Chapter Eight
CHAPTER
Eight
Thea crept through the trees by the light of the full moon, hanging suspended in the dark cloth of the sky like an orb. She paused for a second to stare at it; its glow never failed to soothe Thea’s nerves, to calm her racing thoughts.
But not tonight. Tonight, for the second time, she had refused payment to change a woman’s fate, biting her tongue hard enough to draw blood in an effort not to ask the price.
She needed to know if Jasper had been deceiving her all these years and there were no consequences to not taking a price. Now, only time would tell.
A headache skulked across Thea’s temples.
She needed to focus on her task: mushroom picking.
She still wasn’t certain exactly what she would need for Malek’s key, but she figured she might as well gather some of the easier ingredients now.
Fishing her journal out of her cloak pocket, she looked over the notes she’d copied from her Compendium:
Silver spot-dapples? Excellent for locating and finding – like a key that draws you to the correct spot.
She’d copied the drawing, too. Silver spot-dapples were named for their cap, dappled with white spots that glowed as if they had been painted with molten starlight. She’d have to tread deep into the forest for them.
As Thea walked between the big hoary trees, all twisted trunks and eyes that peered back at her through their knots, she pondered the key.
She still had no idea how to collect half the items on her list, nor how to create a physical object with the power of fate itself, but she was determined to try.
And she would have to hurry: Malek needed this for his sister’s sake, and soon.
Thea wandered deeper into the moonlight-silvered forest. A gust of wind lifted her hair, and she relished the wildness of it all as an owl hooted in the distance.
She filled her pockets with some basic ingredients she needed to start restocking the apothecary: nettles, a lost wolf’s tooth, shiny owl feathers, rosehips and elderberries.
But then the surrounding woods fell silent.
There were no birdcalls tossed from branch to branch, no rustle in the fallen leaves of small mammals harvesting their berries, nor of the trees themselves, shifting in the wind.
Realising with a start that she’d been thinking too hard to pay attention to her route, Thea turned, trying to gather her bearings, but the forest looked the same no matter which way she looked.
Every view it presented to her screamed one thing: she was lost.
Footsteps sounded behind her. Thea whirled.
A white stag stared at Thea with pure white eyes. The forest began to hum, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. She could taste it in the back of her throat: oh-so similar to Jasper’s power.
The Crossroads must be near. Thea scanned her environs, searching for anything else out of the ordinary, nerves clustering in the pit of her stomach.
Thea usually found her best potion ingredients at the Crossroads, where other realms rubbed against theirs, their magic bleeding through, making everything grow bigger and wilder and more dangerous.
Realms like Jasper’s. Thea wondered if he missed it, or if he was happy in the grand townhouse he kept in the oldest corner of Prague, nestled in the streets twining up to the castle.
She’d visited only once, some five years ago, when she’d sent him a raven asking for help to unpick a moral dilemma; a man who’d asked for a woman to acquiesce to his every demand.
Jasper had summoned her to his townhouse, though they met outside, where he’d told her that she should trust her instincts and never weave fate with doubt in her heart.
Pushing Jasper out of her head, Thea decided to follow the seam of the Crossroads through the forest until she’d reorientated herself.
With that thought, her panic softened into intrigue: what curiosities might she find in this unexplored part of the forest?
A rabbit bearing antlers of bone darted past, making her jump.
Half a step away, she noticed something peculiar: the air was misted under the moonlight. It swirled together like the eye of a storm. She lifted her lantern higher, and lowered her head to look through. Was that a – turret?
Thea’s chest convulsed: what was she doing? Standing there in the forest, peering into another world. Yet, something compelled her to reach out a hand, and when her fingers touched the swirl, they passed straight through, disappearing from sight.
Thea gasped, hurrying back, her shoe dislodging a carpet of moss and revealing something glowing beneath.
With the toe of her boot, Thea pushed the moss further back, revealing a cluster of mushrooms. Their caps were silver spotted.
She checked them against her drawing with a shaking hand: a perfect match.
Pocketing her journal, she plucked a handful, wrapping them in a small cloth and putting them in her other cloak pocket for safe keeping.
