Outside the wind whipped my hair and battered Mordon against the railing. At once I knew this was no ordinary storm. Though I'd yet to be outside with my magic during truly bad weather, I knew that I should have some control over the wind. I should be able to soften it or push it this way or that. This thunderstorm refused me. As rain pelted my flesh and I pulled Mordon against the shelter of a wagon, I tried and failed to cushion the blows.
We didn't see the woman who had screamed, though we felt for her on the walkway and examined every place we could find nearby. It was as if she'd never been there. Grimly, I wondered if she had fallen into the lake, but I didn't see her nor did I hear any splashing.
“Where are the others?” Mordon called over the noise of the rain and wind.
“Find them,” I yelled back. Though we were mere inches from each other, it was hard to hear even these short words. “Pavilion?”
If there was a problem, I imagined that the pavilion would be the place where people would gather. It was hard to imagine them leaving us if there was trouble, though. The wind whistled and howled again, and we both crouched and clutched the railing as water drenched our clothes. I gasped, every bit of energy I had been throwing at it was just gone with no change of conditions.
“Here,” Mordon wrenched open a door to another one of the wagons. We burst into the stale peace, panting. Our eyes adjusted to the blackness.
The beds lay unmade, a pillow on the floor. No one occupied the place.
“Where are they?”
“I don't know,” Mordon said.
“Why would they just leave?”
“Something is wrong.”
“It is. I can't control the wind, not one bit.”
Mordon leaned against the door as wind struck it. The entire wagon rocked. My own fear reflected in Mordon's eyes.
“Pavilion. It has the strongest defenses, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I opened the door, the wind caught it, and with a sharp snap, the storm cracked the door straight off its hinges, dropping it with a crash into the lake below.
“Move,” Mordon yelled and jumped to the walkway. My feet slipped on wet wood, but Mordon's arm kept me upright. The boards groaned and heaved. We clutched the railing, forcing our way against the storm. I was aware of a deeper groaning, of the rattling wagon battering against its tether, but I didn't look behind us. The shaking loosened boards and made progress more treacherous. My foot found an empty slat. Then the whole walk bucked beneath us, we braced, and the walk slammed back down. There was a grating crunch, and the wagon we'd been in was just gone.
We slid along the rest of the walkway without daring to say a word. Destruction was everywhere. The whole while the wind howled in our ears and rain tried to tip us into the lake. Wagons were gone or torn into shreds. When the wind took a breath, the place smelled of burnt fur and blood. Jagged breaks in the railing cut into my palm. Most disconcerting of all, there was no sign of life.
The strangeness of the day made this seem a dream. Why did the Wildwoods put their visitors through such vigorous testing? Was it even a test, or was it a state of nature? Drenched, cold to the bone, and shaken from the unresponsive wind, I crossed into the quiet of the pavilion.
A place which wouldn't tumble into the lake! I gasped with fear and relief, resting my hands on my knees. Mordon slumped to the floor, swiped his face with his sleeve, succeeding in smearing a bit of blood or dirt across his forehead. We could hear the distant pounding of the storm on the barrier. No one else was with us. Dust covered the floor. When I wiped my finger in the cauldron, I felt powdered remains of soup, too dry for a couple of hours ago.
“The time line’s all wrong!”
I couldn't help exclaiming it. A flame appeared in Mordon's hand. He was on his feet, looking for whatever had startled me. Only when his eyes settled on mine did I blush. I hastened to explain.
“Do you feel full?”
“What?”
“I feel starving, like I haven't eaten.”
His brows narrowed and he said, “That wasn't a meal. It was half a snack.”
The lightning struck the defenses, breaking apart in a sphere all around us and illuminating the water.
“That's not the point. We haven't eaten anything, that's why we're hungry. We haven't seen anyone, because there's no one to see. I can't control the wind because it isn't there.”
Mordon closed his fist, snuffing out the flame. “We're in a ghost town?”
“Exactly. A repeat haunting. A couple of the ghosts are conscious and can interact with us and each other, but the rest is just memories of what once was.”
“Our Daae and the Grand Master. Are they the ones who have their wits about them?”
“Maybe. There might be others. And the rest…if they're all caught up in some sort of spell or curse, they're stuck here, for every day of their lives—afterlives—until something breaks the cycle. That sort of thing harms the spirit.” I tapped my fist against my head, thinking.
“His magic must be strong in order to withstand the beating for this long,” Mordon said, gazing at the whitecaps on the lake as they crashed against the barrier over and over again.
“Mmm.”
“What about the time line?”
I nodded. “Ghosts will preserve relevant memories, but the longer they have them, the harder it is to present the facts in a way which makes sense. They don't know what they observed after a while, or they confuse it with one thing or another. Sometimes they forget, and if there are multiple ghosts, they'll think different things are important, and it will all mash together.”
