by J. A. White
Kara closed her eyes, translating Taff’s words to images. It wasn’t enough to hear the story. If the spell was going to work, she had to live it.
“Now yonstaffs,” Taff continued, “could not be seen by humans, of course—though those touched with magic might sense them as a warm breeze or a tingling at the ends of their fingertips—but the reverse was not true. Yonstaffs could see people just fine, and spent what little free time they had mocking the two-legs’ odd habits and routines. All except Topper. The little yonstaff found the creatures delightful, particularly a poor boy named Ruzen. The son of a tanner, Ruzen was eight years old and not particularly handsome or smart. He laughed often and easily, however, and was kind to animals. Every evening Ruzen would gather the dogs of the village and play a game with a leather ball he had made with his own two hands. Topper would watch them for hours, basking in their carefree happiness like a turtle in the sun. More than anything else in the world, he longed to play with the boy, to catch the ball between his jaws and feel Ruzen’s hand pat the space between his ears. He wanted to hear the boy’s laugh, not muffled by the barrier between their worlds as all sounds were, but joyously close.”
As Taff talked, Kara tried to picture the individual elements of the story in as much detail as possible. The cowlick in Ruzen’s hair that would never stay down. The leather ball, slightly lopsided and with the stitches already falling out, the handiwork of a child who had not yet mastered his father’s craft. Most importantly, Kara focused the image of Topper in her head until it was as clear as a recent memory. His tongue lolls to the left when he’s out of breath. The pattern of dots on his chest looks like a constellation in the north sky. His breath smells like early morning dew.
“Finally Topper’s longing grew so great that he went to the gods and begged them for permission to slip between the cracks of time and walk in the world of mortals. The gods were reluctant at first, but the faithful yonstaff’s longing was so great that eventually they agreed. They warned him, however, that he must keep his powers a secret, for the world was not yet ready for magic, and the consequences would be dire. Topper agreed. Within days he had found a place among the other dogs of the village, and days after that he had become Ruzen’s favorite. The yonstaff could not speak—for his magic was so powerful that even the slightest sound would release it—but it did not matter. The boy loved him, and this was all he needed.”
Something was happening outside. Snarls, raised voices, a yelp of pain. The wind grew into a cyclone that tossed loose items around the room. Kara felt something made of glass strike her back and shatter. She ignored it and shut her eyes even tighter, driving the palms of her hands into her eyelids.
The story. Stay focused on the story.
“One day,” Taff exclaimed, now shouting the words in order to be heard over the screaming wind, “Ruzen was climbing a tree, as he was wont to do, and at its highest point a branch broke and sent him falling through the air. Ignoring the gods’ advice, Topper made a single sound and time stopped just before Ruzen hit the ground. The moment the yonstaff touched Ruzen, the boy could see how everything in the world had paused in its motions, and though he was astonished at this turn of events, he loved Topper more than ever for saving his life. For a time, everything went back to the way it was. These were the happiest days of Topper’s life.”
Kara felt a new presence enter the world.
It wasn’t Topper yet—just a hazy jumble of thoughts and ideas. She needed it to take a more concrete form before she could make it reality.
“Keep going, Taff!” Kara shouted.
“For a few years, Ruzen kept Topper’s talent a secret,” Taff said, talking faster. “However, as he grew older, his family’s poverty began to seem like an unfair anchor keeping him from the good things in life. Ruzen wanted to know what it was like to go to bed with a full stomach, to wear silk clothes that hadn’t been mended a dozen times. He saw in his pet’s ability a way to make his mark on the world. And so Ruzen, using skills that he had learned but never grown to love, crafted a man and woman from patches of leather and placed them in the center of the village. When a crowd had gathered, he announced that his poor creations were embarrassed to be out in the open without any clothes on and needed their help. The crowd laughed, sensing some kind of jest, and Ruzen nodded toward Topper. The yonstaff knew it was a mistake, but his love for the boy clouded his judgment and he could not refuse. He made a sound. And while time was stopped, Ruzen went through the crowd and gathered various items—hats, gloves, boots, jewelry—and used these things to dress the leather man and woman. When time was set in motion again, it seemed to the audience that these items had flown to their new places in the blink of an eye. Their applause was ecstatic. They asked him to do the trick again. And again. Ruzen left a hat of his own near the feet of the leather man, and by the end of the day it was filled with coin.”
Kara could hear voices on the stairwell and pounding on the attic door. Focus. The story, the story, the story. Topper was so close. She could hear him, a faint whisper in her mind different from any animal she had ever heard. Kara constructed a mind-bridge from memories of companionship—Safi and Taff kicking their feet in the water, rolling dough with Aunt Abby—but no matter how many memories she added, the bridge never seemed to be long enough to span between the shores of reality and her imagination.
Come into my world, Topper, Kara thought. Let’s be friends, you and I.
Taff continued. Kara tried not to notice the fear in his voice as he competed with the pounding at the door.
