A Harvest of Hearts

22

I woke in the morning feeling both comfortable and excruciatingly uncomfortable all at once. The discomfort came from the hard, cold ground that seemed to have fused the bones of my hips together, and the prickle of sharp grass against any patch of exposed skin—of which there was rather a lot more than usual, for me.

The fire had long died, and all that was left was a brave, orange smolder, like a half-open eye in the soapy mess of the ashes. The smolder and I stared at each other as I came back to consciousness, and took stock of my surroundings and inventory of my body, making sure that all bits were present and accounted for.

The comfort that I felt, despite the cold and the aches from sleeping outside, came from Sylvester. His long, smooth body was wrapped around mine as neatly as if I were a parcel of herbs and he the string that tied it.

I felt the rise and fall of his chest against my spine, and the warm curl of his hips against my buttocks—and something else that made me blush to think about.

He had drawn my petticoat up over us in the night, but it had slipped down and now covered only the lower parts of our legs, leaving the rest exposed. I reddened, despite myself, and squirmed a little, and felt him huff out a breath against the nape of my neck as my movement made him stir before settling back into sleep.

Every inch of my skin, every ounce of my flesh, felt a delicious kind of surprise. The night before, I had awakened to myself in a new and unexpected way, and I felt as new as a fresh-born foal struggling to its feet.

I had seen inside myself, to my warmth and litheness and the intelligence of my lips and limbs, which had known exactly what to do without prompting, as wisely formed as any creature of the woods.

But it was morning now, and, despite myself, I felt that new knowledge retreating. I had been magical in the night and was no more; he was magical always.

We had been warm and laughing by the flattering fire. Looking down at my skin, exposed and with goose pimples, I could see every blemish, every hair, every vein, every pimple and dimple and roll. Would the sorcerer regret it, this morning, seeing me in this unforgiving gray light?

My bladder woke up and protested. I wiggled myself out of the sorcerer’s embrace as slowly as I could, managing miraculously to extricate myself without waking him. I stood, my cold bones creaking, and looked back at him.

He was perfect, of course. His skin was completely smooth and unblemished, hairless even, featureless, and pale as bone. His hair was tousled, like mine, but where mine had turned into a bird’s nest at the back, complete with twigs and leaves, his was merely artfully disheveled.

I made my way through the underbrush as quietly as I could to a secluded spot and squatted to relieve myself. When I had finished, I dressed myself as best I could with my chilly fingers, struggling a bit with the buttoning. It was a relief to feel the warm flannel against my skin, but also a sorrow to muffle the new, singing awareness of my naked skin.

I sank my hands into my pockets to warm them as I walked back to our little camp, and my fingers closed about the little raven seal. I froze. Was it my imagination, or did it feel denser, heavier? I remembered the Weftwitch’s words and let go of the seal.

What if I willed it to work by accident, thinking of the king and the sorceresses in anger, and unwittingly destroyed Sylvester as well? Perhaps it would be best to throw it into the woods now and be done with it, as I certainly didn’t ever plan to use it.

Or did I?

The thought startled me. Of course I didn’t plan to use it, I told myself. Using it would mean annihilating Sylvester along with the rest of his so-called family. It was all or none, as the Weftwitch had said.

The little spell—or rather the enormous spell, contained in a tiny package—would kill all the users of heart magic, and there was no way around it. Sylvester was one of them. I couldn’t spare him and eliminate the rest. I wasn’t too keen on murdering the lot of them either, truth be told, despite how hateful they all were. It was so big, so grave an act.

I heard Sylvester sigh and yawn behind me, and I put my thoughts to one side. I brushed myself down and smoothed my hair as best I could, which wasn’t much, and turned.

I was prepared for discomfort. I was prepared for embarrassment on his part, even shame, seeing me in the cold light.

What I was not prepared for was the smile that followed his yawn, an open, unfettered smile that turned his otherworldly beauty into something warmer and more human. I realized how seldom I had seen him smile or laugh before.

“Good morning,” he said, without a shadow of awkwardness.

