The Blue Woods

by Nicole Maggi

  “And she chose them,” I whispered. “And then they sent you here.”

  Heath nodded. His eyes were wide and bright, dappled with firelight. “Out of all the places I’ve been, even Friuli, this place, this town, has been the most home to me. Because I’ve been loved. By you, by your mother, by the Clan. I’ve been accepted. I will go wherever the Concilio asks me to go, but I hope they never ask me to leave Twin Willows.” His gaze narrowed, as though he could see right into my heart. “Don’t ever take this place for granted, Alessia. No matter how much pain you feel right now—from Jonah, from your mom, from the Malandanti—there are people here who love you no matter what.” He turned back to the fire, his face in shadow again. “Everyone should be so lucky.”

  Chapter Ten

  Walking to Tibet

  Bree

  Cal followed me into the den like a freaking puppy dog. Part of me wanted to order him to sit stay good boy, but the other part of me . . . well, okay. Cal was cute and smart—Yale, for God’s sake—and there were worse boys to have following me around. In fact, I usually did have worse boys following me around. Maybe it was time I let a good one come calling.

  “Here, take this.” I thrust one of the ancient texts into his hands and gestured to the couch. “You can start looking in there.”

  Cal examined the pages. “Latin?”

  “Yeah. There’s a translation codex in the back.”

  “Don’t need it.” He flopped onto the plaid-covered cushions and grinned at me. The smile sparkled all the way up into his blue eyes. “I read Latin.”

  “Of course you do.” I snatched the book away and handed him another. Time to show him who was boss. “How’s your Sanskrit?”

  “Um . . .”

  “You don’t know Sanskrit? Jeez. And they let you into Yale?” I clucked my tongue.

  “I’ll take the Sanskrit,” Nerina said, plucking the book away from Cal and handing him back the Latin one. “You don’t read it either, Bree.”

  I rolled my eyes and picked up another Latin text. It was the most common language in the books and texts we’d stolen from the Guild, and I could read it now without having to check the codex in the back too much. I glanced around the room. Nerina sat in the huge lounge chair in the corner, her silk-pajama-clad legs tucked up beneath her and her manicured finger running along the words on the page as she read. Jeff and Cora sat with their heads bent together at the desk against the wall, studying one of the texts in Middle English. The only seat left for me was on the couch, next to Cal.

  I went to sit, but just before my butt hit the cushion, a wave of pain crashed through me. I froze, my teeth gritted, breathing in and out hard. A gentle hand on my elbow guided me down, and I sank into the pillows. I closed my eyes for a moment until I could breathe normally again.

  “Are you okay?” Cal asked, keeping his voice low so that the others didn’t come rushing over, which I appreciated.

  “I’m fine.” I tossed my hair back and smiled at him. “I just got tortured, that’s all.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, I heard something about that. That sounds . . .” His eyes squinted.

  I laughed. “There’s not really an appropriate word, is there? It’s not like Hallmark makes a Sorry You Got Tortured card.”

  Cal leaned in closer to me. The scent of the forest still lingered on him, pine and bark and snow, and something about it eased the pain in my ribs. “The new Sorry You Got Tortured line is in stores now! Featuring the Hey, At Least You Didn’t Lose Any Fingers and the You Still Have Your Kneecaps designs.”

  I choked, trying not to draw Nerina’s attention by laughing too hard. “Nice,” I said to Cal, fumbling for a snappier comeback, but for once I felt like I didn’t even need it.

  A Cheshire-cat grin spread across his face. He was obviously pleased with himself for making me laugh, but somehow instead of rolling my eyes in annoyance, I smiled back. Okay. I’d let him have that one.

  I turned one of the thick, weathered pages of my book. The sun crested into the room through the cutesy wooden shutters on all the windows. “I just don’t see how the Tibetan magic could be used as a failsafe,” I said, rubbing my eyes. After not sleeping all night, they felt all itchy and swollen. “The magic only works for the Benandanti and the Malandanti—those who’ve already been Called and potentials. How would they use it to get their power back?”

