The Road Opens

The wizard’s pack caught on the doorframe.

Rishi stepped back, turned a little farther, and tried again. The rolled blankets beneath it cleared the wood. His own pack rode against his chest, its straps drawn short enough to leave his arms free.

Maeril waited outside with her hand against the living wall. Cold air reached beneath her hood. She had no bag, no books under one arm, nothing to balance except herself. By the time he stood beside her, she was grateful to give him some of that too.

His arm settled around her. She gripped his sleeve and looked down at the path.

The first step took longer than she wanted him to see.

She had to bring the splinted leg forward without catching her boot on the ground. Then she had to trust him with her weight while she moved her sound foot. Her shoulder protested against his arm. She stopped with her teeth together, waited for the pain to ease, and tried again.

Rishi kept his feet planted until she had found her balance.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

They managed another step. Then another, past the edge of the roof, where cold drops fell from the roots above them.

Maeril had walked this way without looking at the ground. She could remember doing it, thinking about a ward or arguing with Rishi, trusting her feet to take her where she meant to go. Now a root no thicker than her thumb required a pause. She turned her head to judge its distance with her good eye, and the turn shifted her weight before she was ready.

Rishi caught her against his side.

“Wait.”

“I have you.”

She could feel it. She still needed a moment before she could make herself move.

He waited, his hand firm at her waist. When she was ready, he took more of her weight and helped her clear the root.

The path bent between the trees. The Root-House disappeared behind them, and the small household sounds faded until Maeril could hear water dripping into a hollow beside the path.

They stopped again.

Rishi could feel the trembling in her sound leg. She was breathing through her mouth now, holding his sleeve so tightly that he could see the effort in her fingers. He looked ahead for somewhere she could sit. A broad root rose from a mossy bank a short distance away, with enough clear ground before it to rest her splint.

“There. We can sit there.”

Maeril followed his gaze, then looked back at him. For the first time since the threshold, she seemed to take in the whole of his load: her enormous pack rising behind his head, his smaller one strapped across his front, a blanket end poking out beside his ear.

Her mouth twitched.

“Rish.”

“What?”

“You look like a mule.”

He glanced down at the pack beneath his chin.

“Whose books am I carrying?”

“A very fortunate wizard’s.”

His laugh moved through the arm she held. She smiled, caught her breath, and looked toward the root.

“That is a good place to sit.”

It took them several more stops to reach it.

Rishi helped her lower herself onto the broad wood, keeping her injured leg clear until she was settled. He folded a corner of her cloak beneath the splint. Then he put both packs down and knelt to open his own.

Maeril rested her hands on the root beside her. Her fingers ached from gripping him. She opened them slowly while he found the water.

Somewhere behind her shoulder, warm breath stirred the edge of her hood.

She turned toward it, bringing her good eye around.

A pale muzzle hovered close enough for her to see the moisture around its nostrils. Beyond it rose a white face, a mane falling in loose strands, and a long horn touched by the winter daylight.

Maeril did not move.

The unicorn lowered its head. One foreleg advanced, the hoof settling beside the root where she sat.

Rishi knelt beside the open pack, the waterskin held motionless in his hands.

For a moment she could only look. There was a dark fleck of leaf in the mane. A drop of water clung to a strand beneath its jaw. Each breath reached her warm and damp through the cold.

She raised her hand a little, then stopped.

The unicorn waited for her.

For her.

Maeril looked down at the hand she had lifted. The healing skin pulled across her knuckles. There was mud on the toe of her boot, and she had scarcely managed the path away from the Root-House. She had been trying to decide whether she could bear the next few steps.

Now she could not remember the question.

“Rish.”

He set the water down and came beside her.

“I see.”

She had loved Mielikki long before she knew what to do with that love. She had carried it into her studies, into the circles where she had wanted so badly to belong, out again when wanting had not been enough. Even when she had learned to speak as though other people’s judgment no longer hurt, she had kept listening for an answer.

Last night, she had believed Elenya when the Root-Mother called her Guardian. She had carried the word into sleep.

But here, with the unicorn’s breath against her cheek, she could barely contain the name she had whispered in so many prayers.

Mielikki.

Her hand rose to her mouth.

“She knows.”

The words came out so softly that Rishi leaned closer to hear.

Maeril tried to say more. A laugh escaped instead, small and startled. She drew a breath to steady it, and the next sound broke halfway between laughter and a sob.

Then she could not stop.

Tears blurred her good eye. She wiped them away too quickly, needing to see, and laughed again as the white face returned through the wetness. Her shoulders shook. The movement pulled at the burns beneath her clothes and caught painfully under her ribs. She bent a little, gasping, her palm pressed against her mouth.