“Good morning,” I replied, the words catching in my throat a little. I coughed, to cover it up. The sorcerer yawned again and stretched like Cornelius, seemingly completely unembarrassed by his nakedness. Of course, if I looked like him, I’d have been unembarrassed by my nakedness too. When he had finished his lengthy and luxurious stretch, he reached a hand to me.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked, keeping my voice level.

“I am never cold,” he said, and smiled.

We stared at each other for a long moment. I did not take his hand, and after a few beats, he dropped it.

“We had better go,” I said, a little gruffly. “Cornelius will be waiting.”

“And so is my father,” he said with a sigh. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared into space, his mouth set in a tight line. “Who knows how many hearts he has harvested by now.”

“And who knows how many he has harvested while we sat here dallying this morning.”

“I’m not sure how much use I would be, even if I were there right now. Me alone, against my father and all my sisters.”

“Not just you,” I said. “For all the good I’ll do. But we need to get back. Even if it is a hopeless case. We need to try.” Without thinking, I put my hand in my pocket and touched the little seal again, then flinched away as if it had burned me.

“Very well,” he said, and stood, exposing his full glory. I had to avert my eyes, so I didn’t turn into a beetroot. “Let us go.”

We retraced our steps through the woods, back to the very edge where we had entered. We walked side by side, the sorcerer with his long stride and me with my usual small steps.

After a few moments, I felt something brush my hand. I looked down and saw the sorcerer’s hand, palm up, welcoming, hinting. I put mine into it, and we walked that way, hand in hand, until we reached the edge of the forest. I dared not look at him, or speak, but our hands held their own kind of conversation.

The path ended just ahead, and there were our carriage and the magical horses, steaming a little in the cold.

It might have been my imagination, but I could almost see the air at the edge of the wood shimmering a little, like a mirage. Magic . Not heart magic but magic all the same. I halted and let Sylvester’s hand drop.

“What is wrong?” asked Sylvester. He had a spring in his step, eager to get out of this forest that must have felt deadening and wrong to him, hobbling his powers. Probably also eager to get some proper clothes back on, to be fair.

“Just wait a moment,” I said. I took a deep breath, trying to impress the taste of nonmagical air on my memory. I remembered the firelight, and the cold earth on my bare skin, and the tart, mineral smell of the ashes. Everything that I was leaving behind as I rejoined the world and rejoined the spell that had been lifted so briefly.

“All right,” I said finally. “We can go.”

We stepped out of the shadow of the trees, and I felt the spell settle on me again, like a bridle on a broken horse. It weighed down my butterfly-light spirit from the morning and turned it sickly, artificial, coated stickily with the false love and adoration that the heart magic created. I backed up in horror, colliding with a tree and setting its leaves to shivering.

“What is it?” asked Sylvester. Magical fabric swirled around him in ribbons of gleaming black, settling itself into a fine suit of clothes. A frothy cravat coiled itself round his neck, pinned with a single black stone at the hollow of his throat; and a pair of tall, gleaming boots flowed up his shapely legs like oil before hardening.

He was the sorcerer again, remote and worship-worthy. I grasped for the genuine love I had felt for him inside myself, as you grasp for the tail-end of a dream upon waking, but I felt it slithering away from me and disappearing, swallowed up by the heart magic.

Sylvester reached for me and pulled me toward him. I felt the terrible pull of the spell, the longing, and the real me was all mixed up in it somehow too, making a queasy hodgepodge of sensation that set both my stomach and my head to roiling.

I was drawn to him and repulsed at the same time. As his lips parted, I saw both the smile of a lover and the grimace of a monster.

“Don’t touch me!” I cried, hands raised, warding him off, and stepped out of his arms.

“Foss ...”

He took a step toward me. I backed away farther.

“What is it?” He stopped, one arm still outstretched.

“We can’t,” I said. I felt the spell swirling in me, thick and sweet as honey, turning my head and befuddling my senses.

“But why ...”

“The spell,” I said. “Now that we are no longer in the Weftwitch’s wood, I am under your spell again. Snagged. Hooked. And with only half a heart left, if that.”

He let his arm drop to his side as he thought about this. “But in the forest, when you were not ensorcelled by any magicks—you came to me then.”

“I did.”

“So that was not the spellbinding. That was just ... us.”

