Chapter Eleven
A thaumaturgic geographer needs to be skilled
in mathematics, analytics, and running like hell.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
When Elodie was a child, she considered geography the most boring subject ever known to humankind. Traipsing endlessly around the countryside with her parents, dependent on the kindness of their various assistants to compensate for a lack of other children’s company, she’d sought entertainment in the splendors of nature, spending hours lying in the long grass dreaming as tiny winged insects flittered like sparks of wonder above her…rummaging through forest shadows…gathering wildflowers that she wove into crowns and necklaces more beautiful than jewels. But whenever the adults in her life looked up from their work and belatedly remembered her, they turned the grass-scented dreams into lessons on soil characteristics, tore the flowers apart to explain their components, and reduced nature’s magic to a series of numbers, charts, and long, somber conversations at dinner parties while she struggled to stay awake. For the first ten years of her life, geography equaled tedium.
And then they taught her how to fly.
—
The gleaming ray of thaumaturgic power streaming out from the monolith on the hilltop to the field below sang beneath Elodie’s feet as she raced along it, high above the meadows, angling steadily toward the ground. It was the sound of energy and wind and joy. It was exultant magic chiming with her every step. She had learned as a girl how to assess the intensity of these kinds of thaumaturgic beams, to calculate their density, and to make a sensible judgment as to whether they were safe enough, despite their bright translucence, to support her weight. The math went on inside her brain, effortlessly rapid, even as she ran right off the edge of the hill. But her spirit, empty of all good sense, just soared.
Air whooshed against her and she flung out her arms, palms facing forward to scoop the cool sweep of it, hair flying behind her, skirt billowing. The land blurred like a dream of green and gold. She closed her eyes, and life hollowed out to pure freedom, flashing with light through her inner darkness. Her heart seemed to expand as if it would become a new sun for the ensorcelled sky. Any moment, she might misstep and tumble to her death, but Elodie couldn’t find it in herself to fear. More than magic, she felt like she was running on sheer passion.
Only some four or five seconds later—barely any time at all, if you think about it, and therefore not completely reckless—she opened her eyes once more and saw Gabriel standing already on the ground, facing her with his arms crossed and exasperated frown in its usual place. Elodie could just imagine the safety regulations that were ticking over in his brain. She grinned, waving to him. And although he was too far away to hear, she just knew he responded with a tetchy “hm.”
The beam began to angle more steeply, wavering as its energy diminished. The field beneath looked old, rusty with fallen leaves, and extremely solid. Gravity cleared its throat officiously, and Elodie’s brain began calling out urgent instructions to be careful, sensible, and to slow her descent.
Woo-hoo! her spirit replied, urging her to go even faster. To outrun gravity. To defy the laws of physics with absolute impudence and hope they didn’t notice. After all, she was still alive after years of such behavior, and you couldn’t get a more logical argument that that.
(Elodie had read a little philosophy, here and there, but the laws of thought were to her what New Year’s resolutions were to other people: affirmed in all their wisdom and value! then instantly forgotten.)
Gabriel stood awaiting her with an expression so intense, Elodie suspected her every step was being assessed toward a final grade. Not literally final, I hope, her brain muttered. She laughed.
And the path dissolved.
—
As an expert scientist, Gabriel held one thing as certain: there was always something new to learn. New techniques, new theories…and new levels of utter, breathtaking terror. As he watched Elodie run along the disintegrating ray of magic with her eyes closed , Gabriel experienced an entire bachelor’s degree course in fear.
By which he meant “fear about the time-consuming accident report he’d have to make should she fall,” that is, nothing more.
His body burned with an overwhelming instinct to run back up along the magic and catch her, hold her safe in his embrace (and lecture her stridently on the importance of prudence), but that was impossible. He could not reach her. He could only watch, arms crossed tightly against the pain of his thundering heartbeat, brain roaring its helplessness.
At last, seconds eons later, she opened her eyes, thank God. Then the confounded woman grinned, and actually waved, as if she hadn’t just done something so reckless, so heedless, so bloody stupid that every cell in Gabriel’s body, and every atom in the world around him, felt like it was going to shatter from the sheer force of the danger. And if it did, that would be fine. He couldn’t exist if she fell from that magic and died. He couldn’t bear to even begin imagining a world without her.
