No, I thank you, a soft, somewhat buzzing voice said at the back of her mind. Fair's fair, don't you think? You're helping me, so it's only right that I help you.
"Who are you—where are you?" Her gaze went to the bundles of pages. Merrigan half-expected them to leap up into the air and assemble themselves into the book in another moment, with a gaudy display of magical sparkles and shimmers, for good measure.
That's right, Mi'Lady. I'm the book.
"Why haven't you spoken to me before this?"
Because you didn't give me permission. Or rather, you weren't ready to listen. Oh, and because I wasn't assembled enough to do more than listen. Quite frankly, until you took me out of that wretched enspelled cupboard and started sorting my pieces, I wasn't even able to listen.
"Enspelled?" Somehow, that was much easier to think about than the other implications swirling through her head. Merrigan wondered if she had read too many tales of magic as a child. Or maybe not enough. What, exactly, was she supposed to do?
A magic book.
She was talking to a magic book.
Something magical ... was helping her, even if it was with something so small and mundane as sewing.
The book had just acknowledged she had helped it. Did that mean it owed her something?
Enspelled, as in the glass kept almost everyone from seeing me there, and ensured that what little magic I had left in my binding couldn't reach out and catch anyone's attention. It was destiny, Mi'Lady. Maybe the many layers of spells wrapped around you guided you to find me. Is it impertinent of me to say how delighted I am to have someone as clever and determined and pretty as you rescuing me?
"I am most certainly not pretty. Just goes to show how all that ripping and water damage and mud staining your pages interferes with ..." She sighed. What was she doing, talking to a book? How could a book, even a magical book, see her? It didn't have eyes!
Of course you're pretty. You only have the illusion of old age and bad hair and a stooped back wrapped around you. The spells only change people's perceptions of you, and how you interact with the solid, real world. There's a very strong anti-looping spell on you, and a one-way spell, and an aversion spell, so people sort of bounce off you, until some serious changes occur in ... well, we'll deal with that later. Since I am magic, and under a few curses myself, I can see through all the shrouding and shielding and don't-notice-me spells disguising you. You're rather pretty. Or you could be. You need some work.
That assessment didn't bother Merrigan as much as it should have. Maybe because she felt so breathless at the news. She wasn't truly old, wrinkled, pale, stooped, thin, and shaky—she only seemed that way. Underneath everything, she was still herself.
"All right," she said, taking a few deep breaths that didn't dispel that knocked-breathless feeling. "So now you can talk to me. Now what do we do? What do I need to do so you can help me break all these spells you see on me?"
Sorry, Mi'Lady, that's the problem. I can't. No one can. You have to break them by abiding by the conditions woven into the spell. Someone very strong, very wise and experienced, wove that spell. I can't even unravel the one that ensures no one but you can ever see the conditions written into the spell that dictate how it can be broken.
"Then what good are you?"
Silence.
Merrigan put down the trousers and waited, dread slowly growing on her. She hadn't just destroyed her first chance at fixing this utterly unfair, unjust, undeserved mess, had she?
"I'm—please see this through my—you've rather—this is all a shock. If I insulted you, I'm ... I'm sorry."
A rap on the door startled her so she leaped to her feet, dropping the trousers. Merrigan bent to retrieve them and jumped again when the door creaked open. She felt nearly sick with the fear that someone had been standing outside in the hallway all this time, listening.
Perhaps someone with a talent for throwing his voice, as the puppeteers had done during festivals and galas when she was a child? Pretending to be the book, talking to her. She had utterly made a fool out of herself just now, hadn't she?
Oh, please, book, please, be real!
"Luncheon, Mistress Mara," the seneschal said. His droopy, wrinkled, yet comfortingly dignified expression never wavered as he brought the tray to her end of the table and put it on the little side table. He didn't look at her as if he feared she was losing her mind, or worse, he didn't look nastily jubilant over the trick played on her.
"Thank you. It smells delicious. Please pass my compliments to Cook," she murmured.
The seneschal jerked, just slightly. His eyes widened, just as slightly. Then one corner of his mouth quirked up in what had to be an enormous smile for him, and he nodded to her.
Now see, that's growth. That's change. That just created the teeniest, tiniest crack in one part of one layer of the spell on you, the voice commented, as the library door thudded closed.
Chapter Five
"What was?" Merrigan reached for the teapot. She hoped it had been allowed to steep nice and long, because she
