Year 2
This time when Amelia answered Zel's knock on her door, her expression turned from hopeful to delighted at the sight of him. She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the house and over to one of the doors off the main room. The last time he had been here it had led to a storeroom but now when she flung the door open he saw that it had been converted into a bedroom. During his first visit he had slept on a pile of blankets on the stone floor of the main room, which had been more comfortable than sleeping on the ground, but only marginally. Those same blankets were now spread over a straw-filled mattress. There was even a jug and wash basin in the corner. He recognized them as ones he'd admired at the house of the local potter when Amelia was introducing him to everybody during his last visit.
"Is this for me?" Zel asked in amazement.
Amelia nodded.
Zelgadis found himself oddly touched by the gesture. It was the closest thing to a home he'd had in his adult life.
"I brought you everything you asked for," he said. He started pulling things out of his pockets and piling them on the table in the main room. "It's a good thing this cloak is enchanted so that things in the pockets are only a tenth their real weight and don't take up any space. Books. Mostly from your bedroom in Seyruun plus a few on herbalism and botany since plants seem to be your latest obsession. Clothes. A lady at the palace insisted I bring them to you." The bundle of cloth was tied up with a ribbon. He suspected it contained underclothes so he'd avoided looking inside. "Seeds. I think I got all the herbs you wanted but I'm sure you'll let me know if I missed any. Letters from an amazing number of people. Don't worry; they know you won't write back. Finally, here is a new purse full of money." It wasn't large but it was full to bursting and extremely heavy for its size, probably because most of the contents were gold. Amelia looked inside and her eyes widened.
"Don't thank me. That's from your father."
Amelia looked at all the things on the table and smiled at Zel as widely as it was possible to smile. Then, finding that insufficient to express her gratitude, she hugged him.
"Oh! Uh, you're welcome?" Zelgadis said, completely flustered.
Amelia's eyes laughed at his discomfiture. She gave him an extra squeeze for good measure and then let him go.
"So, where do you want me to put all these books?"
Amelia looked around thoughtfully and then pointed to the corner of the room with the lowest traffic.
"You can't just leave them in a pile on the floor!"
Amelia spread her hands as if to say, what else can I do?
Zelgadis looked around at her distinct lack of furniture. "If you don't have a bookcase, I guess I'll have to make you one."
Amelia looked surprised and impressed.
"I mean, how hard can it be to nail a few pieces of wood together?"
Amelia suddenly looked a lot less confident in his abilities.
The finished bookcase had a tendency to lean to one side at the slightest push and the corners didn't meet quite right despite all Zel's careful measurements, but wedging it in the corner mostly took care of the leaning and it had enough shelf space for ten times as many books as Zelgadis had brought. When all the books were neatly lined up on the left half of the top shelf, Amelia clasped her hands in delight and Zelgadis gave a satisfied nod.
Then Amelia grabbed Zel's hand and pulled him over to her bedroom. She knelt down beside the mattress and held her hand about two feet above the ground.
Zelgadis made a noise of incomprehension.
Amelia grabbed a piece of slate and some chalk and quickly sketched a picture for him.
"Oh. You want me to make you a bed?" he said, taken aback.
Amelia nodded happily.
"What have I gotten myself into?" he muttered, rubbing the back of his head ruefully.
Zelgadis and Amelia were walking through the forest in companionable silence when Zel heard a loud rustling in bushes ahead. He gestured for Amelia to stay where she was and crept forward to get a better look. It was a bear. He was about to tell Amelia to stay quiet and wait for the bear to pass by but when he looked back to where he'd left her she wasn't there. He looked around. No sign of her.
Before he could start searching for her, a fistful of freeze arrows flew out of the bushes ahead and to the right of him and froze the bear in place. It bellowed in confusion and reared up on its hind legs. More freeze arrows encased it in ice up to the shoulders. Then Amelia stepped out of the bushes and calmly plunged a sword up through its throat into its skull. A very familiar sword. Zelgadis put a hand to his scabbard and found it empty. What the hell did she think she was doing?
Amelia awkwardly yanked his sword free of the bear and blood poured out of its throat, staining the ice covering its chest red.
Zelgadis stalked out of the bushes. "Are you insane? What was that about?" He reclaimed his sword from her unresisting hand and set about cleaning it. "And how did you manage to cast those freeze arrows when you can't talk?"
Amelia demonstrated the answer to the third question by going through a series of gestures that ended with a small ball of fire in the palm of her hand. She used the fire to start slowly melting the ice.
"You've taught yourself to cast spells without words," Zelgadis said in awe. It was something any sufficiently strong mage could do with enough practice but few bothered since it was almost as much work to learn to cast the spell without words as it had been to learn to cast the spell in the first place and didn't add anything to the spell's power or reduce its casting time. Even though the spells Amelia had demonstrated so far were fairly low level, it was still an impressive feat.
When he finished cleaning the bear blood off his sword, he sheathed it and went to go help Amelia. He held up a hand. "Flare..."
