“Don’t you ever do as you’re told?” said Simon.
“Sometimes,” said Elfwyn. “Aren’t you going to unfreeze Reven?”
“No, because he might try to kill me again.”
Dame Glammer watched this exchange with great amusement. “Perhaps if you tried explaining things to the dear little chickabiddy, he wouldn’t be so eager to fillet you.”
Simon spared her a disgusted glance. “Look, boy—”
“Reven,” said Reven, through clenched teeth.
“Reven, then. I’m not here to hurt anybody. And I’m not going to hurt anybody, provided they keep their flippin’ axes to themselves. Good enough for you?”
“You killed Jinx,” said Reven.
“I most certainly did not.”
“Trust Simon, ducks,” said Dame Glammer. She chucked Reven under the chin, which Reven was unable to avoid. “Not long term, mind. But right now, just for the moment, he means no harm.”
Just then Simon noticed the bottle half sticking out of Reven’s frozen pocket. Simon wrenched it free, stared at his tiny self for an instant, and then stuck the bottle into his own pocket. He went over and picked up the ax. Jinx watched Reven discover he could move again.
“Hurry up, lay those blankets out flat,” said Simon. “Make a pallet out of them.”
“Don’t you ever say please?” said Elfwyn.
No, he never does, Jinx realized. But that isn’t evil, that’s just rude.
With the ax tucked safely under his arm, Simon knelt down and helped her arrange the blankets to make a pallet just about Jinx-sized. Reven helped too—but he kept darting angry looks at Simon all the same. Dame Glammer just stood in her butter churn and watched.
“Now we need to slide this under him while disturbing him as little as possible,” said Simon.
“Hey, you made the blankets stiff,” said Elfwyn. “Is that the same spell as the clothes?”
“Yes,” said Simon. “Now, I’m going to levitate … Jinx, and when I do, you two slide the blankets under as quickly as you can, without touching him.”
Jinx hovered closer to watch. Simon frowned with concentration. This was magic on a living person, wasn’t it? The hardest kind to do. Except, Jinx thought, looking at himself, it wasn’t magic on a living person, was it.
For a moment, nothing happened. Jinx could feel Simon trying to draw on power that wasn’t there. Then Simon took the bottle containing himself out of his pocket. He scowled at his captive life—power and concentration, thought Jinx. He’s drawing on his own bottled lifeforce for power. Can you do that?
Jinx realized for the first time that he had learned to sense what power a wizard was using.
Simon was struggling with the bottled power—it was floppy and unwieldy—so Jinx supplied a little power of his own. Some of it came from his own, well, death. And some came from the freed dead lives, a few of which were still drifting upward. They were happy to come to Jinx’s assistance. It was sort of like drawing on the Urwald’s power, only a little more slippery.
Simon looked startled. He stared right at where Jinx was floating, and for a second Jinx thought the wizard could see him. Then Simon shook his head, gathered up the power Jinx was feeding him, and directed it at the body on the rocks.
Jinx’s body rippled a little, like cloth floating on the surface of water, and rose a few inches into the air. Elfwyn slid the pallet underneath, and Jinx’s body settled gently down onto it.
Simon levitated the pallet. Then he stood up, the ax still in his hand. “There seems to be a power vacuum in this vicinity, Bonemaster.”
“Is there? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Something’s destroyed nearly all your power. Care to tell me what it was?”
“Nonsense. I’ve simply found a way to conceal and guard my power,” said the Bonemaster. “If you had any skill at magic, you’d be able to do the same.”
“Is that so?” said Simon. “There’s a lot of broken glass around here. It looks like bottles.” His hand closed over the bottle in his pocket. He turned to Elfwyn. “Take … Jinx and start back down the canyon. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Are you just going to leave the Bonemaster dangling there?” Elfwyn demanded. “He killed Jinx!”
“Never mind what I’m going to do, girl. Take Jinx, and be extremely careful with him. You too, boy. Go.”
Reven scowled but gave a curt nod, like a bow. Elfwyn and Reven each put a hand on the floating pallet, and it glided easily beside them as they splashed across the creek. Dame Glammer thrust at the ground with her stick and crossed the creek in a single bound.
