“No,” Lyall said, flushed. “That's the last thing you should do. I can't control where the path goes, not completely, but I can ask to go somewhere and see if it leads there.”
“Then show us the way.”
“It's not that easy. There will be trouble. Maybe we'd best leave it until later?”
“We go to the village now.”
Lyall wanted to object, but my resolve had spread through the woods. There was nothing he could do but dip his head and shuffle back onto the trail again.
“I don't know what you'll see,” Lyall said. “It won't be nice.”
We came to a thick hedge which was as tall as I could see, with no way through it. Lyall looked to us, and put his hand through the hedge, pulling branches aside and revealing a clearing.
“Mordon first,” Lyall said. “Then you after, Feraline.”
“Why?” I asked, putting out a hand to stop Mordon.
“The way it has to be,” Lyall said. “Or we go back to Tour de Wildwoods.”
Mordon nodded once to me then passed through the hedge. I watched the branches wriggle at his passing.
Lyall twitched his hands. “Right, off you go, then.”
I entered the clearing and Lyall let the hedges swing back into place. As soon as I tugged my clothes free from a wayward thorn, I checked for Mordon. He was nowhere to be seen. I stepped out into the meadow, the grass soft and the air too still.
I'd had a feeling to not let Mordon out of my sight, but there was nothing I could do for it now. I glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mordon or something which could point me to him.
There was just the trees and the grass and me. No animals lurked in the area, nor was there much of anything. My magic said there was no where to go. We might as well be in a room. And if Mordon was out in the trees, it would be easier for him to find me if I was not out there looking for him. So I made my way to the center of the clearing, I sat down, and I waited.
After a while, I stirred. If I hadn't been sleeping, I was close to it. There was a voice nearby, a woman talking to herself. She was everything I was and everything I was not. She was me, but better. Taller, with graceful limbs and an ethereal beauty. She gazed down at me with a smirk.
“Do you know where Mordon Meadows is?” she asked.
“No. Do you?”
“Oh, no, I don't. I suppose if he hasn't told you, he must have decided on someone better.”
“Someone better?”
The woman laughed. “Someone not as naive. Someone who knows how to fly, who knows the laws of the land. Someone…prettier and more interesting. Someone who can make him happy.”
I stiffened. “If he's not here, it's because the woods took him.”
“But how do you know he's not with someone else?”
“Maybe he is. So what?”
“Don't you want to know what he's doing with them?”
I shook my head to clear the thoughts cob-webbing my mind. “Mordon has never given me reason to doubt him, and I won't start now.”
The blonde snorted and let down her hair out of its bun. She didn't look so tall anymore. “Shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice.”
“What does that mean?” I snapped.
“You know. And shame on you. Twice is quite enough, don't you agree it would be better not to let it be thrice?”
I clenched my jaw. “Yes, it is. And that's why I've changed my type.”
“Tiger taken to wearing spots? I'll believe it when I see it.”
“Then look on.” I held out my arms, and she giggled. It was my high-pitched giggle which came out of her mouth.
“Oh, dolly, dolly, little girl, I love your optimism. But you know the truth: they dallied not because they were the dallying sort. It was because you're you, and you're a freaking doormat.” She reconsidered. “Or maybe you're not enough of one. Ever think of that?”
I crossed my arms. “It was their choice. They could have broken it off with me first, and they didn't. That's not my fault.”
“Do you think that—”
“I've said what I'll say on the subject.”
The woman tapped her foot in annoyance. “Do you know why you're here and he isn't?”
“No.”
She held out her arms and did a spin. “Look at all of this, look at it. What do you see? Who do you see?”
“Nothing, and no one.”
She stopped and looked around her, regarding it with grim complacency. “Yes, I suppose there is no one there. How lonely.”
“I don't mind being by myself.”
“No, that's fine. But, have you ever stopped to think…what would be left if he left?”
Not even the sound of a cricket broke the silence after her question. If Mordon left, I wouldn't have the colony at Kragdomen, or any of the friends there. I was the newest member of the coven, so I'd be the one who would have to be parted from my oldest friends. If we were to part ways, I wouldn't even have the house I slept and ate and studied in. That all belonged to Mordon.
“I'd have my barn.” Which I hadn't been to often because it reminded me of Railey.
She nodded. “Yes. You'd have your barn.”
“And my potions business. I could expand on that.”
“A good trade for a Swift.”
“But…I'd lose a lot.”
“Yes, you would.”
The grass was cool and moist beneath my back when I stretched out to stare at the stars through the trees.
