart, now, there was a fellow the land could use four dozen more of, truly!"

"In any case." She straightened as though she were strong. "I'm Fenwater's mage now. What is it you need?"

"Oh, there's nothing I need myself! But the wind's got a terrible wet quality to it lately, that's what I'm hearing from every tongue worth listening to. I've got fresh-made tinctures and a bunch of the finest mint soil's ever grown, would you care to trade for them?"

Merchants only travelled as far as Fenwater for a few shrewd moments of temporary business. And responsibilities called Rose with keening voices; she didn't have the time to barter right now, not when she had one hundred aemet villagers to look in on, not with all the training she kept meaning to review.

"Apologies, but I have plenty of my own tinctures. I'd like to see the mint, though."

Fenwater's forest provided the village with enough mint bushes, spice-potent and tough as taproots - but there might be a lot of tea in the coming days. If everyone was fortunate, a drink mulled with someone else's kindness could be the only cure they needed.

"Yes, of course," Syril said, waving a forgiving hand. "Now, you'll need to keep a pinch of mercy between your teeth and your cheek, my friend, mint always wilts a trifle on the trip over but-"

"Good Reyardine?"

He looked up from a half-untied cargo pouch. "Ah, yes?"

"Pardon me, but I have some folk I need to look in on before I can do any proper trading." She would never be able to force her mind to this chattering discussion, not with breeze stirring cool behind house walls. "Would you mind to wait a short while? Fenwater would be glad to provide for you."

"Now, Rose. Sitting about isn't a fair trade for my time." Despite his words, Syril's eyes lit sharp: travellers rarely refused a meal. "I suppose I can give you a moment, though, if it'd put a spark in your lantern!"

It would, Rose thought, waving for Syril to accompany her. She appreciated any spark of help he could throw.

By luck, she had some pan bread left over to share. Syril got his meal and - still pouring out praise for her cooking - he spread a blanket full of wares outside Rose's door. There, he sat to wait.

Rose turned back to her duties; she had villagers with coughs, and not enough dried coneflower for all of them. No decent mage let that happen.

She left the village proper, hurrying along the bare line between forest and field. She needed to keep her treatments straight in her head and stand as firm-rooted as her namesake plant. Rose had Tellig blood to help her; thinking her own name trickled strength down the inside of her shell. She combed the wagging plains grass with her eyes. However unsure she was, she could promise the plants to do no wrong and no harm.

Late morning gemlight splashed the forest floor with yellow. Bushes shifted with the breeze, hazel and maple and ironwood, their thousands of leaves waving through air. Rose was following a worn path made by farmers' trips for hay, but none of those folk walked with her right now; she was an aemet alone, vulnerable without a colony around her. She couldn't airsense the block shapes of homes, or gesturing hands paddling the air, only trees and leaves and fauna. Father must have walked this path alone, sure-footed as a deer, likely not worried at all. He adapted to mage duties once, but how? Rose should have asked. This was yet another question she should have learned the answer to.

She found coneflowers to thank - more carefully than necessary - and pried them up with a snapping of root threads. And as she walked back to the village, Rose laid her priorities out in a string. The Irving brothers wouldn't abandon their fields until they were ordered to bed; Belladonna was too old to be flippant about her cough; the names kept comng. There were too many people coincidentally unwell, and gossip had already bled through Fenwater buzzing in corners and making folk glance quick to Rose as she passed them by. But the first person to catch a sickness became the town's weather vane, mage's teachings said. Vilhelm Durant had begun coughing first this dawn, and he needed to be seen first and often, no matter what came. Tight-lipped Vilhelm would reveal a name for the sickness: Rose could make plans from there.

Mundane actions drew her attention as she followed the main road, people breathing and striding, antennae arced back over heads and slicing air. This was Fenwater, traditional with all its aemet-built homes clinging to tree trunks, a familiar array of open door curtains and sprout-green faces. Rose nodded greetings, knowing she would miss this if it withered away. True mage or not, she would try. She headed for where she knew Vilhelm laid.

