Chapter 9 #2
Mouse was grateful that it was the middle of the night. The path was familiar enough that she could walk it in the dark, and she did not want to explain to Mr. Hobb any magic he might see if he was awake.
Mouse led the Faerie men past the rose garden to the back of the house. She pointed to a door in the center of the wall.
Brow knitted, Thornwood walked along the wall, brushing his fingers against the stone. He stopped at the door and frowned.
“There is no door here inside the house,” he finally said, turning back to Mouse.
“No.”
“Then why would…” His voice drifted off. He pressed his finger to the raised crest in the door’s center. Sparks crackled between his skin and the stone. “This is a Faerie-ruse.”
“Correct. Faerie-blessed houses often have them. It’s almost like our ancestors did not trust each other,” Mouse said, reopening the book to the illustration.
“There were many of these Faerie-ruses installed at Thistlemarsh just after the Dewhursts fell out with the Faerie King, when mortals still knew some magic. The intention was to trick Faeries into focusing on the wrong entrance, since they need invitations to enter a dwelling. This is the last one left at Thistlemarsh, as far as I know.”
“You didn’t think to tell me this earlier?” he demanded, and Mouse realized that he was genuinely angry.
“Why would I? I have not thought about it in years.”
“As it explains there is already nullifying magic baked into the walls of your precious Hall, I would have thought you would share the information. The enchantment is in the damn brickwork!”
“I did not know it might nullify your magic until just this moment.”
Thornwood ignored her, turning back toward the entrance. Mouse trotted after him.
“We wasted so much time. In the future, spare no details. Ghost sightings, secret passageways, scandals. I must know it all.” He barked at Mickelwaithe in a language Mouse assumed was Faerie.
The servant disappeared as though he’d stepped into a crack in the air.
She gasped at the casual display of magic. Thornwood rounded back into the Hall.
Inside, he went straight to where the door should have opened into the building.
The freshly redone carpet was already peeling, and the fibers came apart under their feet, so Mouse did not feel guilty as she dragged a crumbling chair from a nearby room to watch Thornwood at work.
The Faerie’s lips tightened when he caught sight of her.
“You can’t make me leave,” Mouse said before he could speak. “I want to see the magic that cost me my finger.”
“If you insist on staying, do not distract me,” Thornwood snapped. “I do not want to hear any complaints if some spellwork burns your clothes, or something else frivolous.”
Mouse leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. Thornwood glared at her again before turning his focus back to his task.
He lifted his finger to the wall and placed it squarely on the wallpaper.
Frizzling sparks danced around his fingertip.
The flash of light caught on a ring around his right fourth finger.
Mouse was surprised she’d never noticed it before, as the pale green stone in its center was cracked with a ragged black line.
His magic twisted around the ring, and he smirked, pushing his entire hand down. The flames grew, licking at his wrist.
A green disk formed around his hand. As it expanded, so did the circle of fire until it was big enough to halo his head in green.
The lush scent of magic wafted through the hallway, filling Mouse’s senses with the same giddy power that charged over her when he took her pinky. It was both earthy and electric.
She rose from her seat, drawn in by the magic as though under a spell herself. The power grew like an incoming thunderstorm, charging the air. Sparks skittered off the furniture in lightning bolts of green and gold. Mirrors rattled in their casing as though thunder flowed behind their surfaces.
A boom splintered the room. Thornwood flinched.
An errant bolt of light bounced off the leg of the chair and collided with Mouse’s ear.
She cried out, the force toppling her to the ground.
In the same instant, the opposing power released and swung back like a tree branch.
It knocked Thornwood backward. He missed Mouse by inches, hurtling into the chair beside her.
Mirrors shattered on the wall, the glass cascading across the floor.
The pressure lifted, and a headache Mouse did not know she had evaporated with the green aura of Thornwood’s magic. The side of her face ached as though she’d been slapped.
With a final, exhausted creak, the chair collapsed under Thornwood. He landed on its remnants.
