by Lucy Tempest
Not knowing what to make of all this, I shook her hand awkwardly. “Pleasure. What can I help you with?”
“On my way here, I got lost and drove through those trees over there.” She gestured aimlessly behind her, sweat suddenly gleaming on her neck and forehead. “I’m afraid a part of the carriage fell off as I rushed to find an exit.”
I would have asked if she was feeling ill, but my bafflement ran over that concern. “I’m sorry, did you just say you came through the Hornswoods?”
She blinked at me. “Yes, if that’s the name of the woods at the end of this town.”
“And you came from the other end?” I strained my ears just to be sure that she meant what I thought she did. “Are you sure?”
Her maroon brows rose. “Yes. I thought there was a shortcut through it, but I got lost and the carriage ended up breaking down—and I had to walk all the way out to find help.”
Her statement brought a million questions stampeding to the forefront of my mind, but only two stood out.
The first was, how had she come through the other end of Man’s Reach by carriage, then limped her way out of the woods, unscathed or unbothered by whatever was in there?
The second was, if she had come from the other end, then had she been in Faerie? Or was there an uncharted land on the other side of the woods?
The second possibility seemed more plausible as she was human. And now that I scrutinized her more, looking past the luxuriousness of her jewels and clothes and the regal posture, I saw that she shared the rare features my mother and I possessed; black hair, big, hooded eyes, a wide, strong jaw, and skin the color of milk tea.
My mother had said she was from near Man’s Reach, but never specified where exactly. It had been I who’d assumed she was from here, since I’d thought there was nothing beyond Aubenaire. Could there be, and could this Nariman be from the same mysterious place my mother had hailed from?
Now that I thought of it, neither Nariman nor Rostam sounded like anything I had heard before. My own mother’s name, Dorreya, was unheard of, too. She’d once told me that my name was a localized version of a goddess’s name. But in my travels, I’d found that ‘Adalat was not a goddess found anywhere on Ericura.
The urge to question Nariman about her hometown and her family surged, a part of me hoping she might be a long-lost aunt brought to my doorstep by the Fates. I barely held my eager curiosity back, as I didn’t want to sound like I was interrogating her, especially when she seemed so distraught.
Right on cue, she turned big, now-pleading eyes on me. “I don’t know how long I was lost in there. It’s why I’m in such a hurry now. Will you help me find whatever part fell out so your smith can fix my carriage in time?”
Apprehension rattled through me, the idea of returning to the Hornswoods making my nightmares flash behind my eyes. I considered telling her no, but I recognized the signs of someone on the run and knew the urgent need to split from a town all too well. If I were delaying her escape, then it would be my fault if she got caught.
But I still didn’t want to go with her. Partly because she was a stranger, but mostly because of the woods themselves and my fear of what lay within and beyond them.
When I hesitated, she came closer, staring into my eyes like she was searching for something in them.
Seemingly satisfied with whatever she found, she patted my cheek and said, “Will you help me get home?”
There was something about that question, either the subdued whisper of her voice or the words themselves, that put me at instant ease. It felt like warm water had spilled over my shivering body, banishing the cold creeping in my chest and the anxiety churning in my head, making me calm and drowsy.
Against earlier reservations, I found myself saying, “Lead the way.”
“Thank you, dear.” She removed her warm hand from my face, leading me out of the tavern, her cane pounding rhythmically with heavy thunks that echoed throughout the street, as if the ground below was hollow.
I picked up the glass lantern that was to lead me to the campsite and followed her out, head void of questions or worries as the woods kept getting nearer.
Suddenly she said, “What’s your name?”
Without thinking, I answered, “Adelaide.”
She made an intrigued hum. “What a lovely name.”
“Not really. At school, they used to call me Marmalade.”
She tilted her head to one side, then the other, as if trying to look at me from all angles, amber eyes clear and gleaming in the lantern-light, their brightness unaffected by the night falling deeper around us. “Does it mean anything?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s an old goddess’s name, a name no one uses anymore.”