Amelia tackled him.
"Why don't you want me to use flare arrows? It would be a lot faster than the spell you're using."
Amelia spread her arms out protectively in front of the dead bear. Then she stroked the fur on its head and looked at him hopefully.
"You killed it in cold blood but now you don't want me to hurt a hair on its poor little head?" Zelgadis said disgustedly.
Amelia looked frustrated but grudgingly nodded as if to say, 'close enough.'
"Fine, we'll do it your way," Zelgadis grumbled.
After they painstakingly freed the bear from the ice, Amelia wanted him to carry it home.
"Do you know how much that thing weighs?" Zelgadis protested.
Amelia shook her head at him in disgust, closed her eyes with a fierce scowl of concentration and silently cast the levitation spell on the bear. She picked up the bear's feet and looked impatiently at Zel.
With a sigh, he cast his own levitation spell on the bear and picked up its front legs. At the strength they'd cast them, the levitation spells weren't enough to make the bear float but they did make it a lot lighter to carry.
A very long slog through the forest later, they got back to the town. Amelia put down her end of the bear and pointed in a different direction when Zel tried to take the path up to her house. He resignedly followed her directions. Soon his nose told him where they were headed: the tanner's shop. Suddenly Amelia's incomprehensible motivations started to make sense.
When they got to the tanner's yard and set down their burden, he asked, "Did you deliberately take me out in the forest because you wanted a bear pelt?"
Amelia smiled in relief that he had finally got it and nodded. She hugged herself.
"Because bear fur is snuggly-warm?" Zelgadis couldn't help smiling at her cute gesture. His irritation at being forced to drag a bear through the woods was rapidly evaporating now that he understood the reason for it.
The tanner came out to greet them. His eyes widened at the sight of the bear. "You killed a bear? I know I said that there's nothing better than a bear pelt to keep you warm in the winter but I didn't think you'd actually go hunt one!"
Amelia grinned proudly.
"And this fur is in perfect condition too," the tanner said, walking around the dead beast. "I'm not even going to ask why its wet."
Amelia indicated by means of drawing lines on the bear with her fingers that she wanted it turned into a rectangular blanket.
"I can do that," the tanner agreed. "And for payment...the fur off the legs, head and any other bits you don't want and a quarter of the meat. After I skin it, I'll take it to the butcher. I expect he'll want half the meat, leaving a quarter for you."
Amelia held out her hand to shake on the deal.
After shaking hands with her, the tanner said, "I'll get the meat to you tomorrow and the pelt before the first snow falls."
Amelia nodded her satisfaction.
The tanner turned to Zelgadis. "You're quite the hunter," he said admiringly.
"Oh no, not me," Zelgadis corrected him quickly. "It was all Amelia. I just helped her carry it back."
The tanner stared at Amelia in awed disbelief.
"What's going on?" Zelgadis asked.
Despite the chimera's unusual appearance, the boy barely gave him a glance before answering excitedly. "An eating contest. The last two contestants are on their tenth plates and still going strong!"
Zelgadis stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of the substantial crowd. What he saw made him groan, "Not this again." A red haired girl and a blond man were scarfing down food with no regard whatsoever for table manners. Empty plates were piled high beside them. With a disapproving sigh and an involuntary smile, Zelgadis settled down on the edge of the nearest fountain to wait for them to finish.
When they finally dropped their forks, Gourry with a reluctant groan and Lina with a triumphant cheer followed by a loud burp, Zelgadis wandered over to greet them.
"Hi!" Gourry waved to him cheerfully.
That got Lina's attention. "Zel!" she exclaimed excitedly. "What are you doing here?"
"The usual. Picking up some supplies before heading into the catacombs left behind by the Kingdom of Letidius."
"Hey, us too!" Lina grinned. "If Amelia was here we'd have the whole gang together again. I wish she was here. Those catacombs are probably haunted so we could use somebody on the team with exorcism spells. Have you run into her lately?"
"Yes, actually," Zelgadis replied. "I visited her just last month."
"Oh yeah, that whole living in the woods like a hermit thing. I forgot about that," Lina remarked.
"Amelia's living in the woods? Since when?" Gourry asked.
"In the hillside above a town, actually," Zelgadis corrected them with no expectation of actually being listened to.
Lina smacked Gourry with a napkin. "Since over a year ago! When she vanished! You remember hearing about that, right? And then it turned out that she'd sworn a vow of silence? I mean, how weird is that?"
"It's hard to picture Amelia being silent all the time. She loved to talk so much," Gourry remarked.
"It takes some getting used to," Zelgadis said.
"Well, they do say a silent wife is the best kind of wife," Gourry observed sagely.
"Do they?" Lina said dangerously. "I've never heard that."
"I don't see why anyone would say that," Zelgadis said. "Amelia still manages to scold me and order me around. The last time I was there she made me spend two straight days helping her make preserves. Speaking of which, these are for you." He handed Lina a jar of pickled beets and Gourry a jar of blackberry jelly.
