21. Intro to Entropic Reactions
Lake water, dark and thick with sludge, crashed forward, carrying me and Ciarán in a tangle of limbs. I slammed into something solid—Linsey’s rotsbane, I think—but careened away before she could snag me with her claws.
The water pulled at me from every angle, and my grip on Ciarán loosened and slipped, and even though I knew I was probably about to be slammed into a canyon wall by an impossible amount of water and be killed instantly, I didn’t want to be alone when that happened.
But Ciarán continued to slip, his fingers scrambling for a grip on my hoodie as I tried to keep hold of the edges of his armor. I screamed for him, but acrid water that had been sitting at the bottom of a lake for too long filled my mouth and lungs, and Ciarán was getting harder to hold onto.
My fingers gave way, and my hoodie pulled taut around me, then slackened. I somersaulted through raging water and debris, then bounced off the canyon wall, though not hard enough to kill me. My hoodie tightened around my neck, and the dark lifted.
Raging water broke over my head and I got to see the star-studded sky and its dual moons one last time before unconsciousness claimed me.
I dreamed about Linsey. I dreamed about her swinging effigy in the forest when she’d tricked me into thinking she’d killed herself. I dreamed about the smug look on her face when I’d come out of that forest covered in twigs and dirt. I dreamed about the video she’d posted of my mom online.
I dreamed about her trying to say my name before Ferrin stuffed her full of volatile magick.
I dreamed about her face splitting and releasing the rotsbane underneath.
And I dreamed about her mother, a woman she’d no doubt inherited her bitter spirit from, screaming when her daughter refused to wake up in the morning, not knowing she was still alive in a parallel world but living out a fate worse than death.
A gentle lurching gait carried me into the waking world, and I opened my eyes to jade fur pressed against my face. Sun warmed my back, but when I pushed away from Una to come to a sitting position on her back, my front was still wet from the flood.
The world spun, twisting the surrounding moorland in a kaleidoscope of sky and flower-dotted heath.
“Careful.” An arm wrapped around my waist from behind, steadying my position.
“Linsey.” It was all I could muster through my dry mouth and throat.
Ciarán’s chest heaved against my back as he sighed. “The best we can do is hope she drowned.”
I bowed my head, hiding my face behind tangles of hair, and stared at the fur between Una’s shoulders.
I was afraid to close my eyes. If I did, I might see Linsey’s face just before she turned into a rotsbane, with eyes wide with recognition and fear even though she didn’t know what was about to happen to her.
“And if she didn’t drown, can we fix her?”
“No.”
Entropy was the theory of chaos. The universe was falling into disorder because disorder took less energy. Less magick.
It was why heat dispersed in a cold room. It was why metal left in the rain rusted. It was why Skal turned Magicians and Nightmares inside out.
The higher the entropy, the harder it was to reverse what had been done, because chaos was the natural order of the universe.
And that was exactly what Linsey’s transformation had been—a high entropy reaction that would be near impossible to reverse. It was a cold description of a brutal reality.
“So she’s dead. Back at home.” I buried my fingers in Una’s fur.
“Yes.”
“But her mom—”
“Let’s focus on catching up with the others.”
I nodded, vaguely wondering if Mom would hear the news, and if she did, if she’d be able to figure out what had probably happened.
“We didn’t drown,” I said, forcing myself to think about anything other than Linsey.
“You can thank Una for that.”
I leaned forward so that my face rested in the scruff of Una’s neck, both in thanks and because sitting upright was making the pounding in my head worse. “And Ferrin?”
“I don’t know.”
“We shouldn’t have tried to trick him. Linsey would be—”
I cut off when I felt the gentle weight of his hand against my back.
“He would’ve turned her into a rotsbane eventually, Wren. It’s not your fault.” He let the silence fester a moment, and then he pressed, “Is there anyone else from Keldori who might be in danger?”
I snorted. “No. I didn’t have many friends.”
“Good.”
My father was still in danger. Ciarán’s javelin had saved him from turning rotsbane this time, but Ferrin, if he survived the flood, could summon him again.
My stomach heaved, and Ciarán caught me as I lurched to the side and vomited over Una’s shoulder.
“You hit your head again,” he murmured, patting my back as I coughed up the last of my stomach bile. “If you didn’t need a Ceremender before, you definitely do now.”
I grunted in response and collapsed back against Una’s neck.