Her mouth turned down in distaste. “Mine is my grandfather’s. Who gives a little girl an old man’s name?”
“Maybe they were expecting a boy?” I slurred slightly as a stronger wave of comforting warmth hit my body, my eyes threatening to close.
“Most likely.” She sighed as she pointed ahead. “This way.”
Without complaint, I continued following her. But she walked faster ahead. As the distance between us grew, the cooling mist that coated my skin started evaporating my fuzzy warmth and I became more alert with every footstep. By the time I reached the edge of the clearing where the Horned God towered in front of the woods, goosebumps of both the cold and the creeps were drenching me.
I braced myself, expecting to see the eyes again, but they weren’t there. The only light came from the stars above and the pulsating lantern at my side. But then I noticed that some of the trees seemed to have silvery leaves that reflected the starlight, a sight I had never seen before.
“I think it fell somewhere around here, whatever it was,” Nariman called from up ahead.
I could spot the soft glittering of her dress’s sequins and beads from amongst the trees like a distant star in the night sky. Shuddering now, I felt around with my foot, crushing dead leaves and twigs with loud crunches and snaps. Lifting my foot to feel around another spot, I noticed something glimmer and I froze. The leaves and twigs I’d crushed had turned into small piles of glitter.
This wasn’t a trick of the light.
“What the…?”
I heard a loud flutter and felt a sudden draft of what felt like giant wings and spun around, heart in my throat. I found myself nose-to-nose with Nariman. Her expression had gone from apparent anxiety to tense impatience as she tightened her white-knuckled grip on her raised cane’s throat.
“How did you…? You were over there a second ago…” I spluttered, stumbling back.
“Tell me, Adelaide, have you ever been caught?”
“C-caught doing what?”
“Thieving,” she said casually, raising her cane to our eye level.
The snake head’s ruby eyes lit up with a crimson flash. I couldn’t look away. And the longer I stared into them, the slower my heartbeat got, making me feel warmer and drowsier than I did in the tavern and all the way here.
“No,” I answered slowly. “Never been caught. Can’t tell if it’s luck or skill.”
Her voice was soft and distant, like I was hearing her through a pillow stuffed over my head. “How long does it take you to search a place?”
“Depends on how big it is and who lives there,” I said, words flowing out thoughtlessly. “I need to have a few stakeouts, scout the doors and windows, learn the inhabitants’ and neighbors’ schedules, and plan how to slip in and out. Then I go in once for small items, then come back for the bigger things.”
Why was I telling her all of this? I could get in big, big trouble for it, and I somehow didn’t care. I was so calm.
But I was never calm. What was this?
“If you were somewhere long enough, could you find something specific that’s well hidden and sneak it out?”
“I believe so, yes,” I slurred, swaying.
Nariman came closer. The snake head’s piercing light made my eyes water but I
still failed to blink. I had become numb and lightheaded. Nothing felt or sounded bad to me anymore. I had no thoughts and no worries. It was so…nice.
Nariman smiled, pleased. I smiled back stupidly.
She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, stroking my head softly. “I’m going to need you to steal something, Adelaide. Can you do that for me?”
I nodded mindlessly, the tears that sprang up to fill my unblinking eyes pouring down my cheeks with each bob of my head.
“Good.” She aimed the cane at the thickest tree trunk near us and its red light intensified, spread, until it was seemingly burning a hole through it.
Daylight poured through the hole as it expanded beyond the tree to the ones around it, erasing the dark, foggy backdrop of the woods. In its place, a faraway outline of a walled city with a mountain scraping the sky above it materialized.
With her attention on the gap growing in the trees, I felt the earlier flight of warmth tenfold, like I had fallen into a freezing river, the temperature plummeting around and inside me, rousing me from my lulled state as sense returned to me.
