the clearest and the strongest and no one is as good at it as you. But we have Fauna's apprentice, who can see through the eyes of birds and animals directly rather than through reflection, and Regina, who speaks to the Winds, and myself — since my mirror-slave is a rather dab hand at watching through reflections himself. I can and will speak to the Faerie, and ask them to speak to the Fae creatures of cold and snow for me.”
Aleksia nodded, although she was extremely dubious about all of this. Not that the other Godmothers couldn't keep an eye on things, but that they would be able to interfere in time to do any good. That was part of the problem; she was a long way from the rest of them, and where she would be going was farther still. If Elena was right, and this did involve some ancient magic working along with The Tradition, it could be very dangerous to try to interfere. And by the time help got there, it could very well be too late to do anything but control the damage.
Still, there was no doubt in her mind that something had to be done, if only to muster help for the Sammi if this spun out of control, or if the false Snow Queen proved too strong, or simply to quickly find a replacement for herself if something happened to her. That was imperative. There must be a Snow Queen in the Palace of Ever- Winter.
“My next thought, now that I know in what direction the men went, was to try and hunt for them as unobtrusively as I could,” Aleksia said, without commenting further. “I thought the best way to accomplish that would be to undergo a shape-shift. Or rather, several of them.”
“A full shift?” Elena raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever done one?”
“Not since Veroushka left, but I was rather good at them then,” Aleksia replied with pardonable pride, for shape-shifting was a very difficult magic to master. “She was an excellent teacher.”
“Godmother Veroushka was as good at shifting as Godmother Aleksia is at mirror-magic,” Rosemary put in quietly. “That was what she relied on as much as mirror-magic. And she was hardly ancient when she retired and left the position to Aleksia. She might be about somewhere, shifted, you know. Would be no bad thing to go hunting for her.”
“You have a good point,” Elena replied, craning her head to try and see who had spoken, since Rosemary was just out of sight of the mirror. The Brownie obligingly moved into sight, and Elena nodded her thanks. “I'll have someone get on to that. And do you know, I believe I will send our dragon Champions that way as well. It will take them a while to arrive, but if they go now, should something need dealing with, they will be that much closer to you than they are by staying here.” She spoke to someone out of sight of her mirror, then turned back to Aleksia. “Winged form is what you'll take, I presume?”
“I thought I would change into several forms, in fact, and yes, several will be winged. Peregrine, Gyrfalcon and Owl, Swan, too, if I can find some open water, and possibly Gull. But the hunting birds can at least allow me to feed myself without resorting to magic.” She was extremely reluctant to even consider using magic out there in the wilderness; if she did so, she would stand out like blood on snow. “And I will shift to Bear also. It will probably be the safest form to rest in.”
“Just don't stay too long in those smaller forms,” Elena cautioned. “Shift to the Bear or something else big enough to have a real brain once in a while, even if you can't cover as much territory that way.”
Aleksia did not say what she was, with some wry amusement, thinking. That she knew, probably better than Elena, about the dangers of being shifted into something that couldn't actually sustain human thought for long. That was the great danger of shape-shifting. You could easily find yourself losing bits of yourself, going more and more into the mind of the animal and thinking less and less like a human, until one day you realized — though dimly — that you couldn't remember how to shift yourself back. And you might not care. Altogether too aware of that, Godmother Veroushka had actually insisted on having Aleksia experience that firsthand — having her shift into a house cat, and doing it during the Winter when no feline in her right mind would venture out into the snow.
The experience had been, from the perspective of the human apprentice, terrifying.
From the perspective of the cat, it had been Tuesday. The human had been in horror at how close she had been to losing her “self.” The cat had been relieved, for all those human thoughts and compunctions had interfered dreadfully with doing what she had wanted to do.
The cat had not wanted to be a human again, despite the dim ghost of the human in the back of her mind screaming to be restored again. That was why Veroushka had insisted on doing the shift in company, for she was able to force the change on the cat.
There was no such difficulty when the animal form had a large enough brain to fit all of the humanness into it.
“I intend to rest as a Bear,” Aleksia assured her. “I had considered a dragon, but that is rather too obvious a creature. A Bear can defend itself, forage if it must, and I have been a Bear before.”
“Good.” Elena looked profoundly relieved. “Well then, which first?”
“I need to get ahead of the women, so a Swan for swiftness and endurance.” Swans migrated hundreds of leagues without needing to touch down for rest. They ate grass and waterweeds, so they did not have to hunt. For as long as she could find things for a Swan to eat, she could stay in that fairly unobtrusive form. “I know where the men were last, and tonight is a full moon, so I can fly all night. Once I have discovered some trace of them — and I hope that will not take long — I can see if I can find where this false Godmother is. After that, I will know better what to do, though it will probably involve joining forces with the Sammi.”
“Well, what is sauce for the goose serves the gander, as they say,” Elena replied thoughtfully. “As much magic as she must be using will surely blaze out in that wilderness. Just as you wish to avoid using magic as much as possible to avoid being detected, she will be easy to find once you are in the general area — ”
“Exactly.” Aleksia nodded. She turned to Rosemary. “Have you anything to add, my friend?”
The Brownies put their heads together for a moment. “Yes,” Rosemary replied after the conference. “We don't like any of this, but it's not our business to meddle in the matters of Godmothers. You think you need to enter the story, well, then you probably do. We will do whatever we can to make it easy for you to do that.” She turned to the mirror, and faced Elena. “But we want you, Godmother Elena, to find Godmother Veroushka and get her back here as quick as ever you can. For one thing, once you find and get her here, there will be another experienced Godmother with everything that the Palace can supply, if Godmother Aleksia gets into trouble. This Palace is nearer to where she is going than any of you are. For another, begging your pardon, but this is a big territory for any Godmother to cover, and it shouldn't be left unattended for long. No disrespect meant. But we know our business, as we have been tending to Godmothers and the Palace since Palace and Godmothers were here, and there's plenty of pots that could boil over if they're not watched.”
Aleksia looked at the Brownie in astonishment that turned into admiration. It was nice to see one that thought for herself and stood up for what she thought was right and proper. And she had been rather nervous about leaving all those “unwatched pots” behind her, but could not think of any way she could be in two places at
