Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (8 page)

“Hug me all you like, old thing. I like it,” I say with deep honesty.

Rosalind climbs up to her knees and turns to fling her arms around me. “Dearest Charley,” she says contentedly. “I knew we were supposed to be friends after all, you know. When Sunflame found us. She trusted the two of us to make her well.”
 

I hold her as long as I dare, before sending her off to dress. She pauses in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder, her tangled hair escaping from one heavy braid below a face that is still far too gaunt from her Healing of the day before.

“I was so scared that you were hurt really, truly badly, Charley. I couldn’t bear to lose you.” She tugs at her own braid. “There’s something else, something I haven’t told you yet. Just—Charley, promise you will always be my friend? No matter what?”

“We already promised,” I say. “Best friends for always. Like sisters.”

She gives me a twisted smile, looking queerly like Esther for the moment. “That’s right. Sisters.”
 

The door closes behind her.

The last days of the shared fortnight trickle away, so fast. The day before Rosalind goes the rain is pounding down too heavily to have a hope of taking to the air, or even riding some of the ground running steeds. I find myself sulking, and hate myself for it. It’s Rosalind’s last full day here—I should be making the most of it. It would be easier, I tell myself, if we were flying. Instead we are cooped up indoors and I feel my black mood settling on me, wasting what time we have left.

Meggs picks up my temper and refuses to be cuddled, prowling and flickering in and out of sight and avoiding caresses, despite Rosalind’s attempts to call him over for petting. She eventually gives up trying to tease him into affection and settles into an armchair with a book. Her mood seems odd, too. I keep looking up to see her watching me, with an oddly intent gaze. It reminds me of the first days of term, when Diana would bring Rosalind into the study and I would keep looking up to find those deep blue eyes, so serious behind their spectacles, fixed on my face. Reading my soul. I hope she can’t read it now.

It makes me restless. I can’t bear too much scrutiny, not with all my secrets. I find myself wishing Harry was here—this is his last chance—and at the same time, I’m fiercely glad to have Rosalind to myself in our last hours together. Not that I’m even talking to her much.

As if she’s heard my thoughts, Rosalind calls me over. “Come here, Charley. I want to show you something.”

I settle obediently on the arm of her chair and look where she’s pointing. The book is about care of fabled beasts. She points out to me a section about people with Healing talent using their Gift on fabled beasts, not just humans. It’s particularly dangerous, the book says, because magical creatures’ life energy is so much greater than that of humans that they drain the Healer more quickly than an injured human, but it can be done in an emergency. The biggest risk, apart from causing the Healer’s health permanent damage, is that the Healer and the beast’s energies become permanently bonded, so that the beast is useless to sell, and will flee back to the Healer if hunted.

“Is that what happened with Sunflame?”

She nods. “I told you, I know she will come back. I felt that we were bonded.”

I lean an arm behind her head, my mood easing as I read companionably over her shoulder. “You healed me, too,” I say, suddenly.

She giggles. “You’re not an alicorn.”

“But I’m a Fable Empath. It’s the next best thing. So—that means we’re magically bonded?”

I’m teasing, but I realise Rosalind is looking at me very gravely, no glimmer of humour in her face. “Perhaps we are.” She loops the fingers of one hand through mine, entwining them. “Would you like that?”
 

My breath catches in my throat. “Maybe.” The word is difficult to get out.

“I would, too.”

I really can’t breathe. She can’t mean what I want to think she does. Not after her confessions of last night. She’s just declaring our friendship again.

Meggs materialises in her lap and she gives a yelp of surprise. He’s no lightweight, these days. We both giggle and the mood is broken. Bobby comes in a moment later in search of his beloved Rosalind, his arms full of puppy. The dark mood is broken. With it has gone that odd, intense moment.

I puzzle over the conversation, at intervals, during the day. I would give anything to know what Rosalind had been about to say, even though I can’t see my way clear to asking her. Part of me, secret and daring, wishes that it was something that lies in my own heart. It’s just as likely, more likely, given how gay and natural Rosalind is for the rest of the day, to be a confession of feelings for golden, curly Harry, for wanting to be bonded as sisters by marriage and family.
 

First love is precisely the kind of thing best friends who are like sisters confess to each other, after all. It would be the best thing for everyone.
 

I once was a good sleeper. Hit the pillow, sleep like a hibernating dragon. Maybe it’s part of growing up, this miserable lying awake all night with my brain racing. If so, I wish I could be a child again.

Rosalind’s parents are sending a car for her tomorrow. There will be a fortnight of blankness, completely without her. Then, school—no privacy, hardly any time. I’ll manage, I know. Just now it seems very hard. I’ve been so glad to have my own room, away from the other girls. Now I feel stupidly lonely.

The door swinging gently open makes me sit up a little. I squint to make out a figure against the dim light from the hallway.

“Bobby?” Sometimes he has a bad dream and sneaks in to be cuddled and spend the night in his big sister’s bed. I know, even as I say his name, that it’s not him and not one of the little girls. I’m unsure why I feel unwilling to call the obvious name.

"Just me. I'm sorry to wake you. I couldn't sleep, and I wanted company." Rosalind shuts the door carefully, cutting out the light. She pads carefully across the room in the darkness. I feel her weight next to me, and dimly discern her outline against the curtained window.

