Wonders of the Invisible World Read Online Free Page B

he already knew.
    “Dylan sent me,” she said, then gazed with astonishment at the pillars and piles of books, scrolls, papers everywhere, even in the rafters. The cauldron hanging over the cold grate was filthy. She could see a half-eaten loaf on a shelf in the open cupboard; a mouse was busily dealing with the other half. There were cobwebs everywhere, and unwashed cups, odd implements she could not name tossed on the colorful, wrinkled puddles of clothes on the floor. As she stood gaping, an old, wizened sausage tumbled out of the rafters, fell at her feet.
    She jumped. The scholar picked up the sausage. “I was wondering what to have for breakfast.” He put it into his pocket. “You’d be Leta, then?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You can call me Ansley. My great-grandmother left me this cottage when she died. Did you know her?”
    “Oh, yes. Everyone did.”
    “I’ve been away in the city, studying. I decided to bring my studies here, where I can think without distractions. I want to be a great mage.”
    “Oh?”
    “It is an arduous endeavor, which is why I’ll have no time for—” He gestured.
    She nodded. “I suppose when you’ve become a mage, all you’ll have to do is snap your fingers or something.”
    His brows rose; clearly, he had never considered the use of magic for housework. “Or something,” he agreed doubtfully. “You can see for yourself what I need you for.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    He indicated the vast, beautifully carved table in a corner under a circular window from which the sunny river could be seen. Or could have been seen, but for the teetering pile of books blocking the view. Ansley must have brought the table with him. She wondered how he had gotten the massive thing through the door. Magic, maybe; it must be good for something.
    “You can clear up any clutter in the place but that,” he told her. “That must never be disturbed.”
    “What about the moldy rind of cheese on top of the books?”
    He drew breath, held it. “No,” he said finally, decisively. “Nothing on the table must be touched. I expect to be there most of the time anyway, learning spells and translating the ancient secrets in manuscripts. When,” he asked a trifle anxiously, “can you start?”
    She considered the various needs of her own husband and house, then yielded to his pleading eyes. “Now,” she said. “I suppose you want some food in the place.”
    He nodded eagerly, reaching for his purse. “All I ask,” he told her, shaking coins into her hand, “is not to be bothered. I’ll pay whatever you ask for that. My father did well with the tavern he owned; I did even better when I sold it after he died. Just come and go and do whatever needs to be done. Can you manage that?”
    “Of course,” she said stolidly, pocketing the coins for a trip to the market in the village at the edge of the woods. “I do it all the time.”
    She spent long days at the cottage, for the scholar paid scant attention to time and often kept his nose in his books past sunset despite the wonderful smells coming out of his pots. Dylan grumbled, but the scholar paid very well, and didn’t mind Leta taking leave in the late afternoons to fix Dylan’s supper and tend for an hour to her own house before she went back to work. She cooked, scrubbed, weeded and washed, got a cat for the mice and fed it too, swept and mended, and even wiped the grime off the windows, though the scholar never bothered looking out. Dylan worked hard, as well, building cupboards and bedsteads for the villagers, chopping trees into cartloads of wood to sell in the market for winter. Some days, she heard his ax from dawn to dusk. On market days, when he lingered in the village tavern, she rarely saw his face until one or the other of them crawled wearily into bed late at night.
    “We never talk anymore,” she murmured once, surprisedly, to the dark when the warm, sweaty, grunting shape that was Dylan pushed under the bedclothes beside her. “We just