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As her heavy office door groaned open with the approach of her tardy pupil, Tissaia de Vries did not look up from the arcane tome propped upright in a set of ornate book claws atop her impeccably organized desk.
“You are late.” She slid a bare but finely manicured nail beneath the stiff page depicting the charm sign she’d pondered for today’s lesson and flipped to the next section on its defensive uses. It was a bit advanced for a first year, perhaps, but Yennefer was devouring her lessons with a hunger of the starved; that dreadful excuse for a “home” in Vengerberg had left her so very malnourished in body and mind alike. Considering how much remedial academic work she’d needed upon her arrival—penmanship, reading, and yes, even a bit of training to fix that dreadful Aedirnian farmhand drawl and work around her speech impediment for spellcrafting—it made little sense that she was still months ahead of her cohort.
A prodigy protégé indeed.
Her sudden propensity for tardiness, then, was a frustrating development. “This is the third time this fortnight. Need I remind you that punctuality—”
“No,” Yennefer said forcefully, silencing Tissaia’s preamble. “I know.” Her impudence was expected; the curtness of her interruption was not. The rectoress at last looked up and took in the girl before her: the novice frock, disheveled as always, her black hair, equally so, but instead of that eager, wide-eyed gaze ready to drink in more and more training, Yennefer’s face was tight in a grimace. She kept her chin tucked to her chest, perhaps to hide it, but to Tissaia it was plain.
“You’re in pain,” Tissaia said simply.
“I’m fine,” Yennefer muttered.
“Hm.” She’d worked with girls of varying deformations through her many moons as grandmistress of Aretuza and conduit moments regularly happened just as these girls entered young adulthood. As their growing years concluded, the pliable bones of childhood hardened and unfortunately for those with skeletal anomalies as severe as Yennefer's…
“Your spine is getting worse,” Tissaia said. “It will continue to.”
“I’m fine,” the girl repeated dully, the words garbled in her cheek. “I won’t be late again.”
“When you undergo your transformation,” Tissaia continued as if Yennefer hadn’t spoken, “you may choose to have it corrected. Until then it will progress.”
“I know,” Yennefer said, an angry violet flash as she blinked up at Tissaia.
“As I’ve said, there are potions you may take—”
"And as I’ve said, I don’t need them,” Yennefer just about growled. “Can we begin?”
Hawklike, Tissaia watched the girl and removed the tome before her from its cradle, closing it heavily. Yennefer’s brows screwed together in confusion and she gestured to the disregarded book. “I was to learn a new sign today,” she challenged as Tissaia stood and rounded the desk.
“Come here,” Tissaia said, moving toward the upholstered settee to the right of her desk. “Sit.”
Yennefer looked at her cagedly. She sensed the girl’s galloping heartbeat, saw the anxious flexing of her malformed jaw, and surmised she anticipated discipline—and heavy-handed discipline at that. And yet, even as Tissaia could easily read the girl’s foremost thoughts—please don’t, please don’t—Yennefer did not turn away. Gods, if this is how she had squared off against her father she would only have invited more pain and it made something ache in Tissaia’s chest to imagine it. She toyed with her medallion to mask it.
When Yennefer did at last approach, she perched on the farthest possible edge of the settee and watched the rectoress with hard eyes.
“You aren’t in trouble, piglet.”
Her eyes relaxed at once, then darted away in shame.
Tissaia sighed, folding her hands on her lap. “You’ve made substantial progress lately. An informal review of your repertoire is not an unreasonable accommodation for today.”
“I don’t want to be accommodated, I want to learn the next sign,” Yennefer said, jutting her chin at the forgotten tome. “I don’t need your pity.”
“It is not pity,” Tissaia countered. “I do not pity you.” But she found herself glancing at Yennefer’s wrists and the puckered pink scars there, and Yennefer caught her.
“Bullshit,” she said and, with effort, stood up and limped over to the desk. “Then treat me like you would any other day and do your fucking job.” She opened the book of signs, flipping quickly to the page bookmarked with a leather tassel.
“Yennefer,” Tissaia said warningly, watching the girl’s eyes rapidly scan the page and then lock onto her. Tissaia could barely prepare a protective ward before Yennefer held up two fingers and swept them in a crude if not effective open triangle. She thrust the sign at her teacher with a flick and the word axii. It dissipated fruitlessly on the ward, but any sooner and Tissaia would’ve been briefly hypnotized.
