18
We climbed back through a doorway he had created and started back on our way out of the palace. Cornelius hopped back onto the sorcerer’s shoulder, but I was still struggling to keep up. The floor shuddered and strained.
“My father is trying to break free,” said Sylvester.
“How much further?”
“We are almost to the door.”
“I don’t know if I can run much more,” I gasped. My legs were aching, and my feet felt like they were about to fall off. I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath. My hair was plastered to my forehead and neck with sweat, and I’m sure my face was bright red.
“You have to,” he said.
“I’ve been chained up for the better part of a day and all night, not to mention that half my heart has been extracted from my chest. I’m doing well to still be standing,” I snapped.
The sorcerer gave me a searching look and then sighed.
“All right.” He pulled out one of the heart jars. I drew back. I saw him touch his finger to the jar, making the heart inside glow gently. A little of its outer skin crumbled into dust, and then with a queasy lurch, we were outside, on a rain-streaked street somewhere in the city, standing beside the sorcerer’s ridiculously ornate carriage and his unnaturally large horses, their immaculate black coats steaming in the rain.
A passerby bumped into me and swore, then stumbled past me into the night. I felt off-balance after being jerked out of the palace, as if I had missed a step on the stairs. I wondered why I wasn’t freezing, and then realized I was fully dressed again in rich, black clothing and sturdy boots, any trace of the blood and sweat magicked away.
“We need to be careful with our store of hearts,” said Sylvester, tucking the jar away. “We don’t have many, and they will deteriorate rapidly as the rot spreads.”
The inside of the carriage overwhelmed me. There were so many black cushions and furs and rugs that it was like being inside a giant furry animal, if that animal had also swallowed a bellyful of spangles and sparklies.
I had to push several glittering swathes of fabric aside before I could sit myself down. Cornelius found himself a cozy spot and sat neat as a loaf of bread with his front paws tucked under him. Sylvester climbed in after us and closed the door behind him, enclosing us in a suddenly intimate, breathlessly warm space.
I felt my color rising as I smelled his familiar, spicy scent, and remembered all the things I had imagined the magic-workers did inside their carriages with the people they snagged. To distract myself and conceal my embarrassment, I cleared my throat and crossed my arms across my chest forbiddingly.
Sylvester gave a nonchalant flick of the wrist, and the horses outside snorted and started to move with magical swiftness.
“And how many hearts did that take?” I asked drily.
“No more today,” he said. “Once created, something like this will run forever.”
“But you used one to make it in the first place.”
“It is how our magic works, Foss. I can’t change that. If it helps, I didn’t harvest it myself.”
Maddeningly, I flushed, as I did whenever he said my name. It was exhausting, trying to separate my true feelings and opinions from the ones my heartsickness was giving me. I glanced out the window to distract myself, but the speed of the world slipping by in ribbons of color made me feel sick, and I shut my eyes.
“How did you find me?” I asked instead, to distract myself.
“I found him ,” Cornelius interjected.
Sylvester gave him a startled look. I had forgotten that Cornelius’s speech was still relatively new to him. “Yes,” he said. “The cat had a long story to tell me. Which reminds me, why did you never speak to me before, cat, in all the years you lived in my House?”
“You never asked me to. And the name’s Cornelius, thank you,” said Cornelius.
Sylvester raised an eyebrow at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I didn’t name him.”
“Well,” continued Sylvester, “hearing the cat’s—Cornelius’s—story, I knew I had to get you away from my father. They had me locked in a room away from the others while they decided what to do with me. I suppose they thought I would patiently wait for their decision.”
“Looks like they’d already made their decision,” I said, remembering Millie. “Clarissa interceded for you, though, for what it’s worth,” I added grudgingly.
“I suppose that is good to know,” he said, staring out the window. He seemed untroubled by our madcap speed. I didn’t know how we avoided barreling into anything, but then, they were magical horses; they probably passed through obstacles as if they were no more substantial than smoke.
“I’m not sorry I killed her,” I said.
“I’m not sure that I am sorry, either,” he replied.
