“No,” I whispered.
“Jenny? Jenny. Talk to me. Can you turn human?”
Oh my god. That isn’t Bernard. Where am I?
It was another voice, very close to me, sounding concerned and intimate. Now I wondered if I was having a wonderful dream. I tried to speak and my throat cracked. My head felt too fuzzy to think straight. I could hardly remember what had happened that had me so scared Bernard would hate me.
“Mouth dry…,” I managed.
“Oh—hold on.” A handsome young man who felt very familiar to me pressed a wet rag to my mouth, and I sucked a little water out of it. I was in a cottage, with small cozy rooms and the smell of herbs.
I tried to turn human. I wasn’t sure if it would work, and then I think I overcompensated and sort of exploded. I almost fell off the table. The man’s arms caught me and then he carried me to a soft bed and quickly pulled a blanket over me. I was in awe of him, and so happy that it was probably a good thing I was also so weak or I might have threw my arms around him. I glanced past him and saw we were alone, as far as I could tell, although I was afraid to ask. My head still hurt and I was struggling to remember. “Where am I?” I murmured. “Who are you?”
“Bevan. I’m a familiar, like you. This is my home. You came here a week ago.”
“A week ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You were escaping your master. You don’t remember?”
Yes. I did remember that. And now I was starting to remember Bevan, too. As I started to remember him, I was flooded with a warm feeling and I realized why I didn’t want to remember him, why it was easier for my brain to block all my memories of the past week.
I liked him so much that it scared me. I thought if he was kind to me now, and then he made me leave, it would hurt more than anything. “I guess I do remember.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” he said, understanding. “It’s okay. You can pretend to forget while you’re here.”
He told me to rest, and he had soup with dumplings waiting on the fire. I had a better look at his home than I did before, and it was hard to say if I was more in love with him or his house. It was a very simple dwelling, with just two rooms, and only a half-wall divided the kitchen area from the living and sleeping space. Everything was tucked into its place neatly, from the stone crocks under the kitchen table to the little washstand by the bed with a razor and toothbrush. It was a house for just one person but it didn’t feel lonely at all. The bed was right up against a window so as my head fell back on the pillow I could look at the stars, and it was open to let in chilly night air, but that only made the blanket feel cozier.
I felt so very tired and wounded, in body and soul, but Bevan brought over the warm soup and lifted the spoon to my mouth.
“Here,” he urged me. “Don’t try to sit up yet. You really took a hit. You’ve been out for almost two days.” He was so matter of fact about helping me.
“It smells nice here,” I said.
“That’s because I’ve been making healing potions to help you and it smells like the garden.”
This really was like a dream. This lovely man had been making healing potions for me for days now? “How exciting! Could you show me? I know how to cook and clean already so I’d guess it’s not that hard. Then I could heal you if you were ever hurt.”
I couldn’t believe I’d said it like that. It just popped out. Like I was going to stick around and repay the favor.
He nodded. “It’s easy to make these potions. But…I never get hurt.”
Oh, I just bet you don’t, I thought, watching his hands. He had a little cut on his thumb, so he did get hurt, a tiny bit. His hands were a little rough; working hands, and his fingers were stained slightly green. Probably from making me healing potions.
“I never get hurt either,” I said. “Just this one time.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“It seems wonderful to have one’s own house and garden and oven and make potions.”
“You don’t have your own home? Not in Sinistral? That would be unusual. Most familiars have their own home in the magical realm. And it’s just there waiting for us when we’re born. We conjure it out of our heads. Humans have to build their houses and sometimes they have to leave home and they don’t even have a place to call their own.”
“A good familiar is like a home,” I said. “Some witches think familiars belong in the home. Not in Sinistral.”
“Ah, so your warlock just never liked you to leave?”
“No…”
“I see.” He evaluated me for a second with his keen brown eyes. They were my favorite sort of eyes, very warm. In books, heroes always seemed to have blue or green eyes but I really liked brown ones, even if they were more ordinary. I loved how a closer looks of his eyes revealed a little sheen of umber and flecks of gold. Brown eyes got more interesting the more you looked at them. He didn’t resemble his witch at all. Some familiars did and some didn’t. In my case I ended up looking like Jenny.
Maybe that was why he could be so independent. He looked like his own person and I just looked like the shadow of a family member.
Even so, I can’t imagine anyone forcing him into servitude…
“Is your witch okay?” I asked him.
“Did you have enough soup?” he interjected. “Oh yeah, she’s fine. For now, at least. The Way of Paths isn’t safe yet. But Hel always finds a way. I’m not worried.”
“And the other familiars are okay?”
“You’re the only one who almost died,” he said. “So that was your warlock, huh?” His eyes narrowed. He looked ready to pick a fight. That expression made unexpected heat stir in my tired body.
“Yes…”
“What a fucking ass,” he said. “Pardon my language.”
My eyes widened. “He’s…”
“You don’t need to defend him,” Bevan said. “I know it’s a reflex, but you know I’m right. Whatever happens, I’m not letting you go back to that guy.”
The heat kept spreading. I sank half my face under the blanket, feeling suddenly shy. “I…I won’t go back.”
“You haven’t spent much time in the human world, have you?” he asked.
“The Fixed Plane? Oh, no. None at all, really.”
“I thought not. That’s normal for familiars. I was just curious.”
“So you’ve lived among humans, Bevan?”
“Actually, not much. I’ve always been a believer in familiars being familiars. Keeping to the magical world. Not poking our noses into wizard business much. Not getting caught up in human desires…”
“You don’t sound sure.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s been a weird week.”
“What sort of desires do humans have?” In this case, when we said human, we meant our wizards too, although when we spoke of the human world, we meant the mundane world. Our wizards were both human and not-human, just as…
“We’re animals as much as we’re humans,” Bevan said. “Animals don’t get caught up. They don’t worry about things in advance. They don’t try to change the world. I think it’s an easier way to live. But…I also didn’t know that some familiars have a bad situation.”