A cursory glance at a guidebook and she'd cast the sign. Of course she had.
The frequency of chaos in the room settled and Yennefer had the good sense to try to look somewhat penitent for her impulsivity. She rounded back around the desk and headed for the door, clearly assuming herself dismissed.
“Wait,” Tissaia said. Yennefer’s hand paused on the door’s handle but a fringe of black hid her face. “Today’s lesson is not over yet.”
Her hand dropped from the door’s handle. “Were you to make a lesson from only one sign?”
“One sign that has taken many others at least a few days to master, yes,” Tissaia said, “that was the plan.”
“Then the lesson is over, and no thanks to you,” Yennefer said cuttingly. “Just lend me the book and I won’t have to climb the Blue Mountains to get to your chamber for crumbs of training. Solves both our problems.”
“I have no problem, Yennefer. I enjoy teaching you.” The omission was too frank, too kind for them both and Tissaia quickly backpedaled. “I was prepared to list sanctions for your persistent lateness but now I know why.”
“Now you know why?” Yennefer said, turning quickly on Tissaia. “What difference does it make? I might as well have been sleeping in too late or failing to manage my time.”
Tissaia steeled as she folded her hands behind her back. A different tactic, then; one more salt than honey, as she’d come to learn, might be more effective. “I was only concerned you’d lost respect for your training, or your interest altogether, and seeing as neither are true I instruct you to allow yourself more time to get here as befits a more responsible mage in training.”
Yennefer considered, now far more receptive. She nodded. “I will.”
“You should know, however, that refusing basic pain management in an institution housing the best healers and herbalists isn’t strong, it’s stupid,” Tissaia continued. “Accepting their help isn't weak, it’s smart, and would allow you to focus more energy on your studies.”
“Couldn’t I just—”
“You may not portal to class.”
Yennefer smiled at that, a small chuckle escaping her chapped lips, and Tissaia returned a tight smile in kind.
“Now, seeing as you take such pleasure in making me work for my tenure, let us explore the five uses for axii,” Tissaia said and returned to her desk.
“The book listed six,” Yennefer said, and the rectoress resisted the urge to roll her eyes to the back of her head.
“As far as Aretuza learning standards go, there are five, and that’s all I want to hear on it.” She kept her eyes down on the tome, straightening it carefully in the book stand. “What you may or may not read during midsummer recess, when this book shall be available on loan for one sennight, is beyond my control.”
Yennefer’s face brightened in a way that Tissaia couldn’t help but drink up. But when it fell, as it soon did, it only reminded Tissaia that this particular mentorship was a delicate dance indeed; the latent chaos which so powered Yennefer’s abilities was only ever one or two impassioned moments from exploding, or drowning her alive. Baiting the girl to ascertain her limits during her first weeks here was a test of control, yes, and while an effective strategy it was admittedly not the kindest. Having been the one to find the girl grey and unresponsive in an ever-growing pool of her own blood on her very first night here, Tissaia might have better assessed the risks of—no. It was necessary. Chaos as powerful as Yennefer’s, uncontrolled, would be a catastrophe. At best she would be consumed whole; at worst, she could consume an entire town in the process.
And so, Tissaia assessed her student patiently, masking her concern. Yennefer looked away, coiling ever inward.
“Is there something more on your mind?” she prompted.
“You said axii takes most students days.”
“Your unbridled chaos is your burden and your biggest asset,” Tissaia said, not for the first time. “That is why I had to know you could control it.”
“And what if there’s more to it than that?” Yennefer said, looking uncomfortable beyond the aching of her bones. She perched once more on the edge of the settee, toying with the hem of her sleeve. “Before you bought me...”
Tissaia smothered a pang of guilt as she aligned two quills on her desktop.
“I was able to carry the feed. I washed the pigs for market. Fletcher said I used to earn my keep but as I got older I only grew more and more…” She turned her eyes upward, searching for a word, it seemed. “...Crooked.” She spoke the word like a curse. “And now everything is harder.”
“Spinal deformities are bound to worsen with age and physical labor.” And abuse, Tissaia left unsaid. She again approached the girl, moving slowly as if any sudden movements would startle her. She sat somewhat closer than before. “Destiny had different plans for you than to be a farmhand.”
“You had different plans for me,” Yennefer corrected. “I was cursed and that was my destiny.”
Tissaia frowned, shaking her head slowly.