If she weren't making sure to see otherwise, Rose might think the Saranstas home acted as normal. Merle bustled between storage baskets, and little Clover was four years old and already out of the village broodery, now following her mother and watching the complexities of adult life. Heat poured up from the hearth coals, around a pot full of chutney bubbling to itself. A family was warmly ensconced here.

Merle smiled tight at Rose - like she was simply busy and distracted, nothing more. Her antennae wiggled with her every hurried movement. "I'm glad you're back, dear. I thought of something. Could it be honey taint?"

"It's not honey taint," grumbled the pile of blankets with Vilhelm in it.

Pausing to frown, Merle chose a spice bottle. "But it could be, couldn't it?"

"Could be. But I don't think it's honey taint." Vilhelm's voice was gravel; he coughed once to clear it. "That'd be a sickness in the stomach, not the throat, and Rose'd bring goldenrod instead of coneflower. Isn't that right?"

Panic flooded Rose - she would know food contamination if she came across it, she hoped vivid.

"If it were honey taint," she recited, "folk would become ill within a handful of hours, and they'd have a sour stomach before anything else. I brought coneflower for what's making you cough. That's all."

Vilhelm cleared his throat, the sound of satisfaction. There was no reason to be satisfied, Rose wanted to blurt, not when his breathing felt like this - air hesitated inside him, like his innards raked at his breath. It could be a simple chill - or it might not be. Worry-strength flowed through Rose, painting her insides a warning colour.

"Well." Merle clutched fistfuls of her pants to dry her hands. "As long as there's something we can give to cure it. Speaking of herbs, Clover found us some mallow plant, didn't you, dear?"

The child lit with pride, and nodded.

"Sorrel said she'd dig it up later. It's yours if you want it, Rose. We can at least save you the fuss of wading in the marshes!"

Mallow was a fine provision to have. It soothed the throat, and tasted sweet and mild enough for children to enjoy. Gods, children - Rose would need to look after little ones if the sickness kept spreading. Everyone was someone's child, but young ones had barely begun to spend their lifetime and they could need Rose's help to draw another breath. Clover could face the same demon illness that was stalking her father - this beast couldn't be back already, not so soon.

Rose murmured her thanks to Merle's family and promised to return. She hurried out into the street breezes; the air in that home felt close enough to strangle.

She went next to the Irvings' home. The three brothers were fit young men, quick to grin and quicker to throw their weight into their labour. They wouldn't let a slight ill trouble them overmuch; Rose might be fortunate enough to find them working and well.

Dinner simmered inside the Irving home; steam poured upward, dissipating inside the solid walls. Fahras stood over the pot, large and shaggy, half-covered with an apron. He shifted - lifting his head to listen, whiskers slicing damp air - and he ran for the door. Rose reached the doorway at the same time he did, readying her best attempt at a smile as he scrambled to a halt.

"Oh, Rose!" Fahras blinked, sitting on his haunches. He was the only ferrin Rose knew who stood as tall as her mid-thigh, and the only one with farmer's muscle under his fur.

"I won't keep you," she said. "But how are the trio today?"

"They're- Huh." His ears worked with thought, shifting positions. "I think they're all right. They say they're all right, at any pace. They're moving a shade slow, but they put some vetchleaf in their morning tea for that. "

Rose could visit the cotton fields and see for herself, perhaps check the Irvings' breathing and constitution. That would be meddling in hard work, though. Plants had the same base needs as aemets, the same appetite for water and nourishment and care.

Fahras's ears sank toward his neck. "Why, is something wrong? Whatever you need, Rose."

There was no hiding from a ferrin: they understood people. Every fleeting mood crossing Rose's face, every twitch she didn't know she was making, Fahras's kind saw plain as day. She bit her lip.

"If it's not too much trouble."

"No trouble!" Fahras smiled, a light in his eyes.

She inhaled, mustering herself to ask. Knowledge was to be shared, Father always said.

"I need Breeli's advice. You know where to find her, don't you?"