  “I thought you said monks could use it to shadow-walk,” Cal said.

  “Yeah, but they’re not dipping into the actual magic,” I explained. “They’re using its essence to reinforce their own ability.”

  “There is a way.” At the sound of Nerina’s voice, we both looked up. Her face was pale. “But it is too horrible, even for the Malandanti.”

  “Nothing’s too horrible for the Malandanti,” I snapped. “We all know that.”

  “Yes, but this has real consequences—consequences that would be difficult to hide from the rest of the world. Even with magic.” She shook her head. “I just don’t think they’d risk it. They’re not that desperate yet. Keep looking.”

  Before I could answer, the door to the den opened and Alessia poked her head in. “I’m heading to school,” Alessia said. Even from the couch, I could see the gray circles under her eyes and the invisible weight that dragged at her shoulders. “I’ll let you know if I hear or see anything in town.”

  I hauled myself up, waving Cal’s hand away when he tried to help me. “I’ll walk you out, Alessia.”

  “How’s it going in there?” she asked as we crossed the living room where the TV was blaring even though no one was in the room.

  “Such a waste. We’re not finding anything.” I skirted around the pullout in the middle of the room that Heath hadn’t folded up yet. “We need something more concrete to go on.” I stopped in front of the TV, captured by the image of a young girl weeping at the foot of a bed where a body lay draped in a sheet. It was a report on the news ticker alert I’d seen at my house.

  “At least four hundred people have died,” the voice-over said as the camera panned out from the girl to a hallway filled with sheet-draped beds, “and the number continues to grow every day. Researchers are baffled as to how the disease is spread, and there is no cure or treatment. Doctors Without Borders is overwhelmed and asking for more volunteers . . .”

  “I know, it’s awful,” Alessia said, following my gaze to the screen. “We’ve been talking about that in Clemens’s class. He’s making us all come up with epidemic response scenarios. You are so lucky you’re missing out.”

  The report switched to an interview with a nurse, but the image of that young girl stuck with me. “Yeah, that sucks,” I replied shakily as we left the room. There was something about it other than just the sheer humanity of it that struck me deep. It raised my hackles—the hackles that were reserved just for the Malandanti. But was it a real, true feeling or remnants of the spells the Rabbit had done to me? I couldn’t be sure.

  We passed the kitchen. I peeked inside. For some reason, Mr. Salter from the hardware store was in there with Lidia. They stood hip to hip at the sink, doing dishes. I narrowed my eyes at them. What the hell was he doing here? A non-Benandante hanging around here was surely on Nerina’s no-no list. Mr. Salter leaned in to murmur something in Lidia’s ear. She laughed, her eyes bright and her cheeks spotted with color. Beside me, Alessia sucked in a breath. I glanced sidelong at her, and the look on her face told me this was one more item to add to the list of why she wasn’t speaking to Lidia.

  Alessia grabbed my arm and hustled me to the door. But before we could get outside, Lidia looked up and saw us. “Alessia, wait,” she called out. She grabbed a brown paper bag off the counter and headed toward us. “I made your favorite,” she said. “The prosciutto isn’t ours, of course, but it’s still good.”

  Alessia stared at her mother. I shifted my feet. The last thing I wanted at the moment was to be caught up in Alessia’s mama drama. But she had a death grip on my arm. “Enough with the food, Mom,
okay? You’re not going to bribe your way out of this with prosciutto.”

  “Cara . . .” Lidia glanced at me and sidled in front of me in an obvious attempt to block me out of their conversation. “I want to talk to you about all of this.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not really ready to listen just yet.” Alessia pulled open the front door with a hard tug. Cold blasted in—the kind of wet cold that meant it would snow soon. Great. More snow. Just what Maine needed. I heard Lidia call after her daughter in a sort of sad, thin voice as Alessia dragged me outside with her and slammed the door shut behind us.

