By the third village she felt as relaxed as she was ever likely to get, and then she could think. Lebkuchen was being very well behaved; she wondered if Tante Gretchen had had a “word” with her. It was Earth Magicians who were good with animals, and Earth Masters the best of all. Giselle had always found Lebkuchen a handful, but maybe that had been because the mare had belonged to Mother, not her. Perhaps Tante Gretchen had “explained” the situation to her in a way she understood.

I have food for a few days, she considered, as Lebkuchen ambled along the quiet, narrow road. Water I can get from the rivers and streams. It’s probably not wise for a woman alone to take a room in an inn. So my biggest problem between here and there is where am I going to sleep? I can’t ride day and night; Lebkuchen needs the rest even if by some miracle I don’t.

The easiest thing to do would be to make rough camps in the forest. It wouldn’t be hard; Joachim had taught her how to camp ages ago. But if she could find a farm that still had haystacks in the fields, that would be preferable. She had a distinct advantage over most travelers and gypsies and tramps; she could ask an Air Elemental to stand guard for her and wake her before sunrise so she could get out and away before the farmer could catch her.

For that matter, she could ask her Elemental allies to scout ahead and find a field with haystacks. Then she could wait until dark, slip in before the moon rose, and have herself a cozy little roost without anyone the wiser.

I’ll do it, she decided, and felt a good bit better. Lebkuchen would be taken care of too; the amount of hay the mare would eat overnight would be negligible to the farmer, but it would cost more than Giselle liked at a stable.

She whistled the odd little spell-tune she used to summon the friendliest of Air Elementals—those were usually, though not always, sylphs. This time she got one that wasn’t; an odd little creature with the face of a girl and the everything else of a scarlet-feathered bird. She’d gotten Elementals like this one before, and they were a welcome sight when she needed a helper that was steady and not flighty. The bird-creature flew along beside her and listened as she explained what she needed: a farm near the road with haystacks still in the field, somewhere near where she and the horse would be at around sunset.