Fahras nodded. "It's a simple place to find. It'll take me a half hour and crumbs, would you tell the Irvings that I'm gone? I'd fully appreciate it, Rose."

She carried Fahras's message to his brothers, out among the woody rows of cotton plants with seed pods cracking open white. The Irvings thanked Rose, pausing from their gathering of fallen leaves and petals, rubbing their brush-cut hair back.

"We'll make sure to see you if we start faring any worse," Cliffton said, turning to glance at Arlin and Sherwin. He moved slow enough to be called weary-looking - but surrounded by well-watered ground and spotlessly healthy cotton leaves, Rose didn't dare comment on the fact that he worked. Reaping season was no time for a farmer to go lax.

The brothers agreed with one another, and smiled pleasant for their mage. As Rose turned to leave - overfull of concerns she couldn't voice - Arlin hurried after her.

"I shared a little casting with a mint shoot earlier," he said, low and secret. "Didn't stay to watch it run its course, but it should have some good tea leaves on it by now. Pick it if you'd like, Rose. Sounds like we need some more good brewed up around here."

Walking homeward, holding tender stems of tingling-new mint, Rose cast her airsense out into the forest. Fahras was too long gone to sense; she recalled the bouncing motion of his tailtip among woodbine leaves. Rose let out her breath, feeling it mesh with empty air around her. She hoped not to be alone much longer.

Before she left, Breeli had told the other Fenwater ferrin where she was stowing herself and her half-wild family; she had told Rose, smirking, that it was nothing personal. Just a cranny of the forest a person needed fur on their tail to really appreciate. Dear Breeli was out there somewhere, raising kittens in a comfortable tree cavity and calling out sage advice to them. She would give off an aura fit to light a room with, and combined with memories of Arnon, Breeli might manage to bring wisdom to Fenwater.

Daylight sat in a pebble-size spot on the town chromepiece face. This moment was the colour of goldenrod blooms, earlier than Rose would have guessed but she knew what time-stretching power a person's worries could have. She wouldn't stop worrying until the sound of coughing villagers went stale in her memory. She fussed at the logs securing the chromepiece base, and readied herself to walk past the roiling crowd outside her home.

Because folk had gathered around Syril's blanket, naturally - he chattered, pouring breath-sounds out steady, his fruit-rich appearance flashing through the tree-coloured aemet crowd. He was warm enough to draw everyone toward him.

Rose tugged pleasant expression back onto her face, just in case eyes landed on her. She at least had another korvi friend at this moment, one more messenger and lifeline. Unfortunate that she was holding Syril up, but she couldn't imagine letting him leave uninformed; his service was beyond price. Rose entered the training hall beside her home, and her villagers eyes turned only brief toward her.

This place was a great, rectangular block of air, penned in stale by board walls, only stirred when Rose brought in tincture bottles to store. How lively everyone's hopes had been, giving Arnon so more precious boards than the remnants of the Tellig family could possibly use for their two selves. The newly named Fenwater had wanted a leader, someone too stalwart to fear demons, someone surrounded by children learning the trade. They gave their saviour Arnon more house boards, so he could make all the home he would ever need. Father had supposed - in a thoughtful moment years past, candlelight snagging on the lines around his eyes - that he would use the boards for extra training space until Rose had her children.

Rose wasn't used to life, not like Father was. That felt to be the problem. Her selection of medicine bottles dangled from storage ropes, glinting watchful. She turned bottles to study their ink markings: caricatures of calendula flower and wiche-hazel leaf. She had everything she needed if a neighbour wrenched their back or was bitten by a spider. If only Rose faced something mundane now.

The training hall was perhaps five hanks long on each wall. Although its corners were well filled with living oak trunks, there would surely be enough space. Rose left - she would prod herself to courage later and figure exactly how many sickbeds would fit into that building.

Syril paused from regaling the villagers, long enough to nod to Rose as she passed. Fenwater folk paused also, offering hope-thin smiles. Then they were outside the drawn door curtain, and the house only held Rose and her heaped memories.