“So the story behind the haunting was already told to us,” Mordon said, thinking. “If the time line is confused, then we shouldn't evaluate it on how it played out in our chronology.”
“Yes. The Grand Master's horror story—I'm thinking that was the middle of the tale, or thereabouts. And what we're seeing now tonight is the actual ending.”
“So the beginning would have been with the young woman and Nathaniel.”
“Right, so the young woman and Nathaniel wanted to be together, they were rejected, and, what, Nathaniel unleashed some kind of a monster storm on the camp?”
“No,” said a soft, faint voice. It was the young woman. She stood beside the cauldron, gazing in fear at the rain battering the sphere around us. “We wanted to leave, but they wouldn't let me go. So we waited until night, and we got in a boat. Nathaniel was in the front. When we hit the edge of the protective circle, it trapped me inside and wouldn't let Nathaniel return. My family brought me back here in another boat, and pushed Nathaniel's out to the lake. He was so furious.”
She shuddered with the memory. The air was feeling tight, constricting.
“Fera?” Mordon whispered.
“I feel it, too,” I said.
“They thought I couldn't do anything. I wasn't a water or fire elemental. What could I do?” The tears ran down her cheeks. “I just wanted them to let me go. It happened in a few minutes, that was all, and they were all dead. I'd killed them. I couldn't breathe, they couldn't either. I didn't mean for it to happen, I didn't, but I panicked and I couldn't leave, and next I know…we're dead.”
The young woman started to sob. “I'm so sorry. I don't mean to. I'm sorry.”
I started for the door.
“You can't leave. You came in, you can't go back out. None of the others who came here could leave, either.”
Chapter Fourteen
My heart pounded in my chest, and I let out a slow breath. Mordon looked worried, like he didn't want to ask what fate befell the others.
“It's the protective circle,” I said. “Someone modified it so that the only ones who could leave were the ones given permission to.”
“But if this is a residual haunt…” Mordon said.
I shook my head and held up my palm, bleeding where splinters had cut in it. “Some aspects are residual, but not all of them.”
“I'm so sorry,” t
he young woman said again. “It'll be soon.”
We heard the splashing of oars. The next bolt of lightning revealed the whole camp returning to the docks, a wailing young woman being roughly held by two father figures.
The young woman saw herself and shrieked, “Don't do it! Don't do it!”
I grabbed Mordon's hand, squeezed it tight, and said, “Give me all the energy you've got.”
He clasped a fist into my hair and kissed me hard. His magic flowed into me, replenishing what I'd lost by futilely thrashing it against a residual wind. More power filled my veins, my muscles, making my hair stand on end.
Then the air compressed about my chest, knocking the breath out of me. Mordon's gasp broke through my pain. I focused, driving my magic straight down, into the Grand Master's protective circle. He hadn't been alone in making it. All the village elders had contributed, tossing their strength into the pot, and many years of natural power had fed into the circle, strengthening it for its nightly battering.
I heard their voices in my ears. I clutched onto them, listening to them harder and harder until I heard them in normal tones. When I opened my eyes, I saw the thirteen of them standing in a circle around this pavilion, in the process of making the circle.
I plunged into the process, yelling the words in my mind over and over, until I blended with the spell-casting. My magic and Mordon's swirled into the present-day spell, infecting it with his strength. My eyes were darkening and my lungs burned. The residual young woman was back in a boat, rowing it fiercely. She was about to reach the circle, and she'd find it still closed.
I commanded them to let her go.
The elder ghosts turned to me, blinking, scowling, some surprised.
Let her go.
The mother figure objected, and the others listened.
“Then break apart.”
They stared at me in confusion, then my command spread through the spell, disintegrating it. The wind and rain broke through the inner protection surrounding the pavilion and the ghosts swooped down.
The pavilion plunged into free fall. My stomach soared upwards, I grasped for Mordon's hands. And the young woman put her hand against the outermost sphere. Pain flooded my senses, my stomach was in my mouth, and all I wanted to do was scream as we dove down through nothing, knowing that the inky blackness of a watery death awaited.
My knees clattered against the dock, jarring me to a stop. Mordon grunted as he hit the wood planks beside me. Pain and adrenaline flooded my senses.
I gasped, choking on air, blinking tears from my eyes.
It was bright. Midday. Lyall stood on the dock, his boat tied to it. There was no sign of ghosts, no storm, and no uncontrollable wind. My ears rang with the complete silence.
Everything was as it had been when we'd landed here yesterday. My heart still pounded through my veins and my body was still recovering from the terror of falling through nothing. My mind was still thrumming with the echo of the protective ward, and my skin was wet with sweat. A breeze chilled me and stiffened the hair on my arms. One glance at Mordon confirmed it: he was every bit as astounded as I was.
The water was calm. Lyall looked on at us with suppressed amusement, as if he had seen his friend stumble and found it funny.