But the feeling in my limbs didn’t. The calmness that had swallowed me abandoned me, but I couldn’t flee. I was stuck gaping at that window into this vastly different place, as it began to spin, round and round, its edges blurring.
Wind, spurred faster by the spinning vortex the hole had become, whooshed deafeningly as it blew past, blasting through my hair and into my mouth and eyes, drying them painfully. I still couldn’t blink, let alone raise my arms to block it or turn my face away from it. It was like my body was paralyzed.
“Ada? Is that you?” Bonnie called, her voice so close.
“We followed the light of your lantern.” Mr. Fairborn’s voice joined Bonnie’s as he came into view first, lugging his massive toolbox. “But we can’t find the carriage. Is the woman with you?”
Panic hit me full force. I tried to wave at them, to shout, to tell them to run away. But no impulse made it past my brain to my tongue and limbs.
Then it was too late. The hole, now massive, had started reversing its spin, no longer blowing out the wind, but sucking it in like an angry weather god inhaling back the storm, and us with it.
The last thing I felt was the starburst of blinding light that engulfed me as I flew off the ground and hurtled through the screeching maw into the unknown.
Chapter Four
I knew two things as soon as I came to.
I was lying face down on sand that was almost filling my mouth. And it was pitch black.
I jerked up onto my elbows, spitting out the sand and shaking its grains out of my nose and hair. Only then did I feel the gossamer blindfold and the itchy bindings holding my feet together. My hands, curiously but thankfully, were still free.
Quickly, I reached up to tear off the blindfold. A glittery, golden scarf came off with one pull, and a yellow glare almost blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut again and opened them gradually, until they adapted to the painful lights.
They weren’t lights anymore, but big slit-pupil eyes, like those of a giant grass-snake. A layer of frost glazed over my throat, burning as I tried not to screech.
The eyes watched me, blinking calmly. The confident gaze of a predator, one that could pounce and tear me apart at any moment but was content to watch me wriggle desperately.
While maintaining eye contact, I slowly inched my trembling fingers towards my ankles. Keeping its terrifying attention on my face while I worked to free myself was a nerve-wracking effort. My arms shook so hard my fingertips kept fumbling on the knots.
“There’s no point in trying to escape.” Nariman’s voice spread over me, echoing everywhere.
Snapping my neck in every possible direction, to figure out where her voice was coming from, I took in the vast, empty space that surrounded me in the faint light of stars, an endless sea of sand with the only sign of life distant, skinny trees with flared heads of fronds.
I froze, though my arms still vibrated with dread as realization sunk in me like a foot stomping through mud, harsh and stomach-turning.
I wasn’t in Aubenaire anymore. And the lights, the eyes were her.
Nariman stepped forward and her eyes shrank and dulled back to a very human shape, reflecting light rather than projecting it.
“Oh! I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. I just meant that only I can take off your bindings. See, I made them for palace guards to use on prisoners. They’re enchanted.”
Palace? Prisoners? Enchanted?
Slowly, I dragged my eyes away from hers and toward my foreign surroundings.
Beneath the deep-blue dome of a sky filled with wispy clouds and brilliant stars, I could see settlements scattered as far as the horizon.
The closest one was the massive walled city I’d seen through the hole in the woods. From this distance and vantage point, its wall looked mile-high and made of a smooth, pale material. Half in the night’s shadows and half bathed in starlight, it reflected a soft, opalescent sheen. Peeking over the top of the wall were the spearhead tips of towers and the roofs of tall buildings and temples. But the biggest and brightest building was what sprawled along the summit of the mountain. Not a castle, but a palace, like something out of Bonnie’s books about the faraway lands of sand and spices.
Bonnie!
“Where’s Bonnie?” I rasped, my voice a choked, airy whisper like the wind that brushed across the dunes. “Where’s her dad? Where am I?”
Nariman waved her hands. “Calm down, please. Oh, this was a stupid idea.”
“You think?” I snapped, my voice regaining volume despite being shaky. “What did you do to them? To me? What’s happening?”
