The Language of Ghosts

by Heather Fawcett

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “But I can hardly hear you!”

  There was a pause, and then something drifted toward her. A tiny glowing orb, like the lights Julian had put in her ceiling.

  “Can you see that?” Julian said.

  Noa’s heart leaped. “Yes!”

  The orb gave a little bob, and then it began to retreat through the shadow, wavering like a lighthouse beam through fog. Noa raced after it. She saw several gray figures moving in the distance, but they didn’t catch sight of her. In her haste, she tripped over a block of stone carved with unfamiliar runes, wrenching her ankle. Her eyes watered from the pain but she forced herself to her feet and limped on.

  Finally, Noa saw a hill looming up in front of her, which was crowned with the crumbling tower that looked like a fist. “I recognize this!” she cried. “I think this is where I came through!”

  “Good.” Julian’s voice was a little louder here. “Now, do you see a door?”

  “A door?” Noa blinked. “No—there’s just a lot of rubble.”

  “Keep looking.” The orb bobbed reassuringly. “It’s there.”

  Noa gritted her teeth. “Julian, I’m telling you, there’s nothing here!” Panic rose in her throat. Would she be stuck in this horrible place forever?

  “How about a mirror?”

  “A mirror?” Despite herself, Noa almost laughed. “Where do you think I am, a bathroom? I just told you—”

  “All right, all right. How about a fountain? Or perhaps a small pond?”

  Noa reminded herself that Julian was trying to help her, and was not deliberately trying to drive her mad. “No.”

  “Hmm.” She could practically see him running a hand through his dark hair. “Try the shadows, then.”

  “The sha—” Noa stopped. She saw the shadow rising above Julian’s head. She saw the creatures thrusting her through a cloud of darkness. “The shadows are a door?”

  “Possibly. I’m going off myths and legends here, Noa. Just try one.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Her voice was high and shaky again.

  “Then we’ll try something else. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

  That’s all well and good, Noa thought. At least you know where you are.

  Still, Julian had found her, even if she couldn’t see him, so she knew everything would be all right. Julian could rescue her from whatever this place was, just like he’d rescued her that time she fell asleep in a rowboat and drifted out to sea with the tide.

  “There’s one by this tower,” she said. She didn’t like the look of the tower—it seemed as if it could come down on her head at any moment—but there was a big, dark shadow beneath it, like the one she had seen in the castle.

  She stepped up to it, and again she felt that odd sensation, as though the shadow was a curtain she could push aside. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She jumped, throwing her hands up in front of her, certain it was another gray, threadbare figure ready to drag her away.

  An otter stared back at her, its dark eyes wide. It was an ordinary sea otter, its dark fur shiny, as if it had just hopped out of the water. In its mouth it held a fish, still twitching. Noa couldn’t imagine how it had found a fish in this lifeless place. But then, she couldn’t understand how she had found an otter there, either.

  “Who are you?” she said stupidly. Surely this was some sort of magical otter, despite its ordinary appearance. The otter rose onto its hind legs, which didn’t make it much taller.

  “What is it?” Julian’s voice said.

  “I—I don’t know. But it’s not like those things that brought me here.”

  “Well, if it tries anything, tell it to leave you alone. You speak their language—they’ll listen to you.”

  Noa froze. “I what?”

  She thought of how she had felt drawn to the book from Evert. How the words had begun to make sense the longer she stared at them.

  She could speak the lost magical language, which meant she was a magician. Like Julian, and Mite, and Mom, and every Marchena before them.

  Her head swam, and for a moment she thought she would faint. I’m a magician, she thought numbly. The words bounced around in her head, but she couldn’t make sense of them. It was impossible that she could be a magician after wanting it for so long; Julian may as well have told her she could fly if she flapped her arms hard enough.

  “W-what language is it?” she asked.

  He paused, longer than before. “It’s death.”

  “Death!” she shrieked. “Is that what I am? A death mage?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Then I’m in Death? And those things that dragged me here were ghosts?”

  “Noa, we can talk about this later. Just get yourself back.”

  Noa was shaking down to her slipper. She was a magician. She had been attacked by ghosts. She was in Death. Her logical mind clanked and whirred itself into exhaustion, and could make no sense of it.

  The otter was still staring at her. Then it moved between her and the shadow, its nostrils twitching.

  Noa’s heart thudded. The otter looked young and healthy, which meant it was only as big as a small dog. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt her. Was it some sort of Death guardian? Did it want to stop her from leaving?

  Julian had said that it would listen to her if she spoke to it. “Please move,” she said, her voice faint. “I need to get back to the castle.”

  The otter didn’t move an inch.

  “You’re speaking Florean,” Julian said in the carefully patient voice he used with Mite when she was in danger of exploding.

  “Of course I am!” Noa wished that Julian were there so that she could strangle him. “How am I supposed to say anything in a language I just learned I could speak tonight?”

  “You’ve known how to speak it your whole life. You just didn’t know you knew, because the spell the mages put on the Words made you forget the knowledge that you were—”

  “Oh, black seas!” Noa was cold, and frightened, and something inside her snapped. She scooped up a rock the size of her fist and hurled it at the otter.