I burrowed deeper into the furs and shivered. The events of the past two days were finally catching up to me, it seemed, and I felt like I had to hold myself very carefully to keep from falling apart, as you would when carrying an overfull cup of water. Cornelius kneaded the furs on my lap violently, then twisted himself into a knot and fell asleep.
Despite my head being full of horrors, I found myself starting to nod off, too, by virtue of being warm and rocked gently as the carriage moved, but I roused myself to ask, “Why did you come for me? It would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it, if the king boiled my heart down to a soup and made a potion to cure all the hearts. You wouldn’t have to be in such a rush to harvest.”
What I really wanted to ask was, why bother with me? Why not just let your father have me and be rid of the nuisance I had surely become? Did I matter to you, after all?
Sylvester stared out the window and did not look at me. “You were right,” he said. “We should not be ... doing what we are doing. Harvesting hearts. It is wrong. We shouldn’t even exist. We are unnatural things, made by an unnatural master. We shouldn’t be in the world.”
“Oh.” The wind was taken out of my sails somewhat. “Well. No, you shouldn’t. But even if you give it all up, your sisters won’t. It’s getting worse. The king said that all the sorceresses will be riding out to the far villages to replace the hearts that have been damaged. I don’t know how many they are planning to take, but it has to be hundreds. Every single heart I saw in your father’s storeroom had some mold on it.”
“I know,” he said. “It has never been done before—all of us harvesting at once, in such large numbers. But my father is desperate. The heart magic sustains every part of the kingdom. It protects our borders and keeps us safe without the need for an army.”
“From what? ” I asked. “Who are these mysterious enemies clustering on our borders waiting to invade?”
“I don’t ...”
“I think your father is using his magic to keep himself in power and to keep the rest of us under his thumb, and I think he treats his people like apples to be picked whenever he chooses,” I said. “And I think we don’t need an army because he has you and your sisters. I certainly don’t think it’s to protect us. I don’t think he cares what happens to us at all.”
“Can you keep it down?” interrupted Cornelius. “I’m trying to sleep.”
I sighed. “There’s a secret society,” I admitted. “Of people like me. People who were snagged. Sometimes they’re able to live almost normally afterward—at least for a while. Whatever you and your sisters do to them wears off after a bit, and then they drop dead. The mold made their deaths come quicker. One of them said he knew somebody who could fix the hearts. I don’t know much about it, because ...” they were all slaughtered in front of me, I wanted to say, but my mind shied away from the thought. I wasn’t ready to remember that yet.
“That’s impossible,” said the sorcerer immediately.
“Well, maybe it’s impossible with your magicks,” I said. “But your magicks might not be the only kind in the whole wide world. Your father made you for a particular purpose, like you said. Mayhap there is more than one purpose for magic, and more than one sort of magic-worker out there. This person who can supposedly repair the hearts is outside the kingdom. She’s called the Weftwitch, whatever that means. And what if it’s true? If you really want to mend what your father and sisters—and you—have done, isn’t that a good place to start?”
“It’s impossible,” he repeated flatly.
“Fine, then,” I said. “Let’s just give up. Take me back to the palace, give yourself up, and let your father do his experiments on me. How about that? Where else were you planning to hide from him, if not outside the kingdom?”
Sylvester sighed and settled back in his seat. A tiny fireball flared between his index finger and thumb, and he started running it over and under his knuckles. “I have never left my father’s kingdom,” he admitted.
“Neither have I.” I thought about it for a moment. “Nor has anyone else I know.”
It struck me as odd, now, although I had never given it a moment’s thought previously. You’d think that at least one person from the village would have left the kingdom at some point, whether for trade or family or simply for a visit.
I’d never so much as heard a story about life outside our kingdom. We knew that others existed, out there, at the ends of the roads that snaked out of our villages and away from the city, but I couldn’t remember anyone ever having been curious about them.
“Do you think we can reach it before your father finds us?”
“The sleeping spell still holds. I will know when he wakes.”