“I'd be better off than I was before I met him, though. I'll be fine.”
The woman lay on the grass beside me and turned her head to face me. “You will be. But…I'd ask you to stay.”
“What?”
“I mean, here. In the Wildwoods. If that fire drake wasn't in our woods, would you never leave with him?”
I scowled. “I'm starting to have the impression I'm talking to the forest.”
“Who did you think you were talking to before?”
I propped myself up on an elbow. “To be honest, I thought I was talking to myself. A demented, doubting version of myself.”
She plucked a dandelion with a full seed head and ran the tip of her finger over the fluff. “It is true that I take on characteristics of those I speak with. When you come here to the clearing to speak with me, I ask you the things you don't ask yourself.”
“Then why are you asking me to stay? You sound like an insecure creep.”
“They're your questions, not mine. I'm stating what I read on your heart. It's up to you to answer them. So, what's your answer? If he leaves, will you stay here?”
I considered the question, actually, honestly considered it. What if… I rubbed my forehead and fell back to the grass.
“Not permanently. I'll come and go. I'll always come and go, no matter what.”
“Are you certain you'll feel that way once you're surrounded by family? With people who love you, even though you don't know them yet? Enough people to fill this entire clearing? Are you sure then that you wouldn't stay?”
“I don't know them. I can't imagine what it would be like, to have all the people you describe. But I know myself, and I know this is nice and exciting and it makes sense in a weird part of my brain, but it's not home.”
“What would you do without him?”
“I don't even know what to do with him. I don't think that will ever change. I'm good with not knowing.”
The woman didn't answer me.
Test passed or test failed? I got to my feet, worried for Mordon, and started to look for him. I glanced back at the woman one last time, but she was gone.
It was as if she'd vanished into nothing.
Chapter Sixteen
I poked listlessly at the campfire, its fluttering light playing on the golden brood ring wrapped about my finger. A rough blanket slung over my shoulders as I found myself momentarily alone. Lyall was off to talk with another forest dweller and Mordon had gone to mark a bush or something.
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I listened to the lonely call of an owl, saw the distant shape of a deer sipping from the creek, and thought about how the sorcering trial had ended. Memories from the last session came to mind.
“So,” said a fellow prisoner sitting beside me in the waiting room before the courts opened. “You're the bitch that killed Gregor Cole?”
Twice in the past few weeks I'd had a cell mate, though this wasn't a cell, it just felt like one. It had white floors, white walls, and powder blue padded chairs. I preferred this room to be empty. Whenever they put me with someone else, a chill tickled my spine. I had a dread of being locked up alone with a convict. That my cellmates asked the same question in a slightly different way concerned me. Twice could be coincidence. But three times? That was deliberate.
Once again I didn't answer.
“They said you'd occupy the other courtroom. Feraline Swift, the man-killing Creature.”
This guy was different from the other two. The others had been uncertain, or at least awkward. As if they weren't wholly comfortable with what they were supposed to do. One man felt compelled to verify my identity beyond all doubt, but I hadn't told him who I was, so he'd left me alone. The second man had wrung his hands and turned his back to me. But this man? I got the feeling that even if he had the wrong person, he didn't care.
He'd been in cuffs when they brought him in. They'd snapped the cold forged iron onto the armrest beside me. As he talked, he twisted his hand so that it slid out of its shackles. There was nothing extraordinary about it; he was simply double-jointed.
“The karma bus is coming for you, scint.”
I sat still with my hands in my lap, staring straight at the wall ahead of me. There was nothing obviously threatening in his average frame, sandy blond, short hair, no tattoos appearance—except for the way he moved. He moved like a boa constrictor curling around its prey, slow yet fast and imminently lethal.
Magic dampening wards were on this room, so spells should be out of the equation, which left us on relatively equal ground. For a man, he wasn't big. For a woman, I wasn't small. He was a little bit bigger and had more muscle, which I felt in practice when he seized my arm.
“Didn't you hear? You should die, bitch!”
He moved. I raked my nails down his forehead. He shut his eyelids, but I felt the jelly slip by my fingertips as my nails dug deep. He screamed and lurched forward with grappling hands.
Falling over the chairs, I brought my feet up to fend him off. I realized I was wearing heels. Namely, the stupid three-inch high dime-sized things that Lilly had insisted on and which would make a very nicely pointed weapon. His business suit dimpled around their points. A hand found my throat. I withdrew one foot and kicked hard.