“Linsey,” I said again. “Can we save her? Is there a way?”
Ciarán sighed behind me.
“The answer is still no,” he said, though I hardly remembered asking the first time. “Focus on staying alive while I find you help for your head.”
I wasn’t sure how much time passed on Una’s back.
I flitted in and out of varying degrees of consciousness.
At one point, I opened my eyes and watched Ciarán walking beside me and Una.
His hair was down, brushing against his shoulders, and the stern set of his brow and chin made me close my eyes again and pretend to still be asleep.
Later, after the sun had set, he was behind me again, jostling against my back as Una continued forward.
There were more trees here, though their trunks were spindly and the undergrowth was sparse. Moonlight cut through their gnarled branches to cast intricate patterns on the lichen-laden ground. I watched them for a while before letting hazy half-sleep take me again.
“Wren!”
I woke to hands pulling me down off Una’s back and morning sun bright in my eyes.
“Careful,” Ciarán hissed.
“How the hell are you alive?” Iseult’s voice was too loud, and the sun was too bright. I tried to hide behind the musty folds of my hoodie sleeves, but Orla pried my arms away to better survey me.
Una laid down, and Orla helped me lay back against her green flank.
“Una swam us out,” Ciarán explained. “Do you have food?”
A warm, weighted something crawled into my lap, and I burrowed my fingers into Jonquil’s fur.
“She looks awful.” Orla’s voice wavered. “Wren, I’m sorry. This is my fault. I thought we were safe at the keep.”
“It’s fine,” Tiernan’s curt tone cut her apology off. My head swam, but I was able to put two and two together. Orla still didn’t know we’d lured Ferrin in on purpose. “Here. Give her water.”
The lip of a bottle pressed into my lips, and cool water slipped over my sandpaper tongue.
“Thank you,” I rasped. I tried to blink my friends into focus, and Tiernan and Orla’s faces swam into view. Then I thought about what they might look like if they were to change into rotsbane, and I closed my eyes again.
“We’re at the edge of the Opal Forest,” Iseult was saying somewhere overhead. “That there, that’s Willow’s Grave just beyond this valley.”
I opened my eyes, and my heart quickened at the sight of the valley full of lush trees.
After everything, I had no reason to be scared of the woods anymore. I’d faced so much worse. Maybe it was the fresh memory of Linsey’s transformation, but the thought of going through the forest made panic swirl in my discombobulated head.
The emerald forest canopy swayed in the wind that ran through the valley, but through the shifting foliage, bright flashes of glittering stone caught the late summer sun.
The movement of the leaves seemed stilted, and after staring a moment longer, I realized it was because the tree trunks themselves weren’t moving, only the green vegetation of their canopies.
“Forest?” The way my thoughts swirled just out of reach, the single word was all I could manage through the mental tether with Ciarán.
“Don’t worry.” Ciarán’s voice slid through the mess in my head, slippery and tinny, as if he were speaking from far away. “The Opal Forest of Willow’s Grave isn’t your typical woods.”
He took Jonquil and helped me back onto Una. I slumped back into my position against her neck.
“Already?” Orla asked. “Wren needs rest.”
“You were all too easy to track,” Ciarán grunted. “If Ferrin survived the flood, or if he had Caitria waiting nearby, they’ll be regrouping and following us soon. We’ll be safer in Willow’s Grave.”
“Caitria?” Tiernan repeated his sister’s name.
“She wasn’t with Ferrin,” Ciarán said darkly.
Orla looked up at me, but I nodded sloppily back at her.
“I’ll be fine,” I slurred.
“There’s healers at the citadel, I hope,” she mumbled.
We were finally out of the mountains, and the rest of Skalterra stretched ahead of us, visible from the grassy slope we descended. The strange forest glittered beneath us and extended to a faraway hill upon which the largest willow tree I’d ever seen spread against the horizon.
The tree trunks remained resolute as we approached the forest, and I caught another glimpse of a dazzling flash as the sun shifted between clouds. Curtains of willow-like branches hung in our path, their vines stirring in the breeze.
Ciarán pushed vines out of the way and Una passed through into the grassy shade of the trees.
I watched their trunks pass in a sleep daze.
While the bark grain was still visible in every tree, all of the wood of the forest had been turned to white stone.
Strips of bark flaked away in places to reveal glittering, iridescent slabs of gemstone underneath.
Creeping vines wove their up the trunks and across stone branches to decorate the dead forest in a false canopy.