“I know.” I swallowed hard, as childish tears rose in my throat. I plopped myself down onto a handy stump and dropped my head into my hands. “You have no idea how much I want to,” I said, my voice muffled through my fingers. “But that’s the problem.”

“Why?” he said. Was he being intentionally dense? But when I peeked at him, he looked concerned and puzzled, that was all.

“Because now it’s all muddled up,” I explained. “What I feel, me, Foss, is tangled with the spell that’s making me feel things, all over again, and I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. If we ... did anything now, it would be all snarled up, don’t you see? It would be tainted.”

“Tainted,” he repeated, turning the word over in his mouth. It sounded oddly clean and distinct, the way he said it.

“Do you see?”

“Yes, I see,” he said.

We looked at each other helplessly. How I wanted to leap at him, to let him kiss me, as he had the night before, and more! I felt weary, a hundred years old.

If I could not be free of this spell until one or the other of us died, Sylvester and I would never again be free to embrace as we had in the Weftwitch’s wood. Unless, that is, we decided to damn the world, damn Da and all the population of our kingdom, and live together in selfish bliss in the forest.

I could train under the Weftwitch, as she had said happened with people like me. Sylvester would be safe from his doom. The corruption could not touch me there.

I imagined it: a cottage in the woods. Sylvester waiting there, perhaps tending the garden or the chickens, while I went to the villages for the odds and ends we needed. Cornelius curled up by the fire. Yes, all right, it was hard to picture Sylvester tending chickens, but we could deal with that later.

Maybe there would even be a way to bring Da across the border to live with us. Maybe he could open a new butcher’s shop. And then all three of us would be free of the magic-workers and their terrible, voracious, insatiable appetites.

I wished it were possible. I wished it with all my heart. I didn’t even like them, any of the other villagers with whom I’d grown up. I didn’t even like people in general, really.

But I couldn’t do it. I would never be happy, knowing that Da had been harvested and was dead, or worse. And knowing that we had doomed our kingdom to a slow death—half of it to heartsickness, the other half to the spreading corruption that would curse the crops, the livestock, and the water, and then finally dissolve the king’s walls and let in the war. Sylvester would never agree to it, either. At least, I hoped he would not.

Thinking of living here, abandoning the kingdom to its fate, gave me the same skin-crawling sense of wrongness that I’d had when I had first seen Sylvester’s magic in person.

The king’s magic-workers weren’t right. They were a creeping sickness on the world, like the mold that blighted their store of hearts, and I could not leave my kingdom, unnaturally warped and bespelled as it was, to suffer any longer under their rule.

“There you are,” said Cornelius, pouring himself down from a tree like black ink and reassembling himself at the bottom. “I was beginning to think you’d never come out.”

“We have learned a great deal,” said Sylvester, and I knew he meant more than just what the Weftwitch had told us.

I held out my arms, desperate for comfort, and, to my surprise, Cornelius jumped into them. He touched my nose with his, feather-light.

“Did she fix your heart?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t know how. I don’t think anyone does. She sent the message to the Snagged so they would help her spread the corruption. That’s all.”

“Then what was the point of all this?” said Cornelius. Reasonably.

Well, I couldn’t tell him that she’d armed me with enough magic to fell all the sorceresses and the king—and Sylvester—at once.

“We just need to go back,” I said. “Even if we can’t repair the hearts, we can try to stop the king from taking more.”

Sylvester nodded. I had been a little afraid he would argue with me, but Cornelius was the one who objected.

“Why can’t we stay here?” he said. “It sounds like we’re going to our doom.”

Well, yes. It was hard to deny.

“You can stay here, Cornelius,” I said. “I am sure you could find a home with a warm fire and plenty of bacon. I wouldn’t blame you for it.”

“Well, of course I’m coming with you,” said Cornelius, giving his whiskers a quick wash. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a terrible idea.”

“I agree that we cannot abandon the kingdom,” said the sorcerer, “but I do not know how we are supposed to return to it. Did the Weftwitch give you any ideas?”

“She said there are weaker points in the mist, but that was it.”

I had pinned so many of my hopes on the Weftwitch, thinking that she would mend my heart and send me back with the recipe for repairing all the rest, and she had been so very different from what I had imagined.