“You said it yourself. I struggle to perform the simplest physical tasks. A cruel irony to have this affinity for magic I must have this sorry excuse for a body.”
“I’m not following.”
“Istredd saw me make a portal with the feainnewedd on my first try. I had to tell him.”
The followup made nothing clearer. “Istr… the Ban Ard boy?”
“I told him it’s my blood. I said it’s why I have a twisted spine. Why Fletcher hated me.” She gestured back at the tome again. “Why I barely have to try to learn these signs.”
Tissaia leaned back into the couch, her face knitted in confusion.
“My real father was a half-elf,” Yennefer said, the revelation tumbling forth in a mumbled rush. “I understand if you have to kick me out.”
Tissaia’s eyes widened in surprise while Yennefer stared at her dumbly in the aftermath of her fitful confession. A quarter-elf. Fascinating. Looking her over, there was no immediate tell, though her violet eyes might have been a hint. She was lithe but Tissaia had seen many a sturdy elf, too. Her ears, perhaps? Rounded but inclined just so… No, children of half-elf parents were hardly nonhuman. And, though she was quick to credit her magical abilities to her elven blood alone, her connection to the natural chaos of the Continent seemed minute to the currents of chaos within her very spirit.
But to call her cursed? It made Tissaia’s stomach turn. It was cruel enough that her physical differences brought on such teasing and mistreatment, but for her family to blame her elven ancestry, to make her ashamed of her very blood? To make an innocent child believe that there could be no better life for her than to sleep in a bed in a pig pen because destiny so determined?
Yennefer had been anxiously filling the silence, fretting about going back to Vengerberg when suddenly Tissaia leaned forward and placed a hand on hers, stilling it.
“You are not cursed, Yennefer.”
“What?”
“Rumors of deformations and miscarriages due to elven blood are prejudice and paranoia, nothing more. Your father only wished to find more ways to demean you.”
The unornamented truth hit Yennefer harder than Tissaia expected. Tears sprung into those elvish eyes.
“Does this surprise you?”
“N-no,” Yennefer managed, sniffing. Her successes in the past weeks had buttressed her fragile self esteem, but now it strained and her voice shuddered. “I tried to be useful. I tried but I only ever got in the way. I thought if I just—if I just—”
Yennefer’s chaos surged so violently in her catharsis that when Tissaia at last gathered the girl into a firm hug, she could feel it resonating, vibrating against her own. Oh, how stark a contrast it was to the last time she’d held the girl in her arms, when her life itself had been but a dying flicker. In that moment, a memory materialized—Tissaia’s memory. Though she could've stopped it, she allowed it to take shape as they communed.
What is this? she heard Yennefer ask in her mind.
She didn’t answer. In a moment, she wouldn’t have to.
The mirror over the wash bin was broken and the candlelight had long burned out. The hunchback girl from Aedirn was pallid and cold, crumpled in the corner of the dormitory. Tissaia rushed forward and fell to the stone floor beside her. Her dress slid through the puddle of dark, warm blood as she settled the girl, a gangly thing of skin and bones, on her lap. Desperately she whispered every life-saving and blood-staunching incantation she’d ever learned, even ones she barely remembered, until she was hoarse. The rectoress’s hands shook as she squeezed the girl’s wrists between her palms, wrists so thin that both fit in her trembling clasp.
A weak pulse.
Tissaia cried.
Yennefer pulled back and looked up at the mage, disbelieving, and Tissaia nodded once. The girl was all at once distrustful and hopeful; guarded and wildly, vulnerably open.
“You said no one would blink if I died.”
Tissaia couldn't deny the ache in her chest any longer. No, it wouldn't do to pretend she felt anything less than what she did for this difficult, terrified, beautiful child. She knew, somewhere deep and dormant within the empty space and the knots of scar tissue that had been her womb, whether or not she wanted to, whether it was destiny or love, that she would give Yennefer of Vengerberg everything she had to give.
“You are not going back to that farm, Yennefer. I will not allow it."
The girl scrubbed a hand across her cheeks, sniffing wetly. “But you have to tell them.”
“No, I do not. Aretuza was built by elves and there is no exclusivity here. Any whispers you hear to the contrary are born of prejudice and the Brotherhood would be wise to aim above such behavior.” Such trite and proper words belied the roiling feelings in her gut, but they anchored both Yennefer and herself alike. “I will keep your secret. You have my word.”
“So I get to stay?”
You get to live.
“You get to stay.”