  “What the hell was that about?” I asked her, wrenching my arm away from her so I could hug myself against the cold. I hadn’t really prepared to be standing outside in the freezing morning.

  “Her and Mr. Salter? Are you kidding me? As if she hasn’t been lying to me enough!” Alessia jammed her hat onto her head and looked at me. Her eyes widened as my teeth chattered. “Go inside! You’re so lucky you don’t have to go to school.”

  “I’d almost rather be in school than stuck inside all day with Nerina and her books.” I reached for the door handle, realizing I wasn’t dreading it as much as I claimed. Because Cal was there too? I wasn’t ready to think about that yet. “Hope something interesting does happen at school today. Like a certain raven-haired someone shows up.”

  “Me too.”

  “And hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I want to hear more about that project Clemens has you working on when you get home.” It couldn’t hurt to dig deeper and find out if my hackles were right. I pulled the door open and almost collided with Jenny. “Watch it!”

  “Bitch, please. You’re in my house.” Jenny pranced around me.

  I laughed; I kinda liked her after all.

  She linked arms with Alessia. “What’s wrong with you?’

  “Ugh.” Alessia shook her head. “Tell you on the way.”

  “Have fun storming the castle!” I called after them as they headed up the driveway.

  When I got back to the den, I found Cal, Nerina, Jeff, and Cora all sitting in a circle on the floor, the site books spread out in the middle of them. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, good, you’re back. Where’d you go?” Cal asked, his eagerness spilling off him like water.

  I planted my hand on my hip. “What, did Nerina promote you to be my keeper now?”

  “Bree,” Nerina said, shaking her head. But beneath her long snaky locks, I could see her smiling. “I want you to try something.”

  “What?”

  Nerina laid her hand on one of the books. It was the Tibetan book, its cover an inky gray with a silver medallion in the center. The medallion showed a snake shedding its skin and then joining back with it again. For some reason, the image gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  “I want you to shadow-walk to Tibet.”

  I cocked my head. “Bitch, you crazy.”

  “Bree!” Cora put her hands over her face, her shock dissolving into laughter.

  “Why is that crazy?” Cal asked, his face innocent as he looked from me to Nerina.

  “That’s, like, several thousand miles away. Your soul can’t walk that far,” I told him.

  “Yes, it can,” Nerina said.

  “But I’ve never—”

  “Just because you’ve never done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” Nerina got to her feet and guided me to the couch. “We’ll all be here with you. We’ll monitor your physical form so if anything happens, we can pull you back.”

  When I’d learned to shadow-walk with Nerina, weeks ago, she’d had to pull me back several times. It was an icky, squelchy feeling, kind of like how I imagined a leech felt when you pulled it off your skin. And the furthest I’d gone was Boston. It seemed like there should be an in-between place before I tried to go all the way to Tibet. “Why don’t I visit the Redwood site instead?”

  “Why? We already have control of that site, so we know the failsafe isn’t happening there.”

  “Friuli?” I suggested hopefully.

  Nerina looked heavenward. “Bree, you’re the strongest mage I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.”

  “Yeah, and they all died horrible deaths in battle.”

  Cal bit his lip, his eyes clouded with worry. “She has a point. She’s still recovering. Maybe this is too much to ask.”

  Oh, really? Little Mr. Early Admission to Yale thought it was too much to ask? I stretched out long, my feet knocking one of the pillows onto the floor. “Let’s do this.” Show the new kid just what a mage was capable of.

  There was a moment when everyone scrambled around the couch, asking if I needed anything, putting pillows behind my head, propping my legs up, bringing me a glass of water. “Everybody, shut up and stop.” I flung my forearm over my eyes. “I need you all to be quiet. Nerina, put on that sound machine app.”