She had provided me with a way to defeat the magic-workers, it was true, but not with a way of getting back to the kingdom and using it.

They could sneak messages or objects through, she had said, but travelers lost their lives, or their senses, even if they did successfully make it through.

There were weak points through which her self-sacrificing messengers had forced themselves, but she had said they didn’t survive long on the other side.

“The Weftwitch said they have their own manner of magicks here,” I added out loud. “Magicks that don’t use hearts. We’ve seen it.”

“It won’t work,” said Sylvester with finality.

“Why?” I was annoyed that he wouldn’t even entertain the thought.

“The barrier was created with heart magic. The Weftwitch is right—it is an evil magic, but it is powerful. The most powerful. A spell cast with heart magic can only be undone with the same, as you can only unlock a door with the key made for it.”

“Then how are we to get back?” I cried. “If you cannot use heart magic?”

“I do not know,” he said.

“We didn’t even have enough to get us through the first time without using mine,” I said, folding my arms tightly over my chest.

“We are not using yours.”

“I wasn’t planning to volunteer, thank you very much,” I snapped. “I’m not so much under your spell that I’m prepared to throw away the last piece of my heart I have left.”

At the mention of the spell, his eyes dropped to the ground. I felt a pang and spoke more gently. “You’re the one with the magic. You must be able to think of a way.”

He sighed. “If we get back to the border, and I’m able to study the mist and the weak spots ... Maybe I will find one.”

We found another escort waiting for us a little way out of the forest—I suppose the Weftwitch had arranged it for us somehow. They eyed us warily still, but less so than the day before.

She must have given us her seal of approval, or at least assured them that we posed no threat, because there was no traveling cage for the sorcerer this time. They didn’t even bind his hands. They allowed all three of us to sit in the carriage and merely trotted alongside, not even looking in the windows.

Sylvester and I kept a decorous distance on opposite seats, arranging our knees so that they wouldn’t brush each other. Cornelius jumped onto my lap and looked from one to the other of us. I suppose his cat senses told him something of what had been going on, but he made no comment.

Sylvester and I avoided one another’s gazes until we got back to the encampment, and then exchanged one quick look before we stepped down from the carriage—a sort of bracing, a summoning of our resources, ready for the next challenge.

The headwoman took us back to the border. If you squinted a little, it could have looked like a forest of silver-barked winter trees, stripped of leaves, stark and tall.

But they were not trees. The endless, relentless mist shimmered and seemed to bend a little with the brisk wind, but it remained just as sinister and unbroken as ever. On the other side of that line was our kingdom, with all its beauties and terrors. With its pulsing heart magic.

The headwoman fell back a little so she could whisper in my ear.

“I hear that you might rid us of the king and his spawn for good,” she said to me quietly. “All our magic-workers have been working on this spell for a century. If you can get it through ...”

“I don’t know yet if we are able to,” I said. “We will try.”

“But you are able to.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. I pressed my lips together. The Weftwitch had been altogether too free with her information, I felt.

“I’m not sure yet if I’m going to use it,” I said. “We might be able to defeat them without a measure so ... drastic.”

She snorted. “ Drastic is all that will work,” she said. “You think your sorcerer would be able to defeat all the magic- workers in the kingdom?”

“Maybe,” I said defensively.

“The king would never create a child capable of defeating him,” she said with finality, “however many hearts that child might wield.”

“I’m not ready to give up on him yet,” I said.

She shrugged. “Whether you are ready or not,” she said, “you will have to use it.”

I was not ready for that conversation. “Can you show us the weak points in the border?”

We had caught up to Sylvester, who was almost at the mist. It swirled greasily. This close, I could see the faintest outlines of bare trees just inside it. Where it met the living grass on which we stood, the blades had turned yellow and limp.

“All souls taken by your king,” said the headwoman. “Whether consumed by the mist itself, or stolen for him by the magic-workers. Always hungry. Never at rest.”

“Taken by the magic-workers?”

“Oh yes. When their hearts are used up, and they can live no longer, some die, and their souls make their way here. Others are drawn to the mist by the king’s magic and walk into it willingly while they still live. Either way, this is where they all end up. You have to admire the king for it, in a way—finding a way to use them even after their deaths.”

