How We Begin

The first thing Maeril did inside the lodge was inspect her hip.

She dropped her cloak, tugged the side of her trousers low enough to expose the struck skin, and turned toward the light. A red oval had already formed above the joint.

“She lied.”

Rishi set the living staff beside his platform. “About what?”

“I will remember this for much longer than a tenday.”

He crossed the room and crouched beside her. “May I?”

Maeril moved her hand.

Rishi placed two fingers at the bruise’s edge. The muscle tightened but held. He asked her to raise the knee, then press her foot against his palm. Pain sharpened once and eased when she stopped.

“Bruised. The joint moves cleanly. I find no sign of a tear.”

“Your gift for reassurance is becoming elven.”

“Sit.”

He wet a folded cloth with cold water and gave it to her. Maeril pressed it to her hip, hissed, and lowered herself onto her platform.

Rishi’s own shoulder burned where the training knife had struck. A straight ache lay across his collarbones from the staff. When he rolled one arm, Maeril pointed at him with the cold cloth.

“Do not pretend yours are philosophical bruises.”

“I was not.”

“You were thinking very quietly at them.”

He sat on the opposite platform and checked the shoulder through his sleeve. The skin would darken. The joint moved without catching.

Outside, the late-morning paths carried the household back toward its work. A door-drape lifted. Wood knocked against a chopping board. Farther off, Sirael’s arrows clicked together as she gathered the training gear.

Maeril listened until the sound stopped.

“Tomorrow we do that again.”

“Yes.”

“You sound pleased.”

Rishi looked at his hands. They had closed around the staff before he could think—and helped Sirael pin him with it.

“There is much to learn.”

“That is monk for pleased.”

The lodge held the remains of their preparations for the gathering. Maeril’s spellbook lay closed on the low table. Rishi’s bundle of nettle stalks rested beneath the shrine niche, tied as Lirae had given it to him. The cooking bowls had been washed and stacked. Only a few grains clung to the cloth that had covered their contribution.

Maeril noticed them and brushed the cloth clean into her palm.

“If Sirael wants me awake before dawn every day, we need a system.”

Rishi leaned his back against the wall. “Sleep earlier.”

“A more humane system.”

“Eat before training.”

“That part may remain.”

She ate the grains from her palm and reached for a scrap of paper.

“Morning: suffer in the forest.”

“Train.”

Maeril wrote a line with the charcoal nub. “I have recorded both views.”

“Rest after.”

“Wash first. Otherwise Lirae will banish us for bringing half the course home on our boots.”

She added it.

“Then food,” Rishi said.

“You are learning.”

He watched the short list form.

“In the afternoon, I will work with Lirae when she has time. Breaking first. Combing when she permits it.”

Maeril looked at the tied stalks. “Your rest from being struck is plant labour.”

“It uses different parts of the body.”

“Your idea of rest is more work performed quietly.”

Rishi flexed his fingers. The base of each thumb remembered Lirae’s board. His shoulders remembered Sirael’s staff.

“The hands learn one kind of release from the stalks and another from the staff.”

Maeril’s charcoal stopped.

“You are going to become unbearable about this.”

“Perhaps.”

“Good. I was worried the forest might make you less strange.”

He looked toward her half-finished schedule. “And your afternoons?”

Maeril’s attention moved to the spellbook.

The loose transmutation pages had begun to fill with fresh ink: changes of shape, borrowed bodies, the problem of keeping a mind intact when every familiar boundary moved.

“Polymorph. I have enough notes to begin trying the smaller changes.”

“On yourself?”

“Spoons and scraps of cloth first. Possibly an innocent root vegetable. Nothing that can object in a language we understand.”

Rishi waited.

“You have become suspicious.”

“You stepped into a broken door after saying you would stop.”

“One lapse.”

“One was enough.”

Maeril sighed. “I will call you when I start on myself. We can make certain I can release the change.”

“Good.”

The cold cloth had begun to warm against her hip. She folded it to expose the other side and pressed it back into place.

“Fine. Afternoon: safe magical progress under oppressive supervision.”

“I may be with Lirae.”

“Then I will oppress myself.”

She added another line.

“Evenings. Food. People.”

Rishi nodded. “Faelar’s stories. Caereth’s news. Whatever work the household permits us to share.”

“Nessari’s questions.”

“Many questions.”

“Lirae’s extremely polite instructions not to ruin dinner.”

“Also many.”

Maeril hesitated before writing the next name.

“Thiarel, if she comes near us.”

Rishi’s hands became still on his knees.

“Do not seek her out for my sake.”

“I would not.” Maeril drew one line beneath the list. “But I will not act as if she is absent when she is standing in front of me. And I am not leaving you alone with her until both of you can breathe the same air without one of you bleeding.”

“That may not be your choice.”

“Then I will make it inconvenient.”

Rishi watched the charcoal darken where she pressed it against the paper.

“Maeril.”

She met his eyes.

“I will not provoke her. I will not corner her. I will be present when I can.”

The pressure left his shoulders by a degree.

“Thank you.”

Maeril looked down at the page. “That is what I do. People, food, questions, thresholds. You can have staves and stalks.”

“A good use of our strengths.”

“Precisely.”

“You forgot nights.”

Maeril groaned and let her head touch the wall.

“Night is when civilised creatures become unconscious.”

Rishi reached for the bundle of nettles. “I will practise the release Sirael showed me before the evening meal. Later, I will sit.”

“Mysterious nocturnal monk exercises.”

“Breathing.”

“Suspicious breathing.”

He untied the bundle.

“This is my discipline, not yours. You may sleep.”

Maeril studied him across the lodge. “You do intend to sleep at some point?”

“Yes.”

“And eat enough to replace what Sirael knocks out of you?”

Rishi looked at the small store of bread and nuts beside the hearth.

“I will try.”

“That was not the agreement.”

He looked back at her.

“I will eat.”

“Better.”

After they had washed and eaten, Maeril set the schedule on the table and weighted one corner with the ink knife.

“So this is how we stay for a year.”

Meals at tables where some faces had begun to soften and one remained absent. Enough days for habits to become something more difficult to leave.

Rishi lifted one nettle stalk.

“It is how we begin.”

He laid the stalk across the small breaking board Lirae had lent him. His first pressure landed too near the end. The shell bent.

Rishi moved his thumb to the middle and tried again.

The stalk opened with a dry crack.

At the table, Maeril uncorked her ink. She drew a spoon beside the first shaping sequence and began marking where the change would have to stop.

The sounds continued together: wood yielding beneath Rishi’s hands, a nib moving beneath Maeril’s.