Page 6 of The Fire Apprentice (Sylvania #5)

R owan woke soon after the sun rose, casting glaring beams of light into the hayloft. As he stirred, Jane sat up. Only then she was sitting, watching him yawn and rub the sleep from his eyes as bits of hay stuck to his shirtsleeves. Embarrassed to be staring, she gathered up the two blankets and focused on folding them and stashing hers in her bag as Rowan emerged from the hay. When he murmured a good morning, she mumbled out a thank you and handed him his folded blanket.

She awkwardly told him she wanted to continue on the journey and he didn’t try to dissuade her but merely nodded. They ate the last of Maryanne’s sandwiches before Jane tied her hair up and followed Rowan down from the loft.

The morning was bright and cold as they trudged to the front of the inn. The road leading west into the mountains looked inhospitable, with its rutted surface and overgrown borders, but in the early sunshine it no longer seemed menacing. But regardless, if Elle was up that road, Jane was going up it, too.

Rowan gave one glance back at her and set out across the Forest Road and onto the smaller byway. A piece of straw clung to the back of his head and she reached out to pluck it off but stopped herself. She couldn’t go touching his hair without permission. The straw fluttered as she followed him along the righthand track of the road, which was flatter and drier than the muddy left side. The motion of walking and the breeze shook it loose at last and it drifted off him and toward the ground, missing her fingers by a smidge as she reached for it.

She studied the back of Rowan’s head. His hair fell in soft locks with a gentle curl. But they were cut short at the bottom. Jane shook her head and scanned the forest towering over them on both sides. The lefthand track dried enough to walk on so she hopped over to that side and hurried forward to walk beside Rowan. He didn’t react.

She kept pace with him for a few minutes. The road stayed flat and the two tracks were more open than they’d appeared from the crossroads. All around were leafy trees and a chorus of birds sang as the sun pierced through the canopy. The forest smell was damp and rich with the spring scent of new growth pushing up from the earth.

Occasionally a branch blocked the road and Rowan would reach to toss it aside or kick it out of the way. As a new one appeared Jane hurried forward to move it. “Why doesn’t anyone maintain this road?” she asked as they walked past.

“They do.”

She waited. When he didn’t continue, she said, “Really?”

“The ore for the smithy comes this way. As long as the wagon can get through it’s good enough for the humans.”

“What about the fairies?”

“They don’t need a road.”

Right. The sanctimonious fairies would never clear so many trees and disturb the wildlife with a road. But they had no problem using the roads the humans built.

“Do the fairies come this way in their... pursuits?”

“Sometimes.”

Jane sighed and gave up trying to engage with him. “Master Smith said his shipment was late,” she muttered. “Now I can see why.”

Rowan kept walking.

As another patch of mud appeared on the lefthand track, Jane fell in behind Rowan. Words kept bubbling to her lips and she forced them back. Rowan was so silent it seemed likely her incessant talking would annoy him. But talking was in her nature. Especially when she was nervous. The sun was rising—soon it would be a full day since the dragon had taken Elle. Where had she slept? What had she been eating?

To stop herself from fretting over Elle or talking to Rowan, Jane peered into the surrounding forest. The trees were in full leaf, green and thick, so she couldn’t see too far in among them. Birds called and flitted between the branches. The leaf litter rustled as squirrels searched for food. A slight breeze stirred the topmost branches but the air around her was still. But the road they trekked along was shaded and would be for most of the day, given the narrow strip of sky overhead, so hopefully she’d stay cool.

The land had appeared flat when they set out, but they crossed a brook on a rough wooden bridge and the water flowed swiftly beneath them as it ran downhill. And her legs tired as the minutes passed.

“Thank you again for the blanket,” Jane said.

Rowan grunted.

“The dark bits along the edge—they were warm?” she asked.

“They store the sun’s heat.”

“I assume magic is involved.”

He didn’t reply.

“Is that magic the same as the fire magic?”

He shook his head. “Sun magic is also rare. But it doesn’t involve a dragon.”

“Can you do it?”

“No.”

“But you can change your appearance,” she said.

“Only a little.”

“When you were the chairmaker’s apprentice, you looked completely different.”

“Changing my face or hair is easy. I can’t change my size. I can’t become invisible.”

Jane pressed her lips shut, thinking. “Dustan used a potion to change Rose’s appearance. Couldn’t you make one that would work on yourself?”

“I don’t make potions anymore.”

