Chapter 18 #2
Tabitha hesitated, shrugged, and began.
She lit the candles. She touched droplets from the abalone bowl of water to their foreheads. She gave them each a stone, smooth on one side and jagged with crystals on the other, to hold in their palms. She sprinkled hot ash from the fire over their hair.
‘Close your eyes,’ Tabitha told them, as she resumed her place by the fallen tree. ‘And speak with me.’
She began to chant. It was no language Gwen recognised, and though she was hardly an expert in linguistics, she got the feeling it was no language anyone else would have recognised either.
Gwen heard Isobelle join in, falteringly at first, until she began to get used to the strange sounds.
It took Gwen longer, but eventually the unfamiliar syllables became easier to speak, without having to concentrate so very much.
At first Gwen felt merely irritated – how was she meant to stay on guard for an intruder when she was chanting nonsense with her eyes closed?
And then, as the time stretched on, her irritation transmuted into an almost unbearable restlessness.
She cracked her eyes open, glancing at the surrounding woods, at Tabitha, and – lingering a little too long – at Isobelle.
Her hand itched to touch her sword, but she had a damn crystal in her hand instead.
She knew at any moment she would have to move, or else scream from frustration.
Nothing was happening. But, of course, that was to be expected. What good could chanting nonsense in the woods do?
God, I wish I had told Isobelle what the dragon did to me, the instant she ran to my side that night.
The thought came unbidden, and with it a rush of grief that nearly staggered Gwen. All this time and effort spent trying to hide how it had violated her soul, hide it from the girl she loved, the only person who really knew Gwen, really saw Gwen … all she had to do was tell her.
Her lips were still forming Tabitha’s chant, her voice still pouring forth sound.
A chill ran through Gwen, taking the place of that sudden, strange wave of emotion. What was it Tabitha had said?
This spell may seek out deception here …
A change had been spreading through Gwen’s thoughts as she chanted. Her mind had been narrowing, focusing, drawing inward to the core of her. Now, as their voices rose higher, the words tumbling faster, her body began to sense a shift, too.
A heat, a tingling, like the first wave of sensation through a half-frozen limb warming by a fire. A quivering, golden light, as of sunlight reflecting off a thousand shivering aspen leaves – and yet Gwen’s eyes were closed. She could see the light anyway, feel the source of the warmth.
Magic, her mind said wildly, too lost in the rhythm of the chanting to find any thread of scepticism to hold on to.
The feeling had a direction, a specific location in the space to Gwen’s left. The sensation was as visceral as the instinct that told her, in a fight, where her enemy was without having to look. Only this time, that instinct told her who the source of the sensation was.
The energy was coming from Isobelle.
A cry split the chanting, and a heavy, crashing thud. Gwen wrenched her eyes open and looked first at Isobelle, who was looking back at her, eyes wide and luminous, but as startled as Gwen was.
It was Tabitha who had interrupted the ritual, having staggered back against her makeshift altar and knocked over several of the objects on it, including two of the candles.
Gwen hurried forward and stamped out their flames, before taking a closer look at Tabitha.
Her own heart was pounding, and it felt like she had just woken from the most impossibly beautiful dream.
She blinked hard and forced herself to focus.
‘It’s not working,’ Tabitha gasped, looking as dazed as Gwen felt. ‘It wants to work, but … there’s a blockage in the way. A secret still. One of you is hiding something.’
Gwen looked at Isobelle. Isobelle looked at Gwen. Between the moonlight above and the fire at Isobelle’s back, her expression was impossible to read.
‘Please excuse us a moment,’ Isobelle said to Tabitha, tilting her head to summon Gwen off to one side. Her manner was as polite and gracious as ever – her voice was shaking as though her entire world had upended itself.
They went some distance, until the campfire was nothing more than a dim orange glow, and Tabitha was out of earshot.
‘Did you feel that?’ Isobelle asked, the question bursting from her, her eyes burning with excitement.
Gwen shivered. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘How can I know what’s my own mind, and what’s … something else?’
Isobelle made an impatient sound in her throat. ‘Because I felt it too, that’s how.’ She drew a quaking breath. ‘All right, spill. What are you still hiding?’
Gwen took a step back, astonishment and defensiveness mingling into outrage. ‘Me? Why do you think I’m the one hiding things? You’re the one who had that letter from your parents all this time—’
‘But you know about that now!’ hissed Isobelle. ‘It isn’t secret anymore. It has to be to do with your nightmares, doesn’t it? You never talk about them, you never explain what happened between you and the dragon in that moment it held you paralysed – what about it haunts you still.’
