Turning around to face him, I say, “Because I’m pretty?”
I’m not sure if crafters can blush, for he doesn’t. Instead he counters, “Because you are bold.”
I smile at that and try to summon more details from my dream.
“It was a world with a sandy beach and a violet sky with two suns,” I try, focusing on his eyes, “a larger red sun and a smaller blue sun, about half the size of the one here. And there were trees built in rough layers”—I illustrate with my hands—“and giant, scooping leaves. Dark green leaves, like wilted basil. And there were birds with long, pink bodies.”
Fyel’s brow draws together, studying me.
“I think this place was unfinished, for there was a white gap in the sky, and I don’t think we can touch worlds once they’re finished. We forget if we touch finished worlds. Like you’ve forgotten. Like I did.
“And we lay there.” I resist the urge to fall back on the bed, to look up at the ceiling as though that foreign sky might shine through its logs. Instead I sit on the mattress near him and reach for his translucent hand, only to shy away at the last instant. His image blurs for a moment, and I fear he’s slipping away. But my vision is merely clouded with tears. As I pull back to wipe them away, Fyel’s hand follows mine, as though they’re tethered together by some sort of string. “We lay on golden sand. It was warm, but it was wet, too. The air was heavy.” I blink, and a tear falls off the roundest part of my cheek, passing through Fyel’s fingertips. “And . . . it was a long time ago, I think. And you wore different clothes. You were sleeping, or trying to sleep, and I was lying next to you—”
“Maire.”
“And you looked at me.” The way he looked at me when he grasped my hand; the moment he became warm and solid and real. “But I don’t remember more than that. I woke up. I . . .” My eyes sting and I blink once more. “I broke.”
“Maire.”
He hovers close, glimpsing the hand that had reached for my tears only seconds ago. There was warmth in the way he said my name, familiarity. The peachy tone of his skin fades, replaced by pure white. And he smiles, soft and caramel-like, and says, “You are my lahst.”
I sit up, never breaking eye contact with him. “You remember?” I whisper, my chest squeezing down into a single, hard ball. So quickly. I touch a lingering tear on my lashes and wonder.
He nods. “I was very foolish to do what I did.”
The tightness springs loose. I want to hug him. I want to fly off this bed and sink into his arms and cry into his chest and thank the gods. I swallow the desire, shivering with the effort, and answer, “Yes, it was.” But I don’t regret it. If only we’d had more than a moment.
I start as the door opens and Franc peers into the room. “Are you all right?” he asks me. I gape and shift my gaze to Fyel, then back to Franc.
“I-I—”
“He cannot see me,” Fyel says.
I almost snap my neck looking back to him. What? Then Cleric Tuck couldn’t—
“Maire?” Franc takes a step into the room, scanning the space I keep focusing on. “I heard you talking?”
“I . . . Yes, thinking aloud,” I croak. “Trying to piece together . . . my thoughts.”
He nods once, slow and unsure. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
I clear my throat and ask, “Allemas?”
“Still out. I’ll stay up here while you get some rest.”
I nod, and he departs, closing the door behind him.
My breath rushes out all at once. I grab fistfuls of the bed’s top blanket. “They can’t see you?”
He nods.
“Fyel . . .” I want to walk to him, but I don’t trust my step without that boot, and I especially don’t trust myself not to try and touch him. Keeping my voice low, I say, “Allemas is sick.”
“I know.”
“He was in so much pain yesterday. Hunched over and moaning . . . and he started leaking, Fyel. This substance—not like water or honey or anything I can describe—just oozed out of him, and he cried for it and said it was his. He looked like he was dying. It burned my skin, but I got it to seep back into him—”
All levity fades from his features. The joy of his remembering is so short lived. “It is his soul,” he says.
My tongue grows heavy, as do my bones. My words are almost too weighted to climb up my throat. “H-His soul?”
He nods.
“That . . . isn’t what I imagined a soul would look like.”
“No, it is not,” he answers. His words are spaced in such a way that I know he’s carefully selecting each one. “Allemas does not have a true soul. It is killing him.”
“Not a true soul?” I whisper. “Then how? How does he live? He . . . he isn’t human.”
“No.”
Propping my elbows on my knees, I rest my head in my hands. “Is this what I was supposed to learn?”
“Part of it, yes.”
“What’s the rest?”
He doesn’t answer. We linger together in silence a long moment. I imagine a slick, gray soul slurping beneath my skin, or seeping from my heart, but the image doesn’t feel right. What do most souls look like if Allemas’s is unusual? Is mine different from Arrice’s, from Franc’s?
Was Fyel referring to the condition of my soul when he said I was fragile? Broken?
“Fyel,” my voice is cool and cloud-like, “what did I make? What did I craft?”
He hovers closer. “I think you know.”
“Do I?”
“Do you want to be told every answer?” he counters.
