Pegasi and Prefects (12 page)

I hold the hot cup in my hands a moment longer, even though I’m desperate to get back to Rosalind and the alicorn, alone in the dark. I try to find the right, the truthful words. “I promise, we’re trying to do the right thing. I’m sorry to ask for your help like this. I didn’t know who else to go to. Please trust me that it’s best that we don’t tell you what we’re doing. I give you my word that we’re not doing anything I consider wrong.”

“Then that’s enough for me.” She brushes her hand over my hair, ruffling it. “Hurry and drink up, and get Rosalind back as soon as possible.”

I obey. I want to hug her and howl on her shoulder a bit, but Miss Robert’s never been the kind of lady you could do that to, at least without feeling terribly awkward. Instead, I obey her, hoping that’s enough to show what I’m feeling.

I can tell that Rosalind’s been weeping, even though I’m pretty sure there was some hasty removing of glasses and wiping of her face as I approach. I can’t think how awful it must have been, waiting in the cold darkness with the pain of the alicorn reflected in her mind, while I had cocoa and company.

Somehow she manages to smile at me. I smile back, feeling a rush of admiring liking for her. She’s such a gallant girl, and I never guessed it.

Another dreadful time follows. We set the torches up on a pile of rocks so that our hands are free to get to work. I try to remember everything I have ever been told about cleaning and suturing wounds, thanking heaven that I was often there when the veterinarian was brought to my parents’ stables or the stable hands gave first aid themselves. Still, without Rosalind’s unexpectedly expert help, I’d be at a loss. We pour the saline lavishly over the wound. We can always beg more from Miss Roberts, but not—not if the little alicorn is dead by morning. I hate the thought with all my heart, wishing I could be convinced that just that isn’t exactly what is going to happen, for all our efforts.

Rosalind has deft little hands, sewing up the terrible wound with strong, neat stitches without faltering for a moment, even though I know every stitch is sending an answering jolt of pain through her head as it is mine. Her kindness is almost ruthless.

When it’s done the alicorn accepts a little water from a flask. We stay sitting together on the floor for a long while. Rosalind has the baby’s head on her lap again, and I put one hand on the long nose as well, trying to project love and comfort at it. Rosalind’s head falls on my shoulder, as she finally runs out of whatever source of energy inside her that had been driving her on, and I wrap a supportive arm around her.

We sit silently together, sending out magical comfort to the filly, until it finally falls asleep, covered in blankets. Its—she’s—feeling warm and comforted, thirst eased. Its pain has eased, too, more than I could have possibly expected our ministrations to achieve. Perhaps it’s because the fairies have returned, hovering gently over us and the baby. I reach out with my mind, trying to sense what they are feeling towards it and us. There’s nothing much there. There never is, with fairies, just sharp little sparks of awareness in the surrounding emptiness, like stars in the sky. I wonder, dully, why they cluster around the injured alicorn. Fairies don’t have any healing abilities, at least that I know about. Maybe they just like strays.

Maybe, if the alicorn dies, they will eat her.

“I don’t want her to wake alone,” Rosalind says quietly.

“I know,” I say, gently. “But we’ll be out here soon. Every morning before breakfast, and whenever else we can. I promise.” I’m making the promise to the filly as much as to Rosalind. “She’ll be safe here.”

Rosalind touches a flank, gently. In the light of the fairies’ wings the alicorn is a colour no earth horse ever displayed, shimmering between green and gold and red and blue, and none of those colours at all. Her wings are like smoke. “We found her with Ember and Sunshine,” she says, dreamily. “I think I’ll call her after them: Sunflame.”

I don’t dispute Rosalind’s right to name her. I have been connected with the alicorn, too, and I passionately love the poor little thing already, but it’s obvious to me that Rosalind has connected far more strongly and deeply. As I did, with Ember. Their souls have recognised each other.

There’s no point at all in saying anything about how illegal, and risky, it is to lay claim to a wild or strayed alicorn. I keep my mouth shut about it.

“Sunflame is a good name, old girl,” I say, gently. “I’m sorry, but now we need to leave her and get back. Miss Roberts will be frantic with worry.”

