Page 66 of Homeward for a Spell

Sage laughs. “Only when I move it. But you’ve done a very good job making me forget the pain.”

“I can do it again and again, if it helps. My own version of a healing spell.”

“I’ll take you up on that after food and some sleep. Nearly dying really takes it out of you.”

“Indeed it does.”

Sage falls quiet at that, and Araphi recalls their conversation in the tent (how could she ever forget?). “I’m sorry if any of this brought up memories. Of…of Ollie,” she offers sympathetically. Not wanting to talk about Ollie at all, but wanting to give Sage space to share. To let Araphi know her. To trust her with all her secrets, as she just trusted her to take care of her tonight.

“What? Why would it?”

“Well, I don’t know the circumstances of her death, but—”

“My ex-wife is alive and well in Ashaway, last I heard. Ollie never died.” Sage grimaces as she adjusts the position of her leg atop the chair. “I did.”

25

Sage

Five Years Ago

What most don’t know about a shard elk’s antlers—each of them the size of a fully grown person, and each boasting dozens of prongs as sharp as knives, and barbed at the tips—is that they aren’t only for self-defense. They’re useful for goring, to be sure, whether it’s a hunter or a rival bull. But the death throes of a shard elk trigger a kind of combustion at the root of the antler that sends prongs slicing through the air in every direction. The elk’s final gift to its herd is to kill the thing that’s killed it. Or at least, to try.

In Sage’s case, the elk succeeded.

It was supposed to be quick work—a day’s side quest on the road to their true destination. A crazed, lone bull had found its way into Weatogue, a farming village only an hour’s ride off the Queens’ Road, and was wreaking havoc on the crops as well as menacing the children. Sage’s party would put it down in trade for a meal and a cluster of rooms above the village’s only tavern that night. They made quick work of corralling it into a glen in the woods, where Sage waited with her crossbow to send it to the planes beyond. Though she timed her shot to let the creature gallop far enough ahead of the party not to endanger them with a last burst of strength and desperation, she was still well out of goring range.

But alas, not out of range when the shard elk’s heart gave its last pump, and its antlers shattered outward. The last thing Sage felt was the barbed prong embedding itself six inches deep into her stomach, slicing through something vital. The last thing she saw was Ollie’s face above her own, blurred at the edges. The last thing she thought was: But I never got to—

Then there was only the cold and the dark, and then nothing at all.

Until there was something.

Golden light bloomed in the black, and Sage opened her eyes to the too-bright world. Overhead, birds moved through the tree canopy, but she struggled to focus on them before her wife hovered above her once more. Their jaw-length black curls were wild around their heart-shaped face, and tears shimmered in their pale-green eyes, flowing freely over their high, round cheeks. Their long fingers fluttered against her chest. “Oh gods, Sage!” they cried. “We weren’t sure…we didn’t know if we could…” Then they collapsed atop her, tucking their damp face into the crook of Sage’s neck.

“What happened?” Sage croaked into their curls. Her throat was dry with disuse, as though she hadn’t spoken for days.

“Webar healed you. Brought you back.” Ollie gave another great sob.

Then she remembered—at least the most important bits: the glen, the shard elk, the blinding pain. Sage slipped her arm out from where it was pinned between herself and Ollie, then pulled up the hem of her tunic, soaked through with too much blood. Carefully, she raised herself on one elbow to see a long and puckered white scar running from her navel to her lower left rib. It felt ugly when she traced her fingertips across it, but painless. As though the injury were years old instead of mere moments.

Impossible…

She moved to sit up, then slumped back against the forest floor when her vision sparkled and the world threatened to slip sideways.

“I, er, closed the wound,” Webar, their healer, spoke up from somewhere nearby. “Cost me my best gem to do it. But I couldn’t put the blood back in.”

“Just rest a moment,” Ollie instructed, smoothing back the hair that had fallen across Sage’s forehead. “We’ll spend the night in the tavern, and head for home tomorrow.”

“For where?” Sage dodged Ollie’s palm to prop herself up on her elbows once more, determinedly ignoring her own dizziness.

Ollie’s teeth sank deep into their heavy lower lip. Then they said, “You can’t actually mean to continue? This job doesn’t matter. If Webar hadn’t had the right ingredients in his kit…If the gods hadn’t listened…Sage, you just died,” they reminded her needlessly, reaching out to brush their fingers through her cropped hair. “You bled out in my arms.”

Again, Sage dodged their touch. “Well, now I’m back,” she rasped.

She watched as the pain from a thousand small, half-healed aches washed across her wife’s face. Little wounds dealt between them over the past five years, but never dressed. Barbed words traded, but seldom spoken of again. There was never time, Sage told herself. There was always another client to serve, another adventure to embark upon. Always, the path ahead beckoned. Yet at every new campsite and even under unfamiliar stars, the same old fight awaited them. And here it was again.

Ollie loved Sage.