Merel followed Mebd through the grounds of the Academy. It bustled with life, stirring in the crisp late autumn breezes. The fine powder of snow only served to enliven the girls around the school. Most students at Lodgrey were in their mid to late teens, tittering about like dunnocks with grey uniform capes instead of wings. One or two girls were running through the courtyard playing some game as they teased with a journal, and for a moment, Merel felt like a child again, only to be brought back to reality as a blond headed girl she’d had in the last term froze and sheepishly held the journal behind her back when Merel met her gaze. “Ma’am,” said the girl as Merel followed Mebd through the courtyards to the libraries and the professor’s studies.
Merel nodded and slightly smiled, a drawn thing which was a formality of kindness. As soon as her back was to the girls, she could hear them teasing one another again. About some crush– and Merel found herself a bit entertained at the idea. Most of them had boys to write letters to, or girls who they saved all their adoration for as their darling. Merel had never been one of those happy girls, but it made her smile nonetheless. The cold stung her face, and she wished she had remembered a scarf. Her hand clenched around the grip of her cane a bit tighter, and Mebd stopped a few feet in front of her to wait for her to catch up.
“I ought to consider a more practical way to get you into the upper hall of the library. I feel pained every time you must walk up the stairs, dear,” said Mebd.
“If I need something I usually just send one of the librarians to get it,” said Merel dismissively. “At least I have the kindness of a ground-level study. Besides, the catalogue cards are magicked, I can look at the titles on each shelf of the full library with them. I care not for going to the upper hall unless I must.”
“I saw the most interesting thing when I was in Bluestone last.” Mebd held open the door to the library. “One of the merchants who I visited, had a wife who had lost the use of her legs after their child was born. An injury to the spine, he said the doctors explained, in childbirth. She had a chair which walked as legs, not new, at all– but one of the wizards they had hired had constructed for them a platform for her walking chair which rose and fell on command, between the levels of their home. I tried it myself, it was quite enjoyable– but I think for you, it might be of use?”
“I am very practiced with taking stairs, Headmistress Colum,” said Merel. “Have you forgotten that my dormitories are on the second floor of the halls?”
“I have never heard you complain about it.”
“Clearly you do not listen. I think I complain like I breathe air.”
Mebd laughed, and Merel only grimaced as they walked through the library towards Mebd’s office. If she was not so accustomed to this, she would’ve been annoyed; deep down Merel also knew that Lodgrey was one of the few places she could even expect this mercy.
The library was the very heart of the campus; of the handful of buildings littered across the mountaintop it was the oldest, and it showed. The stone steps and rugged rock had been worn smooth by centuries of use, and in nearly every spare space had a shelf been packed. When Merel had first come to Lodgrey, she had thought this was nearly all of the books in all of the world. With age, she had come to learn that this was not so, but it still took her breath away nearly every time. She ran her fingers across one of the inscribed magics upon a shelf; each shelf was linked to catalogue cards, documenting exactly which books and papers were where, which was a great help to the many librarians and scribes. But the library was not just the library, she thought, starting carefully on the central flight of stairs behind Mebd. Most instructors’ studies were connected to the library, though these had not always been studies; most were former domiciles and dormitories. When enrollment of young women to the academy had begun to overpopulate the original structure, the other buildings had slowly sprouted around it, and it was designated as a library. They said that Lodgrey originally had been built in a time before the Kingdom of Moras even existed, and before there were such things as Wizards, when magic was something free and frightening. Merel struggled to believe this; old magic was in its own ways still around, but she could not imagine this building predating the entire kingdom. She pondered this for a moment, stopped for a moment on the last few steps, some of the stained glass along the outermost wall catching her gaze.
    “Merel,” called Mebd from the top of the landing. “Do you need a hand?”
    “I’m fine,” replied Merel quickly, turning and continuing her ascent at a slow but steading step-cane-prosthetic step up. Her hand clenched around the handle of her cane; she could feel the gnawing, dull bruising ache in her residual limb at her right knee.
