Chapter Fourteen Idris
Chapter Fourteen
Idris
Cold drops land on my face, and I claw my way out of a dreamless sleep like a drowning man seeking air.
I’m in my room, breathing hard, and my eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness.
The fire has died down, and Kit is a shadow, stepping back from my bed.
My body heats as I realize she must have been leaning over me.
“Sorry,” she says. “You weren’t waking up.”
“Right.” I blink, trying to clear my thoughts. “That’s fine.”
We made this plan—for her to wake me just before midnight, in the hope that if I started the night conscious I might be able to stay that way.
I give True’s head a pat and sit up. My body aches, and my head feels heavier than a millstone.
I’m still gathering my strength to stand when the cathedral bells toll.
A tight binding streaks through my muscles, pulling me to attention, and my head swims into a fog. I am up. I am changing. I am going to the door.
Someone grabs my hand and words buzz, muffled and distant. It takes effort to concentrate on them.
“… describe it? What are you feeling?”
Kit. Kit’s voice. I run a hand over my face, and I’m surprised how cold I am. Outside. We’re outside and walking toward the harbor.
“I feel cold,” I say, the words slurring.
Her grip on me tightens. “Yes? What about—the ground under you? What does that feel like?”
The ground seems very far away, entirely disconnected from me. My feet ought to be hurting, but I can’t feel them. I can sense the slope of the hill under me, though, so I answer, “Steep. Firm.”
“All right.” Kit holds something up—bulky fabric. My greatcoat. “Can you put this on?”
I take it without stopping and swing it over my shoulders.
My legs itch to keep moving. I barely feel awake, and it is enough to concentrate on staying here without trying to stop the invisible force that pushes me forward.
I ought to be colder than I am, or I ought to feel warmer with the coat.
But everything outside of me is a haze. I focus instead on the weight of the coat, the brush of the fabric against my arms. True nudges my leg with his nose and a little more of the world becomes clear.
My grasp on time and place is disconcerting.
One moment, I am walking down the hill toward the town.
Then I seem to sink into black and emerge at the edge of the water, my yole at my feet.
Then I sink again and wake at the crest of a swell.
But before we drop, the water smooths into a glassy path.
We glide forward with only the slightest rocking.
I run my hands along the tiller, concentrating on the firmness of the wood against my palms. I am here, awake.
I try to settle into my body, to feel every part of me.
But my spirit struggles to stay. I feel the command of the enchantment—a rod directing my movements.
My thoughts slip toward blankness. It would be easier to fall into the empty place.
Holding myself together takes all my energy.
“Still here?” Kit asks, leaning around the mast to look at me.
I nod. “So far.”
She smiles. The clouds are thin tonight, and moonlight gently illuminates her face.
I’m not entirely sure how to think of her, how to interpret the way a little warmth sneaks over me under her bright look.
It is Kit, but in Catharine’s body. Should I want to reach across the space between us and touch the dimple in her cheek?
The thought jars me. I pull my gaze away, giving myself a firm command to stop it.
Whatever it is. Dimple curiosity? I want to groan at my own foolishness.
With everything that’s happening, I shouldn’t have it in me to be so stupid.
I’m not a lad pining after some young lass.
I’m in the thick of a curse and being danced to death by the Hidden Folk.
“We should talk,” Kit bursts out suddenly. “It might help. But I’m not sure what to talk about.”
“I’m not good for making conversation right now.” My hand on the tiller brings the bow left. I don’t know where I’m taking us, but my muscles apparently sense the way. “Ask me something.”
She looks down at my dog curled between us. “Why did you call him True?”
I reach out and let True lick my fingers. My mind feels sluggish. “You know the story of the babe, the wolf, and the hound?”
Kit tilts her head. “Is it one of your folktales, or is it true?”
“Is there a difference?” My tone comes out more seriously than I intended, and my question takes us both by surprise.
“The way I heard it,” Kit says slowly, “there was once a king who loved his firstborn. And he had a hound, who loved the baby just as much. But one day, the hound would not come away when called for the hunt. The king returned that night and found his son’s nursery torn apart, splattered with blood.
The hound came out from under an overturned crib, his mouth covered in red.
In a rage of grief, the king struck the hound down. ”
I nod. “But then a baby began to wail.”