It didn't take as much power as I'd thought. There was an odd popping sensation as the left heel broke through shirt and skin. He did not seem at all phased, his hand tightening on my throat, making my vision go spotty.
I yanked the foot back for another kick.
A weird, gurgling rushing sound accompanied the movement. He gasped. Blood sprayed, striking my clothes, face, hair. I squinted against it, still struggling to breathe past his fist.
Even as his right lung collapsed, he held on. I rolled to the floor, breaking his grasp. He half fell after me. Faster than him, I scrambled to the door.
It was too secure to rattle but I pummeled the panel with a shoe, rapping out a series of sharp knocks.
He grabbed my leg, caught my foot as I tried to kick him again. So I punched him in the head. It jarred my knuckles and wrist, largely succeeding in making him angry. He took hold of my shirt and tore holes in the fabric as he inched closer to my throat.
The guard opened the door. We tumbled into the hallway, the convict suddenly on top with a stranglehold on my neck right there in front of the court officers, bailiff, the press, and who knows who else.
After the image of a struggling woman being overpowered by a rapist-murderer registered in the minds of those watching, the little issue of his blood being everywhere didn't matter any longer. Except to the judge and jury, whose first sight of me was a hastily cleaned, torn-shirt mess. Throughout questioning, even the offense lawyer kept wincing at me.
Turns out my throat had been marked.
A day in court happened similarly to what was in the boring drama movies, except there was a lot of waiting involved on my part. Wait for this lawyer to speak, wait for that witness, stare at the Adam's apple on this person. It was probably far more involved for someone who hadn't been subjected to truth spells of dubious effectiveness.
The side effects of the truth spells were varied. Mental fogginess, state of general euphoria, constant aches and pains which were voided by the aforementioned general euphoria.
Basically, once I promised to let the judge do a Veridad spell, the rest of the day went by like a booze-addled night of partying. Things were said. Actions were done. People made a commotion over nothing, and there was always one person who took the truth spell who was affected adversely. They became as anxious as a purse-sized poodle faced with walking through a carwash. They screamed in physical agony, declaring that their clothes scraped and the cold of a metal bench burned. They fixated on a single anxiety until he conceded all their dignity.
“Thank goodness that isn't you,” my lawyer, one Uncle Don had recommended, would say every time it happened. “One in ten. Thank goodness you aren't one of them.”
The judge declared the talking over. The judge and jury would retreat into the antechambers to solitary rooms to consider the case. After three days, the verdict would be announced.
In the meantime, I went home.
They escorted me home and placed a conch shell on my table. It was the size of two fists, earthy toned on the outside, glossy pink on the inside.
“That's pretty. Is it a horn?” I asked, deliberately being obtuse to prod a watchman into answering.
It worked. He scowled at me. “No. It puts you to sleep.”
“How?”
“It makes the sound of the ocean.”
“Okay, why do you want me to sleep?”
“So when you next wake up, all the waiting will be over and you won't have to worry about a thing.”
“You mean so I don't run away or cause trouble.”
Lilly intervened then. She took me by the arm and pulled me away. I washed up. The Veridad spell had worn off, and I did not want to waste my conscious moments before the shell's effect hit me.
“How do you think it went today?” I asked her.
“As well as it could have. They were very moved about the attack.”
“My throat feels swollen.”
She gave a pitying smile. “I'm sure.”
Seeing the bed she was drifting me towards, I balked. Something was bothering me. “Where's Mordon?”
Lilly gave a real grin and rolled her eyes. “Under arrest for assault, but I don't think they'll charge him, just hold him for a little.”
Concern jolted through me. “Assault? Who?”
“Don't you remember? He pulled the convict off of you. I thought he was going to kill him, but I guess not.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“I said, Mordon straightened the man out. He went back to the dungeons for his poor behavior. I doubt he'll last a week in the dungeons now. Don't worry, Mordon will be by your side soon enough. No one is shedding any tears over that creep.”
“I guess.”
“Did you know that they rearranged his court appearance to match yours? No one thinks that was coincidence, but who can prove otherwise?”
“I think you can prove it if you can find trace of a price on my head.”
Lilly frowned. “Barnes tried. Nobody is talking. It's a dead end. We have to be happy you're alive, that's all.”
Lyall dropped his pack to the ground, crunching the shavings he'd made last night from whittling on a stick. He sat on his pack. “You look lost in shadows.”
“What?”
�
��I'm asking why you are distressed.”
I smiled. Couldn't help it, not with how suddenly he'd become all concerned about me. A whisper of honeysuckle tickled the back of my neck, warming me from the inside.
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