“Are you all right?” Mouse asked tentatively.
The question hung in the air, and Mouse thought that if he had any magic left to spare, he would have shot lightning at her himself.
“Do I look all right?” he growled.
His face and coat were covered in purple soot, and his hair was blown out into unruly spikes. Small splinters of wood decorated his sleeves. Radiating fury, he hoisted himself out of the remains of the chair and stormed out of the room.
Mouse heard a door slam far away. She sank back onto the floor. The carpet smelled musty, and a current of electricity still buzzed in the room, leaving a distinct burned smell. She closed her eyes.
Thistlemarsh was fighting back against Thornwood’s magic.
It made sense, in the way Mouse understood all magic to make sense.
If she squinted, Mouse could understand how the original wards used to keep out unwanted Faerie intruders might morph over time into a spell that rejected any Faerie magic.
Of course, it was just a theory, but it was the best she had.
What did that mean for her? If Thornwood could not fix Thistlemarsh with magic, she would have to go back to Roger empty-handed, wondering where the next payment for his treatment would come from. She straightened at the thought, brushing the dust off her clothes.
Failing Roger was not an option she could entertain.
She set to work righting the room. Once his pride mended, Thornwood would come back to try his magic again, she was sure.
The space needed to be ready for it. First, she tackled the broken pile of wood shards from the chair.
Thornwood had managed to track them down the hallway as he left, so it took a few trips scouting up and down the carpet before she was sure they were gone.
Next, she went to the mirrors. Any more shattering would distract him from his work, and Mouse wanted him at full strength.
So, she needed to move the mirrors out into another room.
She chose the one closest to the spell’s center and tugged.
It would not come loose from the wall.
Mouse pulled harder, but nothing she did could dislodge it.
The next mirror was shattered, but the remaining frame would not budge either.
She tried the next mirror down, then the next, until she was back in the entryway.
There, the single mirror in the alcove between the hallway and the entryway came off easily.
Puzzled, she propped the unstuck mirror against the wall, the glass turned in toward the wooden paneling, before returning to the hallway.
She surveyed the room. All the mirrors looked the same, and Mouse knew that they were not bolted down, as only minutes before they were swinging in time with Thornwood’s spell.
No, she was sure that this anomaly was part of the magic fighting Thornwood.
She tried the mirror closest to her, and it popped off with only slightly more force than the one before. Shakily, she placed it down the same way as its cousin.
Mouse turned her attention to the mirror closest to the Faerie-ruse, which was remarkably intact. With her hands on either side of the glass, she tugged until the metal casing bit into her hands. It stuck fast.
She tried the one directly next to it, and it took a few hefty pulls, but eventually it came off, leaving an outline in the wall like where a tree stump was pulled from the earth. She returned to the final mirror, which mockingly sparkled at her.
Again, it would not move.
She slumped against it, her fingers tracing the wallpaper on either side. She took in her flushed reflection and noticed, for the first time, that her pinky finger was visible. She scrambled back.
A whisper, as cold and reedy as the wind, sang from under the corner of the mirror into her ear.
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?
Her heart hammered, and her breath was as ragged as if she’d just run to the village and back. She sank down onto the rug, straining to hear another line, but the spell was silent.
Clearly, Thornwood was not just dealing with magic from the Faerie-ruse. There was magic in the mirror as well.
Whatever spell bound the mirror, it could speak. It was warning her. Mouse knew the poem—“Goblin Market,” by Christina Rossetti—but she was not sure what it could possibly mean.
“What are you doing on the floor?” Thornwood’s sharp tone broke her concentration.
Mickelwaithe stood beside him, his eyes glassy as ever and with an unlit candle clutched at his side.
Thornwood himself looked down at her with eyes narrowed.
For a moment, Mouse was back at Le Temple des Fées under the mosaic of pretentious Faerie saints.
“Cleaning up your mess,” she snapped.
Thornwood leaned over her, taking in her work. “There will be more damage before we finish.”