  Well, not quite at it. It was still an otter, or at least it looked like one, and a person would have to have a heart full of stale bread crumbs to hurt an otter. But the otter didn’t know she’d missed on purpose, and it darted aside with an angry growl. The fish fell onto the ground and flopped about, getting itself covered in the ashy grime that seemed to cover everything.

  Noa lunged forward, toward the shadow that now seemed like only a shadow, but when she imagined it as she had seen it before, like a curtain, that was what it became. Sharp claws slashed at her leg, and she yelped in pain. She kicked out and managed to shake the otter off. Maybe it thought her leg would substitute for the lost fish, or maybe it was just out for revenge. Noa didn’t intend to find out.

  She grabbed a handful of shadow. It was light and thin as gossamer, but oddly sticky, like putting your hand into a spiderweb. Beneath the shadow was a hole. It was oval and pointed like a staring eye. On the other side of the hole, through a filmy sort of darkness, was a familiar wall and a familiar bookshelf.

  She was looking into Julian’s tower!

  Before she could think too hard about the impossibility of picking up a shadow like a curtain, or the wisdom of jumping into mysterious holes in Death, Noa flung herself through.

  13

  Noa Recovers from Death

  Noa stretched and yawned. She had been awake for a while, but it felt nice to just lie there under the blankets with a cat warming her feet.

  She didn’t remember much of what had happened after she returned from Death—she must have fainted on the way back. When she awoke, she was on the floor of the tower, and Julian was muttering a blood spell over her. She didn’t feel any pain, but part of her knew she must have been hurt worse than she thought, for Julian’s face was pale. She closed her eyes, and when she had opened them again it was morning, and she w
as curled up in Julian’s bed with sunlight streaming through the tower windows.

  She turned her head to watch the whitecapped sea glide past the island. She knew she should be terrified by what had happened, but she was too full of excitement to have room for anything else. The events of last night had resolved into one heart-stopping revelation:

  She was a magician.

  Noa wanted to dance around the tower. So she could speak the language of death, which was more than a little creepy and would not have been her first choice of magical powers, but she was still a magician. She wasn’t the only Marchena in generations to be born without any magic. She could speak a long-lost magical language, which made her a lot like Julian, powerful in a unique way that set her apart from everybody else. She was definitely more unique than Mite.

  And surely there was a way that she could use her magic to defeat Xavier. She imagined herself standing before Julian and his council and demonstrating her powers to exclamations of awe. She saw herself waving her hands and capturing the islands of Florean one by one. (Her imagination was fuzzy on how this would work, but it did a fair job of supplying the intimidating, windswept black cloak that she would be wearing.) She saw Julian seated on the throne of Florean, turning to smile his old smile at her, his eyes bright with happiness and gratitude.

  She was a magician!

  She lay there in a giddy state until she happened to glance down at the foot of her bed and found a small freckled face staring back at her.

  Noa bolted upright with a scream in her throat, dislodging the cat. “Mite! How long have you been there?”

  “Not long,” Mite said. She jumped up from where she’d been crouching with her chin propped on the bed. “Since you woke up and started grinning and rubbing your hands together. What’s so funny?”

  Noa’s heart was still thudding. “Oh . . . I was thinking about all the ghosts I just met,” she said. “I told them that I had a little sister, and they said they would drop by to visit you one night. Isn’t that thoughtful?”

  Mite paled. “They didn’t say that.”

  “Not all of them,” Noa agreed. “Though there was one ghost who seemed particularly interested. . . . The shadows are like doors for them, you know. He said he’d use the shadow under your bed. He wore a big black hood, so I couldn’t see his face, but I think it looked a little like this.” She put two fingers in her mouth and stretched it wide while bugging her eyes out.

  Mite made a strangled sound and went thundering down the staircase. “Julian!”

  Noa fell back against the cushions, chortling. A moment later, Julian came up the stairs, an exasperated look on his face. “What’s this about you threatening your sister with ghosts?”

  “I wouldn’t say threatening—”

  “You don’t use your powers to frighten people.” Julian swept his cloak out of the way and sat on the edge of her bed. “That’s one of the cardinal rules of magic.”

  This was the most hypocritical thing Noa had heard in her life. “You frighten people all the time!”

  He frowned. “Only people who deserve it.”

  “Mite deserves it. She’s a sneak.” Noa faltered, though, as she remembered Esmalda. She shoved that thought away. She didn’t want to worry about anything right now.

  She was a magician!

  “So the cardinal rules of magic.” She sat up and pushed the covers back. “What are they? I have to know now, since I’m a magician and all.”

  Julian gently but firmly pushed her back against the pillows. “Before you run off and inhale every grimoire I own, we need to make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. You were pretty badly scratched up. What was it that attacked you?”

  “I don’t know,” Noa lied, because it didn’t sound very impressive to admit that she’d gotten into a fight with an otter, even if it had been a magical one. “But it was big.”

  Julian stretched his hand over her, murmuring a few words in Marrow. “Well, you seem healed. A little tired, but that’s normal after you use a lot of magic.”