She sat by her hearth, whispering prayers of thanks for the flammable things, feeding the coals back to licking, welcoming flames. But she shouldn't have added twigs just yet, her thoughts suddenly scolded her - starting a fire was a chance to practice her meagre firecasting. Skill didn't spring up out of bare earth. There was no saving the twigs now: Rose watched them twist and blacken. Sensing the thick forest of things she had yet to learn, Rose stood and headed for her supplies, only to look at them. Even now, she was wasting time. She likely should have been casting in these preliminary moments but gods help her, she had no idea what on-

Air split around a shape bursting into the room - Rose had hot strength to run with.

"Hey, Rose!"

It was a ferrinshape, ears high, every hair stark in Rose's airsense. And it spoke with Breeli's familiar voice. The instincts fled without Rose; she turned, hand over her drumming heart. "Yes?"

"Jumpy, kit?" Breeli lolloped closer, tipping her head. "I'd have yelled."

"Apologies, I didn't think you'd be here so soon."

Rose knelt, and didn't notice her own palm spread in offering until Breeli took it between warm little hands. The time since meeting this friend felt valley-wide, and so, it seemed, Rose was reintroducing herself. Breeli smiled toothy at her, with the same lake-depth gaze as ever.

"Start paying some mind or you'll misplace your head! I missed you. Ambri's tail, it feels like it's been a fouryear!"

A smile spread through Rose. "How are your kittens?"

"Thunder in thimbles!" Breeli crowed a laugh and bounded off to choose a sitting cushion. Her sarong flapped loose, tied with one fist-clumsy knot; that she had put clothing on at all was a nicety. "They're almost ready to choose their preferred names and am I ever glad, it'll be half as many names to yell to the whole forest! I should bring them by more often. Fenwater's short a few climbing trees for their liking, though." She sat on her haunches long enough to wave both hands. "I'm not here to yammer about me! Fahras said you need my ear to talk into?"

Just like that, Rose's smile withered inside her. She joined Breeli in the sitting space around the hearth, picking at her left thumbnails.

"I just need your advice. You always know how to face things."

Turning circles on the cushion, Breeli shot her a frown. "Fahras says Arnon's gone."

The memory of finding Father stood out garish in Rose's mind, that terrible feeling of understanding. Her lips pressed.

"Ten days ago. It happened so fast ... I think it was his heart."

Breeli murmured, her ears low. "Verdana watch him."

"It's-" Rose was out of place standing. She huddled onto a cushion, beside Breeli. "I'm not a mage yet."

"Yes, you are."

"Not enough of one. I don't know what to do yet. How am I meant to know when there's no one here to ask?" Disorder needled Rose's airsense. She smoothed a loose hair back toward her hair ties; that helped but she still itched with awareness, her flesh laid wrinkled on her bones. "I don't- Something's going to happen, and I don't know what to do."

"Something?" Breeli's ears folded. "You've got to have an idea."

Rose dug her thumbnails into one another. Quiet flooded around them; Breeli's gaze bored in relentless and Rose didn't need to look at her to feel it.

"I know there are twenty villagers sick. All with the same throat trouble, all in the last fourhour."

"Twenty? That's enough to worry, all right."

Twenty desperately sick people would be more than a struggle for a lone healer - one like Rose, anypace. She had lived for fourteen years and only spent a handful of those years studying careful. She hadn't grown enough under Father's guidance; she should have taught plantcasting lessons to Fenwater kin, or taken lessons herself, whichever schooling made the difference between mageling and mage.

"Do you remember," she asked Breeli, "how the demon first shows itself? I know what the breathing rasp sounds like. But is there anything else?"

Breeli stared. "I was out hunting grasshoppers one day and I just tripped across Arnon, up to his ears in dying folk. Banish me if I know the first fussy details of it."

And Breeli likely had nothing else to say about that village - the place Rose was born, the community where the Tellig family had lived and almost entirely died. No one talked about that place. A handful of its villagers lived, but they were Fenwater villagers now: the demon stole aemets' homes and pasts as often as it stole lives.