“What do you think?” Ciarán asked in my head. He walked alongside Una with a hand on my shoulder to make sure I stayed in place.
“Can’t think,” I admitted, still struggling to communicate through the bond.
“Are you scared of the trees?”
I watched the flashes of the sun that filtered through the canopy play with the color of his dark hair. It reminded me of the way the trees kept showing off flashes of gemstone.
“No,” I replied.
“Because it isn’t a real forest?”
“Maybe.”
“They aren’t trees,” he explained. “They’re rocks.”
“Petrified,” I confirmed, blinking slowly at the nearest passing trunk. “With opal.”
“You like rocks.”
I tried to confirm, but was distracted watching Ciarán’s hair again.
The forest shadows lengthened with the passing day, and the exposed opal of the forest burned red in the light of the sunset. I drifted back to sleep at some point, but was woken up after nightfall when Ciarán pulled me into his arms from Una’s back.
“You’ll draw too much attention in the city. I’m sorry,” he murmured to the onchú.
I rolled my head into his chest, trying to dispel the pounding in my temples.
“She’s burning up.” Ciarán’s voice reverberated into my ear through his chest. “Come on, Wren. Stay with us.”
“I knew we should’ve rested,” Orla fretted nearby.
“She’ll be better the faster we find a healer.
” Ciarán’s gait swayed beneath me, and I lurched as he adjusted his grip.
I forced my eyes open and squinted at the massive wall ahead of us.
It was cut from a single stone, and I stared at the grooved pattern carved into its surface before realizing it was more bark grain.
“Can you hear me?” Ciarán asked in my head. I hummed back in response, unable to muster anything more. His pace quickened, and I closed my eyes again.
“The Northern Gate is closed!” an unfamiliar voice barked up ahead.
“We’re travelers!” Ciarán called back. “One of us is injured. Please, we need to enter Willow’s Grave.”
“The Southern Gate might help you,” the voice said lazily, “but it’s a bit of a walk.”
“We don’t have time. She might not—”
“If I say no one comes into Willow’s Grave through the Northern Gate, then no one comes into Willow’s Grave through the Northern Gate,” the man insisted. “But if you’re really that desperate, perhaps you can convince me.”
“Convince him?” Orla repeated. “We’ve already told him Wren is injured.”
“Orla,” Ciarán growled, “offer the man a Skal bottle.”
“An entire bottle?” Iseult said.
“Now, Orla,” Ciarán pressed.
Orla rustled beside us, and a gentle light pressed against my eyelids.
“Let us in, and it’s yours,” Ciarán announced.
The guard was silent as he thought, and then—
“All of it?”
“The whole bottle,” Ciarán assured him.
“Surely your friend’s life is worth more than one bottle of Skal.”
Iseult started to protest, but Orla was already pulling out a second bottle.
The gate guard laughed. “I don’t suppose she’s worth three bottles?”
“Two is all we have,” Tiernan said. “Unless you want a cat.”
“No!” Fana squeaked, and Jonquil meowed.
“Three bottles,” the guard said. “Southern Gate might be happy to take just the two, but there’s a healer not far from here once you’re inside.”
“We just restocked,” Orla whispered to the others. “We can spare another bottle if we have to.”
“This guy’s a bully,” Iseult hissed back. “If we keep giving him what he wants, he’ll keep asking for more.”
“Four bottles!” Ciarán’s chest vibrated against my skull as he called back to the guard. “That’s all we have.”
The guard laughed, and heavy wood grated against cobblestone. Ciarán jostled under me as he carried me over a small bridge and through the citadel gate.
“Orla, give the man his Skal.”
“It better not be cut with anything,” the guard warned.
“Pure Skal. I swear it on the Three Magicians,” Ciarán said. “You said there’s a healer nearby.”
“Sure, down a few streets that way. Look for the purple tapestry.”
Glass clinked as bottles were exchanged, and the guard laughed again.
Ciarán hitched me higher up his chest, and my eyes fluttered open.
Street lamps full of swirling, steamed Skal lit the tapestries that hung from walls and across the walkways.
Beyond their ornate patterns, curtains of vines and foliage hung from the glinting silhouette of a massive tree, occluding the darkening sky.
“Are you still with me, Blue?” Ciarán’s voice nudged at the back of my head.
I hummed back, and let the dark of his cloaks envelop me.