The Lost World

Snow Nogaynos snow looked magical. I could watch it sift down through the silver stillness forever, its deep, mysterious veil of lace endlessly entrancing, sticking delicately to the stiff, dark branches of the trees, drifting ever so slightly against their trunks and dusting the stones in chill white velvet. I’d known snow in Amadea. I’d lived in the north. But that was city snow, cold and wet, quickly turning to ice, spotted with ash and soot from the fires of houses, stained with mud and layered with dirt from the roads where the plows turned it up to stack in icy snow-stones along the sides of people’s yards. It came down in lacy veils there, too, but I’d never had time to watch it fall there, I’d always had to work. For a brief moment everything looked clean and cold and white, hiding the meanness of the people but the meanness would always win out, in the end. Here in Nogaynos, I didn’t see the meanness of Amadea. I’d been surrounded by it there, caught between the harsh, narrow, unloving granite of my adoptive father’s indifference, and my adoptive mother’s spite, malice and grasping avarice. I might at any time be driven out into that icy, wet, muddy snow to walk miles delivering the wares my adoptive father had made, or forced to fawn over fake aristocrats to curry favor for my status seeking adoptive mother. Any moment spent in the sanctity of my own mind could bring me a clout on the ear or a brisk slap meant to drive me on to another task to enrich one or the other of them at my expense. I might not be loved here, but I was accepted, and, as much as a young girl my age could be, respected. From Shade I had affectionate friendship, more than I had ever known before. No one snatched the book out of my hand when I curled up in a warm chair before the fire to read and study. I could stare out the windows at the falling snow and let my mind wander out into the lacy, white mystery, and no one would scream at me, or shake my shoulder with a painful clasp to demand I serve them. I might find profound discomfort in it when others served me, but I reveled in the freedom from being forced to serve. Feeding the horses, doing turn-outs and cleaning stalls—those were no hardship. Doing my share of the cooking, I enjoyed. Adding my cleaning spells to the household mix as I learned them, and expanding my repertoire of mending spells gave me competence that pleased me. Adding my power to the maintenance and protection spells and wards surrounding the Towers brought me enormous satisfaction. The better I could care for those around me, the better I liked it. But it wasn’t demanded of me. It wasn’t forced on me with threats, pain and denigration. No one called me a useless dreamer for staring out into the falling snow. No one labelled me idle for reading a book. I could think about ideas, sketch a construct, diagram a spell, or calculate the parameters of an enchantment. I could plan a week’s meals and even list the components needed to feed everyone without having the list snatched up and ripped to shreds while shrill words attacked me, saying that my adoptive mother would do such things. Telling me to do whatever she told me to do whenever she told me to do it. It would have worked, I suppose, if she had bothered to do it, but she would get too busy, or too entangled in her social climbing. She’d come home to a cold fire, slap me around and shriek at me for what I hadn’t done while I worked at the forge. Well, I thought, staring out into the sifting snow, that was over now. Here I snuggled in soft woolens, cradled by cushions in a comfortable window-seat, books scattered all around me, with another open in my lap. Instead of hard words and harsh slaps, a mug of sweet, spiced tea steamed at my elbow while a fire snapped on the hearth. Across from me, Shade pored over his own stack of tomes searching histories of knights and mages for spells of his own. And if those spells held the magic of courage and valor, kindness, devotion and good, stout common-sense, well, I knew those talismans held value of their own, well-suited to the boy who studied them. His sock-clad toe poked mine gently. “What do you see out there?” “New falling snow.” “You look as if it was telling you secrets.” “Nothing so simple. Oh, there are secrets, but the snow does not tell them just for the asking. The snowflakes have a secret recipe you have to watch a cook make over and over until you’ve gathered all the bits and pieces and put them together to make the perfect whole.” “Ah,” he shifted around behind me. “Let me look, too.” He gathered me up, wrapping me in his long arms and legs and his own woolen blanket, dropping his chin to my shoulder so he could follow the line of my gaze. “See the secret trail?” I asked, feeling the warmth of his cheek on mine. I fell silent, allowing my own gaze to sink into those spaces, to follow that trail towards the heart of the snow’s mystery. The hushed silence of the falling snow surrounded us, until I lost all awareness of everything else and only saw the lacy veil and the spaces between the snowflake threads.