I sagged onto the dock, laying flat on my back and just breathing. The water tapped against the posts of the dock, and I heard the flap of a duck as she beat her wings against the surface of the water. After this was the soft calls of her ducklings. The wood under my shirt felt scratchy and uncomfortable, but I wasn't ready yet to come to terms with what had happened. Mordon moved.
Mordon climbed to his feet, brow wrinkled in confusion. I gathered my legs under my body, gaping in awe at my surroundings, trying to get my bearings.
“Need help?” Lyall asked, offering his hand.
When I didn't take Lyall's hand, he took out his pipe, filled it, and started to smoke. He said in a tourist-guide sort of way, “Part of my job is to look after the old monuments. If anyone has tampered with them, then I report it to the sheriff. If I think he'd be of any help in these matters.”
My jaw dropped. Mordon drew me up by the arm, equally pale as we listened to Lyall talk as though nothing had happened since we stepped out of the boat.
“But since you're with me, I thought I'd take you guys by here and let you look around. If you go up the ladder, be careful. Some of the wood has rotted away, and some kids let their dogs chew up the posts and things.”
I was able to say, “Mordon, it's all ruined.”
Nearest to us, a wagon's door yawned in the wind, its windows broken out, its roof a bare frame of three arches. Half the wagons were gone or split in two, their soft canvas coverings gone, their bright paints chipped away by the weather. The walkway boards had huge gaps and seaweed growing on them. Of the pavilion, little remained, just an octagonal platform and the stubs of posts.
“What's wrong? You never seen a floating pioneer camp?”
I brushed by Lyall, went straight for the wagon we'd been shown to for guest quarters. Nothing was left of the pavilion besides a few posts which might have been used for anything, and currently were used for nesting places by some bird or another. When we came to the wagon we slept in, I just stared at it. It smelled of dead fish and bird feathers, and boasted a nest in one corner. Mordon watched as I reached under the bench which had been the guest bed, and I withdrew the remains of a right shoe which was the perfect, rotted remains of my left one.
Lyall waited for us by the boat.
As we rowed back across the lake, Lyall hummed beneath his breath, “Do you know what happened to the lost souls of Alarum? Alarum, oh, Alarum.”
Chapter Fifteen
By the time I had mastered keeping a protective circle around the camp all night long, we had entered a part of the forest which was all quaking aspens and brilliant stalks of larkspur. The difference between this idyllic landscape and the hostility of our entrance made me wonder. Even the insects were bumble bees and butterflies, with none of the biters we had been eaten by earlier in our explorations. Animals approached us, me in particular, to smell my clothes or take offerings of leaves or berries. Their friendliness was enchanting.
Days passed in the forest, an endless cycle of survival and travel. Beneath Lyall's guidance, I came to know the ways of the Verdant Wildwoods. I named all the plants and animals along the trail and would even venture some distance from the others. As a means of defense, Lyall employed a heavy knife. I learned to compress air down into an arrow and shoot targets. During the evenings, Mordon and Lyall tolerated my experiments with various modifications to the fey circle.
Though the forest still shifted and changed around us, I no longer minded it when a boulder was replaced with a tree, or a glen became a hillside. I stayed close to the men, taking Mordon by the hand and slowing him down. Lyall stiffened when he realized I wanted to speak to Mordon alone, and grudgingly gave us space.
“How long do you think we've been here?” I asked.
“Time and the perception of it is all askew here, so it's impossible to know,” Mordon said while ducking a buzzing bee.
“We haven't had a test in some time.”
Mordon frowned. “Very unlike the Wildwoods to give you a break, I believe.”
“Right,” I said, “so it's more likely that we're currently in a test?”
Mordon lifted his gaze to the man smoking against a tree, waiting for us to catch up. “But what test is it?”
“Let's find out,” I said and skipped ahead. “Lyall, how much longer are you going to walk us in a big old loop before you take me to the Fey Council?”
Lyall coughed on his smoke. “What—what makes you think that?”
“Just little things,” I put my hand on my hip. “But I know that the woods has an ever-changing landscape and that the Fey Council is just as close or far as the Lake Alarum or the place we'd entered. Isn't that right?”
“It's not like that,” Lyall said, and he sucked on the
pipe though the smoke had died. I examined him and reflected on our conversations.
“Not exactly, but a close approximation. So, we could go anywhere at any time—yet we're walking through the backwoods. Funny, we're following you, a patrolman, who knows where everything is in the Wildwoods and how to get there. It's been a very long time since I have seen a test, which means I'm in one now. All this beauty—it's a distraction. That's right?”
“Everyone has different tests, it's impossible to know what it is or who is involved.”
“Sure. But I say it's a test, because we aren't at the Fey Council. I'd forgotten about my goal a few hours at a time, which could mean I forgot for a few days of weeks, or even mere seconds. Now. Show us to the feys. Or do Mordon and I have to strike out on our own?”
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