“That night the boy, who was not really a boy anymore, slept with a full stomach, and in the morning he purchased three new sets of clothes. Topper hoped this would be the end of it. It wasn’t. For the next year, Ruzen and the yonstaff traveled through the local villages, doing their show. Soon Ruzen’s stomach hung over his belt and he had purchased so many sets of clothes that they needed a wagon just to cart them around. He shouted more. He laughed less. When Ruzen announced that they were going to the city where people had real coin, Topper knew it was a bad idea. He had noticed, in the past few villages, expressions of fear and revulsion mixed in with those of delight. Talk of Ruzen’s ‘trick’ had spread, but there were those who wondered if it was a trick at all and not some kind of dark magic. The city would be dangerous and Topper, thinking only of the boy’s safety, tried to refuse. Ruzen locked him in a cage.”
Kara rose into the air.
She opened her eyes. The attic floor was far below her. Wooden rafters pressed against her head. The twins stared up at her in triumph, flakes of snow melting in their hair. Other witches had positioned themselves around the room. A hollow-cheeked crone grasped Taff’s face in two hands like an unloved aunt about to bestow a kiss. Grace lay on the floor, her eyes open but dazed. Blood ran freely from a gash in her head.
“We were so close to the end of the story,” Taff said, his fists clenched in frustration. “So close.”
The twins approached Kara in perfect unison, an open grimoire held between them. The remnants of the attic door crunched beneath their boots. They spoke in the guttural language that only they understood, and the words scratched at Kara’s earlobes like a woolen hat.
“Put my sister down!” Taff screamed, struggling against the old witch restraining him.
The twins smiled and flipped to the next page in the spellbook. They spit out a stream of strange words, never speaking in unison, braiding the spell together seamlessly. The roof bucked and rattled like the cage of a feral beast.
“What’s happening?” Grace asked groggily as wooden shards and metal screws rained down around her. She turned toward the twins. “What are you doing?”
Kara felt the ceiling grow warm against her back and then vanish altogether as the top of the house shot high into the sky. Turning her head into the falling snow, she saw the roof hovering above her, flapping its bone-like rafters like a draconic marionette and peering down from a single, stalklike eye where its chimney used t
o stand. Despite her terror, Kara was awed by the grace of the newborn creature; it was as though the roof had been frozen in an inanimate form and was only now returning to its natural state. After trying to build a mind-bridge without success, Kara braced herself, certain that the roof-dragon was going to swoop down and attack her, but instead it flew just beyond the house and shattered into a gust of splinters.
The twins can’t create true life, she thought. Only destroy it.
With her ascent unimpeded, Kara rose out of the house.
She heard Taff screaming her name, but soon this was lost to the swirling storm. Kara twisted and turned, but like an untethered balloon, she could do nothing to halt her ascension. The house grew smaller beneath her. In the dim lamplight far below she saw the twins clap their hands in unison.
She fell.
Kara’s heart thundered in her chest as she plummeted through the sky. She kicked desperately, searching for a foothold that was nowhere to be found, and managed to twist her body around just in time to see the attic floor approach at sickening speed. Kara held her hands out in front of her . . . and jerked to a stop mere inches above the floor.
Gasping for breath, she turned her head to see the twins clapping their hands with glee and making short sputtering noises that sounded like giggles with all the joy clawed out.
“Stop it,” Taff pleaded with them, tears in his eyes. “Let her go.”
The twins raised their hands into the air.
Kara jerked upward, higher and faster than before. She used magic to call out to anything with wings, and droves of nearby birds flocked against the purple barrier enclosing the farmhouse, wanting to help but unable to reach her.
She fell. Rose again.
They’re playing with me, Kara thought, trying to calm herself. That’s all. They won’t really hurt me. They can’t. Rygoth wants me alive.
When she fell again, however—her nose almost grazing the wooden floor this time—Kara saw the twins exchange a tiny, rebellious nod that seemed to indicate the culmination of some prearranged plan: Yes, we have our orders, but we can’t allow this girl to live.
It didn’t matter that Rygoth wanted her alive. The twins, consumed by jealousy, were going to kill her anyway.
She rose slowly this time, as though the sisters wanted to draw this moment of triumph out as long as possible. Kara scanned the attic—searching for something, anything, that could help her—when she noticed a new arrival staring up at her: a medium-size dog with red fur and black dots. He had cogs instead of joints and was watching her with a look of pleasant expectation, as though she had a ball in her hand and was just waiting for the right moment to throw it. His tail, as it rocked back and forth in a steady rhythm, resembled the upside-down pendulum of a clock.
“Topper?” Kara asked.
The twins clapped their hands, and the magic holding Kara suspended in the air evaporated. She shot downward, faster this time, as though pulled by an invisible cord. The twins crossed their arms, confirming what she had already suspected: this time, they would not be halting her descent.
“Topper!” Kara screamed. “Speak!”
The yonstaff reared back on his haunches and opened his mouth wide, releasing a sound that was nothing like a bark at all but rather like a giant bell tolling a forgotten hour.
The world stopped.