Rose forced her hands apart. She would draw blood if she kept picking.

"The sick folk here tell me their strength is low today, and most of them are coughing. Everything seemed as usual last night, it- What if the demon is back? What if I need to call exodus, I can't do this myself, Breeli."

"Fish feathers." She hopped closer, glaring sure, palms suddenly warm on Rose's calf. "You had your ears open when Arnon told you things, didn't you? He was smart enough to pass for a blood Tellig, not a married-in. You had good soil to grow in, kit, ask anybody in Fenwater and they'll say they want the Tellig daughter guiding them."

They had no choice. Arnon had held onto his wife's magecrafting legacy, tucked the Tellig name close to his chest while Telligs themselves breathed their last, and he found himself with one daughter left to pass the legacy to. Only one child. One seed, alone in the disaster's bare-torn wake. Arnon must have planned to take on more magelings - he had mentioned it lightly in the clear morning, on the day before Rose noticed his pallor.

"I'll try," Rose said. She laid her hand over Breeli's, pressing ferrin clawpoints gentle against her skin. "Verdana help me, I'll do what I can."

"Of course you will. And you've got, what, eighteen ferrin here for the calling? More than that if I chew my kits into shape. You learned from the best, Rose, don't trade yourself short."

Rose had learned how to treat the minor troubles the demon caused, the weakness and coughing that leeched a person's strength away. She remembered that much from the old town; she could brew tea and cool neighbours' brows. Then she could pour tea for her own gummy throat, and mop a cool path across her own clammy neck, and try again to heft a water pail. After that, the shadows took her memories; Rose remembered only heat, confusion and plantcasting's clean flare in the dark, and Father's face, and the tattered beginnings of a new village when she awoke. Breeli could guide her through some of that airless time - only some of it.

A half-burned husk of log crumbled into coals. Sparks winged up hot, melting away into the space between treetops.

"I should have found more korvi," Rose said, shaking her head. "Another trip and I could have found dragonkind friends to help us."

Settling against Rose's side, Breeli said, "I was wondering about that glittery fellow. Is he there to prop your walls up or what?"

"I don't mean to hold the good Reyardine up. He doesn't seem as though he'd mind running an errand." Here was another worry on top of Rose's heap: she had to make another round of the village and ask Syril for whatever she needed to ask of him. She made herself meet Breeli's gaze. "I should check on Vilhelm again. Would you come with me?"

"No trouble. Clover must be growing like a vine, how is the dear thing?"

"Doing fine. She'll be glad to see you." That mundane thought was all Rose needed - she had the strength to get to her feet. She took a careful breath to speak with. "At least I'm sure I know the sound of the demon's grip. And Father said everyone listens to an exodus call if they've got a drop of sense."

Her instincts roiled at the thought. Rose wanted to run but she only walked, with Breeli following smooth by her side.

"Do what you have to, kit."

Rose's nerves honed her airsense to a point now; she could feel every spoken word gusting on villagers' breath, every mote of air in the forest. She sensed Vilhelm's rough-splintering hack for a full, awful moment before entering the Saranstas home.

Merle smiled, watching Breeli butt friendly against Clover. Then she cleared her own sticky throat, and coaxed Vilhelm to roll over and face Rose; his eyes were glazed now, moving thick as syrup. Here was the throat-shape Rose had hoped never to sense again - an airway sagging in on itself, the first damp-bowing traces of weakness. Her heart sped, drowning out the raking sound of Vilhelm's breath.

"I suppose it wasn't the honey," Merle murmured. Clover slipped back to her mother's side and stifled a gusting cough in her hand.

A ferrin hand laid on Rose's knee; Breeli stared up at her, steady, sturdy against the ground.

The strangest part was how easily Rose's words came. This was no vague possibility, no web of maybes. This was a sick person and his sickening family, whom Rose Tellig had to help. She scraped for words.

"It's ... It's nothing he ate. This is worse, I'm afraid."