They could have done without the fabric, Giselle supposed. Mother was very patient, but she said herself that she was not patient enough to spin her own thread and weave her own cloth. She had taught Giselle how to do both, but . . . Giselle was not very patient at all. To be honest, it was very hard for her to just sit and do handwork; she found it terribly tedious.
But—books! She hoped there would be a new Karl May book! The ones set in the Orient were very, very good, but the ones set in America, in the Wild West, were superb! Old Surehand, Old Firehand, and especially Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. She could not get enough of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. Especially Winnetou and the other Indians. She wondered what it would be like, to be an Elemental Master on the plains. What the Elementals would look like. They were different in other places, she knew from her studies. And what would it be like to stand in a place where the horizon was flat, where the land was flat for as far as you could see, and not hemmed in by mountains?
Luna brightened. “Will there be new ribbons?” she asked. Giselle smiled. The sylphs loved to play with ribbons, and would wear them to shredded tatters, twirling them about and using them in games of tag. Mother always made a point of bringing bolts of ribbon back from her trips to the city.
“Of course there will be new ribbons,” Giselle promised. “Mother would never forget you.” Luna clapped her hands in glee.
Giselle finished her meal and went back upstairs. She didn’t much care for the kitchen either, it was so dark, and so close. But she had to cook her food somewhere, and when Mother was gone, she was locked into the tower.
She took the stone stairs that spiraled up the tower wall two at a time; there was nothing like a handrail, but she had been scampering up and down these stairs since she was old enough to toddle, and it never occurred to her to feel fear.
This tower had four levels. The bottom was the kitchen, and had been her bedroom as well until she was old enough to safely navigate the stairs. The next level was the library and workroom, where she took her lessons and learned her magic. The third level was the storeroom, where everything was kept that wasn’t a book, and the final, top story was her bedroom. Besides her bedroom, none of the rooms had anything but slits for windows.
She breathed a sigh as she got to her own room and the wide-open windows again. So did Luna. The sun was just setting, and the view from the tower was particularly glorious tonight. The very air seemed full of golden light, and the long shadows cast by the trees across the meadow were a deep, deep amber.
Damozel woke up, stretched and yawned. Linnet flitted down from the lantern and landed beside the west window. Her fellow sylphs joined her.
“We will see you at dawn, magician,” Luna said, as the other two took turns balancing on the windowsill before launching themselves out onto the evening breeze. She did not wait for an answer; sylphs lived very much in the moment, and seldom waited on human politeness.
Sylphs could flit about at night, of course, but the ones that did tended to be shy and secretive and seldom visited Giselle. Giselle leaned out of the window to watch her friends soar up into the clouds. She often wondered if they slept up there, and if the clouds were as comfortable as they looked.
She remained leaning out of the window, dreamily watching the sunset and twilight stealing over the forest. From here, it looked so peaceful, and near the abbey, it actually was, but all sorts of things could be lurking deeper into the trees—
“Hello up there!”
A deep voice called from just beneath her, startling her and making her jump, yelp and nearly hit her head on the top of the window frame. Her heart beating wildly, she looked down to see that there was a man standing just beneath the window. A man . . .
She knew what a man was, she’d met at least three when members of the Bruderschaft came to consult with Mother. But none of them had been nearly this handsome. Or young.
Because he certainly was younger than any man she had seen before. She wasn’t very good