I stared at the mist. So Dav was in there somewhere, and Colin. I did not know what happened to us after we died, but I was pretty sure we weren’t meant to be trapped in a ravenous spell for all eternity. I had thought the Snagged would at least be free after their deaths, however tragic, but it seemed there was no chance of escaping the king—as long as he and the magic-workers lived.

I supposed I would end up in there too, if we failed.

The headwoman led us a little away along the edge of the mist and then scuffed at the earth with her foot, revealing a line of white chalk under the loose gravel and dead leaves.

“Here’s one spot,” she said. “It’s a big one, relatively speaking. I don’t know how much luck you’ll have, but you’re welcome to try.”

Sylvester stared at the mist, pacing up and down, reaching out a hand to almost touch it at intervals. It reminded me of the way a man would look at a horse for sale, examining its teeth, running his hands down each leg, feeling for the strength of its back. I suppose he was analyzing the spell again, looking for any chink that he might be able to use to prize it open.

It was almost like watching a dance as well, I decided, one with intricate movements and endless possibilities for missteps. His cloak billowed out behind him as he marched up and down, swirling dramatically every so often as he turned.

After a long time, he sank to the ground and sat cross-legged, staring straight ahead with his jaw set. Cornelius and I exchanged glances, and I ventured to walk over to him.

“Well?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I can find no way to make an opening large enough for us.”

I thought quickly. “What about one large enough for Cornelius? Maybe he could carry something through, something you imbue with enough magic to ...”

“And then what? What is a cat, even a talking cat, going to do with it on the other side? He cannot cast a spell. Only I can do that.”

If I gave him the little seal, I thought. Maybe Cornelius could carry it through, and maybe he could will it to . . .

No. I couldn’t do that to Cornelius, put him in that kind of danger alone. Although the idea of keeping Sylvester in the Other Kingdom had an appeal. Perhaps the barrier would keep him safe from the seal, while the rest of the magic-workers died on the other side of it. Even if just Cornelius and I went through, and Sylvester stayed ... I could use the seal, and perhaps he would be all right.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Nor I.” He sighed. He twisted his hands in a sudden, violent motion, and a fireball appeared between them. He juggled it between his palms, frowning. “And it’s harder for me here. My magic doesn’t work as well. Even for trivial things such as this.”

“So, what we need,” I said slowly, “is a vast store of heart magic for you to access. Enough that it overcomes the difficulty of using your magic here at all and is strong enough to break down the border, at least temporarily.”

“Well, no such magic store exists, convenient as it would be.”

“The House,” I said.

“What?”

“The House. The whole thing is heart magic. And it has a life of its own. Growing, changing ... spreading. It’s enormous. Room after room. All heart magic. And it’s part of you.” I looked at Sylvester. “If it’s part of you, can you still ... feel it, from here? Can you use it to pull us through?”

Sylvester looked thoughtful. He balanced the fireball on his index finger and spun it. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I suppose it is a store of magic, of sorts. Although it is a little ... unpredictable.”

“It’s the best plan we have,” I said. “And the only one. We can at least try.”

So, try we did. Or rather, Sylvester did, standing very straight with his arms at his sides and eyes closed at the edge of the mist, as Cornelius and I hovered anxiously about him.

The mist shimmered and swayed. It may have been my imagination, but there seemed a new alertness about it, as if it was craning to see what we were doing.

Sylvester pressed his hands together, and an eye-aching blackness appeared between his palms. He drew them apart slowly, forming the blackness into a long tablet, and placed it on the ground like a tiny obelisk. He stepped back, and so did we.

There was an odd resonance to it, a hum, like a tuning fork just struck. It looked like it longed to be bigger. It was unsettling to look at it for too long, honestly—you started to feel like you might fall into the density of its blackness and keep on falling.

Sylvester made an odd gesture, and the sense of pressure and resonance grew stronger. I half expected it to pop open like one of those trick snakes the sprouts bought from the traveling peddlers, but instead it swallowed us up into blackness, arcing overhead and blotting out the sky so that we stood surrounded by warm, uncomfortably fleshlike darkness that seemed to be very faintly breathing.