“Right. Well, all we can do is try. But there’s something I have to do first,” I said. “I have to tell my Da that they are coming.”
The idea had been forming in my head since I heard the king talk about his upcoming harvest, and now I was resolute.
“We can’t afford the time,” said Sylvester. “If we are to find this Weftwitch before my father wakes, we must leave the kingdom now.”
“I’m not leaving without seeing him,” I insisted. “And if your own father weren’t an evil, murderous tyrant, you would understand.”
We glared at each other for a moment.
“Fine,” said Sylvester at last. “We will stop there on our way. But only briefly.”
“Briefly is enough,” I accepted.
I must have fallen asleep shortly after that, because I remember no more talk. I do remember waking once or twice to find Cornelius purring in my lap, but no sooner had I surfaced than I dipped down into sleep again. I had that same old dream, with the long, dark passages and the vines, but it did not scare me anymore. Instead, it made me sad.
We arrived at my village somewhere near midnight, by my reckoning. We all woke as the carriage came to a lurching stop. Cornelius yawned and stretched, his teeth glittering in the moonlight. Sylvester’s eyes opened, silver as coins.
We left the carriage and the horses in the woods outside the village. I worried about the horses needing water and food, or even a rubdown, but Sylvester reminded me that they didn’t need any of those things, and that, no matter how realistic they looked, they were made objects, like the windup dolls visiting toymakers peddled to the village sprouts.
As I touched my hand to the velvety nose of one of the great horses and felt the heat of its breath, it reminded me how subtle and insidious magic could be. Even I, despite knowing the truth, was fooled.
We left them in the thickest part of the wood in which they would fit, and we laid branches against the carriage as well, to further hide it from view, just in case some poacher was prowling in the deep wood before dawn.
Then the three of us walked down the dirt road to the village. Cornelius got tired of keeping up with us after a while and hopped onto my shoulder, wrapping his tail around my neck like a scarf.
Rain began to fall. It was one of those rains that, while not heavy, seems wetter than usual. It trickled down the back of my neck and inside my ears, and my mood dampened as rapidly as my clothes did.
Cornelius maneuvered himself down under my arm and into the pocket that hung at my waist with his magical cat gymnastics. Sylvester, of course, stayed dry. Typical. The raindrops seemed to hover around him in a glittering halo without actually touching him.
The village was asleep. It was late enough that even the pub lock-in had ended, and the last stragglers had staggered home. The sky was still black, but a slender rim of gray showed around the bowl of the horizon.
I looked carefully for any curtain-twitchers but saw none. That didn’t mean no one was watching us, of course. There was bound to be one old biddy who couldn’t sleep, glued to her window in case one of her neighbors did something scandalous. There was little enough light that she probably wouldn’t be able to identify the sorcerer, but she would probably recognize my distinctive shape, and be flabbergasted that old Foss was walking anywhere with a man.
“There’s the shop,” I said, my heart giving a leap as I spotted its dear old sign and the light glinting off the mullioned window in front. “We live behind it. There’s a door to the side.”
Really, our house spread both behind and above the shop, wrapping around it like waxed paper around a chop. You could get to our living quarters by going up the staircase behind the counter, but if you picked your way through the alley at the side, there was a door that led into our kitchen and yard. It also had the advantage of being away from any windows and prying neighbors.
Despite everything, I felt a surge of joy walking up the old path to the front door. I held Cornelius in one arm, and I knocked.
The Da who opened the door seemed both shorter and older than the Da in my memories, but it was him, roused from his rest and wearing his old striped nightgown and cap.
“Foss!” His face lit up.
He even smelled like himself, a mixture of soap and the stale blood smell that we could never quite get out, no matter how much we scrubbed. It was the smell that brought tears to my eyes as I fell into his arms, still cradling Cornelius in one of mine.
I felt a sharp pang in my heart for leaving him so cavalierly and for so long. I hadn’t allowed myself to realize how much I missed him until now, when my whole self seemed to reach out to him with arms wide open.
“Come in!” he said. “Come in from the rain! You’re soaking.”