    “If you say so, dear,” said the headmistress as Merel reached the top of the stairs. “I do want to speak with you about—“
    “I know,” said Merel calmly. “I understand usually, Headmistress, when you ask me to speak with you in privacy, what you mean is to speak to me about things which are personal, not professional.”
    “Then you know what we will speak of?” said Mebd.
    “I have some notion,” said Merel, as the headmistress opened the door to her study. “I know you believe that I am not prepared for— for the world outside of the Academy. I know there are things within your confidence that have made you— fear for my well being.” Merel cleared the papers and heaps of books from one of the chairs. Mebd was a particular kind of wizard that Merel was not, and that was a hoarder; her treasure trove concealed somewhere deep inside, her heart. Merel personally had no use of this, herself. Her heart was something she kept close and hidden at nearly all times. Mebd had likely put it inside of a book, she thought— and the countless papers were not just things of her work, but camouflage and protection.
    “Well, yes.” Mebd began clearing her desk, and searching for something in particular, though her gaze lingered for a moment on a few evaluations before she sorted them into a box. “Yes, I do think that. But I think it is because you have been sheltered. And I have done the sheltering. In many ways, I have found as headmistress, that this is why Lodgrey exists.”
    “To…”
    “To shelter. To protect young women from the reality of our world, to give them the capacity to dream before it is…” She trailed off, looking over the paper in her hand over her spectacles. “Before their spirits are crushed by women’s lives. To allow them to become something greater than mothers, wives, and widows. You know what I mean when I say this. Becoming a wizard is the only way many women can be free to gain power of their own here. In most of the world we know, honestly.” Mebd sat down in her chair, a loaf, and glanced at Merel. “You were always meant for more than that, Merel. Most women are, but you especially, I could not bear to see in such a way. I have sheltered you, and I thought it was a kindness then, but now that I am to set you loose, I fear I have done you a great disservice. But I know of how— how the world has wronged you in other ways. I cannot protect you forever, and I cannot turn you out to the cruel masses. That’s the conflict I face now.”
    “I wouldn’t say you have done me a disservice,” said Merel, watching the headmistress with a studied placidity. “I would say, though, that I do believe that the Academy has protected me. I would not complain, though.” Merel thought for a moment about what Mebd was implying; she was not quite so sheltered as she looked. Her life before this had been strained. It hung in the air between Mebd and Merel, yet neither would fully acknowledge it with words. “If you sheltered me it was because you knew that in this world, girls like I was needed sheltering.”
    “I know,” said Mebd softly. “And that is my fault. In spite of it all, I shall have to watch my greatest student set sail and leave our safe harbor here. I always knew I would. But Merel, when I took your heart out of you, and placed it in that pendant, I did not do it because I thought you would be a good instructor for impudent, distracted teenaged girls.”
    Merel smiled, the corners of her mouth twisting into a little half-grin as tears began to wet her eyes. She knew what was next to come. “It was because a wizard is meant to be part of the world, rather than within our own ambitions and self, to be free. That this is our way of becoming, of serving.” Her voice was a soft whisper. “I vowed that to you the very day which we set my own apart.”
    “And I know you would not let me down by losing sight of this. Shall I have a carriage hired for you? Am I to watch the rise of the greatest alchemist of our age? Or shall I let you content yourself with all this dust up here?”
    Merel thought for a moment. She glanced down at her cane at her side, and raised her hand to the pendant at her throat. How long would it take her to say her goodbyes and write for her address change? And, perhaps most importantly, would the laundry service have her chemises back in time— that was a pressing concern indeed, not to mention that she’d have to pack up her laboratory implements and books and notes, and buy up enough stock in her medicine to last her a week or two’s journey. It was all a great hassle, and this was not to mention that she had no way of knowing if the court mage would even have any way to accommodate her.
    Then, she remembered how very much she’d longed for the sea her first year at Lodgrey. Her home was on the ocean; it was a distant memory here in the mountains. Yet Bluestone was on the sea, too. The thought of hearing waves again lashed at her, the thought of salt air in her lungs and fresh wind in her hair.
    “If you wouldn’t mind writing to Mage Ullic, I could be ready by the end of the week.”