Chapter Twelve #2
“It will be all right! Just hold on!” The spell finally woven, I stretch my hands wide, and the threads snap taut.
But soaked as the fibers are, it will take more magic than usual to ignite them.
I reach out with all that is in me, curling invisible fingers around grass, heather, and bush, wrenching energy from their leaves.
Pain knifes through my chest, piercing lung and bone.
Above me, Sylvie screams, her fingers sliding free.
She falls.
I cry out, doubling over and forcing that tide of energy through the narrow, sharp point that is my constricting heart. It is like driving a blade into my own breast. But I channel relentlessly, and at last, the threads flare bright.
Sylvie jerks to a halt a half yard from the rocky ground, where her head would have split on a nasty crag of stone. Suspended in place, she gasps and stares up into the rain, as if she cannot believe she is still alive.
I can hardly believe it.
Breathless with pain, my head spinning, I reach out with ash-covered hands to grasp her skirt and pull her to me. A moment later, the spell releases and she drops into my arms.
I hold her to me, finally sucking in a sob of relief.
“It’s all right,” I whisper into her hair. “You’re safe now.”
Carefully I set her down and search for any injury, but besides a few scrapes on her knees and palms, she’s blessedly unharmed.
“Thank the Fates,” I breathe.
“Thank you,” she says. “You saved me! With magic!”
I don’t tell her how close it was. That had I faltered another heartbeat, she’d be severely injured or worse. I only squeeze her hand and tell her if she ever pulls a stunt like that again, I’ll hex her with a month of warts.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and to her credit, she does look it. Her gaze drops to her shoes, and I spy a bead of water on her lashes that I do not think is rain.
I sigh. “Come, let’s get you dried off. And . . . shall we keep this our secret?”
Smiling, she loops her pinky around mine. “Definitely.”
We make our way back to the house, a muddy, soggy journey that leaves us both spattered up to our knees.
My heart still has not quite recovered from that painful channel, and I hope Sylvie doesn’t notice how much I lean on her as we hobble along.
Every step is a test of sheer willpower, and if she were not there to witness it, I might let myself collapse into the muddy heather and give in to the pain.
“I wish I could go to a school like yours,” Sylvie says. “Somewhere far away, with other girls like me. Are there boys there too?”
“There are a few, though most boys join the Telarii, not the Moirai.” Even there, they are usually outnumbered.
A talent for Weaving and channeling has always been more common among women, in nearly every culture and time.
I don’t have the heart to remind her that without the ability to channel, no Weaving school of any order would take her.
“Well, I should make friends of them all, even the boys.”
“Maybe when you’re a bit older, you could—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Connie said never. He didn’t go to school, he says, and I don’t need to either. Just like I don’t need to go to the seaside, or sail to France, or get married.”
I stumble on a slick rock, nearly choking on my own tongue. “Married? He’ll stop you from getting married?”
She shrugs. “Not too put out about that one, to be honest. But I wish Connie would get married. At least then I’d have a sister . . .”
She glances at me sidelong, her eyes narrow and sly, and I shake my head firmly. “No, Sylvie. Don’t even entertain the thought. I’ve a life in London to go back to.”
And I can think of beggars back in the Devil’s Acre with more appeal than the insufferably arrogant Conrad North.
“Some days,” she confesses, “I feel like a prisoner. Like our poor Queen Mary, locked away for no sin other than existing. Or like Elaine of Astolat, doomed in her tower to watch the world only in a mirror.”
How lonely has this child been, that she would pour her whole heart out to a guest she’s known for two days?
My heart breaks for her, and not just because I see myself in her plight.
But what can I do? What advice can I give her?
Should I tell her to seek out a faerie and strike a devil’s bargain, trading one sort of cage for another?
She wants answers I cannot give.
Back at Ravensgate, Mrs. MacDougal fusses over Sylvie while I dry off by the kitchen fire.
The girl gives me a conspiratorial smile as the housekeeper bundles her off to her room, but the moment she is gone, I sag onto the hearth, gasping a little.
Pressing my hand to my chest, I breathe out long and slow, willing my heart to calm.
To unclench itself. It takes longer than usual, this recovery, and that terrifies me.
Fates above.
I must find the gateway to Elfhame, and I must find it soon.
