Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, I leave a note in the kitchen saying that I’ve gone to Blackswire to see if I might find word of my still-absent “employer” and his tragic, lingering, unspecified illness.
Along with it is a list of assignments for Sylvie to occupy herself with, mainly arithmetic worksheets I wrote out before dawn.
I finished them just as the sun rose tepidly over the moors, its light muted by a layer of pale clouds.
From my window, I watched the laird of Ravensgate ride off on his big horse, his dog trailing after, toward the north.
The opposite direction of the village, thankfully.
I was not able to sleep after bidding Mr. North—Conrad—a good night.
Despite our truce, I found myself pacing my room for hours after, thinking of our argument, and of how young and lost he’d looked, sitting on the hearth with his head in his hands.
Thinking of Sylvie kneeling in her room, threads webbed between us, her eyes glowing with delight as she brought snowflakes spiraling down from the ceiling.
I will help her as much as I can.
But I cannot forget the real reason I am here, nor the deadline creeping ever nearer. Another foray into the woods, in search of the gateway to Elfhame, is just the thing to clear the knotted tangle of the North family from my thoughts.
I have the stolen map in my pocket, but rather than thrashing about in the woods again, I decide to try a different approach. After all, someone else found the faerie doorway long ago—perhaps she left a clue behind.
I find Fiona’s cottage easily enough, and shiver when I pass her grave.
I realize I never found out how she died, and had assumed it had been old age.
But what if it wasn’t? What if some other fate befell her?
If so, her belongings turn up no clues, but I do find something of interest—a sketch hidden among the pile of letters, showing a modified wayfinding knot.
“Clever old girl,” I murmur, threading my string between my fingers to copy it.
It takes a true master of the craft to fashion new spells from old ones, rearranging threads in such a way as to alter their original purposes.
This spell, when I’ve channeled into it, pulling energy from the abundant moss on the walls and roof, produces a hovering bead of light much like the north-finding spell that led me to the cottage in the first place.
But this one burns red, not blue, and it zips around urgently, waiting for me to follow.
I am glad to leave the cottage behind, and I let the red light lead me into the trees and off the path entirely.
Over the crack and crunch of my footsteps, the woods seem to whisper, and I catch myself whirling more than once, eyes questing in search of some elusive follower.
The shadows in the trees move furtively, giving the illusion of cloaks vanishing behind stones or eyes closing the moment I look their way.
My arms are stippled with goose bumps that do not fade.
I imagine the ghosts of the old moorwitches lurking in the gloom, their fingers Weaving dark magic.
After nearly an hour of tramping along over mounds of moss and carpets of pine needles, the wayfinding spell suddenly fades with a soft hiss, leaving me alone.
I stop dead, my heart missing a beat.
But there is nothing here. No door, no arch, no cave.
I must be close, or the spell wouldn’t have fizzled out. That, or the spell was a dud to begin with.
Well, there’s not much I can lose by forging ahead and hoping for the best.
The further I walk, the stranger the wood seems. It feels as though I have been walking for hours, and yet the sun never changes positions in the sky, and though I swear I walk in a straight line, I begin to see the same trees and rocks over and over again, until I’m certain it’s not a trick of my eyes.
The light here is weak and broken with shadows of jagged branches, and in the ravines swirl malevolent mists.
I press on, and twice pass a rock that juts from a high bank, shaped curiously like a turtle’s head. The second time, I stop and grasp my threadkit.
I’m not lost at all.
I’m being misdirected on purpose. Someone has woven a confounding charm of some sort to nudge me away whenever I get close to my quarry—Fiona’s wayfinding spell had worked, but the charm or some other ward must have stopped it before it reached its destination.
Finding a stump to sit upon, I take out white ounce-thread and a needle from my threadkit and begin stitching my shawl. The light here is poor, and I have to squint to see what I’m doing.
Overhead, a cold wind rattles the branches.
I feel like a rabbit hidden in a hole while a hungry wolf prowls above, searching for a way in.
I keep my head down and my eyes focused on my stitches, working as quickly as I can.
The familiar tink of my needle against my thimble is little comfort in this dark forest.
“There,” I say, after twenty minutes of embroidering. I hold up the shawl with its new pattern of knots curling up the hem like a vine. “That’ll do.”
I throw the shawl around myself and then draw a long breath before channeling, the memory of yesterday’s hovering charm making my heart squeeze preemptively. It is as if I’ve touched a hot stove, only to force myself to touch it again.
“You can do this,” I murmur to myself. “It’s not always that bad.”
I channel, wincing at the slight pressure it causes in my heart. But this time, thankfully, the pain is manageable. The embroidery on my shawl glows briefly, and then the spell is done.
“Counterwards,” I say with no small measure of satisfaction. And to think, in our fourth year Margaret Appleby said they were a foolish waste of time because Moirene sisters, with their devotion to education and other social duties, didn’t need to know battle magic.
Ducking my head, I pull my shawl tight and push forward.
Protected by the thin muslin of my shawl, I see the moment my spell takes effect, because the new stitches begin to glow faintly.
I’ve stepped into some powerful wards and feel them prickling over me as I pass.
My shawl grows hot, as my spell works to repel the magic pressing against it.
The edges begin to flutter, though there is no wind to speak of this low beneath the trees.
I’m getting closer.
My stomach knots as my sense of foreboding grows stronger. Everything in me wants to turn back, to flee this place where the trees twist around each other like entwined serpents. Every step is harder to take, and I realize I’ve slowed to a crawl.
“Discouragement spell,” I say through my teeth, feeling it lean on me with the weight of a horse.
Someone has been clever indeed, working with subtle yet intricate magics.