The breath staggered loudly in his throat—it sounded like hm , brusque and sharp, even while the hysterical shouting in his brain began to calm. Elodie was drawing closer to the ground now, closer to safety.
Then, all at once, between one step and another, the thaumaturgic beam disintegrated beneath her, three feet off the ground. Gabriel’s heart stopped. But Elodie went on moving with her own irrepressible womanly magic, tipping over in an effortless cartwheel. Flowers shed from her moon-colored hair. Lace flashed like a provocative wink from beneath her skirt. She landed upright, her boots making a thud on the earth that was echoed by his heart jolting back into rhythm.
“Well, that was fun,” she said, smiling with such joyful exhilaration Gabriel knew she was still running on sunlight inside her mind. It almost unbalanced him, sending him to his knees before her, but he held himself rigid with a frown. His pulse, however, was a fluttering wreck.
“You are—”
“Incorrigible,” she interrupted blithely. “Irresponsible.”
“Unrivaled,” he corrected her, then looked away. He thought he heard a tiny storm, as if Elodie had gasped, but nothing could have induced him to look at her, lest he see what his word had done to the expression on her face. And, quite frankly, he rather feared that he might cry, or shout, or offer an extensive explanation as to why running on magic in the sky with your bloody eyes closed imperiled the health of people who loved you.
Not loved. Admired. Respected as a colleague.
He scowled at the field in which they found themselves.
The ground was damp, bruised from the week’s storms. Fragments of the thaumaturgic beam littered the air like broken rainbows but were fading fast, leaving only a ruin of torn hedges and ripped-up grass in the wake of magic. A lone farmhouse stood some quarter of a mile away, white smoke arising placidly from its chimney. Everything appeared calm, as if the shock of magic had been no worse than a brief, bright gust of wind. The late morning sun burnished tawny leaves and gently spun Elodie’s hair to gold, and Gabriel realized he was looking at her yet again.
“Any sign of a thaumaturgic trove?” she asked.
“Not immediately.”
“It must be here somewhere.” She gazed out at the surrounding countryside, no doubt accumulating romantic adjectives about its trees and mud puddles—and although she didn’t bite her lip as was her habit, she did tuck a stray curl behind her ear, which was almost as alluring uninteresting. Gabriel’s heart fluttered again, watching her. He began to worry about his blood pressure, and made a private note to decrease his morning intake of coffee—except no, he’d not drunk coffee this morning, had he? Because he’d been in bed with his blasted wife .
“Annoying,” he grumbled to himself, even as other things within him began fluttering. Elodie heard, and cast him an offended glance, and for a startling moment Gabriel feared he might blush. “I am not referring to you,” he said hastily, his brain racing through the tidy stack of its thoughts, tossing them hither and yon, in search of a reasonable explanation. “It’s annoying that we’re dealing with such a conundrum.”
Which was a ridiculous thing to say about two people who loved nothing better than a good conundrum to exercise their mental faculties. Disgusted with himself, Gabriel turned away, shoving a hand through his hair. The field really was very quiet. Eerily quiet. No birds sang, no breeze stirred. It was as if the world held its breath behind a smirk, poised to spring a practical joke upon him.
Then Elodie sighed. It was a sound so ecstatic, Gabriel couldn’t prevent himself from looking back at her. She stood with her hands clasped, face tipped up with a rapturous expression, soaking in the eeriness as if it fueled her very soul. Baffled, Gabriel regarded her, his head tilted to one side as if doing so might give him a better perspective on this wayward woman.
Her linked fingers were half-hidden in the sleeves of the scratchy-looking brown cardigan. One fine, rippling strand of hair snagged in her eyelashes. She seemed young, and yet Gabriel couldn’t even begin to fathom the strength within her—this woman who threw herself out of hot air balloons and into marriage without a second thought, and held her ground among the fusty old men of the geography school who, despite having accepted her as a student because she was undeniably clever (and because the university’s chancellor forced them to), were appalled by the very thought of her as a professor. Had she been a man, they’d have proved welcoming, with much back-slapping and advice about the best pipe tobacco. But for a woman to become their equal was deemed insufferable.
