After breakfast, Stonemane fetches his journey bag and joins us in the front sitting room. He wears his traveling clothes again, though they are stiff and clean now. I study them covertly; we have not done the wash since he arrived. Did he wash them out in a bucket in his room, or merely wave his fingers and shoot sparks from his eyes?
He sits on the floor, his bag over his shoulder and looks to Niya. The rest of us are seated around the room, Bean rocking back and forth on the edge of her chair in excitement. Niya and I have agreed that the best place for her to sew her stitches is in my sash, for I already have a few bands of embroidery at the ends. She holds it in her hands now.
“Are you ready, my lord?” she asks.
He dips his head. “I thank you all for your hospitality.”
“I am sorry for this trouble,” Baba says.
“So you have said,” he agrees. “But it is not of your making. Miss,” he nods at Niya, “do your work.”
She does. In five simple stitches, she sews a small circle on my sash. She pauses as her needle begins the final stitch. Stonemane waits, his eyes on her fingers. I glance between them, my eyes alighting on Stonemane just as Niya pulls the needle through with a single, confident tug. Stonemane snaps out of existence; one moment sitting before me and then, between one blink and the next, disappearing so completely I can almost believe he had never been there at all.
Bean gives a little shout of glee and jumps up. “Oh, you’re good!”
Niya smiles as she knots the thread and breaks off the extra. She looks relaxed, the tension slipping from her shoulders. It had not occurred to me that holding her magic might be so difficult, or that having an opportunity as significant as this to use it would be a welcome reprieve rather than exhausting. She winks at Bean now. “Let’s hope he’s comfortable in there.”
“The goat never complained,” I tell her comfortingly, taking my sash back and binding it around my waist. It feels no different than it did this morning; it seems strange to imagine that the stitches themselves hold a faerie within them.
“What goat?” Baba asks.
“Nothing,” we chorus together.
He regards us with fatherly suspicion. Mama, knowing our secret, averts her eyes.
“It’s just an old joke,” Bean says a little too brightly.
Baba shakes his head. “There are some things I suppose I’m better off not knowing.”
Mama stands up, brushing out her skirts. “Bean, you’d best head off at once if you’re going to take the horses the long way round. Rae, let’s get you a spot of food packed so you don’t come back starved.”
We leave the room together, Niya catching hold of my hand. Her eyes dance with excitement. In the kitchen, Mama finishes packing a rucksack with bread, cheese, a few bits of dried, seasoned meat and a water flask while Niya fetches my walking stick. We had packed food for Stonemane as well, which he had slipped into his bag. I lace on my leather shoes, ruminating on the wonders of his bag—it clearly holds more than its small size suggests. Perhaps it also washes clothes.
Bean manages to leave a scant few minutes before me, riding out of the stable yard with five horses on a lead rope behind her. They are some of our best—Diamond and Harefoot and Storm among them. How very odd that he came to us walking when he had wealth enough to buy them. Storm alone, with her long legs and sculpted nose, with her frothing dark mane and the speed of the wind, must have cost him thrice as much as a regular riding horse. Baba would not have parted with her for less.
