She stepped out on the porch, prepared to force a smile of welcome, but it came easier than she had expected. Jain and the recorders were the evildoers. Mist was innocent, she was sure. Well, not quite innocent. He had some illicit longings that must be discouraged, but he was not part of the conspiracy, only a fellow victim.
Clutching a basket, he came hurrying along the path with giant steps. The rain had ended shortly after he left, but Thaile had worked out the sorcery of the Way now and was not at all surprised to see that his cloak and hood were soaked. Then he noticed her standing there in her frilly white blouse and dark gold skirt, and for a moment food dropped back to second place on his wish list.
“What did you bring?” she asked, grabbing the basket almost before he stepped up onto the porch.
“Fish! You know how to cook fish?”
“I can try.”
As he stripped off his wet cloak, she went inside, rummaging in the basket already. By the time she had spread out the contents on the kitchen table, he had followed her and was looming in the doorway. He had changed his clothes again, to a frilly white shirt—open all the way down to his silver belt buckle—and very snug green velvet tights. Oh, he really did fancy himself! The cottage was growing dim, and somehow he seemed even larger than before.
Thaile stared at the four enormous fat perch, the crusty loaves, onions, yams, eggs, lemons, butter, three bottles with labels she could not read . . . ”We’re entertaining the whole College?”
“I can eat every bit of that,” Mist said firmly. “But I’ll spare you some. Do you like wine?”
“Never tried it,” she said, and Felt a surge of satisfaction that raised her hackles.
She took out one of the gorgeous metal knives and set to work. Her father owned one metal knife, and she had a dozen! Mist busied himself with opening a wine bottle. He filled two beakers, then brought a chair in from the sitting room and made himself comfortable to watch. She had a fairly good idea now what his talent was.
Her hands moved deftly, needing little direction from her. “Funny,” she remarked airily. “I’ve completely lost track of time.”
She Felt no reaction—no alarm, no guilt. Unless Mist was a sorcerer who could convey false emotions, he was innocent. “Not quite first quarter. This wine is delicious.”
She lifted her goblet with care—he had filled it to the brim. “Which moon, though?”
“Second!” He was surprised by the question, of course. “I don’t think I care for wine.”
“It grows on you!” he said hopefully.
I’ll bet it does. She could guess its effects just from his anticipation.
Second moon of the year . . . that confirmed what she had worked out while he was gone. She began peeling the onions so she would have an excuse if her eyes misbehaved again.
The cottage had been wonderful, and heartbreaking. As she had uncovered all its marvels—working out how drawers worked, and door handles, and the chimney flue—she had become more and more distraught. Eventually she had realized that she was frantic with the need to share all these marvels with somebody. Gaib? Frial? Or Sheel, her sister? None of those. Nor her brother Feen. Nobody she knew.
Knew now?
She had soaked blissfully in the bathtub with its magical hot water—after scalding her foot on a first attempt—and at the same time discovered that she was utterly miserable. Eventually she had begun to wonder if she could just be lonely. Lonely? A pixie? Many times she had spent days on end wandering the hills by herself and been almost sorry to go home and reassure her parents she was still alive. Pixies never got lonely!
In the end, the mirror had convinced her.
A thousand times in her childhood Thaile had helped her mother and sister wash their hair, as they had aided her. She could easily call up their image in her mind, kneeling by the spring. The back of Frial’s neck had always been paler than the back of Sheen’s neck, because a goodwife wore her hair long and a maid did not.
Today, in the mirror, Thaile had seen that paleness on the back of her own neck. Then she had noticed the edges of her hair. She had never seen hair cut so neat and even—until today, here at the College. All the people she had observed at the Market had been well trimmed like that, although the detail had not registered with her at the time.
The second moon of the year . . .
She could not even remember Winterfest!
At fourteen she had kept Death Watch for old Phain in the first moon. Almost exactly a year later, Jain had come to the Gaib Place and told her she had Faculty. She had hung around there, moping, for a couple of moons. Then she had gone to visit Sheen at the Wide Place. And then . . . And then what?
She could not remember. She could not recall coming to the College, even this morning. She had just been here. Trying to think about the journey made her feel sick.
She must have run away!
So Jain and the other recorders had followed her and found her. She remembered how strangely sleepy she had felt at the Meeting Place, and his curious probing questions, testing what she could recall and what had been deleted from her mind. “Smells terrific!” Mist remarked.
Thaile stared down at the sizzling fish in the pan.
When had she learned to cook fish?
She was a hill-country girl. She had never eaten fish at the Gaib Place, but now her hands had known what to do, how to gut them and scale them, how to smear them with egg and roll them in breadcrumbs. Who had taught her?
Part of her life had been stolen away. Months were missing, the better part of a year.
And someone was missing, the person she had wanted to share the wonders of this cottage with. Who? The boy she had always dreamed of ? The one with the smile and the pointy ears?
She looked up at Mist with eyes that nipped, and onions had nothing to do with it . . . This was not the one, certainly! Not him, with his empty glass and his open shirt and his fancy boots up on a stool and the trail of mud wherever he walked. Never him. She would not have run away with Mist.
She must have run away with someone, though, or why had she let her hair grow long?
Jain and his foul friends had done this awful thing to her. She gulped away the ache in her throat. “You say you can’t cook, but you knew exactly what supplies to bring.”
“I’ve seen it done often enough,” he remarked blandly. “You haven’t touched your wine.”
“You take it. I’ll stick with water. And I think this is ready to eat. ”
He swung his feet down to the floor. “I know I am.”
She would not have run away with Mist. Oh, he was likable enough, but she knew now what his talent was.
Mist pushed his chair away from the table, stretched out his long green legs, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That was delicious! You are a terrific cook.”
Thaile had finished her meal some time back. She had never seen anyone put away quite so much at a sitting as Mist just had. “Thank you, my lord.”
He smiled tolerantly, missing the sarcasm. His emotions were oddly fuzzy, because of the wine. “It’s very nearly dark out there!” He stared at the window for a moment and then began to emit worry. “There’s a lot of places I was supposed to show you and haven’t.”
“There’s a moon.”
“There is here . . .”
“But it may be raining elsewhere? Mist, how big is the College?”
He shrugged blankly. “No idea.”
“There’s only the one path, isn’t there, the Way?”
“ ‘Sright.” He grinned. “That’s quite a trick, isn’t it? No branchings, no side roads. It starts where you are and ends where you want to go.”
“Provided you’ve been there already.”
He nodded, and stretched. “You have to be shown the Way. Just means you have to know what your destination looks like, I think—it’s only a Way back! But I ought to show you a few more places before it gets too dark. Course we can take a lantern.”
“Can you show me the Gate?”
He shook his head as he stood up. “No, I was blindfolded when . . . You mean you weren’t?” If butter could look suspicious, then it would look like his eyes now. “Why do you want to know the Way to the Gate?”