Through the Darkness

“Probably, but I’m not a practiced mage. I’m just me.” Vanai was still astonished and delighted the spell had worked at all. And delight of one sort made her think of delight of another. She gave Ealstan a saucy smile. “Remember how you were saying it would be like having a different girl if we made love while I looked like a Forthwegian? Well, now you can.”

He usually leaped at any chance to take her to the bedchamber. To her surprise, he hesitated now. “I hadn’t expected you’d look quite so much like my sister,” he said, his face reddening beneath his swarthy skin.

Vanai blushed, too, and wondered if it showed. She said, “What I look like doesn’t matter.” Her whole life and most of Forthweg’s history gave that the lie, but she went on, “I’m not your sister. I’m just me, like I said before.” She stepped forward, into his arms. “Do I feel like a Forthwegian, too?”

He hugged her. His face was the picture of confusion. He said, “When I see you, you feel the way you would if you were a Forthwegian--we’re made a little wider than Kaunians, after all. But when I close my eyes”--he did--”you feel the way you used to. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“If I were a better mage, I bet I’d feel right all the time.” Vanai tugged at him. “Come on. Let’s see how I feel in bed.” She could hardly believe she’d said anything so brazen. Major Spinello would have laughed and cheered to hear her. She hoped the Unkerlanters had long since made Spinello incapable of laughing, cheering, or hearing ever again.

“This is very strange,” Ealstan muttered when she took off her clothes. He ran his hand through the tuft of hair at the joining of her legs. Then, before she could stop him, he plucked out a hair.

She yelped. “Ow! That hurt!”

“It looks blond now,” Ealstan said, holding it up. “It didn’t before. You can’t go to a hairdresser, or you’ll give yourself away.”

“Pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, if you please,” Vanai said tartly. Ealstan did, with results satisfying to both of them.

When they went to bed that evening, Vanai still looked like a Forthwegian. When they woke in the morning, Ealstan said, “You’re a blonde again. I like you fine either way.”

“Do you?” Vanai seldom felt interested early in the morning, but this proved an exception. “How do you propose to prove that?” He found the way she’d hoped he would.

Afterwards, he went off to cast accounts. Vanai used the spell again. It looked to be good for several hours, anyhow. She started to put on trousers and short tunic, then stopped, feeling like a fool. That wasn’t what Forthwegian women wore. Ealstan had bought her one long, baggy, Forthwegian-style garment. She drew it down over her head, thinking, I’ll have to ask him to buy me some more clothes.

Then she stopped again, feeling even more foolish. If she could go out and about in Eoforwic, she could buy clothes for herself. Why hadn’t that occurred to her sooner? Because I’ve been locked away from everything for so long, that’s why. The answer formed itself as fast as the question had. Because I’m not used to doing things for myself any more. High time I start again.

She was so nervous, she almost tripped going down the stairs. What if she’d done something wrong this time? She’d betray herself the instant she walked out the door of her block of flats. I should have had Ealstan tell me everything was all right.

But she couldn’t stand going back up to the flat. Defiantly, she threw open the door and walked down the stone steps to the sidewalk. No cries of “Cursed Kaunian!” rose from any of the people walking up and down the street. No one paid any attention to her at all. Hers had to be the most unnoticed defiance in the history of Forthweg.

Vanai walked along, staring in wonder at buildings and pigeons and wagons and all the other things she’d had little chance to see close up lately. Seeing people who weren’t Ealstan up close felt strange, too. And seeing Forthwegians who didn’t react to her Kaunianity at all felt stranger than anything. As far as they could tell, she wasn’t a Kaunian.

Two Algarvian constables came round a corner and headed straight toward her. She wanted to flee. She couldn’t. That would give the game away. She knew it, and made herself keep walking toward them. “Hello, sweetheart!” one of the redheads chirped in accented Forthwegian. Vanai stuck her nose in the air. Both constables laughed. Vanai kept walking. They didn’t bother her any more, as they surely would have bothered a Kaunian woman even before Kaunians were forced into their own tiny districts. And they’d told her she was at least passably pretty as a Forthwegian. She liked that.