I hovered. “Just a minute, Da.”
“You’ll catch your death.”
I glanced over at where Sylvester was standing. Reading my meaning, he stepped into the spill of light from the open door, and Da saw him. He blinked. He looked at me.
“Foss?” he said.
“Can we come inside? Both of us, I mean,” I said.
“Are you safe?” Da asked, narrowing his eyes. I suppose he thought the sorcerer might be coercing me somehow.
“I promise I am, Da. It’s pouring down out here. Can we come in?”
He searched my face, then stepped back and held the door open. I had barely stepped over the threshold when he gathered me in a bear hug. I let myself relax for the first time in what felt like forever, feeling the familiar scratch of his stubble against my chin. I almost felt safe. Almost.
I pulled back. “Da, this is Sylvester,” I said.
Da looked the sorcerer up and down. He didn’t seem enthralled or impressed by him at all, that I could tell, which I put down to the strength of his fatherly concern overriding any magical influence.
“So, you’re the one that led my Foss on a wild-goose chase,” he said.
Sylvester flushed a little. “I did not intend to. Sir,” he added quickly.
“Da, we have to talk,” I said.
“Well, then, come into the kitchen,” he said. “I can heat up what I made for dinner if you’re hungry. Pot roast.”
Cornelius shot me a pleased look.
I busied myself in the kitchen, more amazed and comforted by its ordinariness than I had ever been. Nothing appeared magically beneath my fingertips but staying as far away from magic as possible—except for that contained within Sylvester, I suppose—had become my new aim in life, and so I loved every spoon and mug for which I had to hunt.
It felt so good to be back at home again: having good, solid flagstones underfoot instead of black magic, and smelling real food cooking on our trusty old potbellied stove. Cornelius, of course, was right at home at once, leaving my arms to explore the kitchen.
I had told him to hold off on speaking until I gave the word, because I thought my Da had more than enough to take in without adding a talking cat into the mix. Da liked cats, though, and bent down to pet him on the head as Cornelius sauntered around.
“Nice kitty,” Da said. Cornelius shot me a long-suffering look but purred enough like a regular cat to pass muster, and then settled himself down on the hearthrug for a good wash, knowing that pot roast was in the offing.
I excused myself to have a good wash, too, at the basin in my old room. All the plain, serviceable dresses hanging in my tiny wardrobe felt like old friends. I selected the most comfortable—a faded green, because I would be perfectly happy if I never saw black again—and laced up a pair of my old boots before going back downstairs.
Seeing Sylvester inside our little house felt completely wrong, as if a panther had wandered in and sat down at the dinner table with a bib around its neck. He had to stoop to get through the doorways, and he looked all kinds of odd sitting in one of our dining chairs. He couldn’t lounge in it as he did on the throne—but he clearly wanted to—and he seemed all elbows and knees.
I could see him desperately wanting to conjure one of his magical toys in order to have something to do with his hands, and resisting. His fingers twitched a little.
Da set a bowl down in front of him—pot roast, with a beef rump, potatoes, and carrots that bobbed up and down in a brown gravy, with a hunk of good workman’s bread at the side for dipping. He had been the one to teach me how to cook, after all.
Sylvester needed no urging to start slurping it up. Da raised his eyebrows at me as he plonked mugs of tea on the table, surprised at the sorcerer’s appetite. I suppose he had imagined that they all lived on gossamer sandwiches and dewdrops or some such. Da picked out some of the choicest bits of meat and gravy and set a plate down for Cornelius, as well.
Da was a man who respected food and enjoyed eating, and so there was a period of silence while we all bent over our bowls. When we paused to take a breath, Da leaned his elbows on the table. “Well, then. Tell me everything.”
Well, of course, I wasn’t going to tell him everything. Da didn’t need to know how often I’d come close to being filleted like a side of beef, nor did he need to know I’d murdered one of the sorceresses with my own hand. Not yet anyway.
“Here goes,” I began, and tried to explain everything that had happened as simply as possible, leaving out all the most embarrassing bits.