‘What could that have to do with any of this?’ Gwen retorted, even as fear clenched tightly around her heart. God help her, but Isobelle was too smart.
No, she just knows you. Sees you.
‘Gwen—’
‘You’ve been looking at me strangely ever since we arrived in this wretched town,’ Gwen blurted quickly. ‘I thought it was the letter, but if anything, today you’re only treating me even more oddly—’
‘Because you said you’d take me back to Darkhaven and then leave!’ Isobelle had forgotten to keep her voice down, and the last word rang through the trees like the wailing of a frightened child.
Gwen stood, panting and staring, hearing her own words thrown back at her. There were tears in Isobelle’s eyes. Abruptly, Gwen’s own fears scattered, and she exhaled a ragged breath. ‘God, Isobelle, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’
Isobelle’s tears spilled over and glinted on her cheeks. ‘Really?’
Gwen reached out, and Isobelle moved instantly into her arms. Gwen tightened her hold until Isobelle’s pent breath went out in a soft whoosh.
‘There is nothing,’ whispered Gwen, ‘nothing that you could do or say that would stop me from … from …’
From loving you, she tried to say. The words wouldn’t come, but they ricocheted around inside her body like captive birds trying to escape a cage. She focused on the sensation of her own fingers tracing gentle patterns against Isobelle’s shoulder blades. The silk cloak did feel glorious.
And yet a part of Gwen pulled back. Ordered her to stay wary. For if Isobelle withheld a truth as earth-shattering as that letter from her parents because of Gwen’s nightmares … how might she react if she knew what those nightmares were really about?
If she knew that the dragon had broken something in Gwen forever?
Isobelle had pulled away enough to look up at her. Less than two inches separated them in height, but she had a way of gazing up at her that could melt every bone in Gwen’s body. ‘You did mean it, at the time,’ she whispered.
Gwen’s heart ached. She had meant it. A part of her still meant it. That part of her wanted to push Isobelle away, hold her at arm’s length, make sure she wouldn’t see the fears tangling inside her like the overgrown roots of a dying tree.
But a much larger part of her could not bear to see Isobelle in such distress.
‘I was mad at you,’ Gwen muttered. ‘I don’t really know how to be mad at you yet, I haven’t had much practice. It’s like trying to be mad at the sun.’
Isobelle let out an odd, inelegant sound halfway between a snort and a gasp for breath. ‘What a thing to say.’
‘We’ll get better at it.’
Isobelle’s brow furrowed. ‘Better at being mad at each other?’ she asked sceptically.
Gwen traced her fingertips along the lock of hair that waved down Isobelle’s temple. ‘Well … yes, I suppose. Among other things.’
Isobelle flashed her a tremulous smile, her gaze travelling down Gwen’s face, slowly, lingeringly, as if making up for the last day, during which neither of them had looked at each other very much at all.
And even then, there was still a shadow in her eyes.
They could pretend all was well again. But it wasn’t.
Isobelle’s smile faded as her gaze lifted. ‘Gwen … you weren’t wrong. You said I’ve been looking at you strangely, and … there’s a reason. Do you remember that sachet we found in your pocket?’
Gwen blinked at her, trying to think her way through this total non sequitur; her mind suddenly felt like it was swimming through thickened honey. ‘At the welcome banquet? Kind of. Why?’
‘Well, I—’
She got no further. A desperate, terrified scream rent the quiet of the forest.
Gwen and Isobelle stared at each other, eyes wide with sudden horror and surmise – and then the scream came again, this time horribly cut off mid-cry.
Gwen let go of Isobelle and took off through the forest, calling back over her shoulder for Isobelle to follow.
She could no longer see the orange glow of the fire, but she remembered which direction they’d come and recognised the trees she passed.
Her sword was in her hand, its weight not quite right, different from her other sword, but ready.
She burst into the clearing. The fire had been kicked apart and half smothered with dirt, and was now smoking and hissing, sending feeble gasps of smoke up towards the moon overhead. The objects on the altar had been scattered, the sigil in the dirt smeared out of existence.
Isobelle was close on Gwen’s heels, and stopped abruptly as she saw the chaos. ‘Where is Tabitha?’ she whispered urgently.
Gwen swore, slamming her sword back into its sheath, heart sickening. She’d been so focused on Isobelle, on the idea that their unknown enemy would come for her or Gwen, that she hadn’t realised who needed her protection most that night.
If someone believed that magic might hinder their plans … why target Isobelle or Gwen, when they could target the only living witch within ten miles of Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea?
Tabitha was gone.