A Touch of Death

Chapter 13

The Enchanter's eyes felt crusted over when he woke sprawled across the sofa in the tower workshop the next morning, candles burned out and the rotten stench of sulfur stinking up the room. Coughing, he peeled himself up from the cushions, swatting at the air in a futile attempt to clear it before flinging the shutters open. The Enchanter squinted in the early morning sun, but reveled in the fresh air, taking large gulps as he tried to recall the events of the previous night.

He'd been experimenting with the secretions from the nightmare wolf, and he vaguely remembered the concoction beginning to smoke before... The Enchanter frowned. He must have lost consciousness. Perhaps he'd managed to re-activate the breath somehow, as his limbs felt sluggish and there was an awful taste in his mouth that he remembered quite clearly from one or two misadventures in his childhood. Before the wars, it was common in Fae courts for children to dare each other to run through the nightmare wolves' stables. The only real danger was being knocked unconscious— the pens were purposefully designed to be out of feeding range— but falling victim to a cloud of breath still had nasty side effects, even for full-blooded Fae.

A glance at the clock showed that he still had enough time to make it down to the library before Aoife arrived. He'd decided at the spur of the moment that early morning physical training was not a good idea after her ordeal with the wolf, and she needed to learn more about the history of her people— their people, he reminded himself, though it no longer felt like it. The only other Fae he ever spoke to after his exile was Camilla, and then only rarely.

He groggily made his way down the stairs to the kitchen, taking a hunk of bread, a piece of cheese, and a boiled egg from the larder before going along his way. At the last second he remembered to throw a murmured thanks to the cook, just in case she was around. Even after years of work, he still couldn't work out how to break the curse on the members of the household staff, nor figure out a way to track them. It seemed they only took on any corporeal qualities when interacting with inanimate objects, as he never physically ran into them and couldn't find any way at all to track them, though he'd once walked in on the slightly disturbing sight of the dishes appearing to wash themselves as leftovers disappeared from midair off the spoons.

It didn't take long to find the lower entrance to the library from the kitchen, and once inside there was plenty of work to do. He scarfed down his breakfast, wandering the shelves and looking for any materials that might be useful.

For the next hour the Enchanter bustled around the library, pulling books off shelves, deciding against them, and replacing them in completely inappropriate spots around the library as he discarded the volumes. The room needed to be reorganized anyway, he reasoned. There were several volumes on magical theory and the history of Fae and human interactions that would be helpful for Aoife to read without the need for him to spend time explaining it.

Aoife walked through the doors after he'd already built up a sizeable stack of books on the writing desk in front of the windows, including histories and a novel or two she might find interesting.

"Ah, there you are!" the Enchanter said, clapping his hands together. "Now, I've got a few books for you here..." He placed the two volumes he currently held into her hands, looking around for one more book on the history of the Fae before he noticed the expression on her face. Her eyes were wide in a look that could only be described as nothing short of pure and unadulterated panic.

"What's wrong? They're only books, and reading them won't hurt you." The Enchanter said with a sigh, fighting off a huff. She mumbled something he couldn't understand. "Speak up, girl!"

"I can't read."

He blinked owlishly at her before shaking his head. "You read a list of ingredients yesterday."

"I know what those words look like because I see them often. Falk, our old groundskeeper, taught me a little back at the estate, but it was only enough to recognize what words I needed to use often. We never had time to finish the rest." Her voice was barely audible, but it sounded like a thunderclap to him. He blinked, dumbfounded. How had the world passed this girl by so much that she never learned to read? And then he remembered: My village chased me out.

They thought she was a demon, so she likely came from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, most likely subsisting off farming their own crops and trade. People like that didn't necessarily need to learn to read to survive, and it might even be an uncommon skill for someone there.

"Then we'd best get to teaching you," he said firmly. "You're intelligent. You should be able to pick it up decently quickly." The Enchanter took the book away from her hands and instead began rummaging through the desk drawers. There were pieces of blank paper, ink, and a few pens somewhere in the drawers. Teaching her the alphabet was step one to the process, but he didn't exactly have any children's primers on him, so he would have to improvise.

"Have a seat, go on." He waved absently at the desk chair while scrounging up writing supplies.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"There are very few things that anyone can say with certainty, but one of them is that the ability to read has never done a single soul any harm, and has often done quite a lot of good," he said firmly, pulling up a dusty stool beside where Aoife sat. "Now, we'll start with the basic characters and the sounds they make."

They stayed in the library for several hours, with Aoife leaning over a table and squinting at strokes on the paper while the Enchanter corrected her. In the end, what became incredibly evident was that Aoife was stubborn and that the Enchanter was, while very intelligent, an absolutely horrendous teacher.

Aoife was quite adept at copying the brushstrokes of the characters, but when it came to understanding the sounds they made, she couldn't keep up with the pace that he wanted to set. In the end, she still stumbled and struggled to keep up, but the Enchanter did compromise by slowing down. Slightly. They would need to take this very slowly, with small words and very few letters at a time. He'd overestimated her comprehension of words and what they stood for based on what he knew she could understand, and at the end of the morning they were both tired and frustrated.

Ah, well. One day at a time.

"Let's stop there," he finally declared, after Aoife struggled over the same word for the tenth time.

"You're not very patient," she muttered, and he couldn't deny it.

"I'm a scientist. I look for results," he said flatly, standing from his position atop the stool. His back was aching from sitting so long over the table without support, and he shifted uncomfortably as he moved towards the door.

"There is occasionally value in the process, you know?" Aoife spoke from behind him, but he had the distinct impression that she was rolling her eyes.

"Are you a scientist as well?" He raised an eyebrow, frustration getting the better of him as he turned towards her. The steely look on her face told him that the bite in his voice did nothing more than annoy her.

"I'm an herbalist. Not a good one, but I know that if you're so focused on what your potion's going to do once it's finished, you'll muck something up in the middle and make certain it doesn't do what you want. It doesn't matter how much time you have— you take your time or you take more time later." She leaned back in the chair, looking at him in a way that spoke strangely of a challenge.

"Review the first five characters. I'll see you at dinner," the Enchanter said, sweeping out of the room. A tightness settled in his chest and remained all the way up to his tower workshop, remained as he threw ingredients together into the potion he was making the night before, and even amongst his careful measurements and exact procedures he knew that there was something missing. Some measure of instinct or luck wasn't melding the way it should in any of his experiments, and he hated admitting it, because this child that was Aoife had a point.

What was he missing out of the process in his haste to find the answers he so desperately needed?