Page 6 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
She tried to push him, with her merely human strength. He did not yield.
She actually thought about getting a stick and hitting him, but no. Not Falada. He was her friend, and you did not do that, not to animals, not ever. Some people used a riding crop, to be sure, but Cordelia would have cut her arm off before she put a mark on that shining hide. But I have to save him. I have to do something.
A lump was rising in her throat, and then her mother caught her shoulder and said, “What’s going on here?”
Cordelia whirled around, shocked. It took her a moment to say, “Mother? What are you doing here?”
“A very good question,” said her mother. “Where were you going?”
“I wasn’t—I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to see what was down this road—I’ve never gone—but Falada wouldn’t move—”
There was no way that her mother could be there by accident. She was miles from home. Her mother was on foot.
“Of course he wouldn’t,” said her mother, sounding amused. “He knew something was wrong.”
She stepped to Falada’s head and scratched under his chin with her nails.
Falada stretched out his neck and blinked his eyes and made a soft hwuff of pleasure.
“Were you trying to run away?” Evangeline asked.
“No!” said Cordelia. She hoped it sounded like shock. “No! If I was running away, I’d—well, I’d have taken food, wouldn’t I? Or water or clothes or something. And I wouldn’t! I mean, I love you. I’d never run away.”
Her mother laughed. Cordelia dared to hope that her answer had been good enough. Please, please, let her believe me…
She could not imagine the punishment for trying to run away.
“I know that’s not true,” said her mother. “He tells me everything, you know. He is my familiar, after all.”
It meant nothing. It was monstrous to the point of being meaningless. She did not know what a familiar was, but she knew that Falada could not possibly talk to her mother. She had whispered every secret and every fear into his mane and that would mean that her mother knew them all.
It could not be true, because the world could not be like that.
And then her mother stroked Falada’s nose, and he turned a sly eye toward Cordelia and snorted, and Cordelia realized that she was hearing the sound of a horse’s mocking laughter.
He thinks that’s funny.
He’s been telling her everything all along, and he thinks it’s funny.
The image came to her of Falada and her mother laughing at her together, and Cordelia thought that she might faint.
“Oh, don’t look so stricken,” said her mother briskly. “I’m your mother. Do you think I don’t know all your little secrets already?” She rolled her eyes and mounted Falada’s back, then reached down a hand to Cordelia.
Cordelia took it. She could not seem to breathe. The touch of calico under her arms, when she held her mother’s waist, was like sandpaper, and the sharp, woody scent of wormwood closed around her like iron bands.
“So you thought you were saving him, did you?” Her mother shook her head. “Silly child.”
“I… I…” Cordelia could not muster a single defense. Her mind was completely blank.
“I made you,” her mother said, looking straight ahead. “I made him and I made you, and you belong to me. Don’t forget it.”
They rode double back to the house. When they were cresting the final hill, the white outline of the house before them, her mother broke the silence, saying cheerfully, “You know I’d never let anything happen to you. Falada will keep you safe. He’d never let you get lost.”
Cordelia nodded. She’s rewriting it in her head already, then. I was getting lost, not running away.
Relief washed over her and settled in her chest. Her mother did this sometimes, recasting the past into a shape that she found more congenial. This time the changes seemed to benefit Cordelia.
The closeness between them, as she held her mother’s waist while Falada carried them toward their front door, gave Cordelia the courage to ask, “Mother? What’s a familiar?”