His tone warned her not to continue. He’d said he was gifted with potions, yet he’d stopped making them? Was it because of her and the love potion he’d made for Larch?

The road sloped more steeply uphill. Jane saved her breath for the effort of walking. She tried to pass the time by retelling herself her favorite stories. Not so much the fables and tales from her childhood, which seemed faded and phony, but the real-life tales of the people she knew.

Like the day Maryanne met Wells: She’d been making baskets for the villagers, and he’d come to the house to commission one. But everything he said sounded so sleazy she thought his request for “a basket to put my tools in” was a proposition for sex. Of course, they ended up tumbling anyway, after she’d whacked him over the head and called him a litany of nasty names. Wells was a bit of an oaf but if he made Maryanne happy, Jane could overlook it.

Rose’s love story from last spring was her favorite. Dustan had seduced Rose with the help of a love spell. But unlike his brother Larch, Dustan had quickly realized Rose and the other humans were different from what he’d been led to believe. Instead of continuing with his seduction plan, he’d helped her escape from a tyrannical father and despicable fiancé and eventually freed her from the spell, believing he would lose her. But they’d found their way back to each other. Jane smiled, thinking of how Rose seemed to glow with happiness when she said Dustan’s name.

Rowan’s pace never slowed and Jane made sure to keep up with him. She’d insisted on coming and she didn’t want him grouching about her slowing them down or resenting her. But skies, her feet were getting tired. And the road had more and more rocks embedded in it, poking up at all different heights, making the walk more treacherous. How did he walk on this road in his bare feet? His soles must be used to it. Her shoes rubbed against the backs of her heels but she didn’t dare take them off. How long would someone have to walk barefoot to get used to it?

Hopefully whoever drove the wagon bringing ore down from the mine had a thick seat cushion.

As the sun cleared the treetops and shone down from the top of the sky, Rowan stepped off the road into the shade. Thank the skies. She’d been sweating from the climb even without the sun. Maybe it would pass over to the trees on the other side while they rested.

Under the trees, a soft carpet of pine needles spread over flat ground. Coming off the road, she could tell how steeply the road sloped by comparison to this wayside where the ground leveled off. A circle of rocks near the center contained the ashes of past cooking fires, and a smooth, old tree trunk alongside the firepit made a seat. A squirrel nosed around the ground but as they entered, it darted up the nearest tree.

Rowan strode to the firepit, lowered his bag onto the trunk, and sat.

“I have bread we can eat for lunch,” he said, digging in his pack.

Jane sat beside him and put her hands together in her lap. She bit her lip as he pulled out a loaf wrapped in cloth, a wedge of cheese, and a short knife, and moved his pack to the ground. He lifted his eyes to regard her.

“I don’t mind if you talk.”

Her cheeks flamed hot but Rowan turned back to the bread as he opened the cloth. He cut a slice off the end.

“I don’t have to talk,” Jane squeaked out.

“I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want to annoy you.”

He started on the second slice. “I like it when you talk.”

Jane’s whole face burned, and her neck and breast and possibly her toes. He liked it when she talked? But he never responded! She leaned away from him so he wouldn’t see her blushing and pretended to hunt in her bag for something but he only went on cutting slices of bread. She retrieved her water gourd and sat up. Rowan handed her a slice of bread with cheese.

“Are you actually a blacksmith?” she asked.

He shook his head as he worked on the cheese.

“But you know the basics.”

“Someone showed me once.”

“A human?”

“No, a fairy.”

“Why did they show you?”

“I was younger. I needed to hit something.”

Jane smiled. “I know that feeling.” She took a bite of her bread and cheese.

He didn’t reply.

“You had a forge? In the... the place where you all lived?” She was unsure how to describe the underground caverns in the forest where the fairies had lived under the old queen. Rose said many of the fairies had felt imprisoned there. The word “village” seemed too nice.

“Not a proper smithy. A makeshift one.”

“How did it work?”

He blinked a few times, staring off. “We built the fire in a basin of rocks with an opening in the bottom for the air to blow through. The caverns have several chimneys that allow smoke to escape—in the kitchens and a few other rooms. And we hammered against a slab of metal. It was loud.”

“What did you make?”

“Hooks.”

She waited.

“Fairies don’t use metal objects much. If we needed a tool, we’d more likely get it from a human smith.” He stopped cutting the bread and sat up to eat. “There’s a proper forge in the forest now. It’s in a rocky courtyard to the north of the gardens.”

