Page 7 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“Like a spirit,” said her mother. “Or a tame demon, sometimes. A sorcerer makes one out of magic, or catches one, or binds one. Falada’s mine.”
My mother is a sorcerer. Falada is her familiar.
She let those facts roll around in her head while they rode up to the stable. Falada’s hoofbeats were muffled on the packed earth floor.
“Are familiars all horses, then?” Cordelia asked, when she was finally allowed to dismount. She fought to keep her voice casual, as if it hardly mattered.
Her mother laughed. “No, and wasn’t it clever to make him one? So useful to have around. No, most sorcerers are so unimaginative, assuming they’ve got the power to call one up at all. Always nasty little devils with claws. And witches are worse—cats and dogs, the lot of them, not a drop of imagination between them.”
“Are there any others around here?”
Her mother’s head snapped up. “Why?”
Oh damn, damn, I shouldn’t have asked, I should have stopped at two questions, I shouldn’t have tried for a third… There was a look in her mother’s eyes that she didn’t like at all. She cast about wildly for an answer. “There was a dog that barked at Falada a few months ago. I thought maybe it was a familiar.”
This seemed to be a good enough answer. “No,” said her mother, turning away. “Falada would tell me if he saw one. There’re no other sorcerers around here, and the only witch is on the other side of town and she’s drunk half the time and senile the other half.”
Cordelia nodded politely.
“If you ever see another sorcerer when you aren’t with Falada, you must tell me at once, do you understand?” Her mother reached out and seized Cordelia’s wrist in a bruising grip.
“Y-yes, Mother.”
“Don’t trust any of them. They’ll only want to use you for their own purposes. And don’t even think about keeping it a secret from me.”
“No, Mother.” Cordelia had no idea how to tell if someone was a sorcerer, and struggled for a way to ask without making it a question. “I… I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I don’t know what one looks like.”
Her mother sat back, lips pursed. “Hmm. No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I picked a good town to move to. Hopefully that luck will hold. Larger cities mean more sorcerers, and we want to avoid them at all costs.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Cordelia, who had pushed her luck as far as she dared.
She wondered, as she climbed the stairs to her room, what her mother had meant by “use you for their own purposes.” It seemed that there was little enough about her worth using, unless someone needed dishes washed.
A day ago, she would have said it aloud to Falada, turning the words over and trying to puzzle out the meaning. But a day ago the world had been different and Falada had been her friend, and tears slid down her face and dropped, unnoticed, onto the bed.
She tried to remember every secret she had ever whispered in Falada’s ear. There were too many, going back all the years of her life. Small ones, like tests failed at school, coins kept to buy a piece of penny candy. Big ones, like riding with Ellen.
How lonely she was. How afraid.
Even one secret was too many.
She felt as if she was coming up from being obedient again, and she swore that she would not scream.
Despite her mother’s statements, Cordelia was still surprised two days later when her mother announced that she would be marrying a man in a city near the coast and was going to go see to it. She left Cordelia a few coins and rode off on Falada, her chin high, while her familiar moved like silk beneath her.
Cordelia stood in the doorway and wondered what that meant. Would this man come here? Would she be expected to cook for three? She dreaded the thought. It would be very like her mother to come home with a guest and wonder why there wasn’t a steak dinner waiting on the table, and blame Cordelia for the lack.
Worse yet, she might be expected to talk to him. Cordelia dragged out her old primer from school, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, by Miss Florence Hartley, with its yellowing pages and firm, no-nonsense block letters. She read the paragraphs about how to speak to adults until she had committed them to memory. “Let your demeanor be always marked by modesty and simplicity. Avoid exclamations, they are in exceptionally bad taste and are apt to be vulgar in words. Above all, let your conversation be intellectual, graceful, chaste, discreet, edifying, and profitable.”
“Now, if only I knew how to make my conversation edifying and profitable,” she muttered to herself, embarking on a thorough cleaning of the spare bedroom, just in case it was required to hold a potential husband.
In the end, her mother vanished for nearly three days, and Cordelia actually slept with the door closed the second night. The only light came from the moon through the window. Wunderclutter hung in long chains from the upper sill, casting slithery shadows over her bed. It was supposed to drive off evil spirits and dark things that might walk in the night.
Cordelia wished that she could hang it all around the house and keep her mother away.
And Falada. Her stomach roiled with humiliation at the thought. Falada is worse.
The day after her mother left, Falada had returned, no rider on his back. Cordelia assumed that wherever her mother was, she had sent Falada back to watch Cordelia. Spy on me, more like.