  I heard her clicking through her phone for a few seconds and then the calm, constant sound of ocean waves. Whenever I heard them, my heartbeat steadied and slowed. I loved the ocean, but I feared it as well. The ocean had almost taken my brother from me. I remembered that day so well, the cloudless Mexican sky over my head, the hot white sand beneath my toes, my dad’s obnoxious chatter on his cell phone behind me, Jonah disappearing suddenly from my view, and watching, waiting, watching to see him come up again. Somewhere far away someone was screaming his name . . . No, no, they were screaming my name. . .

  With a force that practically tore me in two, I broke the surface and sat up. “Breathe, breathe,” Nerina urged, her hands tight on my shoulders. I gulped in air. It felt like my ribs were going to crack from the effort of trying to get enough air into my lungs. “Steady,” Nerina murmured.

  Cal pushed in next to her. “Are you okay?” His oceanic eyes had darkened with concern, like a storm over the sea. Aw, how sweet. But I wasn’t about to get swept away, not when I had a job to do.

  I shook him and Nerina off. “Just kidding,” I said and waited a moment for my breathing to calm down. “I’ll try it for real now.” I lay back on the pillows again. Okay, so maybe Mexico wasn’t the best place to think of when I was trying to get to Tibet. What should I think about? Of course. I was an idiot. The little Tudor house that was always my refuge. I closed my eyes, and I was there. Selling lemonade in the front yard. Jonah painting the sign to put up on the fence. Fresh Lemonade 50¢. My dad putting out a plate of chocolate-chip cookies and then eating half of them himself. Warmth spread through me. I stared up at the sky through the leafy trees. The sky was the same everywhere . . . in Charlottesville, in Twin Willows, in Friuli, in Tibet . . .

  I blinked, and the scene around me changed.

  A huge expanse of dark green grass stretched out before me. I turned. I was in the shadow of a great mountain, the greatest mountain, its summit so high that it couldn’t be seen from where I was. It could only be seen from the clouds.

  Something jingled nearby. I followed the sound and saw a cluster of yaks, their collars clinking with little brass bells. A colorful row of prayer flags stretched from the fence posts that surrounded them, flapping in the constant wind that hushed over the land. I breathed in deep, the air cold and clear in my lungs. It tasted different than any air I’d ever breathed. I looked again at the mountain, its white peak jagged against a mottled blue sky.

  Holy shit. I was in Tibet.

  The most important thing I’d learned about shadow-walking was that you had to lose your head. You couldn’t let your mind guide you; you had to turn inward and listen to your instincts. As I gazed out over the foreign landscape, I waited for my gut to tell me where to go. I had no idea where—or what—the magical site was here, and it wasn’t like I had a map.

  A map of all the sites. That was a good idea. I should come up with one, I thought. Sell them at all the Benandanti conventions.

  A whisper of wind fluttered my hair. I listened hard. I could just hear the fragment of something, a voice maybe, coming from the east. I turned in that direction and strode
away from the yaks. They watched me placidly as I went, and I could hear their bells for a long time in the distance.

  After a little while, I lost the soft voice on the wind. I stopped, listening inside again. I tried to keep my breath slow and even, because I knew that if I lost that thread, I’d wake back up on the couch at Jenny’s. That was the other important thing I’d learned from shadow-walking: be patient. Not exactly my strength. So I had to fight for it.

  A feeling tugged at my gut, telling me where to go. I was now in the deep shadow of the mountain, snow dappling the air. It was freezing, but I didn’t feel the cold. My body was safe and warm in Maine.

  I know what you want to see, said a voice behind me. I spun around. Standing just a foot away from me was a leopard. But not just any leopard. A snow leopard. One night when I was really bored and there was nothing on television, I’d watched a show on PBS about snow leopards. They were one of the most endangered species on the planet. But here was one standing in front of me. Talking to me.

  And it was haloed in blue light.

  Do you know who I am? I asked it.

  Of course, the Snow Leopard replied. Its voice was definitely male, deep and warm. You are our mage. We’ve heard about you.

  I’m not really here, you know, I said.

  I know that, he replied. I’m not an idiot.

  I laughed. I got the feeling if I met him in real life, I’d like him.