There was no sign yet of our own kingdom, but I imagined I could somehow still feel its presence—a bristling menace at the edge of my consciousness. Cornelius had dug his claws into the skin of my shoulder, but I only noticed that once the world stilled around us, and I could catch my breath.

“Sorry,” Cornelius said, and released my shoulder as gently as he could.

“It’s all right.” If I’d had claws, I would have stuck them out too. I could tell that this was the House, even though there was nothing remotely House-like about the long, dark throat in which we found ourselves. It still felt familiar.

I suppose it had either tucked the kitchen and throne room and bedchambers away inside itself somewhere, or re-formed them into some other shape, as was its wont. The floor moved ever so slightly under my feet, so slightly that I would have thought I had imagined it, if it weren’t for Cornelius hissing, just a little, under his breath.

“It’s ... different,” I said, which didn’t begin to cover it.

“It can take many forms,” said Sylvester, “as you have seen.”

“Well, I wish it had taken on a less unsettling one,” I muttered.

The black tunnel stretched ahead, illuminated by a dim light that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“Did it work?” I asked. “Will it take us back to the city?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sylvester, comfortingly.

“And how will we know when we’re past the mist?” I pressed.

“Distance doesn’t have the same meaning here,” replied Sylvester.

“So, we won’t know?”

“I don’t think so.” He placed one white palm against the wall of the tunnel. It seemed to move slightly under his hand. “Follow me.”

Sylvester led the way, and Cornelius and I trailed behind him, hoping that the House wouldn’t dare swallow up its own master. I let one hand fall into the pocket where I kept the little seal and turned it over in my fingers, for comfort. I imagined that it had an odd, acidic tingle against my skin—but that could just have been my fancy. Cornelius growled softly in my ear.

“I know, I don’t like it either,” I said.

The House creaked and groaned around us. I imagined it as a beleaguered boat on a rough sea, the sea being the strange other space that it occupied, outside of what we thought of as distance and time. It felt like the House’s boundaries were putting up a fight against whatever was outside, and that they might be losing, but Sylvester continued to stride ahead with the appearance of confidence, and so we followed.

“What will happen to us if the House collapses?” I tried to make it sound as if I was just idly curious.

“I don’t know,” said Sylvester over his shoulder.

“Would we be trapped in the House, or what’s left of it? Or would we end up outside in whatever’s out there?”

“I told you, I don’t know,” said Sylvester.

Either way sounded horrendous. Or what if it spat us out right into the mist? I tried to slow my thoughts. It was so dark; that was the problem. There was nothing to distract me but blackness and more blackness. I tried to concentrate on the sorcerer’s lean silhouette ahead.

“Is it just me,” I muttered to Cornelius so that only he could hear me, “or is the tunnel narrowing?”

I felt the flicker of his tail against my nape. “It’s not just you,” he said. “It’s definitely getting tighter.”

“That can’t be good,” I said.

“Keep going,” said Sylvester—and was I imagining it, or was there a thread of anxiety in his voice?

My ears made a popping sound, and I felt pressure inside my skull. The blackness around us grew heavy and foreboding, like big-bellied storm clouds gathering before a downpour. I imagined I could feel the substance of the House pressing back against it, but something Outside was trying to push its way in. I pictured it slicing into the House somehow from the outside, cutting through its layers of heart magic to find us, pink and vulnerable as baby rabbits in a burrow when the plough comes.

Sylvester started walking faster, and I struggled to keep up with him. The pressure in my head was painful, and it was starting to affect my vision as well. The walls pressed in.

“Not much further,” said Sylvester, in a voice that was probably meant to be comforting.

A sudden, blinding flash, something like lightning, tore open the dark—and it stayed open, hanging like cut cloth, opening to a sharply painful white nothingness that reminded me of teeth. More and more of the blackness behind us was shredded. The floor pulsed underfoot, forcing us forward faster and faster.

Sylvester reached back and grabbed my hand, and we ran, keeping just in front of the terrible light and tearing. The House shuddered and bumped us along, keeping us always just far enough ahead.

I felt sorry for all the times I had been impatient or irritated with it, because without the House’s help, we could never have run fast enough to escape.