"Thanks, I'll, uh, open it later," Lina said, looking queasy at the sight of food after her twelve-course meal.
"The time before that, she made me cut down a tree. And then chop it into firewood. The entire tree! And then dig up the stump. And then turn the hole into a new vegetable bed. I have never been more exhausted in my entire life."
"Yeah, Amelia can make a lot of demands on a guy," Gourry said feelingly.
"That sounds rough. If she treats you like that, why to do keep visiting her?" Lina asked.
"I don't really mind," Zelgadis admitted. "That firewood will keep her warm this winter."
"It feels good to be needed, doesn't it?" Gourry said.
"Yeah," Zel agreed softly.
"So what do the people in the town say about you visiting her?" Lina asked nosily. "I know what the people in my hometown would say about a young man who shows up to do a girl's chores for her."
"Honestly, I think they're just glad that I'm there to do them so they don't have to help her out of charity like they did the first winter she was there."
"C'mon, they gossip about you, don't they? Admit it!"
Zelgadis grimaced. "This is a town so quiet that they're still talking about somebody's goat eating his neighbour's fruit trees two years later. What do you think?"
"So between your freaky looks and Amelia's freaky vow of silence and the fact that you stay alone with her in her house for days at a time, chop her firewood and help her with chores...they pretty much never stop talking about you?"
Zelgadis hung his head. "Pretty much. Plus she can cast recovery spells (without a spoken invocation no less) and she once single-handedly killed a bear."
"Did Amelia also make that very stylish scarf you're wearing?" Lina snickered.
Zelgadis fingered the scarf in question self-consciously. "She did, as a matter of fact."
"Amelia knits?" Gourry asked.
"Not very well," Lina pointed out. The scarf was full of runs of too-tight or too-loose stitches and even some outright holes and the width wobbled between a hands-width thick and nearly twice that.
"She got bored last winter so she got someone to teach her."
"I'd have to be pretty bored to take up knitting!" Lina laughed.
"You know how energetic Amelia is. Now picture her alone in a house with nothing to do. No travelling. No royal duties. Frozen garden. No books. She couldn't even talk to anyone."
Lina winced. "Okay, that's pretty bored."
"If Lina was ever trapped with nothing to do like that, I think she'd blow up the whole world!" Gourry said in awestruck horror.
"Amelia can get pretty scary too. It once rained for three days straight while I was there. She cleaned the house from top to bottom, reorganized the storeroom twice and made several dozen cookies, two pies and three of the best suppers I have ever had in my life."
"Amelia can cook?" Gourry asked.
"She can now," Zelgadis confirmed.
"Maybe we'll have to visit her," Lina said hungrily.
"Good luck finding the place."
"It can't be that hard. You found it."
"Only because I took a wrong turn and got completely lost. Besides, even if by some amazing coincidence you stumble across the village, like I did, you won't find Amelia. After I found her, she asked the people there not to tell any more strangers about her."
"Amelia told them that? I thought she didn't talk."
"Fine. I told them, but I was just translating her request."
"You should have pretended not to understand her."
"That occurred to me later. But I think my ability to understand her is the main reason why she lets me keep visiting."
"Plus, all the chores can't hurt either," Gourry suggested.
"There's that," Zelgadis agreed.
"So, how often do you visit her?" Lina asked.
"Every couple of months unless I'm too far away to get back that quickly. I usually end up staying about a week since Amelia keeps finding things for me to do."
"That's a lot of time to take away from searching for your cure!" Lina said, surprised.
"It's not like the searching ever leads to finding anything useful," Zelgadis said bitterly. Then, less bitterly. "And I like it there. It's peaceful."
"That sounds nice," Gourry said politely.
Lina shrugged. "It doesn't sound appealing at all to me (other than the good food), but to each his own. Now, about these catacombs..."
"...and then of course Gourry, being Gourry, walked straight into a pit trap. Fortunately, Lina managed to catch his hair before he fell so he didn't hit the spikes at the bottom and we were able to pull him back up, but you should have heard him screaming!"
Amelia laughed silently.
The two of them were sitting in front of a blazing fire eating jam cookies and hot cider while the winter wind howled outside the shutters. Amelia had her bear skin wrapped around her shoulders.
When they finished their snack and Zelgadis finished his story, Amelia brushed the crumbs off her fingers and retrieved her knitting from her bedroom. She was working on a blanket. For a time there was no sound other than the wind, the fire and her needles softly clicking together. Amelia apparently decided this was too quiet because she put down her knitting, fetched a book from the bookcase and handed it to Zelgadis.
"The Tale of the Red Knight?" He shrugged in resignation. "Lighting." A small ball of light appeared by his shoulder. He opened the book. "Listen well to the tale of the Red Knight, strong champion of Letidius, unparalleled in courage..."
Amelia smiled happily as she resumed her knitting.