An idea came to her. “I wonder...”

Rowan lifted his eyebrows.

“Would using dragon fire affect the process?”

He tilted his head, questioning.

“I mean, blacksmiths use a coal fire because it burns slowly. So what would happen if you used a fire made with the fairies’ fire powder? It burns so long.” She frowned. “But I’ve only seen fire powder used on a stick of wood, and the fire is no longer dragon fire after it’s put into sand, is it? Sorry, that was a stupid question.”

“It’s not.” He studied the bread in his hand, nudging the slice of cheese into the center with a finger. Even that finger had a scar on it. “A fire made with fire powder burns more evenly than any human fire and lasts longer. And you can use coal as the fuel instead of wood. So yes, you could use it in a forge fire.” He took another bite.

“Is the result better?”

He shook his head. “The result depends only on the smith.”

Jane paused her questions to finish her first slice of bread and cheese.

Rowan laid a second slice on the cloth for her. “You could do it,” he said as she picked it up. He’d said something similar yesterday in the smithy. Her inclination was to deny it again. But Rowan didn’t speak like a flatterer. He spoke so little that the words he did say seemed true. And why would he say that about her if he didn’t believe it?

“Everything Maryanne and I do for money—the mending and cheese-making and weaving baskets. I like those crafts but sometimes I want to smash something. When she stakes the tomatoes in the garden, she gets me to drive the stakes in. Sometimes she has to stop me because I’ll keep going and bury the stake too far down or splinter it in two. We can barely get them out at the end of the season. I would love to try blacksmithing.”

“Talk to Master Smith when you get back.”

What did that mean? Wasn’t he going to stay on as the apprentice? Jane frowned, but she didn’t want to ask.

“Do you know Rose?” she asked instead. “I haven’t seen her since last autumn.”

“I spoke to her before I left the forest the first time.”

Jane inhaled sharply. Had Rose known about Rowan coming to Woods Rest?

But he quickly added, “I didn’t tell her exactly where I was going.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “She might not have let you go if she’d known what you were up to. Telling her ‘I’m going to stalk your friend Jane and make her mend all my holey socks’ probably wouldn’t have gone over well.”

He met her gaze and for the briefest moment, his eyes narrowed at her teasing. He frowned and closed his eyes. “It was hardly stalking,” he muttered.

Jane had the strangest sensation in her chest, a bubbly lightness. She thought about Larch, about the unforgiveable things he’d done, and their history felt distant. Like it had happened to someone else. It had always been so close to her before. “I suppose,” Jane said, not believing the lighthearted words coming out, “that’s true by fairy standards.”

This time, Rowan stared so hard her confidence failed.

“I’m teasing?” she said.

He shook his head, continuing to watch her, but his face softened.

“I’ve never joked about it before—about fairies or what Larch did. I’ve never been able to think of what happened with Larch without becoming upset. I’m not sure what’s happening to me that I’m making jokes about it.”

“Maybe you’re healing,” he offered.

She frowned. “There’s still plenty of me that’s a mess.”

“How so?”

She hadn’t expected him to ask. She put her untouched bread back onto the cloth and smoothed her hands over her legs, thinking over her answer.

“I can’t find the feelings I used to have,” she said. “When I was younger, love seemed exciting. And then, well... It wasn’t perfect. But then I met Larch and we had... what we had. And now nothing ever feels as good as it did that time. When I was under the spell, I mean. But that wasn’t real, so...” She shrugged. “I’m left wanting something I can’t have.”

Rowan’s face was scrunched. “I thought you were over him?”

“Not him. I’m definitely over him. I shudder to think of the person I was, the person he wanted me to be. I don’t want to be her ever again.”

Jane frowned, trying to figure out exactly what she meant. “I mean the feeling of being in love. It was all consuming and heady, like floating or flying like a bird. Love will never feel like that again.”

“Maybe it’s not supposed to feel like that,” he said. “Maybe it’s not supposed to feel the way a spell or love potion makes it feel.”

“But that’s the problem. It’s not supposed to feel that way. But however it is supposed to feel, it will never compare.”

Rowan didn’t reply. He’d finished his lunch and was picking at a thread on his trousers. Jane took up her second slice of bread and ate it. Too late, she realized her comments would only make Rowan feel worse about the part he’d played in Larch’s deception, since the love potion that had left her ruined for non-magical relationships had been his doing. Not that his guilt was her responsibility. But it had been nice talking with him while it lasted.