In fact, as a member of that same faculty, Gabriel believed Elodie superior to them all. Certainly she possessed far more strength than he did.
Oh, he could lift her off her feet and over his shoulder ( note to self, his brain interjected: try to make that happen ), but he could never match the power of her spirit. How did she feel so much emotion all the time and not collapse with exhaustion from it? He himself was still recovering from the brief interlude following their wedding, during which he’d spun from passion to astonishment to delight (upon Elodie making him a truly excellent omelet for breakfast) then shock and pain as it all came to a crashing halt. And that recovery would now take significantly longer, considering in the past two days he’d watched Elodie run pell-mell directly into a magic bomb and race blindly down a magic beam…to say nothing of the hug last night, which perhaps had been the most discombobulating of all.
He wanted to hug her now. But that was insane. For one thing, she was wearing the blasted scratchy cardigan again. For another, a man didn’t just hug his wife indiscriminately. Especially when she’d made it very clear she was his wife in name only.
But damn it, he wanted to hug her more than he wanted to breathe. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted to kiss her. And to undress her, slowly, gently, until he’d absolutely confirmed that no inch of her being was at risk of further peril.
Which was more than insane. It was heartbreaking.
Clearing his throat gruffly, he directed himself back to the safe territory of science. “Atmospheric conditions suggest no ongoing thaumaturgic forces in the immediate zone,” he said, squinting at the sky, where no trace of magic lingered against the bland expanse.
“That’s true,” Elodie answered. “And yet, things feel iffy.”
“Iffy,” Gabriel repeated with a frown. “Elucidate, please.”
She shrugged. “I have a tingle down my spine.” Then she grinned at him sidelong. “I know, that’s not scientific.”
“Hm,” he said. “No, it’s not. But under the circumstances, one shouldn’t discount the subconscious awareness of an expert.”
“Good heavens, are you saying I should trust my instincts?” Elodie laughed and nudged him with her elbow. Nudged him . With her elbow . Everything in him clenched against a sudden bizarre impulse to laugh with…what was this feeling? Appreciation? Dyspepsia? Joy?
“My instincts tell me that we have a long day ahead of us,” she said. “The source of the magic emissions must be somewhere, although I don’t see any significant disturbance of the earth, or blue lights, or an enormous hound of darkness and thaumaturgic fire that chars the ground beneath its claws…”
“Such a specific example,” Gabriel said dryly. He was trying to repress the disconcerting amusement that had started to grow like colorful weeds in his heretofore neatly trimmed psyche, but Elodie made it difficult when she existed said things like that.
“Um,” she replied. She was staring to the northwest, eyes wide, and Gabriel turned to see what had so captivated her.
“Well, that’s aggravating,” he said.
Across the field crept an immense, hunched figure of mist and fury, a hellhound shaped from hill shadows and old, buried magic. Vicious blue light spiked its back and spat broken fragments like pain-colored stars that blistered the land when they fell. A memory of volcanic fire served as eyes, flashing and roiling with malevolent hunger. There was nothing substantial about it, only feral enchantment and an echo of mythology, but Gabriel knew that, if it caught them, they would be swallowed, bones and soul.
“Run!” he commanded.
And snatching Elodie’s hand, he pulled her with him into the haunted wild.
—
As Elodie sprinted through woodrush and old quaking grass, she felt magic sparking around her ankles, fierce and spiky even through the leather of her tall boots. But it was nothing compared to the magic in her heart. Gabriel was holding her hand .
She’d spent most of her life escaping things—parental rules, a provocative husband, enchanted trees. But she’d never before escaped with someone else. Oh, there had been students to guide across treacherous fields while pursued by a boulder, and colleagues whose kisses beside campfires helped her elude melancholic thoughts brought on by too much wine. But no one had taken her hand and run with her, literally or otherwise.
Within seconds, she learned that it was the most incredibly, extraordinarily unhelpful experience.
