Agnes sat on the edge of the little bed she had finally come to think of as her own. Over the last several weeks, her arm had mended and the bruised had faded, but Agnes still hurt. Her arm throbbed at night, and her tailbone did little electric dances if she sat down on it wrong. The nurse at the medical building on campus said she couldn’t find anything wrong, and the druid had stopped giving her the poultice that made the pain go away. He said she couldn’t use it for longer than 3 weeks, and offered no alternative.

She could hear Billie on the other side of the patchwork curtain that separated their living spaces. It must be feeding time. Billie kept a menagerie of animals on her side of the room. Frogs, mice, snails, slugs, bugs in jars and snakes in tanks. When you added in the twisted branches, the bowls of mud and gunk from the bottom of the lake, and the crystals and geodes sitting everywhere it felt like you were walking into a tiny forest trapped inside of a bedroom. Ivy clung to the walls, and plants both exotic and boring hung from pots attached to the ceiling. Agnes couldn’t turn on the ceiling fan because of the small, dark berries that grew on the blades. Agnes, who had never shared a room before, was constantly aware of the encroaching nature reserve that slipped over, under, around and occasionally through the curtain. Her first night back in the room after being released from the hospital, Agnes had awoken to find the biggest frog she had ever seen sitting on her collar bone, its black, beady eyes staring deeply into her own, its chest puffed out and a high pitched “wheeeeee” of a croak escaping it. She had panic and rolled out of the bed, reinjuring her arm and accidentally flinging the frog into the curtain. Billie had slept through the entire event, and acted as if she couldn’t possibly understand why Agnes had panicked over “such a cute little thing.”

“LITTLE?!” She had demanded, “Little thing? It’s the size of a cat, Billie!”

“He’s so cute, though!”

Billie did not understand anyone who didn’t love all the creepy crawlies of the world. One of her recent ancestors was some kind of troll, which is where Billie got her magic from. Trolls love the squicky muck and the mossy woods, and Billie was a credit to her lineage, she loved being outdoors so much that she brought the outdoors back in with her. But it served her well, and she made poultices and salves and all manner of earthy things so well that her professors had her teaching some of the classes. Her specialty was healing magic, and Agnes had come to rely on her heavily since the druid stopped providing the salve. Billie’s worked better anyway.

Agnes listened to the noises from Billie’s side of the room for a little while, until she heard the top of the snake enclosure open. She waited for a few minutes until she heard it close again, and got up. No way she was going over there before the snake had been fed. There was a strict rule about no snakes out and about when Agnes could see them.

Billie looked up from the moss patch she was trimming with a pair of tiny scissors, “Hey, Ag, you feeling better?”

“A little, yeah. My arm is still throbbing, but I can sit if I do it right, so that’s good news!”

Billie smiled at her and reached for the red clay pot she kept the salve in. “Ready for a refill?”

As she slathered the thick green-brown tarry stuff on Agnes’ arm, they talked about the meet next Saturday.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle the broom. Professor Hastings only knows the runes because her brother married a runic witch that lives in Norway. If I get back on a broom she’s enchanted, I’ll fall again. I wish they’d just let me use mine.”

“Talk to her, maybe she’ll let you do the enchanting on a school broom if you can follow the regulations for them. I mean, does it actually say in the handbook it has to be done by a professor, or just that they can’t be homemade runes?”

Agnes pondered this, and decided she would talk to professor hastings In the morning. Her arm was feeling better as soon as Billie had applied the salve, and she was beginning to feel a bit more optimistic about things.

“One more thing,” Billie began, looking slightly guilty and a little worried.

“What’s wrong?”

“I kind of need to put a small tree on your side of the room, but don’t worry, there aren’t any bugs or reptiles. I just… I need a place for the squirrel.”

“THE SQUIRREL?”