19. Instruments of Magic #3
They may have created the fog that obscured me, but now they’ve lost me in it.
Suddenly a burst of light cuts through the vapor. I freeze amid the popping and crackling sound, looking toward the sudden illumination even as the brightness fades and disappears, the air returning to fog.
Then I hear something I do understand.
It’s unmistakable. A human voice. Deep and undeniably male. “You, there, girl. Don’t be afraid.”
It’s a man. Alive. A survivor?
My pulse flutters against my throat.
A man, but he cannot be speaking to me. Humans don’t see me. They definitely do not speak to me.
I peer into the milky vapor as though I will find someone there, materializing through the mist like a dream come alive.
A few moments pass. Nothing. No one. And yet the sound of that voice still rings in my head. Someone is clearly not . . . dead. There is a survivor in the vicinity of fog and smoke and ash, and he is talking to me.
He sees me.
My mind struggles with this, my heart beating harder and faster, threatening to burst from my chest that already hurts and aches.
Perhaps my curse was lifted?
It’s too much to believe, to dare hope, but maybe, just maybe the witch finally put an end to the spell she cast after all this time, in this moment of destruction and death and misery.
Perhaps she decided I had been tormented enough and ended the curse in a flash of compassion.
Or . . .
What if she is dead? As dead as everyone else in the ruins of my life.
A small, breathy gasp escapes me at this. She could be dead. That’s certainly one way to end a curse. The one who cast the curse could be no more.
I quickly cover my mouth with my trembling fingers, stifling the sound at the sudden realization, at the possibility . . .
I’d been consumed with the thought of her over the years. My anonymous, faceless tormentor. I’d envisioned a witch living hidden away in some secret location deep in the woods that I had yet to discover. What if I was wrong?
Could she have been in the village during the attack? Powerful and yet powerless to stop the descending claws and fangs and fire?
Could she have been living in Isstad as one of my neighbors all along? This whole time? A witch among us, blending in, wreaking her damage? Seeing me and pretending not to, relishing in my suffering? Isn’t that what witches do? According to lore, they foment mischief and misfortune.
If she is truly dead, then I am truly free.
My hope dies swiftly, fleeting as a shooting star as I stand surrounded by death, drowning in grief.
Free. Only to die at the hands of these monsters?
Not so free.
Not unless one considers death a freedom. And I suppose some would . . . some do.
No. No. Fuck that.
Everything inside me rallies in resistance at the notion. Not me. I did not finally break free of my curse to die now.
The man’s deep burr comes again: “Don’t run, girl. I’ll help you.”
I tremble and I’m not sure whether it’s the voice—all deep and rumbly and so low I feel it under my skin—or the reality that someone is addressing me at last, finally, seeing me and offering help.
I open my mouth to reply to this other person—the first to speak to me in years—but then I recall what else is out there. Predators who would hear me and follow the sound of my voice.
I close my lips, sealing them tightly, determined to not alert them to my location in the thick swarm of fog.
I cannot speak. Not even a whisper. I don’t dare it.
Instead, I press on, slipping and gliding through the fog like a carp in one of the ice ponds beyond the village where I used to fish with my father and brothers until my nose went numb.
I leave the beasts behind. Their growls and tromping feet grow more and more distant.
But he stays close, his voice trailing me as though linked to me by an invisible thread, his hushed words lifting my skin to gooseflesh.
“Where are you? Don’t run. We can help each other.”
I flinch, willing the man to stop talking so loudly lest he be discovered and ended by one of the monsters in the night.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t quit. His voice remains near . . . behind me, a clinging tether, and frustration flashes through me. Damn fool. Is he trying to get himself killed? Get me killed?
He moves with no care for stealth, his steps heavy, his breath audible huffs in my ears.
He follows me, and that still strikes me as incredible, impossible—that he sees me and knows I exist.
When he next speaks, I can’t help it.
I spin around, hissing into the opaque swirl around us, exercising my voice for someone who can hear me for the first time in a decade. “Hold your tongue! Do you want them to hear you? To find you and kill you? To kill us both?”
There’s a long pause . . . a beat that feels like an endless echo in my head.
Somewhere in the fog the dragons go silent, obviously listening for us, and I feel a flash of anger at him, at myself, that I broke my silence.
Fear punches through me as the silence stretches.
My heart ceases to pump, and I know, somehow, I have miscalculated.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.