I tried to keep pace with Sylvester, but I was holding him back. I released his hand, and, reaching up to where Cornelius had coiled around my neck, I hurled him at Sylvester. He hooked his claws into the sorcerer’s cape, more from surprise than any sense of self-preservation.

“What are you doing?” demanded Sylvester, turning.

“I can’t keep up with you,” I panted. “You and Cornelius need to run ahead.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sylvester, grabbing my hand again. I tried to wrest it from him, but his grip was too firm. “We are all going to reach the city.”

We stumbled along, far slower than I would have liked, while the House fell piece by piece into the void behind us. The tunnel became narrower and narrower, until we could no longer stand straight, but had to stoop, almost bent in half, in order to fit.

We would never move fast enough like this, I thought, but again the House convulsed, and pushed us farther along itself, like a snake swallowing a mouse and working it down its long throat. Its movements seemed more labored now, though, and weaker. We didn’t have too long.

“There!” said Sylvester, pointing ahead. I saw a sliver of light, little more than a fingernail. By now we were almost crawling. The press of the blackness around us was sickening, fleshlike and heavy and entangling, but it was better than the bright snapping and tearing behind us.

We pushed our way through, like babies struggling to be born, using our feet and hands to push the darkness aside, and nudging our way toward the light as best we could.

There was little to no resistance to provide handholds or footholds as we pushed, just malleable black that gave way like bread being kneaded, and it felt almost impossible to make progress.

Sylvester was almost through, wiggling himself through the tiny gap, when my leg cramped horribly and stopped me from moving forward. I called to Sylvester for help, but his upper body was already on the other side, and I suppose sound might have been distorted or altogether muffled out there, because he did not respond.

I struggled but could not get enough purchase with one leg to move. Then I felt a furry nudging and Cornelius pushing with all his might. He could easily have followed the sorcerer through the exit, hanging onto him with his feline agility, but instead he had made his way behind me and was trying to help.

“Cornelius, you silly ass!” I cried. “Get out of there!”

It was helping, though. He pushed me enough that I could get my hands on the odd, amorphous opening and start to pull myself through. Sylvester was on the other side, and he grasped my arms at the elbows and started to pull.

“Come on, Cornelius!” I yelled behind me. “I’m fine now, you can come out.”

I felt him scrabble at my back, trying to climb, and then he was gone. I fell out of the hole and into the Other House so suddenly that the sorcerer couldn’t support my weight, and I staggered. I turned round immediately to see Cornelius struggling to follow. His head and one paw were out.

“Cornelius!” I cried.

He mewed, a kittenish noise. His ears lay flat on his skull, and his eyes were wide as platters. His throat moved as if he were trying to speak, but no sound came out. He seemed to be making progress, and then suddenly, he was sucked backward, as if something had grabbed his back paws and yanked.

“Cornelius, hold on!” I shouted. “Sylvester, do something!”

Before he could move, however, I thrust my arm into the swallowing black. It felt like plunging into the mouth of a great black leech that was intent on sucking the skin and flesh right off my bones. I did my best to ignore the pain and fished around for Cornelius in the dying maw of the House.

At first, I felt nothing but that terrible suction, and then my fingers touched softness. I thrust my arm in all the way to the armpit, hoping my shoulder wouldn’t dislocate with the terrible pressure, and was able to grasp skin and fur in my fist.

“I’ve got him!” I cried. “Help me!”

I didn’t even know if Cornelius was still alive in that black and airless space, but I pulled as hard as I could, so hard that I felt my elbow pop, and Sylvester held me under the arms and pulled in turn.

Together, we had just enough force to prize open the rapidly closing hole enough for Cornelius’s limp, furry body to squeeze through. The pressure was so great that I worried he might be crushed by it, or at least have broken bones, but there was no way of telling until we had him safe.

Sylvester and I stumbled backward as I clutched Cornelius’s body to my chest, and we fell together in a tangle on the dusty boards of the Other House as the magical House swallowed itself, like a snake eating its own tail, and disappeared into itself with a sudden, convulsive movement that felt like the world turning itself inside out for a moment.