  “I didn’t use any magic,” Noa said. “A bunch of ghosts came along and grabbed me, and dragged me back to the Beyond with them!” She lashed her arms out dramatically in a grabbing motion.

  Julian looked thoughtful. “There are stories about ancient mages who traveled to the land of the dead. I always thought they were just stories, but perhaps those mages were able to speak to ghosts, like you. Your power may be different than the others. . . . Perhaps ghosts are drawn to it, even without you speaking their language. As soon as you released your power by reading that book, they came to you.”

  Noa’s exhilaration was wilting at the edges. “Can we . . . stop them from doing that?”

  “I expect so. There are methods you can use to control your power. And once you grow more confident in speaking their language, you should be able to command the ghosts, just as a fire mage commands flame. I’ll teach you.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course. We should start as soon as possible. Tomorrow, if you’re up for it.”

  Her excitement blossomed again. She was going to have magic lessons with Julian! Normally, magician children went to Northwind Island, which was home to a magic school where they lived for a year, or until they mastered basic enchantments. Noa had often fantasized about Northwind Island, but this was just as good. “We should start now!”

  “Not so fast, Noabell. You need to eat something. I’ve already sent for lunch.”

  “Lunch?” Noa looked at the position of the sun and realized he was right—she must have been tired. “How did you know I was in Death? You seemed to have it all figured out last night.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “I knew something bad had happened. Reckoner practically dragged me out of bed, howling his head off. I found the book by the lavaplace, and I guessed that you had been there. I went to your room, but you were gone. So I used a blood spell to track your location—that sort of magic is difficult, and I wasn’t sure I could do it, given how much magic I spent on Evert. The spell told me you were in another world. It also told me you were dead.”

  Noa felt cold. “That I was dead?”

  “Yes.” Julian rubbed his face, which was very pale. “I panicked. If I hadn’t, maybe I would have found you sooner. What the spell told me was a contradiction—that you were alive somewhere, but also dead. So I invented a new spell—”

  “Invented a spell?” Noa repeated. “Just like that?” She was used to Julian’s slapdash flair for magic, but sometimes he still managed to surprise her.

  “Yes. A spell that would use our shared bloodline to allow me to communicate with you, wherever you were. If you had truly been dead, I wouldn’t have been able to do that—I soon realized that the first spell had actually been telling me that you were in the land of the dead, not dead yourself. I guessed the rest based on the myths and legends I’ve been reading about the ancient mages.”

  “Are you going to explode, Noa?” Mite said, her head popping up from the stairwell.

  “No, Mite,” Noa said. “Not all magicians are as dramatic as you.”

  “I’m not dramatic!” Mite seemed to consider. “Or if I am, I can’t help it.”

  Noa turned back to Julian. “We need to start making plans. We have one of the Lost Words! How shall we use it to get rid of Xavier?”

  “You need to learn about your magic before we think about any of that,” Julian said. “Even then . . .”

  Noa stared at him. “What are you talking about? What was the point of looking for the Lost Words if we don’t use them?”

  “The point? The point was to find a weapon that I could use against Xavier. Not to turn my little sister into one.”

  Noa’s fantasies crumbled and toppled like sandcastles. She had just found out she was a magician, and Julian was acting as if it was nothing. As if she was still just his little sister, still the same girl who’d done nothing but cry
and run away the night Xavier stole the throne from the Marchenas. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She was strong. She was a magician! “So it’s all right for you to risk your life, but not me?”

  “Yes,” he said, in a voice that stopped his mages in their tracks. But it didn’t daunt Noa.

  “That’s not fair.” She wanted to sound as cold as him, but her voice had a tremor in it. “I want him gone as much as you do.”

  Julian blinked, then took her hand. She knew that, like her, he was thinking of those terrible hours in the fishing boat. The sloshing of the waves; the dark all around. The palace disappearing into the sea like a sinking ship.

  “We’re still on course for Greenwash Strait,” he said in a placating voice. “We’re going to keep searching for the Lost Words. If there’s another book, we have to keep it out of Xavier’s hands.”

  But Noa wasn’t about to give up. “Julian, why did we sail all the way to Evert? Just so you could turn an island right side out? We found one of the lost languages of magic! Let’s use it. Let’s get rid of Xavier once and for all.”

  Julian didn’t answer for a moment. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally. He didn’t look like he was going to think about it. If anything, he looked gray at the idea of Noa tangling with Xavier. But that didn’t matter.

  Noa settled back into her pillows, strangely calm. Her anger cooled into something dark and unyielding as basalt, glittering with anticipation.

  She was a magician now. And she was going to do whatever she could to make Julian king of Florean—whether he liked it or not.

  14

  Noa Has Her First Magic Lesson

  Noa paced back and forth, each step thudding in a satisfying way against the flagstones. She had decided to wear her black boots today instead of her usual sandals. They were more magician-like, in her opinion, though warm for the weather. Her sweaty feet made small squishing sounds as she walked.

  She was in the expansive courtyard at the back of the castle, waiting for Julian to come and start her lesson. Mite was playing in the fountain, even though Noa had told her not to. But as Mite was now soaked from head to foot, Noa didn’t see the point of dragging her out—she wasn’t going to get any wetter.