Phoenix and Ashes

Eleanor had had a restless and uncomfortable night, and was mortally glad that Alison and the girls were away. She had been reduced eventually to sleeping on the kitchen floor, near the fire, inside a circle of protection before she could actually get to sleep. Only when her circle was around her and a couple of her Salamanders were frisking about with her would the unsettled feeling that there was something horrible outside the walls of The Arrows leave her.

Then, of course, she overslept—although, for her, oversleeping meant rising around seven. It didn't matter though, since the compulsions that Alison had put on her had weakened to the point that if she was merely in the kitchen at dawn, she would be left alone. So once she slept, she slept long and deeply, and only awoke at the insistent tugging of a Salamander on her finger. The moment she awoke, she knew by the chill even here next to the hearth what it wanted; the fire had burned down to the barest of coals, and before she did anything else, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and got it rekindled. Then she returned to the pallet—which, now that she was able to take pretty much what she wanted or needed within the walls of the house, was now as comfortable, if not more comfortable, than her bed in the attic room. It looked as it always had, but she had carefully hand-stitched a tattered rag of a coverlet over the top of a very nice woolen blanket, had more blankets in hiding if she needed them, and had made up a decent mattress out of one of the featherbeds left in the upstairs maid's room. Anyone looking in on her as she slept would only see her wrapped in something that looked as if she had rescued it from the bin, and once she was awake, the sham was carefully hidden away in a cupboard that had once held enormous pudding-basins. Eleanor could not have boiled a pudding to save her soul, so the basins, now stowed in the cellar, were not required. In all the time she had been here, Alison had never once opened the cupboards, and Eleanor was fairly certain she wasn't going to begin now.

So when she lay back down to wake up properly, it was with no sense of hardship. She did, however, want to think very hard about the dreams she'd had.

Unlike the ones that had driven her downstairs, these had been quite interesting. Not pleasant precisely—she was left with the impression this morning that whatever else had been going on, she had been working very hard—but certainly not disturbing.

'Am I supposed to remember them, or not?' she asked aloud. And that seemed to trigger something—a memory of—voices.

She closed her eyes, and relaxed as Sarah had taught her, because she knew if she strained after those dream-memories, they would vanish.

Voices. The first thing that came into her mind was the hollow, ringing quality of them. Then words. 'She's not ready! I care not if she can wield the power, she is not yet ready to do so!'

That was a female voice, more annoyed than angry. But there was something not—quite—human about it. As if it belonged to one of those fiery creatures that she had called 'fire fairies' that had appeared to play with her in her dreams as a child. There was a resonance to it that she had never heard in a human voice.

'When are they ever? But the knowledge must be there when she needs it.' That was a male, gruff, with the impression of immense age. Now, if a volcano could have a personality, this would have been it. Immense power was in this one, held barely in check; a slow power, slower than that of the first voice, but somehow the impression was that the speaker's strength at need was exponentially greater than anything the first speaker could command.

And a third voice—also male, and by contrast, quite human-sounding. 'Very well. But see to it that she forgets when waking.'

After that—nothing. No matter how much she blanked her mind, she could remember nothing else, except that she had been working as if she were studying for the examinations to enter Oxford.

Ah, now that was another clue. Whatever she had been 'doing,' it hadn't been physical labor, it had been entirely mental.

Assuming it was anything other than a dream. Which was a rather major assumption. Yes, she knew very well that magic was real, and very much a factor in her life, but it didn't follow that things she dreamed about were also real. Whatever, that was all she had of it. With a sigh of frustration, she stretched, opened her eyes, and started the day.

Which, once she was clean and dressed, was interrupted again almost immediately, by the sound of a great many people and wagons coming up the street.

This was hardly usual for Broom, and even less so this early in the morning. What on earth could be happening out there?

She left by the kitchen door and went to the garden gate to peer out, and saw, to her puzzlement, a veritable procession of wagons and carts carrying canvas and parcels and no few of the village women, all of it heading up towards the road leading out of the village. Where on earth could they be going?

Across the road, watching with the greatest of interest as he leaned on his stick, was one of the oldest men in Broom, Gaffer Clark. Under the thick thatch of white hair and the equally white beard, it was hard to tell exactly how old he was, and he himself wasn't entirely sure, because there weren't too many other people in Broom old enough to say that they knew they were older than Gaffer.