She nods, reluctantly, and tries to rise. She seems to be having a little trouble, until I take her forearms and help her up. She seems dizzy and unfocused. I’m almost afraid that she will actually fall asleep and fall on the flight back to Sunshine. I hold her waist tightly, just in case.

It’s a distinct relief to make it back in one piece. Miss Roberts gives us tea, cheese, hot buttered toast and cake, and no questions, then bundles us off to her spare bed wrapped in spare pairs of her pyjamas. Rosalind’s hands are completely hidden in the sleeves, and she trips over the legs. I catch her just before she falls, and get a faint smile in return as I help her to the bed.

We snuggle in next to each other. I feel a little shy at the closeness, which is ridiculous, given how often my little sisters and youngest brother creep into my bed for midnight cuddles at home, and given that we sleep only a couple of beds away from each other in any case. There’s plenty of room to fit two girls in the bed with space to spare. Still, I turn away, suddenly awkward.

“Charley?”

I roll back toward her. Her round elfish eyes are black in the dark without spectacles. “Mmm?”

“Thank you for today, Charley dear.”

I should probably say something in response, if I could think of the words. I can’t bring any to mind.

Of all things to feel, I am conscious of a queer, wild sympathy for Roy, and the unfortunate impulse that led him to steal an unwanted kiss from me in the stables. I was too hard on him.

Perhaps it was because we’ve spent the time concentrating on feeling love and sympathy toward the alicorn together, trying to wrap it in tenderness. I feel like these last few hours have bound us closer together than a year of ordinary friendship could. Or perhaps it was always going to happen to me eventually, with some girl or other—although it feels, right now, that it couldn’t ever be any other girl than this one lying next to me. All I know is that all I can feel now, so sharp and poignant that it makes my heart ache, is the terrible, unnatural desire to move closer just a little, and kiss this girl. Not a peck on the cheek like I gave her in the shack, but a real kiss. A kiss that will tell her that she is sweet, and courageous, and a complete darling, and that I don’t know why I ever didn’t realise how pretty she is, or that I would like her more than anyone else in the world if I had ever just given her a chance, and that I want to be her friend and so much more that I don’t even understand.

Most of all, a kiss that would risk revealing to Rosalind how much I
want
to kiss her. A kiss that would smash our budding friendship to pieces. A kiss that would, if she understood it and it alarmed her sufficiently, ruin absolutely everything, perhaps my whole life. I can foresee, with painful clarity, Rosalind shrinking away, horrified. . . Perhaps calling for Miss Roberts. . . The final consequences are more vague, but I shrink from them.

I need to say something normal, frank and cheerful, thanking her too. I can’t make the words come. Eventually, she gives up waiting for a response and turns away from me herself.

“G’night, Charley.”

“Night.”

I listen to her breathing change as she falls asleep, tired out by the dreadful evening. It takes me much, much longer before I can shut out my own thoughts enough to sleep.

We get up and dress before dawn. We take the stairs carefully, trying not to make any too obvious creaking sounds and wake Miss Roberts. Our noble effort is entirely wasted. The kitchen is already lit up, a fire in the grate, hot tea and porridge and buttered toast waiting for us.

She waits until we’re fed before she asks any questions. When she does, she asks simply: “Are you girls going to be back at school in time for morning classes?” When we nod a little uncertainly, she says, “I’ll help you get your rides ready. I presume you are up so early in order to go out.” And that is all.

When we open the shack door, I half expect to see Sunflame lying dead, or dying, the infection in her wing too much for her emaciated frame despite out best efforts. Instead, she’s on her feet, teetering eagerly in our direction, radiating affection and joy at seeing us—at seeing Rosalind, in particular.

At first I’m caught up in the delight of seeing her so much better. It takes me a little while to realise that she’s suspiciously much better. We did our best last night, but it’s not really credible that a couple of schoolgirls treating her wound made quite so much of a difference.

As we busy ourselves changing her bandages, I watch Rosalind carefully. There are purple bruises around her eyes, livid against her pallid skin. Her thin cheeks are more hollow than can be accounted for by one late night. By the time we take Sunflame out to socialise with Ember, Rosalind’s hands are shaking.