“Wait,” said Da, afterward. “The sorceresses are made from what, again?”
“From street urchins, I think,” I said. “Orphans. Lost children. Sold children. He trains them up for years in all his magicks until they are of age, like Sylvester. Sylvester only just started being a sorcerer.”
Da blew out a long breath and shook his head in disgust. He would never put up with anyone mistreating a child, would Da. He turned to Sylvester.
“So, you were some little bit of a boy when he scooped you up? Disgraceful.”
Sylvester looked surprised to be addressed. He had been silent, concentrating on his dinner.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t remember it, though. It was many years ago now, of course, and our memories of the children we were before seem to disappear as part of the ... process.”
“That’s beside the point,” said Da. “You just don’t treat people that way.”
“I am not precisely a person,” said Sylvester with a certain awkwardness.
“Like hells you aren’t,” said Da. “Of course you are.” He reached out and prodded the sorcerer with one of his meaty fingers, startling him again. “That little boy is still in there, somewhere, and he deserved better.”
I felt a ridiculous pricking of tears at the back of my eyes. Oh, Da.
“He took another girl, while I was there,” I said. “Millie, her name was.”
“Oh, the poor little thing,” said Da.
I thought about telling him how we had seen Millie floating in the tank, her heart out and floating like a kite on a string, but I didn’t want Da to have to imagine such things. Bad enough that we had to bring him such terrible news.
“Da, they need more hearts,” I said. “The ones they have are all sick with something, a mold or a disease that’s eating them up. They’re running out. Until they find a way to fix them, if they ever do, they’re going to need to replace them. And there’s a whole palace full that they have to replace.”
“So, what does that mean?” asked Da, looking at me sharply.
“They’re going to ride out, all eleven of them ... Or twelve, I suppose, if they’ve changed Millie into one of them already. I don’t know how long it takes.”
Sylvester shook his head. “It will be many years before she is a full sorceress. She will have the ... necessary parts for one when he removes her from the chamber, but we are trained until adulthood.”
“Right, so eleven. They usually only take hearts from the outlying villages, but this time they’re going to almost all of them.”
“They will probably start here,” said Sylvester. “Partly because they like to take the bulk of the harvest from the farthest places, as Foss said, and ...” he hesitated.
“And what?” I asked.
“And because this is your village, Foss. The king will know it, and he will take pleasure in harvesting from it first and deepest, for your sake and for mine.”
“They’re coming here?” said Da. “When?”
“I cast a sleep spell that I would hazard still holds,” said Sylvester. “I used an inordinate amount of power for it.”
“An inordinate number of hearts,” I said under my breath.
“They will awaken soon and come here as soon as they have gathered themselves. You have a day, perhaps. Maybe two.”
“That’s not terribly long,” commented Da.
“You need to get out, Da,” I said. “All of you. You need to get out and hide.”
Da turned his mug of tea between his hands. “Where can we hide, from the king himself, and a small army of sorceresses? Where could we go that they could not follow?”
“I can help a little,” said Sylvester. “Perhaps it will be enough.”
“If you go deep enough into the woods, you may at least delay them a little,” I pleaded.
“And what about all the other villages that aren’t lucky enough to have you to warn them?” said Da. “They’ll be sitting ducks.”
“I know, Da,” I said. “But we don’t have much time. I had to make sure that you were all right.”
“We might be able to get word to them, if we’re quick enough,” said Da. “Unless you have some magical way of doing it?” he added, turning to Sylvester.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I know no such spell that will work without many hearts to power it. Although I might be able to speed the horses, if you can persuade messengers to ride out.”
Da looked at him narrowly. “I can’t help wondering why you’re helping my Foss,” he said. “Seeing as how you’re one of the magic-workers yourself and should be out hunting hearts with the rest of them.”
“I have come to realize,” said Sylvester laboriously, “that our presence in the world—mine and my sisters’—makes it worse, not better. Foss has shown me how dangerous we are to people like you.”
“I’m surprised you care,” commented Da. “I would have thought you were above such things.” He shot me a quick look.