Jinx himself stayed behind, floating between Simon on the ground and the Bonemaster clinging to the broken bridge. Was Simon going to kill the Bonemaster?
Simon took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and began drawing symbols on the rocks. He took out some dried leaves and scattered them on the ground.
“Are you using the boy’s lifeforce too?” asked the Bonemaster, peering down at the drawings and sounding as if the whole thing was only mildly interesting to him.
“Shut up.”
Simon walked along the rocky shore, away from the Bonemaster, circling the island. Jinx followed, feeding him power from the lives that were still hanging around and from his own death.
Every fifty paces Simon stopped, drew symbols again, and then scattered more leaves. He kept his bottled lifeforce clenched tightly in his fist the whole time. Jinx could feel the power that came from the drawings and the leaves, and he suspected that Simon could feel the power Jinx was feeding him—the wizard looked at Jinx several more times, but still didn’t seem to see him.
When they got back around to the bridge, the Bonemaster was still standing on a bone rung, with his arms folded around another rung. He reached out one hand and poked at the air. He frowned, then put his palm out and pushed. Jinx watched the Bonemaster’s palm and fingers flatten as though he were pressing against glass.
“Think that’ll hold me?” said the Bonemaster.
Simon glared up at the Bonemaster. “Have you done anything to him? Other than push him off a cliff? Anything I’ll need to know about the life? You’d better tell me now.”
“Or what?”
You had to be impressed with a wizard who could ask “or what?” when he was hanging from a broken rope bridge and trapped inside an invisible wall, Jinx thought.
“Or I’ll leave you in there to starve,” said Simon.
“Nice try, Simon,” said the Bonemaster. “But you simply cannot afford to do that.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
“Think about what’s in that bottle. You’re not still counting on the boy, are you? I only ask because I’ve spent some time with him. He wasn’t a very talented magician, was he?”
“Just tell me if you’ve done anything to him.”
Considering the condition he’d been in the last time he saw himself, Jinx thought that sounded odd.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to figure that out for yourself,” said the Bonemaster.
“Right,” said Simon. “Either way, I’ll be back.”
“Bring the girl with you when you come,” said the Bonemaster. “She’ll be welcome anytime.”
Jinx had never flown over the Urwald before.
He saw the Urwald as an endless expanse of green cloud-shaped treetops, stretching on and on in all directions to the horizon. He soared higher, and the horizon grew farther away, but he never saw any place that wasn’t trees, any place where kings might live.
He felt wonderfully free.
He glided back to the river and saw the Bonemaster slowly, painfully, making his way up the cliff face. Jinx flew on to find his friends. They were marching along, sad and silent, and he got bored with them and drifted up above the Urwald again.
When night fell, the plain of treetops grew dark and shadowed, outlined with silver from the starlight. Some bond seemed to be connecting him to the trees, and he realized that through it he could lis
ten to the root networks far below.
The Terror was there. Following Reven, of course—him with his talk of chopping down trees and trading lumber to Samara. But it reached in from the unseeable borders of the Urwald, too. Somebody was cutting down trees, out there at the edge of the Urwald. And Jinx saw that this was connected to Reven in the mind of the Urwald—that Reven had the power to make the cutting grow and spread until there was no Urwald left.
The trees mourned this, and they mourned Jinx too. The Listener was dead—this news susurrated through the branches, crept along the root networks.
But I’m not dead, Jinx thought. I’m still here. If he was dead, wouldn’t he have, well, gone somewhere? Wouldn’t he see his mother, who’d been carried off by elves, and his father, done in by werewolves?
Or was this where people went when they died? He saw no one else floating over the top of the Urwald. But then—looking down—he didn’t see himself, either. Was he nothing but eyes? Then shouldn’t there be other eyeballs floating around up here?
The last of the Bonemaster’s captive lives had floated away. Jinx didn’t know where they’d gone, and he didn’t feel any urge to follow them anyway.