She reached out then retracted her hand, fingers curling elegantly. “I need your help. At least, I think you can help me.”
I edged away from her, trying to subdue my shaking. “Why would I help you?”
That got me no answer. Just wide-eyed silence as she tapped her fingers on the head of her cane in a precise beat.
“Why did you have to kidnap me, to get me to help you?” My voice shook with dread even as I found the gall to shout at her. “You could have just asked for my help.”
She tucked her cane under her arm, wiped her hands on her sequined gown as she paced back and forth in front of me, with no sign of her earlier limp. “I would prefer not to call this a kidnapping, and no, I doubt asking would have done the trick.”
“What is this?” I asked, getting dizzy keeping up with her pacing.
“This place or this situation?”
“Either, both—just tell me what you want so I can go home,” I pleaded.
“Where is home, though?”
That question hit me like a punch to the throat, choking me, making it difficult to speak.
She knelt beside me, looking much younger than she did earlier, her features softened by some emotion I couldn’t fathom. “Allow me to welcome you to mine in this realm.”
I swallowed dryly, back to pulling on my bindings. “You…you come from the Fair-Folk’s realm?”
“I’m not a fairy, I’m from the Folk’s Shore, just like you,” she said, turning her face so half of it was encased in shadow. Once the semi-mask of darkness hit the middle of her face, the eye encased in shadow grew big and bright as before. “But we’re not exactly neighbors.”
Panic resurged as her words sank in. She wasn’t a fairy from beyond Man’s Reach, but she was from a land beyond Ericura. The landmass dubbed Folkshore by Bonnie’s book did exist. She was from somewhere there. Here. And she wasn’t entirely human.
She was a witch. A real witch.
My heart boomed so violently it rattled me all over as I tried to get up, to hop away. But I hit the ground again before my knees could straighten, slamming my face into the hard sand. It scratched against my cheek as I struggled to get up, grazing my skin.
She grabbed a handful of my tunic and pulled me to my feet. “If I untie you, you have to promise not to try to e
scape.”
It was a hard offer to consider, being freed but staying put.
But I had no other choice. After all, where could I run to?
The grudging promise escaped my spastic lips. “I won’t run.”
With a snap of her fingers, the bindings evaporated off my legs.
I stumbled a bit before I caught myself, regained my balance and, though I was shaking in my boots, I squared up to face her. She watched me with unwavering attention, amber eyes fixed like a hawk following its prey. I half-expected her to blink sideways.
Putting on a brave face, I asked, “What are you?”
She blinked slowly, humanly. “A woman, albeit a talented one.”
So, that’s what magic was called here? A talent?
I pointed to the walled city. “What is this place, and why am I here?
“This is the Kingdom of Cahraman,” she said with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “Before you is Sunstone, its capital, which I can’t enter. So I need your help.”
“To do what?”
“I already told you what. What you do best: steal.”
It was only then I remembered the conversation we’d had before that portal had opened and how I’d felt then, like I’d been in a trance. I’d been literally under her spell.
Licking bone-dry lips, I asked nervously, “Steal…what exactly?”
“A lamp.”
“A lamp,” I repeated dumbly.
“An oil lamp,” she clarified.
I stuck my finger in my ear and rubbed. “There must be some sand in my ear, because I thought you said oil lamp.”
“I did.”
“All this for an oil lamp? Why can’t you just buy a new one?”
“Sentimental value,” she said quietly. “It’s not just any old lamp, you see. It’s a solid gold heirloom. My grandmother, Reiza, passed it down to my mother, who then gave it to me. It was the last thing she gave me.”
The last thing her mother gave her, and it was gold to boot. Both a keepsake and maybe something she could sell or trade for a better situation. I knew that feeling. The only thing my mother had left me was a ring that had once belonged to her mother. I’d sold it at my lowest point, in a winter where food was hard to scavenge and no one was hiring. I’d do anything to get it back.