As she followed the seam of the Crossroads, the trees grew thicker and wilder, the undergrowth a snarl of roots and thorns that threatened to trip her, and the hum deepened.
This part of the forest was thick with magic that was strange and unknown, and she was lost in the middle of it.
Unease tasted like bile, creeping up her throat.
Then she heard it: voices.
‘—in the Magic Quarter.’
Thea snuffed out her lantern. She crept closer, as quiet as she could manage in her old leather boots, the woollen dress she wore for her midnight wanderings dragging across ferns and brambles until she stopped to yank her hems up.
‘All it took was a whisper in the ear of one of the Hunters in Prague that magic was flourishing in his city, under his nose, and he’s snapped into action.’
Thea pressed a hand over her mouth, quieting her breath.
‘Pan Novak does seem positively riled,’ an unfamiliar voice drawled. ‘As does the other Hunter you’ve enlisted – and he’s a city councillor as well.’
‘They’re puppets dancing on my strings,’ a second, female, voice said. ‘The wheels are turning and everything has already been set in motion: the Magic Quarter will close soon, and then it will be ripe for my picking.’
A wave of dizziness washed over Thea as all the blood drained out of her.
It was unsurprising that the Magic Quarter had been targeted: magic bred power which bred greed which ran straight to resentment.
It was dangerous to be different. But who were these strangers discussing the Quarter in the deepest part of the forest in the witching hour? Thea needed to hear more.
‘You’re lucky you found a way through those wards, I was beginning to think you’d never weave a path through,’ the first voice laughed.
Were they fate-weavers? Craning her neck to better listen, Thea hadn’t realised she’d moved until a twig cracked beneath her boot.
‘Someone’s here,’ the second voice snapped.
Thea picked up her skirts and ran. Her heart-spell flickering, her lungs shuddering, she fled through the trees until the trees stopped humming, until the plants no longer glowed, until the forest blinked and Thea crashed to a halt, gasping for air.
Someone was manipulating fate.
A pinprick of light danced into view.
It was a blushing red-pink, the same shade as the fruit Talibah had brought back from her last voyage: pomegranate.
The light was joined by a second, then a third, then more than Thea could count.
She swivelled, failing to keep track of them as they surrounded her.
They looked like something from a faerie story: bludi?ka.
Will o’ the wisps. Thea had read about them in a tome she’d found on the Lantern’s shelves.
Some tales said they were the lost souls of those who had met an unfortunate end, others that they were members of the fae, marsh tricksters with a malevolent streak.
The voices she’d heard had woven fate to send them after her.
Thea peered closer at the nearest light. It flared a deep crimson before springing forward with a hiss, its light parting to reveal a dark maw, framed with teeth. Crammed in above, a pair of empty eye sockets stared back at Thea.
Biting back a scream, she ran.
The lights gave chase. Flickering brightly, each pink spark bled red. A warning.
Clenching her fingers into fists, nails cutting scythes into her palms, Thea banished her pain and fear, looking to fate to guide her home.
Yet when she reached out to tweak the threads, they would not yield. Whoever was manipulating fate, sending those creatures after her, held a power that Thea did not.
She ran faster.
The lights burnt brighter.
With each beat of her boots against the forest floor, fear drummed through Thea.
The bludi?ka were on her heels now, hissing and snapping their teeth as they neared.
Thea could not outrun them, so instead she stopped and turned.
Thrusting out her hands, she buried them deep in the loom of fate, shrouding the forest, and pulled.
The forest shuddered. Leaves fell from trees, birds took wing in fright, squirrels and woodland mice and foxes fled. And the bludi?ka hesitated, regarding her anew. Her fingers still entwined with those glimmering threads, Thea glared at them.
‘One more step and I will crush you,’ she hissed.
They retreated. Their crimson lights fading to pink, they lifted the edge of a blanket of moss and vanished beneath. Not waiting to chance anything else, Thea ran once more, the fistful of threads still in her hand leading her back onto the path out of the forest.
When Thea returned to Stiltskin’s Apothecary, dawn was laying siege to night. The door was unlocked. And the apothecary’s namesake was standing inside, his back to her.
Thea closed her eyes for a beat, tiredness gnawing at her bones.