Chapter 10: The Freezing Ray

Conti recited another spell, and the tangled vines swiftly vanished. The freed hares, having survived a fright, hurriedly darted back into the depths of their burrows to hide. Joann tied up the three plump rabbits one by one and stuffed them into the game pouch of her backpack. Glancing at the sky, she said to Conti, “It’s nearly noon. There’s a small cabin ahead in the woods. Let’s rest there.”

“Great! Maybe we’ll find more game on the way,” Conti replied cheerfully.

As luck would have it, her words came true. As they neared the forest cabin, Jamie suddenly stopped, sniffing intently at the base of a tall, straight birch tree. Joann immediately sensed something in the tree. She shielded her eyes with one hand and, using the sunlight filtering through the treetops, soon spotted a pheasant perched among the branches. Its plumage was a mix of brown and white, and its long tail feathers shimmered with splendid colors, hanging down from the branch and swaying in the breeze—truly a captivating sight.

“Wow, so beautiful!” Conti exclaimed, eyes lighting up as she, too, spotted the pheasant in the tree.

Joann put a finger to her lips, signaling for silence so as not to startle the bird. Though these wild fowl appeared plump, they yielded less than two pounds of meat; in fact, the value of their striking tail feathers far surpassed that of their flesh.

Jamie crept stealthily toward the birch, then suddenly leapt at the branch where the pheasant stood. Unfortunately, the pheasant was warier than Jamie had anticipated; it beat its wings and took off just before Jamie could reach it.

Jamie’s leap missed, snapping the branch and landing him with a thud in the snow. He let out a low, frustrated growl.

The pheasant circled the treetops several times, and, convinced that neither the hound nor the boy and girl behind it posed any real threat, it folded its wings and settled back onto a branch twenty feet above the ground, casting a sidelong, disdainful glance at Jamie, who was prowling angrily below.

Conti giggled, whether at Jamie’s wasted effort or the pheasant’s arrogance, it was hard to say.

Joann walked over and patted Jamie’s back to calm him, then looked up at the proud, spirited pheasant perched above. Narrowing her eyes, she silently judged the distance, then raised her right hand. Her cloak slid down her wrist, revealing a slender, pale finger that pointed at the pheasant from afar. Her lips parted, releasing a string of low, rhythmic words in the language of the elves.

“Ringa!”

At last, Joann finished the spell with a Quenya rune symbolizing “cold.” Her right index finger glimmered with a frosty light, and a slender, icy blue ray shot from her fingertip, slicing through the air and striking the pheasant perched high above with pinpoint accuracy.

The cantrip “Ray of Frost” wasn’t particularly lethal, but it was more than enough for a pheasant. With a long, startled cry, the bird toppled from the branch and hit the snow hard. Chilled to the bone by the cold magic that had seeped inside it, it trembled and tried feebly to beat its wings and escape.

Before Joann could give an order, Jamie raced over and clamped his jaws around the pheasant’s neck, finally venting his frustration.

“Joann! Joann! What spell did you just use?” Conti ran over, brimming with excitement.

“Just a simple cantrip, nothing worth mentioning,” Joann replied, a little embarrassed. She knew her spellcasting skills were far inferior to Conti’s and hardly worth her amazement. She guessed that, as a divine spellcaster, Conti might not be familiar with arcane magic and was probably overestimating what she’d just seen.

“It may be a cantrip, but it looked so cool! And it’s practical too—the way you just went ‘whoosh’ and knocked the pheasant down!” Conti mimicked Joann’s spellcasting gesture, pointing her finger skyward and laughing gleefully.

Joann shook her head, unable to fathom what made this girl so cheerful—she never seemed to stop smiling. Despite his own temperament being the complete opposite, Joann had to admit that this lively, optimistic Asar girl radiated an infectious energy, like the brilliant sunlight of morning. It inexplicably lifted his spirits and made him forget his troubles.

Jamie brought back the pheasant, wagging his tail proudly for his master’s approval. Joann patted the hound’s head, knelt, and plucked out the most beautiful tail feathers from the pheasant. The remaining meat was left to Jamie for lunch—a reward for his excellent work on this hunt.

As Joann carefully wiped the blood from the pheasant’s feathers and was about to stow them in his backpack, he noticed Conti staring intently at the feathers in his hand, her gaze burning with longing.

“What lovely feathers!” Conti murmured in admiration.

Joann, though he had little experience dealing with women, was not a fool. Hearing Conti’s words, he immediately realized how much she liked the feathers and handed them all to her.

“All for me? Really?” Conti’s eyes widened in delight, her smile even brighter. “Thank you! Even one would have been enough.”

She chose the most colorful feather and exclaimed, “It would look gorgeous on a hat, don’t you think?”

“It’s nice enough,” Joann replied.

He bundled the remaining feathers carefully in a cloth and put them in his backpack. He had no desire for a hat adorned with pheasant feathers, but he knew such fashions were popular in Layton these days. The wealthy sons and daughters of the city all wore felt hats decorated with beautiful feathers, making it seem as if they had a pheasant perched on their heads. He didn’t find it attractive—in fact, he thought it quite ridiculous—but his personal taste didn’t matter. What mattered was that these lovely feathers were valuable: they could fetch at least five gold coins, enough to pay back Aunt Barbara and keep him from worrying about household expenses for a while.

With the burden of debt lifted from his shoulders, and the company of a cheerful, optimistic companion, the rough mountain path ahead seemed far less daunting. As noon approached, Joann led Conti through the woods until a small cabin appeared in a clearing ahead.

The cabin had been built by laborers hired by Joann’s grandfather. Every autumn, when the apples ripened in the woods, Joann often spent the night here, patrolling the orchard with Jamie to keep wild boars or marauding monkeys from causing havoc. Sometimes the local children would come to steal fruit; unless they were deliberately wasting it, Joann never stopped them.

Since the onset of winter, Joann had been busy traveling to Layton Port for his entrance exams and hadn’t been to the woods in over a month. Now, the cabin’s roof was heaped with thick snow, its doors and windows blocked by drifts, making it look from a distance like a pristine white burial mound.

Joann cleared the snow from the door and opened it. As he crossed the threshold, he suddenly halted.

In the sunlight streaming through the doorway, he noticed a large heap of fresh earth in the center of the cabin floor, exuding a damp, unsettling odor in the dim room.

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