A review by meghan111
Od Magic by Patricia A. McKillip

4.0

Od is the founder of a school of magic. She appears one day when Brenden is eating lunch in his garden:

Any number of animals seemed to be crawling over her. Mice peered from one shoulder; a raven with a missing claw perched on the other. Lizards clung to her hair. A ferret stuck its head out of her cloak pocket. A great albino ox with a broken horn stood at a polite distance behind her, downwind, or Brenden surely would have smelled it coming. It carried an owl on its unbroken horn. A few mongrels, feral cats, and an old blind she-wolf sat waiting behind the ox."

Od says that Brenden should journey to the school to work as a gardener, because he has mysterious ways of knowing plants.