by Layton Green
Adaira leaned her head against his shoulder as they trotted down Magazine Street. “Yes,” she said.
Gus carried them through the western portion of New Victoria, past the Garden District and the stables and a series of parks along the river. They turned north to skirt the enormous Fifth District Protectorate Army barracks, then west again through a residential neighborhood that merged into miles of tenement sprawl, ending at another portion of the watery Fens.
Val observed Adaira’s reaction as they circled the southern edge of the horrific swamp ghetto, littered with rotting wooden planks and the hordes of wretched souls who lived atop them. A few “lucky” exiles huddled around stick and canvas tents, or sat on wooden crates and puffed on homemade pipes packed with opium-laced tobacco. Most of them just withered in the humid air, riddled with disease and surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes.
As they drew closer to the edge, Val noticed a woman with deep black skin and mini dreadlocks tending to the wounded on one of the larger platforms. A blue tribal tattoo snaked around the woman’s arms and torso. “Allira?” Val whispered to himself, as the woman dabbed a cloth into a jar and applied the paste to a leg covered in festering sores.
Adaira’s mouth tightened. “A horror you are spared in the North, I trust?”
“Poverty’s everywhere,” Val said, distracted. He wanted to call out to his old companion but dared not in front of Adaira. Even though Allira didn’t speak, it would be an awkward reunion to explain. “But not like this.”
“It’s the children who are the tragedy,” Adaira said softly, watching as a group of naked children scampered through a pile of refuse, drawing perilously close to the ridged back of a crocosaur. “The adults have made their choices.”
Really? Val thought. Because no adult he knew would choose a life like that.
He didn’t kid himself that the poor deserved to be poor, at least on any moral scale, but neither did he sugarcoat the inevitability of poverty. Not because some people deserved it, but because human greed would always ensure inequalities.
Those born into privilege, he had learned over the years, had an amazing capacity for rationalizing the plight of the needy.
Leaving the Fens sprawling to the horizon on their right, the carriage followed a rutted lane through a pine forest, until it ended at a tract of marshland dotted with pastel wooden houses integrated into groves of cypress. Gator-choked canals dissected the watery channels and islands of marsh grass, and the residents poled through the swamp in canoes and pirogues.
“Bayou Village?” he guessed.
“Aye,” Gus said.
“Who lives here?”
“Artists, philosophers, a few outcasts with means, mostly those who want to live a life close to nature,” Adaira said. “It’s quite romantic, though I fear I’m a city girl at heart.”
“Nature is for weekend getaways,” Val agreed. “Any idea where to look?”
“My childhood nanny retired here. She’ll be delighted to see me.” Adaira leaned forward and thanked Gus for the ride with a peck on the forehead, causing him to blush, then waved for Val to follow her into flight. “I’ve visited her once before,” she said as they soared above the collection of quaint residences, pointing at a lemon-colored tree house shaped like a boat.
They landed on the ‘prow,’ a deck-like area with a table and two chairs. A rope ladder led to a canoe tied alongside the house. A slim older woman with curly gray hair rushed up a ladder to greet them, hugging Adaira tight.
“What an unexpected treat, my dearie! How are ye?”
Adaira introduced Val to the woman, who she called Aunt Ilsa. After a few minutes of small talk, the former governess brought out tea and pastries.
“What brings you to our little oasis? Of course I fancy a random visit, but my intuition tells me ye’ve another purpose.”
Adaira smiled. “As always, your intuition is astute. I’ve taken on a class project that involves gathering a mint orchid. A book in the Wizard Library tells me this species might be found in the private garden of Wellesey Kilmore—are you familiar with him? He’s a floramancer of some repute.”
Aunt Ilsa clucked. “Of course. Wellesey was our most famous resident. Being a wizard and all.”
“Was?”
“He disappeared years ago, dearie. At least half a decade.”
Adaira’s mouth opened and then closed. “Where did he go? Does anyone still tend his garden?”
