Bend Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Again

Hard lessons in the cold, a gloved hand on her wrist, and a letter from the chancellor.

Ansel did not speak of the glove, or the smoke, or the knee.

By the time Bess and I came down the next morning, the floor of the great hall had been scrubbed and the candles were cold.

"Courtyard," was all he said.

The training yard lay open to the sky between two walls of black stone.

Frost lay on the flags, and my breath hung white in front of me.

He had put out a single iron bowl of water on a post.

"Freeze it," he said.

"The whole bowl?"

"The surface. A skin of ice, the thickness of a coin."

I looked at the bowl.

I looked at him.

"Yesterday I lit a hundred candles," I said.

"Yesterday you shouted at the current and it answered. That is not skill. It is a door left open in a storm."

"It worked."

"It nearly took the roof off. Again."

I held out my hand over the bowl.

I snapped my fingers.

The water shivered.

"Again."

By noon my fingers were numb. My throat hurt from swearing quietly.

Bess sat on the step with a blanket around her shoulders and a hot loaf from the kitchen, because the keep had a kitchen and a stove and a stock of flour, and she had found them before she found her bed.

"Bess," I said. "Stop eating where I can see you."

"Then you'll have to stop looking, Princess."

"I am freezing."

"And I am warm, so we're both getting what we chose."

"Again," said Ansel.

I made a sound that no princess should make.

"You are fighting it," he said. "You pull the current toward your hand like a rope. It is not a rope. It is a tide. You stand where it already runs and let it pass through."

"That means nothing."

"Then feel it."

I stared at him.

He had told me twice that he would not touch me.

He took one step closer to the post and stopped, with his hands carefully at his sides.

"Put your hand on mine," he said.

"I thought you said..."

"I said I may not touch you. You may touch what you like."

His left hand, the clawed one, stayed at his side.

His right hand, the one in the iron glove, he held out flat in the cold air.

I pulled off my own glove and laid my bare palm on the back of the iron.

The iron was warm.

It was far too warm, hot enough to hurt, and when I closed my fingers around it something deep behind my ribs pulled toward it.

I forgot to be cold.

"There," Ansel said, very low. "That. Where it moves."

"It is coming from you."

"It is coming through you, and I am letting you borrow how it feels. Hold it."

I held it.

I could feel the whole tide at once, wide and slow and deep, running under my hand and out into the air around us.

I looked up.

His eyes were closed.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

His breathing had stopped, I thought, until I saw he was only holding each breath very still.

His ears had gone flat against his skull.

I snatched my hand away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Did I hurt you?"

"No."

"You were not breathing."

"It is cold."

"That isn't how it works."

"Princess," he said, and the word came out hoarse. "Freeze the bowl."

I turned to the post.

My hand was shaking, and I put the shaking down to the frost.

I breathed out.

I stood where the tide ran, and I let it pass through me.

The skin of ice crossed the water in a single clean sheet, from one edge of the bowl to the other, thin as glass.

I laughed out loud.

Bess dropped her bread and clapped.

"That's the first time I've seen a smile on that face," she said.

"I'm not looking at you."

"No. You're looking at him."

I was.

Ansel had turned his head away, and I could see the line of his throat, and I saw him swallow.

"Good," he said to the wall. "Tomorrow, again."

A shadow crossed the yard.

A black crow dropped out of the grey sky and landed on the post, beside the bowl. It had a small scroll tied to its leg with a red ribbon.

Ansel took the scroll in his claws and unrolled it.

I watched his face change.

"What does it say?" I asked.

He handed it to me.

It was in a neat, soft, familiar hand, the hand that had written me birthday notes since I was five.

To the Beast Mage of the Hollow: a report on the princess's progress is required each week, in writing, signed by yourself and by her.

If it fails to arrive, the crown's grant to the Hollow will end.

With affection, O. Gisborne.

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