He flew far, looking for more dead people. From up here, the troubles of the Urwald were invisible. Trolls and ogres and werewolves lurked under those trees, but you couldn’t tell it from here. You could hardly even see the clearings.
Everyone and everything was part of the Urwald. Jinx didn’t feel alone, because he was connected to all of it.
And then a sudden surge of panic disconnected him—he had no idea where he was. He didn’t even know if he’d gone east or west, north or south from where his body was—or how far he’d floated, or for how long.
Maybe it didn’t matter anymore, but he felt as if it did. He wanted to know where his body was, and where it was going, and where he belonged.
The sunrise caught him by surprise. The sky went purple and golden-pink. A red sliver appeared on the horizon, growing into a great fireball, and the birds twittered and screamed in celebration. Jinx had never seen this before, and he understood why Reven missed it.
The sunrise had interrupted his panic, and now that he was calm, he heard the trees again. He followed the thread of their thoughts, and it guided him back to the path where the four people accompanying his body were walking.
It was midday when they reached Simon’s house. They had walked all night. Elfwyn and Reven stopped at the edge of Simon’s clearing and stared, dismayed. Jinx could guess what they were thinking. Simon’s stone house looked too much like the Bonemaster’s castle. The two of them looked at each other and then back at the forest. But they followed Simon and Dame Glammer (who left her churn at the door) and Jinx’s floating body into the house.
“Eat something,” Simon ordered. “All of you. Dame, get them some food.”
“Can’t we help you—” Elfwyn began.
“No! Do as you’re told.” Simon shoved Jinx’s body along ahead of him toward the south wing.
Elfwyn moved to follow him. Simon turned around and gave her such a look that Jinx was surprised she didn’t turn into a toad on the spot. Simon went into the south wing, and the door slammed behind him.
The door was no barrier to Jinx—he floated right through it. He watched as Simon cleaned the workroom out with a few quick spells, sweeping the floor with a sudden wind that gathered all the dust into a ball and carried it out the window.
Simon laid Jinx’s body in the center of the floor. He dug out the book bound in red leather. He mixed herbs in a mortar. Jinx recognized the roots that smelled of betrayal. Then Simon dug a piece of chalk from a jar and began sketching symbols around Jinx’s body. Sometimes he checked a symbol two or three times, looking worried. It was clear that Simon had never done whatever he was doing before and didn’t really know if he could.
This went on for a long time. Jinx got bored. He sailed to the window and then out it, into the summer daylight. He soared high over the treetops and saw green stretching to the horizon in every direction.
He felt at peace up here … except for the Terror. Except for the tree cutting that would spread until there was nothing left. No trees and therefore no people or creatures that lived beneath them.
Jinx flew back down into the clearing. He flew through the window and into the workroom again.
A cat came and sniffed at Jinx’s body.
Simon scooped it up. “Jinx is not a cat person,” he said, and dropped it in the hallway.
23
Widdershins
Simon knelt on the staircase up to his tower and touched the thirteenth step from the bottom. He said a word that Jinx didn’t recognize. There was a click and whirr of things unlocking, and the stone lifted upward. He reached into a hollow underneath and pulled out a green glass bottle that Jinx just had time to recognize before Simon stuck it in his pocket.
He’s been walking on my life, Jinx thought angrily, as Simon put his own bottled life under the step and locked it in.
Simon went down to the kitchen. “Right. I need you all to come help me.”
“Are you going to put Jinx’s life back in him?” said Elfwyn.
“The one you’ve got in a bottle,” said Reven.
“Aren’t they clever?” said Dame Glammer. “Goodness, do you keep the little chipmunk’s life in a bottle, Simon? That’s dark magic, that is.”
“It is not,” said Simon. “It’s wizard’s magic.”
“What I said,” said Dame Glammer. “Dark magic. Wizard stuff.”
“I can’t do any magic,” said Reven.
“You’ll do magic if I say you will,” said Simon. “Wash your hands and come on.” He turned and stalked off to the south wing, leaving the door open.
When they got to the workroom, Elfwyn and Reven froze and stared at Jinx’s body. It did look a bit mystical, in the middle of all those chalked symbols.