Aunt Ilsa’s eyes clouded. “Wellesey lived alone on an island a few miles inside the swamp. No one knows where he went, and the few people who ventured onto his isle to see if there was anything to salvage . . . well, they never returned.”
“Never returned?” Val echoed.
She held her palms up. “No one knows what happened on that island, but Wellesley came here to experiment.” She patted Adaira’s hand. “I don’t meddle in the affairs of wizards. I believe common born should be common born, and wizards wizards.”
“Can you point the way to his island?” Adaira asked. “We’d like to fly over.”
Aunt Ilsa hesitated. “I’d prefer if ye didn’t. Not even the crocosaurs swim near it now, and I’d never forgive myself if something were to happen. Your father . . . .”
“We’ll be safe,” Adaira said. “I promise. Just a glance from above.”
After a few more protestations, Aunt Ilsa reluctantly gave them the directions. Adaira hugged her, but it didn’t relieve the worry swimming in the older woman’s eyes.
“I wonder what happened to Wellesley,” Adaira asked as they flew northwest over a vast swamp lake.
“No idea,” Val said, “but there’s his island.”
From above, it looked just as Aunt Ilsa had described: a landmass with six narrow inlets encroaching on one side, like a six-fingered hand. A thick jungle canopy, lusher and more tropical than the rest of the swamp, covered the island.
“Shall we?” Adaira asked.
Val descended in response, until they were hovering a hundred feet above the surface. From that distance, they realized the island was a seething mass of plant life so dense and overgrown it resembled a nest of snakes. The diversity of color and species was startling; every tree and bush and flower looked different than the next. Only the green, ropy vines that seemed to proliferate on the island, draping the ground and other plants, looping from tree to tree, had any uniformity.
Val pointed out the top of a stone chimney rising out of the jungle near the middle of the island. “That must be Wellesley’s old house.”
They drifted closer, until the outline of a modest bungalow took shape, smothered in thick vines. “I wonder what happened?” Adaira murmured. “If he left, where did he go? And why so sudden?”
Val breathed deeply, enjoying the heady floral scent. Despite the beauty, the island made him nervous, as if something alien lurked amid the trees and vines, waiting for them to step foot on the surface.
Lucky for them, they didn’t have to.
He folded his arms as they hovered. “How in the world are we going to find a single orchid in this jungle?”
Adaira gave a knowing smile and took a stoppered bottle from a pocket of her breeches. “I made a little purchase at the New Victoria Magick Shoppe. A potion of enhanced smell.” She unstopped the bottle and downed the potion. “As long as the mint orchid smells like mint, we should have no trouble.”
After a few moments, she sniffed the air, her eyes widening. “This is amazing. I can smell everything. There’s jasmine by that oak tree, fennel and rosemary and lemons on the breeze, iris and lily coming from behind the house, a thousand different smells.”
She drifted towards the house, pointing out a patch of greenery near the front door. “Mint for the kitchen, as I suspected. We’ll need to range further.”
They flew in lazy concentric rings radiating out from the house, allowing Adaira to test each section of the island with her nose. Though Val still had plenty of energy, it was the longest time he had spent in the air,
and he was tiring. He understood why Adaira had suggested taking the carriage to Bayou Village.
“I have to ask,” he said, “why we didn’t go to the Magick Shoppe for the Shadow Veil that night?”
“Too expensive,” she said, distracted by her task. “I have only a small allowance, and could barely afford this potion.”
Val thought of the chests full of coin in Salomon’s Crib. I could have helped with that.
Halfway between the house and the northern shore, Adaira stopped moving and breathed in deep draughts of air, her nose twitching. “There,” she murmured, and dove towards the trees.
Val followed, landing next to her in a thicket of vines and hibiscus. Adaira waded through a clump of yellow bushes to a group of orchids with elegant silver stalks growing alongside a fallen log. Hanging pendulously from the stalks were emerald flowers similar to an upside down lotus, with pulpy red centers.
True to the name, the orchids smelled strongly of mint, enhanced with notes of vanilla. As he helped her harvest the flowers, placing them in a cloth bag she had brought, Val heard a whisper on the breeze.