Later in the evening, after a simple but warming supper of potato soup and bread, I task Sylvie with some history reading in the library. In moments, however, she falls asleep in the great armchair, snoring softly.
On the floor beside her, I set about meticulously pasting the maps we assembled this morning, unable to bear letting the precious pages fall to pieces again.
With the soft pattering of the rain at the windows and the soothing crackle of the fire, I catch myself yawning.
Mr. and Mrs. MacDougal have already retired for the night, but Mr. North has still not returned from his trip to Blackswire.
As I fit the maps back together, I find tiny notes scrawled around the borders that I had not seen earlier. Childish script traces the outlines of the continents, penned in ink faded with age.
Here the Bedouin nomads pitch their tents! This is where the pyramids are—Must see them first. On these islands, dragons can be found—but not the flying, fire-breathing sort, just big lizard things.
I am so engrossed in reading these little addenda that I do not realize I am being watched until a deep voice rumbles over me.
“Where the devil did you find that old thing?”
Startled, I drop the bottle of paste, and it spills across the carpet. “Oh, Fates!” I glare up at the laird in the doorway. “That’s the second time you’ve nearly startled the heart out of me, Mr. North!”
“I hardly think you’re in a position to judge, given the nature of our first meeting.” Conrad North kneels across from me, taking a handkerchief from his pocket. Captain pads softly behind him and settles down on the warm carpet, his long tongue lolling. “Here. Let me.”
“I can do it.” I reach for the cloth, but he refuses to relinquish it, and for a moment our fingers tangle together. His are cold and damp from the rain, mine warm from the heat of the fire, and for a heartbeat, the temperature difference sends a spark up my arm.
He tries to snatch his hand away, but the paste on mine holds fast, and to my utter humiliation, I realize I have glued my hand to Mr. North’s.
“Ah . . . my apologies,” I stammer. “Um.”
He stares at our hands. “Well. This is bloody hilarious.”
“I can fix it. Just—hold still.” I twist my hand.
“Fates, woman! Stop that wriggling! You’re peeling the skin off my bones!”
“Oh, hush. You’ll wake Sylvie. If you had just let me handle it—”
“I think we can both see how your handling turns out. What the hell is in this paste?”
“Language, sir!” I grind my teeth together, biting back a curse of my own. In attempting to wrest my fingers loose, I’ve only entangled us further. “I am not ordinarily this clumsy, I swear.”
Captain rests his shaggy head on his paws and regards us both with a plaintive whine.
I study the situation as if it were a knot I am trying to unravel.
I feel Mr. North’s eyes on me, his steady gaze making the heat rise even higher in my cheeks.
I must look stricken with rash by now, an absolute fright.
His skin is hot against mine, his large palm enveloping the back of my hand.
I find myself thinking, insensibly, of how gently and skillfully that hand had pulled a poor struggling lamb out of its mother.
The pattern of veins over his large knuckles reminds me of a vanishing spell I learned in my third year at school, useful for making small objects disappear for a few moments. I wonder if it would work on a small schoolteacher?
“Do you often solve problems by glaring at them?” he asks, interrupting my admittedly irrational line of thought.
I glare at him, just to see if it might work. “I was thinking. Which is more than you seem to be doing, laird. Have you got any bright ideas? No? I thought not.”
Scowling, I go back to prying at my fingers, then his. Until he puts his other hand over mine, his thumb lightly brushing my wrist.
Right where the two circular burn scars gleam like white pennies.
“What’s this, then?” he asks softly.
I instinctively attempt to wrench my hand away, which is, of course, impossible at the moment. Oh, but the Fates can be cruel.
“Nothing,” I say. “Old injury. Hazards of a life devoted to magic.”
He makes no reply, only gazes at me while I scrape at the glue between his thumb and forefinger. He’s got calluses there to rival any farmer’s, I suspect. What the hell is in this damnable paste?
“The important thing is to remain calm,” I tell him, feeling a bit hysterical.
“Ouch,” he says calmly. “You’re peeling my fingernail off by the roots. Could you please stop?”
With a suppressed growl, I give up and sit back. “I do know a spell . . .”
“Of course you do,” he mutters. “And how will you Weave it with one hand?”
A short laugh bubbles from my lips. “I have no idea.”