Gabriel’s pace was much longer than hers, and she stumbled repeatedly as she strove to match it. Mud splashed up under her skirt, charring the lace of her drawers with hot, fetid thaumaturgy. At one point she almost fell, and was saved only by Gabriel yanking on her arm, an intervention that rescued her knees from bruises but just about dislocated her shoulder.
“Faster!” he shouted, as if she could somehow extend her legs at will. Elodie tried to point out the unreasonableness of his demand, but her every breath was otherwise engaged.
Jagged rocks thrust violently through the subsoil, sending dirt and shards of sandstone flying. A clump of thistles exploded in green fire, forcing them to swerve or else be impaled by burning prickles.
Then they swerved again, avoiding a sudden mud geyser.
And again, batting at swarms of dead leaves that flickered about their faces like ragged brown butterflies.
“The farmhouse!” Gabriel called out, and they angled toward it. Groundwater began to rise all around them, a muddy, backward kind of rain that rapidly twisted into high, thin columns spun by furious magic. Elodie counted three— five waterspouts that screeched with witchlike fury as they began plowing through the field, churning up grass, dirt, and flaming stones. Water blasted the air. The hellhound was instantly shredded, black, jagged remnants of its magic slicing through the air like knives.
Elodie could barely see anything, her eyes full of grime and strands of hair. She could hear only the screaming of agonized wind. Gabriel’s hand was her center of gravity, and she clung to it desperately as they ducked and dodged a way through the maelstrom. Survival seemed an impossible hope, violently ripped apart and slapped in their faces.
Then the farmhouse appeared out of the turmoiled shadows before them, solid as—well, not as a rock, considering Elodie’s experiences of more than one rock turning into a bonfire or a gaggle of fanged geese that chased her, but since she did not presently have the luxury to contrive a better simile, it would have to do. They stumbled up to its door, and Gabriel raised his free hand to knock.
Elodie flung him an incredulous look, then grasped the doorhandle, shoved open the door, and pushed him over the threshold, following immediately behind. A dim impression of a cozy, firelit room barely registered with her senses. She and Gabriel moved against each other while he shut the door again and she bolted it, as if they were one person with double the usual limbs. They pulled across a large wooden box filled with boots and old shoes to serve as a barricade, although that would hardly keep out any force determined to get in. Then, stepping back, they stood side by side, panting with near exhaustion, to stare at the door.
Magic slammed against it, causing the heavy oak to rattle on its hinges. Wind speared through gaps between the wood and its frame, howling, shattering into tiny silver stars. But the door held, and after a minute Elodie and Gabriel exhaled in unison.
“Well, that was—” Elodie began, but she tumbled into an astonished silence as Gabriel turned to grasp her head between his hands. Her pulse, which had just begun to slow, leaped up once more, racing around wildly with no idea of what on earth was happening.
“Are you all right?” he demanded. His voice was rough, as if he’d dragged it behind him through the squall. His eyes were fierce, urgently assessing her mud-streaked face. He appeared enraged by the possibility that she might be injured.
“I’m fine,” Elodie lied. In fact, she felt completely wrung out by a force more intense than that which raged beyond the door: her hopeless, unrequited love for this man. The thought that he’d been in peril, that he might have died, made her distraught. She ran her hands across his chest, his arms, checking him for injury, even while he did the same to her. His fingers stroking her face slid through mud and filthy water and, ugh, something slimy that she suspected was part of a worm. But Gabriel, the world’s most fastidious man, did not even flinch. As he grew sure she was unharmed, his breathing slowed, but still something shook through it, something that almost seemed to Elodie like fear.
“I’m fine,” she reiterated. “Just a little damp. Are you—”
“Fine,” he said brusquely.
Their gazes locked. The building might have smashed apart with magical tornadic winds in that moment and neither of them would have noticed. Their entire world had compressed into the small, desperate space between them, its atmosphere a storm of adrenaline and longing and years of unspoken love.
“You—” Elodie began.
“You—” Gabriel said, his voice layering over hers.
And then, suddenly, they were kissing.