Nym's Arc

Chapter 20 of 41

By morning the rain had stopped. Nym and Drasila walked toward the castle on foot. The black cat trotted ahead, tail high. The towers rose clearer now, gray stone under teal roofs. It was beautiful, but Nym's stomach knotted. She had no name to give the guards, no reason they would let her in. Strangers at a castle gate got turned away, or worse, arrested. "We can't just walk up and knock," Nym said. "We don't know who rules here. We don't know what they'll do to us." As she spoke, the bone whistle slipped from her bag and dropped in the wet grass. Drasila bent and picked it up. Her thin fingers turned it over. She raised it to her lips and smiled. "My old friend," Drasila said. Nym turned and stared. "The pegasus. I forgot about him." She pressed her palm to her forehead and shook her head. She had blown that whistle once on the eastern road and a black-winged horse had come down from the sky. She had not thought of him in weeks. "The horse was a gift," Drasila said. "Your father gave him to you when we were together before you were even thought of." She held the whistle out. "Every Fae gets a familiar of a sort. Could be a cat. Could be a pegasus. You never know what comes. Your father gave me one of my own." Drasila lifted the whistle again and blew. No sound came, but the cat rose at once. Then wings beat overhead. The black-winged horse dropped from the clouds and landed on the road, green and gold saddle bright in the morning light. Drasila laughed for the first time since she woke. "Now we arrive as we should," she said. "Not as beggars.“ They rode fast the last stretch, the horse hooves steady on the ground the cat ahead. At the gate two guards stepped forward with spears crossed. Drasila tucked her pinned hair behind her ear and took Nyms hand.