During the weeks that they had spent crafting Topper’s story, Kara and Taff had engaged in many debates about what might happen if time actually stopped. Taff, who believed that magic had its limitations, thought that nature would go about her business as usual: the wind would blow, snow would continue to fall. Only people, and perhaps animals, would stand as still as statues. Kara, on the other hand, believed that everything would freeze in place like a painting, with only those who had cast the spell retaining their ability to move.
They were both wrong.
Looking around the attic from where she hovered several yards in the air, Kara saw that the current moment was not completely frozen but caught in a kind of net that permitted the slightest of movements but no escape. A fly dangled in midair, but its wings kept twitching. A snowflake vibrated like a recently struck tuning fork. Taff’s body was frozen, but the lips of his wide-open mouth trembled in a silent scream. The air itself thrummed with sounds looped over and over again, becoming indistinguishable from one another as they merged into a high, insect-like drone.
Panting gently, Topper watched Kara with his head canted to one side. His pendulum tail, perhaps a register of time’s movement, had stopped ticking back and forth.
“Good boy,” Kara said.
Topper’s chest puffed up with pride. Kara heard a whisper in her mind, as though the yonstaff were trying to communicate with her, but she couldn’t make out the words. The mind-bridge had been strong enough to bring Topper into the world, but there was, in this way, an unspannable distance between them.
“Now how do I get out of here?” she mumbled to herself.
Kara kicked her feet and swung her arms, trying to swim through the air, but although she was able to turn her body all the way around, she could not get any closer to the ground.
Topper watched her struggle, a look of amusement on his canine face.
Thinking that this invisible tether might break if enough force were applied, Kara grabbed onto a column that had once supported the attic roof, drew herself close—and then pushed away with all her strength. She spun through the air and jerked to a sudden stop like a dog at the end of its leash. After repeating this a few more times, Kara found that she was able to travel a farther distance, as though the magic holding her in place was beginning to fray. Finally, on her sixth attempt, something snapped and Kara crashed to the wooden floor with a bone-rattling thud.
She rolled over on her back, cradling her left elbow, and found herself staring straight into Topper’s muddy eyes.
“Hello,” Kara said.
The yonstaff watched her, eager to see what the amusing human would do next.
Taff, she thought.
He had been frozen in the midst of a long stride, having managed, just before time stopped, to finally escape the old crone holding him in her grasp. His captor was reaching out for him, deep scratches and several bite marks lining her veined arms.
“Taff,” Kara said, shaking him by the shoulders. “Wake up!”
But Taff’s expression remained frozen in the same unsettling midscream—until Topper licked his hand.
Instantly, his eyes opened and he tumbled to the floor.
“Ow,” he said, sitting up quickly and rubbing the back of his head. “What the heck?”
“The spell worked!” she exclaimed. “We froze time!”
She pointed at Topper to prove her point.
Taff’s mouth fell open. “Is this . . . ?”
Kara nodded. “Topper, Taff. Taff, Topper.”
Taff burst into a radiant smile and threw his arms around the yonstaff. “You saved my life!” he exclaimed.
Kara saw the pendulum tail tremble, as though Topper was struggling against some implacable force to wag it. The tail can’t move again until time does. This had not been part of the story they created, but as Kara had learned when she conjured the Jabenhook, small details often changed during the magical transition from imagination to reality.
Taff rose to his feet, taking in his surroundings.
“This is amazing!” he exclaimed. Given his enthusiastic gesticulations, Kara suspected that Taff might have shouted the words, but his voice was strangely muffled in this suspended world, as though he were speaking through a closed door. “I mean, you’ve done some pretty incredible things before, but you actually stopped time!” He stood eye to eye with one of the twins, her face hardened into a permanent scowl. “Do you think she can see me?” he asked.
“I doubt it.”
Taff stuck out his tongue anyway.
“Don’t play with the frozen people,” Kara said. “And it wasn’t just me who did this. We created the s
pell together.”
“I guess.” Taff shrugged. “But it would have just been a story without your magic. I didn’t really do anything at all.”
It wasn’t the first time that Taff had put himself down like this. Despite her brother’s invaluable help, he never felt like he did enough.
I’ll talk to him about it later, she thought. Who knows how long this spell is going to last. When Kara built a mind-bridge it was usually a permanent fixture that she could return to time and time again, but the one linking Topper and herself felt as insubstantial as a half-remembered dream. At any moment it might dissipate altogether, allowing time to continue its forward march.
“Let’s go,” Kara said, spinning around and nearly colliding with an auburn-haired witch whose nose twitched slightly, as though she had been frozen just before a sneeze. Kara stepped around her and navigated past the other figures spaced throughout the attic floor. Topper padded softly behind her. “Hopefully we can get past the barrier,” she said, thinking out loud. “And we have to wake up Darno and Shadowdancer. And retrieve our supplies, too. We won’t get far without—”
“Kara? Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Taff stood over Grace. Her eyes were closed. It was the first time that Kara had ever seen her look truly at peace.
“We can’t just leave her here,” Taff said. “They’ll kill her as soon as time starts again.”
“What happens to Grace is not our problem.”
“But it kind of is,” said Taff. “Listen, no one hates Grace more than me—”
Kara stared at him with arms akimbo: Really?