The Magician's Daughter by H. G. Parry

Author:H. G. Parry [H. G. PARRY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Biddy felt as though she had been trapped within walls for a thousand years already. She had never thought of herself as an outdoors person particularly. Unlike Rowan, she liked curling up in the library by the fire when the skies threatened and closing the shutters against the snow; she had always been more entranced by stories of bustling streets and close-packed buildings than of wide-open spaces. But she was starting to realize that the castle at Hy-Brasil, with its ruined walls and wind and rain whistling through eternally open windows, was not a true measure of what it meant to be inside. Even in the library, the only truly watertight room, there was always a breeze to be found. Morgaine’s house, with the curtains drawn too tightly to see even the smoggy London sky, was too much like being deep in the walls of the Undercastle. If she couldn’t be home, then she longed to at least step out the door, just for a moment, to stand with the sunlight on her face and space around her and a thousand sights and sounds in her eyes and ears. She knew it would be dangerous, with the magic in her heart calling all the mages in the city to her, but she couldn’t feel it. Her terrors were all of the dark, of being confined in a tiny space with the rustle of Storm’s wings and the creeping cold of stone.

But it wasn’t possible. She accepted this with only a stifled sigh. Rowan was complaining enough for both of them.

“I still think I ought to go with you,” he said, as Morgaine pulled on her gloves.

In the light of day, on the other side of last night’s misery, Biddy could find it in herself to be interested anew in Morgaine’s clothes. They had changed with the fashions from what Biddy had seen in Rowan’s dream, yet they had the same heady aura of glamour, of beauty, of letting their wearer walk across a street and belong in a way that Biddy couldn’t imagine. Oh, she was wearing them herself now, technically: Morgaine had found her a white lace dress, only a little too loose in places, with long petticoats that drifted with her like shreds of cloud. It wasn’t the same. She felt stiff in it, unfamiliar, as though the clothes were wearing her and finding her too small. Morgaine wore hers effortlessly, without thought, as a second skin. She had a suit today, pinstriped grey with black trim, and her hair was piled on her head to frame her face in soft tendrils—what Morgaine had told her, seeing Biddy watching her pin it up earlier, was called a pompadour. She’d offered to do Biddy’s hair just like it, but Biddy had declined regretfully on the grounds that it seemed to take a long time and Rowan would probably implode.

“Oh really?” Morgaine returned. “And what logic do you have to justify that?”

“It’s my memory. It’s my magic.”

“Well, this is your house, isn’t it, according to you?” She didn’t wait for a reply.

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