“I had questioned it for a while,” admitted Sylvester. “But I knew nothing except what my father and sisters taught me. Having Foss in my House was ... enlightening.”
“Yes, she’s not afraid of speaking her mind. I know,” agreed Da, still looking at me. “Well, seems like the best thing to do would be to gather everyone in the square and go from there. We’ll have to ring the fire bell to get them all out.”
“You’ll have to do it after we’ve gone,” I said. “We have something else to do, and we have to do it before the king awakens and can find us.”
“And are you going to tell me what it is?” said Da shrewdly.
I hesitated. “I don’t want you to worry overmuch.”
“Nonsense,” said Da. “I’ve been worrying about you since the moment you were born, and I’ll worry until I leave this earth. Probably after that, too, if I’m able.”
“We’ve heard that there’s someone who can help us,” I told him. “Some kind of magic-worker or healer, who can fix the hearts and perhaps even give them back to those who are missing theirs. The ones who are still alive, that is. If we can find this person and bring them back, it might stop the king from harvesting all the villages.” I shook my head.
“Da, if he has his way, he might kill half the people in the kingdom. More. He doesn’t care. He knows more children will be born to replace them, eventually, and I don’t think he cares how long it takes.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Da. “What king would be willing to kill that many of his own people? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Because he doesn’t let us hear about it, Da. I don’t know why we’ve never questioned the right of the magic-workers to come out and steal our lives away, but we never have. I never have. It was just the way things were, and we were grateful for their protection, and the health of our crops and livestock, and we just let them do it. Until now.”
We stared at each other for a moment, and I saw the same realization dawn on Da’s face, as it had on mine.
All this time, we had lived under King Darius’s rule without questioning his right to take pieces of our hearts as he saw fit, and we had counted it little more than an inconvenience in exchange for our safety. It seemed so stupid, now, as if we were little more than the unintelligent sheep the magic-workers believed us to be.
“And where is this person you need to find?”
“Outside of the kingdom,” I said. “We will leave tonight and hope to be back before too long. If we can offer the king a way to repair the hearts he has, we might be able to stop him from taking the hundreds he needs. And we can save those who have been taken already and still survive.”
“Like you?” asked Da. It was the first time he had asked me directly about my heart. “Foss,” he took my hands, “tell me straight. How are you? What has happened to you? Are you going to be all right?”
“I’m fine, Da.” I swallowed. “I was just snagged, is all. Sylvester didn’t mean to take me. He had his spell ready for harvesting, and I got caught up on the tail of it by accident.”
Sylvester looked embarrassed, as he probably should.
“Then you can let her go?” said Da, turning to the sorcerer.
“He hasn’t quite figured out how yet,” I said. “But he will. Or perhaps the person we’re looking for will know a way.”
Da sighed and rubbed his hand across his face, looking very tired. “And you say he didn’t mean to take you?”
“He says he didn’t, and I’m inclined to believe him,” I said, meeting Sylvester’s eyes for a moment. Was I imagining it, or did he look surprised? I didn’t tell Da about the piece of my heart that Clarissa had taken, which was still sloshing about in its jar in my pocket as we spoke.
“Let me at least have a little time with you, before you leave,” said Da. Sylvester took the hint and unfolded his long legs.
“I will check on the horses,” he said, which of course didn’t need checking on at all, but I suppose he was trying to be polite. He hadn’t had much practice. He toddled off outside, and with Cornelius asleep on the hearthrug, Da and I settled ourselves in our same old shabby, comfortable armchairs before the fire.
“Foss ... I never told you the old stories,” he said. “You had enough to worry about. But there are tales—true or not—about these harvests, from many years ago. Whole towns full of Davs, with the hearts sucked out of them.”
I leaned forward to grasp his hands, desperate to reassure him and take that old, old look from his face. “Da, it’s all right. I was just being dramatic. Even if I did lose my whole heart, it wouldn’t be that bad. You don’t die. Like Dav, like you said.”
“Yes, you do die,” said Da. “Not at once, but you do. Dav killed himself, Foss. While you were away.”