The air seemed to rush toward it, then out again, a giant creature taking its last breath. Then it was just me, Sylvester, and Cornelius, flat on the floor, while the Other House creaked and groaned around us, and the spiders clung to their webs, wondering what on earth had just happened.

I was wondering the same and was scared to look down at the little bundle in my arms, fearing the worst. I was so worried, in fact, that I didn’t realize I was lying right on top of Sylvester until he stirred under me, and then I jumped off him like a water droplet off a hot stove.

“Cornelius?”

His eyes were closed. I felt him gently for any damage, but he seemed to be intact. I held one fingertip to his dry little nose and felt a huff of warmth as he breathed.

“He’s alive,” I said to Sylvester. “But I don’t know if he’s injured.”

“Let me,” said the sorcerer. He got to his feet and came to me, taking the little cat gently from my arms and cradling him. He looked so small. His paws hung limply, looking naked and vulnerable.

Sylvester bent his head, his silky hair falling forward in a graceful swathe, and blew out a long, shimmering ribbon of breath that wound around Cornelius’s body before dissipating.

He stirred and twitched. I had to clasp my hands to keep from reaching out to him as I watched and waited. After a second, a sliver of yellow eye showed, then two, and his ears flickered.

“Cornelius?” I said gently.

“Foss,” he said. His voice was rough. He licked his dry nose, showing a sharp point of a tooth.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so.” He stretched out his back paws experimentally and only then realized he was in the arms of the sorcerer. He started a little, but I heard the beginning rumbles of a purr.

“Cornelius.” I reached out my hand and stroked him under the chin. His eyes closed to little slits of pleasure. “Thank you.”

“I have not had a chance to examine him fully,” said Sylvester, “but he may have been hurt internally. Cats are good at hiding such things.”

“I feel fine,” said Cornelius.

I cupped the cat’s little head in my palm, my heart swelling with love and rage. “He had better be all right, or ...” I realized what a ridiculous statement that was. “Well, he had just better be all right, that’s all.”

Sylvester released Cornelius gently, near the ground, and the cat started washing himself vigorously. He made a face and spluttered some loose fur from his tongue. “Tastes funny,” he said.

“Like magic?”

“And ash.” He shook himself vigorously. He seemed to be returning rapidly to his old self. “Now what?”

“We’re in the Other House,” I said. “We need to get out into the city, and then find the king and the sorceresses. With any luck, they haven’t yet ridden out.”

“I had no idea this place was still here, underneath,” said the sorcerer, looking around at the wood and plaster.

“Not for much longer,” said Cornelius.

He wasn’t wrong. The place was creaking and cracking like a ship in a high storm. The final demise of the House seemed to have sucked the last bit of strength from its beams and buttresses, and I had the feeling that if we didn’t hurry, we’d be buried under them. It seemed as if the vines were the only things holding it up.

“Yes,” said Sylvester, shaking his head a little as if to clear it. “Come.”

He reached out his hand to me, and after a moment, I took it. Even after all that excitement, it was cool and dry in mine. I fought the urge to take mine back and wipe it on my skirt.

We ran. I did my best to keep up with the sorcerer’s long stride, but it was a struggle, especially after having to push my way through the tunnel. I wasn’t sure how much more my body would put up with. The cracking, occasional crash, and shower of dust gave my feet the added fuel they needed, though.

Even the vines were dying, shriveling and browning as we ran, then snapping underfoot, dry and parched. We made it out into the street and kept running, hearing the sounds of destruction behind us, until we were far enough that it felt safe to turn and look.

I looked at the place where the House had been and saw the Other House—the dusty, ramshackle old mansion—back where it belonged.

Like a tree that had been long colonized by twisting vines, it looked brittle and dead. Cornelius and I exchanged glances, remembering our first time fighting through the vines and cobwebs.

As I watched, it started to collapse into itself as an ordinary, rickety building collapses, creaking and crashing and sending up puffs of elderly dust.

The magic of the House had been supporting it in some way, I suppose, even while it had been shoved into that magical void, and with that support gone, the old building could no longer stand.

Even the twisted vines, so full of juice and malice, fell with it. I could smell their sap as they snapped. We stood and watched as it disintegrated—the sorcerer’s House and the old mansion it had inhabited, both now gone forever.