“The baby was fine,” Kit continues. “The king found his son well and whole, lying beneath the crib. And beside the baby—the corpse of the wolf who had tried to consume him. The hound had protected the child, but it was too late. The hound was dead.”
“My father told me that story when I was a boy,” I tell her. “He’d say, ‘The hound was true to the end—it was the man who judged too quickly and made a mistake that couldn’t be undone.’ Father thought it a good lesson for me. I was too impulsive.” I pause. “Well, I am still.”
Kit leans forward to pat True’s back. “So you named your dog after the one in the story?”
“I loved that story.” I look down at True, with his wide, dark eyes, and he thumps his tail. “I always thought the dog deserved better.”
“It’s a sad story.” Kit pauses in thought. “I wonder if it was the king or the baby prince who told it eventually.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the ones who live who tell the stories.” Kit pushes back a lock of hair. “Well, unless it’s just a work of fiction. But Cath—my sister always says there’s something real in a folktale.”
I shrug. I hadn’t considered it before.
After a beat of silence, Kit goes on, “There was a woman in the Hidden Lands with her feet bound in iron. You said she has something to do with your curse?”
We talked about this earlier. Father would probably be annoyed, but I see no harm in telling her what Speir showed me. Kit is deep enough in my family’s secrets to know. Her gaze remains trained on my hands, her brows drawn together in thought as I tell her.
“That’s different from the story I heard about Mervyn,” she says when I finish. “I wonder if he found the selkie before the pirate princess.”
I hadn’t thought about “Mervyn’s Impossible Tasks” in some time. It’s a story every child in Skyare knows. Thinking out loud, I repeat, “It’s the ones who live who tell the stories.”
My hand on the tiller alters our course, the compass in my chest realigning with some unseen beacon. My thoughts blur again—True, sitting in front of me with his ears perked up and alert; True as a puppy, small enough to curl up on my chest after his first bath—haze and shadow, memory and dark.
This time, it is my own voice that startles me back to the present. I hear myself shouting, “Open, black cliff, and let the young prince in and out with his boat and his hound.”
“And his lady before, and his brother within!” Kit adds quickly.
A terrifying, marvelous sight comes into focus before my eyes.
Cliffs cut into the sky, their face shadowed from the moon, and we are already near enough that I would not be able to save the boat if I tried.
But then a jagged split thunders down the space just in front of us, and stones slide away to reveal a hollow between two looming sides.
My hand guides us straight for it, and I am breathless with wonder as we narrowly slip past rocks and whirlpools.
In the rationality of daylight, I would never attempt this gap.
But the enchantment sings in my veins, and I find myself grinning as we steer into the cave, slicing between dozens of hazards that would dash us to flotsam and chum.
The next thing I know, I am on firm ground. Sand—then rock—and my thoughts are wisps that trail away.
Music and turn and spin and touch and breathless and fall and Abram—
I blink, struggling my way back. Abram leans toward me, and I’m on the ground—no, on some sort of couch.
A mermaid grabs my chin, forces my head up, and pours something thick and sweet into my mouth.
I cough on it, almost choking. Abram’s hand catches my arm, and he’s speaking quickly.
The glass moves away, and I struggle to catch my breath.
“Hey,” Abram says, his over-large eyes searching my face from behind his glasses. The purple-pink light makes his skin look bruised. “Are you …?”
I try to nod. “I’m all right.”
It’s such a lie, I laugh at myself—but it turns into a hacking cough.
My muscles feel unwound, and my bare feet are raw.
The drink, whatever it was, sizzles through me, lighting me up with restless heat.
Even though I don’t feel like I can stand, I find myself pushing to my feet.
Someone is taking my hand and pulling me forward.
I want to collapse into the blankness again to escape the pain of my battered body.
Abram tightens his grip on my other arm. I’d forgotten he was here.
“Let him have a moment,” Abram says to the mermaid, his tone harsher than I’ve heard before. “For goodness’ sake, let him rest.”
The mermaid, who now holds my hand, lifts her eyebrows.
Her appearance swirls in my addled mind—her skin is a striking black, like rocks left by old lava flows, and she has raven hair tinted blue hanging in narrow braids down to her knees.
My mouth goes dry, and a part of me wants to lean forward into her inviting smile.
But Abram pinches me, and I flinch back toward my brother.