Rishi settled beside her and brought his arm around her back. She turned into him for one breath, her forehead against his shoulder, then looked toward the unicorn again.

It was still there.

“Oh,” she said, and the word dissolved in another helpless laugh.

Rishi felt her fingers catch at his sleeve. He covered them with his hand. Her face was wet, her breath uneven. A smile kept breaking through the laughter, so wide that it pulled at her healing cheek. Each time she turned toward him, she seemed to offer it to him, and he found himself smiling back before he could speak.

She shook her head, laughing, and pressed his hand between both of hers.

He had been measuring the distance to the next place she could rest. Now he wanted to remember this: her cold fingers around his, the warmth of her shoulder, the way she kept looking from him to the unicorn as though there were too much happiness to bear without showing him.

“Take your time,” he said.

Maeril tried to draw a slower breath. It shuddered in her chest. She let the next one come without forcing it, held his hand, and waited until she could see clearly again.

The unicorn’s muzzle dipped toward her.

This time she reached all the way.

Her fingers touched the warm plane of its cheek. The short hair lay smooth beneath her palm; she could feel the movement of its jaw. She stroked it once, very lightly, and left her hand there.

“Hello,” she whispered.

The greeting made her laugh again, but more quietly now.

She moved her hand into the mane. The strands slipped between her fingers, thick and warm near the neck. She found the little piece of leaf and eased it free.

For a while she did nothing else. Rishi stayed beside her, his arm around her, while she stroked the mane and let her breathing settle. When she could manage it, she leaned forward enough to rest her forehead against the unicorn’s face.

“Thank you.”

She closed her good eye. The warmth stayed against her skin.

When she leaned back, the unicorn shifted its weight. It bent its forelegs and lowered itself beside the root, bringing its back within reach.

Maeril watched it settle. Her hand remained in the mane.

“You mean it.”

Rishi followed her gaze toward the broad white back. Then she looked at him, her mouth still trembling at the edges.

“Will you help me up?”

“Yes.”

He moved the packs clear of their feet. Before lifting anything, he checked that her cloak would not catch beneath her and asked where she needed his hands.

Maeril looked down at the splint.

“The leg first. If I turn before it comes with me—”

“I know. We will move it together.”

He supported the splint while she shifted toward the edge of the root. They stopped when pain caught her breath. The unicorn remained still beneath her hand.

On the next attempt, Rishi brought his arm beneath her and lifted. She held his shoulder while he guided her onto the unicorn’s back, keeping the injured leg clear. Settling hurt enough that she had to close her eye again. He stayed beside her until she opened it.

“There?”

She adjusted her sound leg, then nodded.

“There.”

He passed her the water and kept the splint supported while she drank. Once she was steady, he eased the leg onto a fold of her cloak along the unicorn’s shoulder. Maeril held it there while he closed his smaller pack and lashed it securely to the back of the larger one. He hung the healer’s pouch at his hip, where he could reach it, then shouldered the combined load and climbed carefully behind her.

Maeril leaned against him as soon as he was settled. He brought one arm around her waist and supported the splinted leg with the other, easing it along his thigh until she told him the position was comfortable enough.

The unicorn rose beneath them.

Her hand tightened on Rishi’s arm. He held her through the change of height, and then they were still, above the root where she had sat.

Maeril looked down at the path. The next small obstacle lay a few paces ahead, half buried in wet leaves.

The unicorn stepped over it.

She let out a long breath and rested her head against Rishi.

For a while they rode without speaking. Hooves pressed softly into the damp ground. Winter light reached between the trees and moved across the pale mane beneath Maeril’s hand. Her ribs still ached with each deep breath, but she no longer had to brace herself for every step.

Rishi felt her weight settle more fully against him. He adjusted his hold beneath the splint. Ahead, water crossed the path in a thin, clear runnel; the unicorn passed through it without breaking stride.

“So,” she said at last. “After Mosstone. What next?”

Rishi looked along the sunlit stretch of road beyond the trees. He pictured Lantern Hall’s narrow doorway, Elisa looking up as he entered.

“Baldur’s Gate. I want to see Elisa. Be at the Hall again.”

Maeril rested her hand over his arm at her waist.

“Yes. I want to go back too.” She leaned against him. “I miss the Crossing. And we have rather a lot to tell Elisa.”

“I would like to hear what she has been doing.”

“I also want a few uneventful evenings, just so I can read a useless book.”

He smiled against her hair. “Speaking of which, did you ever read The Art of Being Struck?”

“Rish. Come on.”

She elbowed him with great care and very little force.

Rishi’s laughter startled a bird from the branches.

Maeril joined him, breathless for a moment, warm and alive against his chest.

The unicorn carried them on beneath the winter branches, into a long reach of pale sunlight.