This is not like the fae ward around Blackswire, but rather these spells were designed to escape notice.
Only a Weaver might understand what they are, and only then if they were specifically looking for such magic.
It took me far too long to recognize what was happening, that these trees are laced with power.
There are no counter-wards for discouragement spells; instead, one must marshal the willpower to press through and endure them. I need to rally my spirit by focusing on what I stand to gain if I make it through this ward; I need to fix my eyes on the greater goal.
That’s simple enough: I think of magic.
I remember the day I stood before the Moirene Council in Westminster Abbey, the great cathedral roof soaring over my head.
The triptych of the Fates, immortalized in stained glass, gazed down as I took my vows and stitched the trefoil knot into my collar.
I remember my pride, my relief, my joy. For the first time in my life, I felt secure. Safe.
I think of how it feels to stand at the head of a classroom and guide a wide-eyed group of little girls and boys through their first spell samplers, their needles clumsy in their eager hands. To see the delight in their eyes when they complete a new, difficult spell.
And then, insensibly, another daydream finds its way into my thoughts like a stray bird flitting through an open window: myself sitting on the great steps in Ravensgate’s grand foyer, teaching Sylvie how to Weave an illusion knot, to summon flowers of light, and when I look up, there is Conrad below, watching with the softest of smiles on his lips, mischief shining in his proud tiger-gold eyes.
Startled and shaken, I blink the vision away, and realize I’ve made it through the ward. The weight of the discouragement spell broke like a fever once I’d summoned enough willpower to force my way through it, and now I can breathe easier.
I hurry on, as if I might escape that last, unbidden image and the sudden eruption of butterflies it hatched in my belly.
I tramp up a hill, through more wards, but these are not as strong as the first ones. The threads on my shawl are beginning to burn away, ashes like dust on my shoulders, but the spell did its job.
I reach the crest of the hill, and there it is.
“Oh,” I breathe, looking down in the shallow depression below. “Of course.”
The door to Elfhame is obvious at once: a ring of standing stones, ten all told, tall and unnatural and silent in a clearing.
No insects here, nor birds or beasts. Not even the wind rustles the treetops. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a cathedral at midnight, alone with only the Fates to notice me.
The ground below is velvet moss for nearly twenty yards in diameter, not a patch of mud to mar it.
It feels like it’s set outside time, in its own pocket of reality.
It might have been a thousand years since another living creature set foot down there.
And all around the clearing, the ancient boulders stand improbably balanced.
Carefully I make my way down the hill, sliding on the loose dead leaves and damp loam.
Once at the bottom, I slowly approach the circle, feeling caught in a different sort of enchantment entirely—one of wonder.
I draw near the closest stone, studying it for any sign of instructions carved into it, a clue of how to activate the doorway.
Lifting my hand, I reach for the stone, some primal part of my soul eager to feel its ancient face against my palm.
A flicker of movement catches my eye. I turn my head, eyes chasing a figure in my periphery—is that a woman, pale as dawn light?
Then my hand touches the stone, and I am thrown violently off my feet and hurled through the air. I collide into a tree with a shout, the wind knocked from my lungs. There I lie a moment, trembling from the aftershocks of the repulsion spell which still crackle through my body.
Gasping, I push myself to my knees and stare at the stones and the thing I’d missed in my dazed wonder: a very fine thread stretched taut between them.
Looking over my shoulder, I scan the trees. If there was a woman there, she is gone now. Though in retrospect, I feel sure I must have imagined the specter. It could have been a deer, or a shaft of sunlight.
That, or Sylvie’s ghost is more real than I gave her credit for.
With a shiver, I put the apparition out of my mind and crawl forward to inspect the thread that knocked me off my feet.
It is a ward. A strong ward, and unlike the one surrounding Blackswire, this one is meant to keep out intruders of all species, human or fae, and likely animal too.
This is definitely the right place.
Lachlan’s warning about the defenses which might surround the doorway were valid, it seems, and there will be more magic to counter here than mere discouragement charms. I rub my ribs and limp back to the stones, taking much greater care this time.
Keeping a little distance and several rows of trees between me and the rocks, I follow the circumference of the circle and inspect every branch, twig, and trunk.
I begin to see more wards and hexes strung about, strings blending into the branches and grass.
I narrowly avoid setting my foot in an immobilization hex.
One stretches through the air at eye level, and I hold my fingers as close to it as I dare; most of these hexes will be activated by tripwires, so a simple touch, however light, will immobilize, shock, or even set me on fire.
And these are no ordinary threads—they are thinner and lighter, almost invisible.
The spells are made, I realize with a chill, of spider thread.
Never have I heard of such a material being used to Weave spellknots. Never, that is, but in the old faerie tales.
It would take days to undo all these knots. They were not woven by an amateur, and many of the patterns are unfamiliar to me. Are they the work of the fae inside Elfhame?
I must clear my head—think, think, think.
How lovely it would have been to walk into this clearing and find the door here, open and waiting for me. But that’s not how these things work, is it? There’s always a secret, always a twist. There’s always a dragon that must be slain or tricked.
Round and round I walk, inspecting the circle’s defenses, as the sun tilts overhead and begins to decline, shadows growing longer. Even if I found a way through the wards, I’d still have to figure out which spell would open a portal to Elfhame.
Three more weeks until my magic is stolen from me. Three more weeks until every dream and hope I ever had slips through my fingers. Three weeks until I am no longer even a charity-school teacher, but just a girl with no money, no home, no name, and no other skill to make her way in the world.
Despair pools around my feet.
This errand of Lachlan’s grows more difficult by the day, with layers of unexpected complications arising at every turn.
And after seeing the power at work to guard the stones, I can only wonder what—and who—waits on the other side.