Calista began preparing to leave for the castle. She gathered up all of the books and journals her mother and grandmother had left for her, documenting medicinal herb identification and cultivation, medicine recipes, meal recipes that helped with certain ailments, and all manner of illnesses and injuries that lycans could receive. She added her own books and journals on top of the stacks. There were so many books between the three generations of women, that she had to divide them up into four different bags so no single bag would be unduly heavy. She filled the excess space in those bags with a few practical outfits for gardening and clinical work. She also added a couple casual outfits and some sleepwear.
Then, Calista packed the most important bag of all: her medkit. It was a large shoulder bag with a long strap. It hung between waist and hip level, and was made of sturdy buckskin leather. The interior was coated in wax and divided into a multitude of compartments. Into this bag she packed bandages, sutures, diagnostic tools, surgical tools, and a variety of medicinal powders, ointments, poultices, tinctures, syrups and gels. Then finally, she also packed an assortment of preserved herbs, and small packets of seeds from each plant in her garden. She didn’t know what her new employer would be growing, but if the silverleaf was an example of what his garden contained, she needed to make sure she was well prepared to grow everything she could possibly need.
Fridolf was planning to leave on the last day of the monster mage’s stated deadline. The day before he was set to leave, Calista loaded her bags on the chestnut bay mare and headed for the castle herself.
She had plenty of reasons to disobey her father’s command and accept the duke’s deal.
Aside from wanting to save her father’s life and business, she also felt the situation presented a good excuse to get out of her obligations as herbalist and healer without inciting retribution from the pack. She left a note on her workroom desk telling the family where she’d gone and not to worry, and also told them to tell the other lycans the mage had taken her, so the family wouldn’t be held accountable for her absence.
There was also one other reason she wanted to accept the job. She was curious! She wanted to know what was wrong with him that he believed he was cursed. It couldn’t really be a curse, because then the clerics would’ve been able to help him, right? It’s not as if he couldn’t afford the cost of their best treatments. She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been able to hire a human physician to help him, though. Calista supposed perhaps the affliction was contagious and the humans didn’t want to risk it. Or perhaps when he’d sent for them, what he described was something they’d never heard of or seen before, and didn’t know how to treat it.
Was it possible he could’ve contracted something that she would know how to treat? Could a human contract a lycan illness? Calista didn’t know of any that could host-jump, but she had also never had any dealings with a mage. Perhaps if he was able to use his magic to change his shape, he could contract an illness that affected shapeshifters. There were a few diseases that lycans could share with arcoudans and gatans. She wasn’t sure about smaller types of shifters. Her grandmother and mother had on rare occasions treated other shifters, as lone arcoudans and gatans sometimes passed through the area, so they had a few notes in their books and journals about them.
It was new territory for the young lycan, and that excited her. She had yet to treat any previously unknown illnesses so far, so she had nothing new to contribute to the works of her foremothers. Even though she wasn’t thinking about taking a mate at this point in her life, she did hope to find love someday, and have daughters of her own to pass on her knowledge to. She wanted to have a new and unique research contribution of her own to pass on with her mother and grandmother’s research.
Perhaps that was selfish of her. Wishing an unknown disease on someone just so she could research it? That would be genuinely awful. Calista didn’t really wish for that. Lycan diseases were invariably serious. They had to be, to overcome a lycan’s powerful immune system and regenerative abilities. A new disease carried a very real possibility of losing a patient. Calista would never want that to happen.
But clearly, this mage duke was alive and functional. He was not bedridden, and seemed to have been dealing with his mysterious affliction for quite some time. Whatever ailed him was not a pressing or life-threatening concern. So Calista didn’t feel guilty for being a little bit excited for the chance to research the problem.
Calista was jolted out of her thoughts when the horse unexpectedly stopped and snorted. The silver-haired healer looked around, and saw the overgrown path that her father and sisters had described.
“Ah… you’ve been here so often in the past week, you just expect it now, huh?” she asked the horse, patting the animal’s neck comfortingly. She guided the horse down the path. Before long, they reached the gate. Just as with her sisters earlier in the week, the gate swung open on its own. Calista was less impressed than her sisters, but only because she expected it to happen. Her sisters had told her about it, after all.
She rode the horse across the outer bailey, and saw a black-cloaked figure appear. His body language seemed almost hostile, and Calista sighed internally. She could hardly blame him. Paying him no mind, she rode the horse into the stable. The mage followed.
Calista led the horse into a stall and efficiently unloaded and untacked the animal.
“Do you have a hoof pick?” she asked, looking over at the mage who stood beyond the stall, watching her. “And a currycomb?”
The mage stood unmoving for a moment, and Calista imagined if she could see him, he’d be blinking at her. Was it so confusing that she would want to take care of the horse first?
“I… yes. I do. Are you Calista?” He regarded her suspiciously.
“Oh, yes, sorry! Calista Hemming!” she introduced herself, holding out her hand towards him. “And you are?”
The mage stood frozen for so long, Calista started to think he was going to leave her hanging. She slowly began to withdraw her hand, feeling awkward, when he reached out and took her hand.
“I am Lord Gavin Lowell,” he replied, and pulled her hand into the darkness of his hood. She felt lips press against her fingers, and felt her cheeks warm. That wasn’t what she’d expected. She had always seen her father and brother shake hands with their employees and business associates, so she assumed that was how an employer and employee greeted each other among the humans.
“It’s… nice to meet you,” she said hesitantly, shyly.
“You… are the first to ask my name,” he said softly.
Calista looked at him with mild horror. Neither of her sisters had mentioned his name to her, but she didn’t realize it was because they didn’t know.
“I am so sorry my sisters were so rude and duplicitous,” she sighed.
“Do you have more? Sisters, I mean,” he asked, suspicion filling his tone again.
“Oh, no, no. No. Two older sisters and two older brothers,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face.
“I see. Good. I hope you are not also lying,” he said, finally moving to collect the hoof pick and brush from a nearby bin. He handed them to Calista. She set about grooming the horse and making sure the stall had adequate water and hay in the troughs.
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