Fire - Kristin Cashore [78]
Fire said nothing to this; only waited.
He scratched his head then, and squinted at her, uncertain. ‘What do you think? Is five too young to understand? I don’t want her to be frightened.’
‘They don’t frighten her, Lord Prince. She talks of guarding me from them with her bow.’
Brigan spoke quietly. ‘I meant the changes that will happen to her own body. I wondered if the knowledge of it might frighten her.’
‘Ah.’ Fire’s own voice was soft. ‘But then, perhaps I’m the right person to explain it, for she’s not so guarded that I can’t tell if it upsets her. I can suit my explanation to her reaction.’
‘Yes,’ Brigan said, still hesitant and squinting. ‘But you don’t think five is very young?’
How odd it was, how dangerously dear, to find him so out of his element, so much a man, and wanting her advice on this thing. Fire spoke her opinion frankly. ‘I don’t think Hanna is too young to understand. And I think she should have an honest answer to a thing that puzzles her.’
He nodded. ‘I wonder she hasn’t asked me. She’s not shy with questions.’
‘Maybe she senses the nature of it.’
‘Can she be so sensitive?’
‘Children are geniuses,’ Fire said firmly.
‘Yes,’ Brigan said. ‘Well. You have my permission. Tell me afterwards how it goes.’
But suddenly Fire wasn’t listening, because she was unsettled, as she had been several times that day, by the sense of a presence that was strange, familiar, and out of place. A person who should not be here. She gripped Small’s mane and shook her head. Small took his nose away from Brigan’s chest and peered back at her.
‘Lady,’ Brigan said. ‘What is it?’
‘It almost seems - no, now it’s gone again. Never mind. It’s nothing.’
Brigan looked at her, puzzled. She smiled, and explained. ‘Sometimes I have to let a perception sit for a while before it makes sense to me.’
‘Ah.’ He considered the span of Small’s long nose. ‘Was it something to do with my mind?’
‘What?’ Fire said. ‘Are you joking?’
‘Should I be?’
‘Do you think I sense anything at all of your mind?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Brigan,’ she said, startled out of her manners. ‘Your consciousness is a wall with no cracks in it. Never once have I had the slightest hint of anything from your mind.’
‘Oh,’ he said eloquently. ‘Hmm.’ He rearranged the straps of leather on his shoulder, looking rather pleased with himself.
‘I’d assumed you were doing it on purpose,’ Fire said.
‘I was. Only it’s hard to know how successful one is at such things.’
‘Your success is complete.’
‘How about now?’
Fire stared. ‘What you mean? Are you asking if I sense your feelings now? Of course I don’t.’
‘And now?’
It came to her like the gentlest wave from the deep ocean of his consciousness. She stood quiet, and absorbed it, and took hold of her own feelings; for the fact of Brigan releasing a feeling to her, the first feeling he’d ever given her, made her inordinately happy. She said, ‘I sense that you’re amused by this conversation.’
‘Interesting,’ he said, smiling. ‘Fascinating. And now that my mind is open, could you take it over?’
‘Never. You’ve let a single feeling out, but that doesn’t mean I could march in and take control.’
‘Try,’ he said; and even though his tone was friendly and his face open, Fire was frightened.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘It’s only as an experiment.’
The word made her breathless with panic. ‘No. I don’t want to. Don’t ask me to.’
And now he was leaning close against the stall door, and speaking low. ‘Lady, forgive me. I’ve distressed you. I won’t ask it again, I promise.’
‘You don’t understand. I would never.’
‘I know. I know you wouldn’t. Please, Lady - I wish it unsaid.’ Fire found that she was gripping Small’s mane harder than she meant to be. She released the poor horse’s hair, and smoothed it, and fought against the tears pushing their way to her surface. She rested her face against Small’s neck and breathed his warm horsey smell.
And now she was laughing, a breathy laugh that sounded like a sob. ‘I’d thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I’d thought I could