Dame Glammer entered the room, skirted around the sides, and went to stand by one of the braziers. “Come in, little chickabiddies.”
“Watch where you’re walking!” Simon snapped, as soon as Elfwyn and Reven moved.
“Now, Simon, the chickabiddies won’t want to help if you yell at them,” said Dame Glammer, grinning. She found the whole thing wonderfully amusing, Jinx could tell.
“Right. Stand next to a brazier, chickabiddies. Don’t step on the symbols!” Simon was as tense and cranky as Jinx had ever seen him, and Jinx suspected that this was because Simon was really nervous about the spell. Which was not exactly reassuring.
Jinx ducked through the window and flew up over the Urwald again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be alive again. He was free up here, and he could see sunrises and sunsets forever.
On the other hand, Jinx was the only person who knew about the danger to the Urwald. And if he stayed floating up here, he probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
And there were Elfwyn and Reven, who had looked pretty upset about Jinx being, well, dead—and there was Simon.
He drifted through the stone wall into Simon’s workroom.
Simon was handing a torch to Elfwyn. She took it and stepped gingerly over to the brazier Simon indicated. She set it smoking. Meanwhile Simon summoned Reven and, very slightly more politely, Dame Glammer and gave them torches. He took a torch himself and lit the fourth brazier.
“Now you stand in a circle around Jinx—no, not that close! I said a circle, not an isosceles triangle.” Simon walked around, pushing and jostling them into place. “And face inward.”
When he had Elfwyn, Reven, and Dame Glammer arranged to his liking, Simon stepped forward toward Jinx’s body.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Move!”
“You mean us?” said Reven.
“Yes, you, who did you think I meant, Jinx?”
“Well, you might have meant Jinx,” said Elfwyn, as she and the others walked forward toward Jinx’s body.
“Now walk around him! No, no, widdershins!”
“Widdershins means this way, chickabiddies,” said Dame Glammer, giving Reven a little shove. “To reverse the spell.”
“I knew what widdershins meant,” Elfwyn muttered.
Seen from above, the flames streaming behind the torches formed a ring over the four people’s heads. Jinx watched the ring of flame rotate slowly around his body, which almost looked alive with flickers of yellow and orange light rippling across it.
Simon began to chant in a language Jinx didn’t know.
“Are we supposed to chant that stuff too?” said Reven.
“Shut up. No.” Simon went back to chanting.
Smoke drifted upward from the torches and braziers and swirled around Jinx like the lives from the Bonemaster’s bottles. Jinx began to feel confused, as if what was happening below was a dream and not real. The ring of flame and the rhythmic chanting rocked him out of reality, into a place where he wasn’t sure anymore why he was up here on the ceiling instead of down on the floor with the rest of himself.
Simon stopped and knelt. Reven walked into him.
“Kneel down, all of you. Put your hands on him.”
Now there were four people kneeling around Jinx and six hands on him—everyone’s but Simon’s.
Simon looked up at the ceiling, directly at where Jinx was no longer sure if he was really floating. “Jinx, if this works, you’re probably going to feel as if you’ve just fallen off a hundred-foot cliff. Sorry.”
He took the green bottle out of his pocket. He leaned over Jinx, uncorked the bottle, and quickly put it to Jinx’s lips.
Jinx felt himself sliding back toward his body. He didn’t have to go. He had a choice. He could go on floating around the Urwald instead. He stopped for a moment, drifting just above himself, and then made his choice.
The last part of the slide was the hardest. Instinctively, he struggled.
“Don’t move, boy!” Simon’s hands were on Jinx’s shoulders.
And then Jinx didn’t feel even slightly like moving. His whole body was a universe stretching to an endless horizon of pain. There was nothing but pain. As far as Jinx knew he was alone in the room with pain, if there was even a room. Then the pain organized itself into bones fitting themselves back together, muscle reconstituting itself, marrow producing massive amounts of blood to replace what he’d lost—Simon had told him about all these things that bodies contained, but now he could feel his own body containing them for all it was worth.
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