There’s no doubt about it. The faster Sunflame gets better, the worse Rosalind looks.

I try to put Rosalind’s appearance and Sunflame’s miraculous recovery together with what happened last night. I had felt really dreadful when I collapsed in in the shack. I rather think I was suffering from shock. Then I felt immeasurably better after Rosalind stroked my hair for a while, as if shock and exhaustion could be caressed away by human touch, while she had looked ever more fragile. I had thought at the time she was simply comforting me with her touch out of kindness and sympathy. Perhaps she was both kinder and more sympathetic than I’d imagined.

I bite my lip. It’s not my place to say anything, really. Rosalind doesn’t have to discuss her magical Gifts and how she uses them with me. It’s not considered in good taste, really, to boast about magical abilities, because it’s not as if they are things you can earn on your own, although of course girls do always speculate and talk about Gifts. Grownups are sometimes more circumspect. After all these years, I’m still not quite sure what Miss Roberts can do. If Rosalind doesn’t choose to tell me she’s a Healer, that’s her choice, and an honourable one.

It’s only. . . Rosalind has been away from school for two years because of ill health. I look at her hollow, strained face. I remember that it’s supposed to be my duty, as Senior Prefect, to look after the wellbeing of everyone in the school.

I still say nothing. After all, if I’d had the ability to help an alicorn filly, wouldn’t I have done the same?

There is golden smoke blossoming from Sunflame’s wings now. Not hot smoke gleaming red in its depths, like Ember produces: a kind of curling, cool mist. It’s beautiful. The little creature comes back to Rosalind, adoringly, as if she can’t bear to be far away; Rosalind leans down and hugs her. I sit back on my heels and worry about them both.

There has to be a reason this creature is alone, without herd or owner. Perhaps Sunflame ran away from her owners because of mistreatment and was injured by something wild, which somehow failed to tear her apart and devour her. More likely it was a hunter that had injured her, a sharp spell, an arrow or a small knife-sprite injuring her wing, and she evaded death, not injury. Of course it’s illegal to take magical young for sport, but it still happens, especially when poachers who aren’t entitled to hunt want some sport themselves, or to sell unicorn horns and pegasus feathers on the black market.

The worst of it is that Sunflame won’t be a filly forever. The hunting parties drawn to Cornwall by the thought of the small, sluggish dragonlings wouldn’t pass on a something as rare as an alicorn with both wings and horn. Teaching this little baby that humans are to be loved and trusted is not really an investment in her long-term future. We might be doing more harm than good.

I try to explain my doubts to Rosalind. Her small chin juts out defiantly.

“We’ll just have to find a way to keep her.”

“You can’t just turn up with an unpapered alicorn and not expect people to ask questions. They’re not exactly as common as golden geese, you know.” Unicorns and pegasi rarely breed together successfully, and when they do, the offspring is generally sterile.

“Your father runs fabled beast stables, doesn’t he? We’ll find a way.” Rosalind’s voice is firm, but her round elvish eyes with their purple shadows, proof of what she’s already sacrificed for Sunflame, are fixed pleadingly on me. Without really intending to make any promises, I hear myself telling her:

“It’s nearly half-term. We could ask my older brothers for help.”

“You think they really will?”

“They’re sports. They’ll think it’s a lark,” I say, recklessly committing my family as well as myself to lawbreaking and fraud.

Rosalind hugs me so hard that she nearly squeezes the breath out of me. I slowly, carefully begin to put an arm around her in response, trying to be natural about it. I must take a little too much time because she pulls away before I can properly embrace her back, bright spots of colour in her pale cheeks.

I want so much to ask her so many things: about being a Healer, about why she doesn’t tell anyone about herself, about what makes her so scared of the other girls all the time—and why she trusts me so readily, even though I’m a prefect and it’s probably my duty to turn her in, not aid and abet her and incriminate myself. Time enough back at school for questions, I tell myself.

“Come on,” I say, gently. “Time to leave the wee baby and head back to school. We can check on her this afternoon.”

She nods. We leave the shack open, so Sunflame can shelter there if she needs to, and head back to Fernleigh Manor.