Elpwkemstr
He started. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? My nose is limiting my other senses.”
“It was strange. Like a whisper in my mind, or a voice floating on the breeze.”
“What did it say?”
“It sounded like gibberish.”
Adaira gave the jungle a nervous glance, then closed the bag and tied it. “This should be plenty. Shall we leave?”
“Definitely.”
Val kept an eye on the jungle as he drifted upwards, Adaira a few feet beside him. He heard her laugh and say, “We can play later, silly.”
Elpwkemstr
Before he could ask what she was talking about, she shrieked at the same time something tugged on his leg. He whipped his head down and saw a vine wrapped around his ankle and another snaking upwards from the undergrowth, attaching to his other leg. He tried to jerk his away, but the vines were too strong.
Elpwkemsssstttrrrr
“Adaira!” He yelled.
“It has me, too!”
Instead of bringing him to the ground, the vine carried Val ten feet to the left, where another vine wrapped his waist as the original fell away. As he started to panic, the whole jungle came alive, a continuous stream of writhing vines that rose up to carry him and Adaira towards the center of the island.
She thrust her palms downward, slicing through the vines attached to her leg with cuerpomancy, but as she freed herself and tried to fly higher, more vines ensnared her, wrapping her faster than she could cut them away.
“I can’t get free!” she screamed.
Val craned his neck as he struggled. He saw the stone chimney poking out of the jungle a few hundred yards away. For whatever reason, the vines seemed to be taking them to the house. Was it possible Wellesley was still alive?
Elpwkemsssstttrrrr
“What’s that voice?” she asked, her voice shrill. “What’s it saying?”
“I don’t know,” he yelled back.
Elpwkemsstr elpwkemsstr
They drew close and closer to the center of the island. Adaira tried a fire sphere, causing the vines holding her to curl away, but a dozen more ensnared her. Val tried desperately to think of a spell that might free them, and finally decided to conserve his remaining energy until they knew the end game.
The front of the house came into view. He paled when he saw the vines covering it rising and falling in a regular rhythm, over and over, as if breathing. He had the sudden insight that the mass of vines covering the island was a single organism, an experiment by the floramancer gone horribly awry.
Elpwkemsstr elpwkemsstr
Was the damnable thing trying to communicate with us, Val wondered? What does it want?
Or was it just hungry?
The front door had long ago been ripped off its hinges, and the vines thrust the two of them inside the house. What he saw next caused his stomach to lurch and his throat to tighten with panic. A sinkhole had swallowed most of the floor, and at the bottom lurked a bulbous green plant with a circular maw of teeth, at least fifteen feet in diameter. Dozens of vines of all sizes, some as thick as flagpoles, snaked out from the maw, writhing as Val and Adaira drew closer.
Elpwakemstrelpwakemstrelpwakemsstrr
Adaira screamed again. Val spotted something in the corner of the room, something he had to look at twice to believe.
An intact human skeleton sitting upright at the kitchen table, the bones held together by a nest of tiny vines.
Elpwkemstr elpwkemstr elp wke mstrrrrrrr
And then he got it. He understood the twisted dynamics in play, the sentient nature of the plant, its confusion over Wellesley’s death, and the meaning of the words they kept hearing.
Elpwkemstr
Help wke mstr
Help wake master
“Adaira!” he shouted, as they approached the edge of the sinkhole. “On three, I want you to punch through the ceiling, then free yourself and fly straight up as fast as you can. Don’t stop.”
“Why will that work? What are you doing?”
The vines carried them above the maw of the plant monster. Below the buzzsaw of razor-edged teeth, the pink flesh of its gullet throbbed in anticipation. “Trust me,” Val said, with confidence he didn’t feel. “Are you ready?”
“Just hurry!”
“One . . . two . . . three!”
As Adaira used Wind Push to blow a hole in the ceiling, rattling the entire structure, he used his magic to levitate the bones of what he knew used to be Wellesey Kilmore.