I blinked.
“They all do,” said Da. “At least, that’s what the stories say. They wander for a while, and weep, and then they wind down like a clock and put themselves out of their misery. Whole villages of ghosts. That’s what the stories say.”
I felt fear clog my throat like a dose of medicine. “How?” I asked.
Da’s eyes shifted. “That’s not ...”
“It is important, Da. How?”
Reluctantly, Da met my eyes. “He cut his throat,” he said. “That’s how they always did it. In the stories. Either that, or they drowned themselves or hanged themselves. Stabbing themselves in the heart doesn’t work, you see. Something about the magic.”
My head swam.
“Is that going to happen to you, my girl?” he asked. Da was a fine figure of a man, in rude health, with a ruddy face that matched his meats, but in that moment, he looked drawn and pale.
“No, Da,” I said with a confidence that I did not feel. “We’re going to find this person who can repair hearts, whoever it is, and they’ll fix me right up. I promise.”
He knew that I couldn’t possibly know that, of course, but I think it comforted him anyway. He drew me in for a hug, and I felt his tears wet against my ear and cheek.
“I couldn’t bear to lose you,” he said.
“You won’t, Da,” I managed. “And I’m not alone. Sylvester and Cornelius will be with me.”
“I like him,” he said in my ear. “Your young man.”
I pulled back. “He’s not my young man ,” I insisted, flushing.
“Could have fooled me,” teased Da, but, like I’ve said, he thought the sun shone out of my arse, and that I was as beautiful to everyone else in the world as I was to him.
“For being a sorcerer, he’s not a bad chap,” said Da.
“I’m under his spell, Da. He might not have meant it, but I am. That means that I’m in love with him, all right? And I can’t help it. Like Dav and his sorceress.”
“Foss ...”
“I’m just like Dav.” I was working myself up now. “Just another fool tagging along after a beautiful face, to be thrown away like yesterday’s dinner, not even fit for the cat.”
“I don’t think he sees you that way,” argued Da. “And besides, it’s not true. You’ve done a lot for him, it sounds like. Just ... put yourself first, all right? As best you can. Even if he’s a decent fellow, as he seems, he can’t hold a candle to my Foss. And I need you to come home safe.”
“I will, Da,” I promised. But I know neither of us believed me.
I wished we could stay there just for the night—that I could collapse into my comfortable old trundle bed, with the indentation in the mattress just the right size and shape for me. I wished that Cornelius could curl up on the old blanket my mother had crocheted before I was born, that stayed always folded at the foot of the bed. I determinedly refused to imagine where Sylvester would sleep.
There was no time, however.
Da promised to gather the village together in the morning and tell them about the coming harvest, and to send riders to the neighboring villages to start to spread the word. We hoped each settlement would send out riders of its own, and thus word would spread swiftly, giving many enough time to hide.
It wouldn’t keep them safe from the sorceresses and the king for long, but it might keep them safe long enough for us to return with a way to repair the hearts. If such a cure actually existed, of course, which was still by no means certain.
Da pressed a final cup of tea upon us both, as if fortifying us for the journey, and by the time the very first graying of dawn had lightened the night sky, we were back in the carriage and on our way to the border.
Saying goodbye to Da—well, there’s no way to describe it. We were both putting on a brave face, but I could barely speak past the lump in my throat, and I could see the tears glistening in Da’s eyes.
Sylvester wandered away to give us the chance to bid a proper farewell, and we clung to each other for a long time. Neither of us voiced the fact that this might be the last time we saw each other, but we both knew it.
When Da finally released me, his face was wet. He attempted a smile. “I love you, my girl,” he said.
“I love you too, Da.” I willed myself not to cry. The least I could do for him is keep it together until I was out of sight, let him see me smile.
“You take care of yourself, all right?” he said.
“You too, Da.”
“And don’t let that sorcerer get any ideas.”
“Da!” I blushed furiously. “It’s not like that. He barely looks at me, and not that way.”
Da smiled a little. “Whatever you say, Foss.”