"I couldn't sleep either." I peer more carefully at her. She’s shining pale from head to foot, like a will o’wisp, when I know perfectly well that her dressing gown is nile green and would make a darker outline. "Rosalind Hastings, if you didn't bother to put on your dressing gown!" I reach out to grasp her arm, thin in my grip, feeling the trembling through the linen nightgown. She must be frozen. "Don't tell me you didn't wear your slippers either. You precious little nincompoop, you're not fit to look after yourself. Get into bed."

"Oh, but—"

"You’re supposed to be delicate, old girl. I'm not having you catch your death of cold while you’re in my home.” I push her gently off the bed and hold up the bed covers. She remains motionless for quite an awkward space of time, and for a moment I’m afraid that, sensitive as she is, Rosalind resents the scolding, however fond the intent. I’m relieved when she finally slips into bed beside me.

I’m right about the slippers; one of my own pyjama legs has become hiked up in my restlessness, and Rosalind's foot is icy against my skin, sending the tiny hairs on my leg bristling. I squeak, and hear a heartless giggle in response as Rosalind takes advantage of the difference in our height by pushing her feet between my calves to warm them.

“Your feet are like ice cubes!”

“Sorry.” She doesn’t sound particularly repentant.

I hesitate. I shouldn’t, I know, have her here at all. At first I had been so worried about her exposing herself to the cold that I had lost all sense. Now, her skin already against mine, I know it’s dangerous. But some things seem easier in the dark, somehow, and the poor girl is shivering half to death. There’s nothing I can really do but wrap my arms around her and try and warm her with my own body heat.

For a moment I think I’ve dared too much, as Rosalind holds stiffly away from me. Then she sighs and snuggles into my embrace.

Longing rises thick in my throat at her closeness; then, hopeless longing is something I have become used to. I settle her head against my shoulder and close my eyes, letting myself fall into a state of bliss. I tell myself it’s allowable, just for tonight. I will dream that she sleeps here every night, that I have every right to hold her close. Just for a little while. It will be a memory to get me through the lonely next fortnight.
 

“Cosy now?” I ask at last, when she stops shivering. “You'd better take my things when you go back. I won't have you wandering around in the night half-dressed.”

"You're terribly sweet, but you needn't fuss—it hardly took me two minutes to get here. I'm nice and toasty now." Her words are muffled against the side of my neck, and I shiver myself at the ticklish warmth. It feels awfully nice and I’m almost sure it shouldn't feel quite as nice as it does. It sends reverberations of shock all through me, almost unbearably delicious. “I want to stay, if you don’t mind. I’m so lonely, for some reason, tonight. If you don't mind me sleeping with you, I won't deprive you of your dressing gown."

“I don't mind,” I say, minding terribly in my own secret way. It’s so hard, lying so close, not to let my hands trace her form through her nightgown, steal a kiss from her mouth. Disastrous. I need to relax and innocently enjoy the closeness, as if she was one of my younger siblings snuggling up for comfort. “There’s plenty of space, and it’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.”

“I know. That was when we were first truly friends, wasn’t it? I don’t see how we could not have become friends, after that horrible evening.”

“I’m glad it happened. Sweet dreams, Rosalind.”

Neither of us mention that we didn’t sleep in each other’s arms, that night. I don’t mention, either, that on both nights I had felt aching desire at the closeness. I close my eyes, allowing myself the luxury of tightening the hug just a little.

It doesn’t take long to realise that I still can’t sleep, not like this. Rosalind's breath is as quick and shallow as my own, and I’m certain I’m not the only one wide awake. Perhaps I’m holding her too tight and it’s squashing her. I tell myself to release my grip on her, and fail utterly. Some things are entirely too much to ask, I decide guiltily, and it’s no more sensible to try and force oneself to do the impossible than to ask a unicorn to fly.

“Charley?”

"Hmm?" Perhaps I’ve started to drift asleep after all, when it comes to it. My voice is heavy with slumber, or with something else.

“I don’t want to go home without you.” I can hear my own desolation echoed in the quiet words and, selfishly, my heart jumps at it. “I don’t know why Mother didn’t invite you in return. I can’t bear to be without you so long.”

“She probably wants some time with you to herself, especially for Christmas. It’s been ages since you’ve been to school, after all, and she must be missing you.” Rosalind makes a noise that, if it was no quite so ladylike, would have resembled a snort. I chuck her under the chin. “Buck up, kid. It's not for long.” I keep my voice consciously light, deliberately giving the lie to her own feelings. The rest of the holidays without her feels like an unendurable eternity.
 

Despite myself I stroke Rosalind's back with one hand, tracing the faint outline of her spine with my fingertips, more out of the need to give comfort than to touch, however wonderful it feels to touch her. "You’re putting on weight. I think Mother's succeeded in fattening you up a little. You resemble a half-starved baby bird far less than you did when school broke up. And you have more roses in your cheeks, too, when you’re not wasting them on fixing my bumps. Your mother will be happy."

"Charley, please!" Rosalind seemed amused and frustrated in equal measure, and the wet tickle of her mouth against my collarbone as she giggles makes me want to gasp aloud. "I'm serious."

"So am I. I want you to get healthy so you can take over as goal keeper.”

Rosalind pushes herself up slightly, her head above mine as if she is trying to make out my expression in the darkness. "I don't know if you realise quite how serious I am," she says slowly. “Charley—I told you I didn’t tell you all of it. Why I couldn’t go back to that school and face the others.”