Mstr, the vines whispered as the skeleton drifted across the room. Msstrr!
The vines holding the skeleton intact slithered away, and Val felt his own bonds loosening. He drifted Wellesley’s skeleton to the right, holding the bones together with his will, positioning it ten feet above the gaping mouth of the plant creature.
As soon as he felt the vines holding him slip away, forcing him to use magic to stay aloft, he dropped the skeleton into the open maw.
Msstrrr . . . noooo!
As every loose vine rushed to cradle the falling bones, Val exploded upward, following Adaira through the hole in the ceiling, using every ounce of his power to speed his flight.
When he risked a quick glance back, he saw an army of vines shooting skyward, grasping for them. Adaira managed to soar out of reach of the plant creature, but the closest vines shot skyward and caught Val by the ankles, yanking him down. He tried to accelerate away, but the vines were too strong.
“Adaira!”
She turned and flicked her wrist downward, cutting through the vines holding Val’s ankles. He flew higher, but two more vines shot up and took their place. Adaira cut those, too. In the intervals between cuts, Val kept surging skyward, gaining foot by foot. He was tiring quickly, but Adaira and the threat of death urged him on, and he finally flew high enough to escape the grasp of the vines.
Breathing hard, they extended their arms and flew as high and as fast as they could.
They didn’t stop until they reached Bayou Village.
Val landed hard, then stumbled to his feet. His whole body ached from the escape and the day of flying. Again he marveled at the bone-throbbing physical exhaustion the prolonged use of magic entailed, not to mention the mental fatigue.
As Gus clicked the horses into action, Adaira collapsed into Val’s arms. The bag of mint orchids was tied to her belt. “I’ve never been so frightened,” she said. “If you hadn’t figured it out . . . .”
He stroked her hair. “It took both of us, working together. You need to teach me the spell that sliced those vines.”
“It’s a simple cuerpomancy spell. A matter of focusing power in a small enough place to strip through the tissue.”
“Remind me not to make you angry. Or any cuerpomancer.”
“Once you master Spirit Fire, you needn’t worry about dealing with plant
creatures. It was sad, wasn’t it? The poor thing just missed its master.”
“I’m wondering if that poor thing didn’t kill Wellesley.”
She frowned. “He was a powerful mage. I suspect his heart failed him, with no one but his creation to bear witness.”
They rode in silence for a while, until Val leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped. “We need to give this mint orchid to the investigators, Adaira. We’ve risked enough already, and from what I’ve heard about this assassin . . . it’s too risky. We’re not full mages yet.”
Adaira stared straight ahead, then surprised him by biting her lower lip and agreeing. “You’re right, but Gowan and Dida have a vote as well. It should be a group decision.”
“They’ll agree with me.”
When they reached Canal Street, Adaira flew towards the coterie house after a long kiss and a promise to meet with the others after class the following evening.
Val watched her fly away, feeling a stab of regret at the imminent loss of the relationship. How deep his feelings might run, he didn’t know, because he wouldn’t let himself go there.
The endgame had arrived, and it didn’t involve Adaira.
“Playing with fire, ye are,” Gus said, startling him.
Val took a moment to respond. High above the velvet-draped entrances of the restaurants lining Canal Street rose the spires of the Wizard District, javelins of color punctuating the charcoal hues of dusk. “Some fires have to be extinguished before they burn too bright,” he said.
“Aye.”
-46-
Will led the way as the party squeezed through a pile of loose rocks and found themselves standing in a field comprised of boulders and glassy black obsidian, interspersed with hardy shrubs whose variegated leaves sparkled green, red, and gold in the morning sun. An old lava field, he thought.
Dalen and Caleb gave whoops of joy, Marek cracked a smile, and Yasmina looked dazed. Tamás fell to his knees, and Lisha had to shield her eyes from the morning sun. For a long moment, Will stood in place with his face upturned to the sky, basking in the sweet warmth, the smells and colors of the surface, the knowledge that he was a free man once again.