Chapter 3 #3
Then again … Audra smiled at the memory.
There was one child who’d stayed at Fernwell years ago, back when Audra was a child herself.
The boy had told a tale of a drunk who rowed out to the Mist, just to test it for himself.
According to that very creepy child—now that she was thinking about it—the drunk’s whole body turned itself inside out the moment he passed into the Mist, revealing his pink and glistening innards to the moonlight, and yet, though he’d perished, his body had rowed him back to shore.
The disturbing little boy had even claimed he’d seen the inside-out monster the man had become with his own eyes while visiting a museum with his parents—said he could see the food he’d eaten and everything, all proud, with his hands on his hips and a morbid expression on his round face.
Audra had called him a liar, and not just because she didn’t want to believe him (she had to admit, the idea of a body moving on its own, without its person, its soul, to make it do so, was fascinating), but, at the time, she hadn’t known what a museum was, and the idea had sounded made up to her—as if there was such a place that kept men-turned-monsters on display just for disturbed little boys to look at whenever they pleased.
The thought had been so absurd she couldn’t grasp it.
After she called him a liar, she’d pushed him a little, just for good measure, and ran to find her mother, determined to hide behind Aisha’s skirts until his family had departed.
And yet, for all her blustering about not believing his story, Audra had slept in her parents’ bed for a week after that, haunted by the thought of the Mist turning her into an inside-out monster too.
The Mist hadn’t bothered her before that boy.
It had always simply been there. As much a part of the world as the sea or sky.
She’d always enjoyed the slice of harbor visible from her window.
The sparkling Salt Hollow Bay … the ships coming and going …
and the bone-white Mist just beyond it all, which stretched upward, blending sky and sea.
But suddenly, she couldn’t bear to see it.
Aisha had been forced to tack Audra’s curtains to the windowpane, lest they shift and the Mist come into view.
Now, at twenty-three, she could gaze upon the Mist without shivering; she was doing it right now and wasn’t bothered at all. She also knew what a museum was.
In theory. She had yet to visit one.
But she knew enough to begrudgingly admit (though not in front of that boy if he ever returned) that an inside-out drunkard who messed with magic would be exactly the kind of thing a museum would display.
The Mist might be poisonous, but as far as Audra was concerned, that was where the magic ended.
Yet, it was surprising that such rumors sprouted from it; it was the only remnant of magic remaining on the continent of Khaveah.
And the only thing that all eight kingdoms had ever managed to agree on.
It was simply a tool. Powerful, impenetrable, and unnatural, yes …
but it wasn’t the kind of spell that would alter a person’s physiology completely.
If the power of the Mist were any more complex, the human kings, queens, and emperors of Khaveah would’ve found a way over the last few thousand years to make it go away.
That was the thing about humans.
They invariably all despised magic.
Audra raised a hand to her forehead and squinted against the high afternoon sun. She’d thought for a moment that there was movement in the haze—a darkness marring the blanket of white. But as quickly as she’d seen it, the shadow disappeared.
But … was the wall of fog higher than usual?
Normally, the Mist raised only a few ship masts higher than a bird could fly. But something was different today; it looked taller, even where she sat on the roof of the inn, positioned on the edge of the tallest cliff in Salt Hollow.
Movement in the Mist again. There one second. Gone the next. Audra’s hair raised on the back of her neck.
The Mist looked like it was breathing, swelling.
Audra leaned in, her hands clamped to the ledge of the roof, cracked shingles biting into her palms, as a cold sweat broke out across her brow.
It was expanding.
Her heart leaped into her throat.
“Forgotten gods of old,” she whispered.
At this rate, if it kept swelling, it would soon overtake the vessels trawling the deep waters outside of the crescent-shaped harbor.
And the ships noticed it too; she watched as they came about, opening their sails, hurtling away from the dense, viscous fog.
But even though the wintery wind was on their side, blowing straight toward the harbor, filling the boats’ sails, seemingly swept along by gods who had long ago abandoned them …
It was only a few heartbeats before the farthest boat from shore, so small in the distance it resembled one of the wooden toy boats she used to play with in the bath, was swallowed whole.
The wind whipped away Audra’s cry as she scrambled backward, her gaze locked onto the wall of fog looming closer.
She crawled backward until she fell through her open window, landing on her bed.
She rolled off the toppled planters, kneeling on crushed stems and leaves and scattered soil.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, she slammed the window shut and latched the rusted lock.
For the first time in thousands of years, magic had returned to Salt Hollow.