Free Uprooted by Naomi Novik

it took nearly all the caution left in me not to throw something down at his head, and I don’t mean a token of my regard.
    But the Dragon hadn’t been wrong to be wary: even with such a comfortable memory written into his head, the prince hesitated on the carriage steps and looked back up at me with a slight frown, as though something troubled him, before at last he ducked inside and allowed himself to be bundled off. I stood at the window watching the dust of his carriage recede along the road until it really and truly vanished behind the hills, and only then did I step away, and feellike I was safe again—an absurd feeling to have, in an enchanted tower with the dark wizard and magic lurking under my own skin.
    I pulled on the gown of russet and green, and went slowly down the stairs to the library. The Dragon was back at his chair, the book open on his lap, and he turned to look at me. “Very well,” he said, sour as always. “Today we’ll try—”
    “Wait,” I interrupted him, and he paused. “Can you tell me how to make this something I can wear?”
    “If you haven’t grasped
vanastalem
by now, there is nothing I can possibly do to help you,” he snapped. “In fact, I’m inclined to believe you mentally defective.”
    “No! I don’t want—that spell,” I said, hastily avoiding even saying the word. “I can’t even move in one of these dresses, or lace it for myself, or clean anything—”
    “Why wouldn’t you just use the cleaning cantrips?” he demanded. “I’ve taught you at least five.”
    I’d done my best to forget them all. “It tires me less to scrub!” I said.
    “Yes, I can see you’ll be making a mark on the firmament,” he said, irritably; but that hadn’t any power to wound me: any magic was bad enough, I didn’t feel the least desire to be a great and powerful witch. “What a strange creature you are: don’t all peasant girls dream of princes and ballgowns? Try to degrade it, then.”
    “What?” I said.
    “Drop part of the word,” he said. “Slur it, mumble it, something of the sort—”
    “Just—any part?” I said doubtfully, but tried it:
“Vanalem?”
    The shorter word felt better in my mouth: smaller and more friendly somehow, although perhaps that was just my imagination. The gown shuddered and the skirts deflated all around me into a fine letnik of undyed linen stopping at the shin, and over it a simple brown dress with a green sash to draw it snug. I pulled in a glad deep breath: no dragging weight pulling me down from shoulders to ankles, no strangling corsets, no endless train: plain andcomfortable and easy. Even the magic hadn’t dragged out of me so horribly. I didn’t feel tired at all.
    “If you’ve arranged yourself to your satisfaction,” the Dragon said, his voice dripping sarcasm. He held out his hand, and summoned a book flying over from the shelf. “We’ll begin with syllabic composition.”

Chapter 4
    A s little as I liked having magic, I was glad not to be so afraid all the time. But I was no prize pupil: when I didn’t just forget the spell-words he taught me, they went wrong in my mouth. I slurred and mumbled and muddled them together, so a spell that ought to have set a dozen ingredients neatly out for a pie—“I am certainly not trying to train you on potions,” he had said, caustically—instead mixed them into a solid mess that couldn’t even be saved for my supper. Another that should have neatly banked the fire in the library, where we were working, instead seemed to do nothing at all—until we heard a distant and ominous crackling, and we ran upstairs to find green-tinged flames leaping out of the fireplace in the guest chamber directly above, and the embroidered bedcurtains going up.
    He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers—“My father’s a woodcutter,” I said—“Of axe-swinging