Yes, I want to say, but I force myself to think back, think hard. Steel . . . I know steel from other worlds. Yet I know intuitively that my own creations were not made of metal. Perhaps Fyel used steel. Regladia, though. I remember regladia. And cakes. I think hard on cakes, on flour and sugar and lavender and cacao—
“I made plants,” I try, and when he nods, I smile. “Did I make trees?”
“You made all sorts of things.” He sounds nostalgic.
Plants. Regladia. Trees.
Wheat. Rye. Cinnamon. Sugarcane. Mint. Olive. Cacao.
I slip from the edge of the bed, placing my weight on my good foot. “That’s why . . . the cakes.”
He nods.
“They remember me.”
He nods again.
“I did the eggs, too, didn’t I?” I try. “Milk . . . bees?”
When he answers, his voice is soft and sounds of a smile. “Many agricultural things.”
“That’s a lot of . . . things.”
“You have experience.”
Older than Raea, he had said. How many thousands—millions?—of years was that? I lean against the bed frame, taken aback by the enormity of the idea. I only remember a handful of years. I can’t absorb the idea of missing so many others.
Arrice bellows up the stairs, calling me for something I can’t quite hear—a visitor?—and my mind reels backward. My joints stiffen.
Franc can’t see Fyel. I can only assume that’s also true of Arrice, Cleric Tuck, and all of the other people wandering around Carmine or Cerise or Dī as a whole.
But Allemas can.
Allemas can.
“Why can Allemas see you?” I ask, my voice strengthening. I don’t care if Franc hears me. “Why can Allemas see you if the others cannot? How are we three connected?”
“You are so close, Maire,” he says, and that smile is gone, as if it never were. “Remember who you are.”
“How?” I shout it. I am so sick of all the half-truths, all the mysteries swirling like living shadows inside me.
“Maire?” Franc calls from the next room.
Fyel frowns.
Dropping to the bed, I grab my wooden boot and strap it on. Fyel doesn’t try to stop me. He told me I need to learn for myself, yes? Then I will learn.
I am not a slave.
I am not a victim.
I am not this.
I trudge into the hallway. Franc m
eets me at the door. Allemas lies supine on the bed.
“What are—” Franc starts.
“I’ll watch him first,” I say, my tone more curt than it should be toward my dear friend. “Go downstairs.”
“What?”
“Go. I need to be alone with him. I’ll be fine. Go.”
Franc eyes me, mutters a “Fine with me,” and leaves the room.
I enter it and slam the door behind me. Fyel does not follow. Franc does not return. Allemas does not open his eyes.
“Wake up.” I say.
Allemas lies still.
I march to him, my splinted right foot thunking on the floorboards. “I said wake up!”
Nothing.
I grab the front of his still-damp coat. “Open your eyes, Allemas! Tell me how you know him, how you know me! Tell me what you are!”
He stirs.
I have never inflicted intentional harm on anything. Not on the people around me, not on animals, not even on the insects that so love to taste my wares.
But I slap him.
I bring my palm down hard across his pale face, and my hand stings when it connects.
“Who. Are. You?” I grab his coat again. “What are you?”
His breathing stays even. He stirs but doesn’t wake. Doesn’t answer.
I utter every curse I know and release him before grabbing fistfuls of my own hair. I crouch, elbows on my knees. Think. Think. Think.
I try to remember everything I can about Allemas. The slave pens where I met him, the house where he held me prisoner, never fully explored. The customers we served. The maze in the forest where he left me for so long. Where did he go each day? How did he travel? What is he?
I picture his house. The blazeweed surrounding it. He knew I would try to escape. It was his cage for me. The kitchen, unstocked. Did he live there? Only sometimes? The dark, empty cellar. The unfurnished front room. My bedroom with its dozen locks and bricked window. His room—I’d only ever entered it once, to grab a clean change of clothes. What else was there? What could he be hiding? What were in the closets—
Vertigo and nausea strike me. I fall onto my knees, colors swirling beneath them.
And then I’m there.
I’m . . . here.
Slowly, stiffly, I stand, face to face with weathered wood and an unmade bed and the smells of age and forest.
I am in Allemas’s house.
The men on horses find all the people from all the places and I am looking and looking at all the faces.
CHAPTER 25
I stand, tree still, for a long time.
I want to believe I’m dreaming, but dreams feel so different from reality, and this is very real. Even so, I walk to the window and peer outside, seeing the forest where the trap injured my leg. Seeing a setting sun unhindered by clouds, a little higher than it should be. How far must this place be from Carmine if the night hasn’t yet touched it?
But, more importantly, how did I get here?
I spin around, half expecting Allemas to come through the door or crawl out from under the bed. Holding my breath, I listen, but no creaks or footsteps sound in the house. It is early, silent save for the faint buzz of forest bugs beyond the walls. The crickets have begun to sing.
Did I will myself here? The way I will cakes, the way I’ve, many times now, willed Allemas?
I shake my head, though there is no one there to see it. No—those sensations, that flying sickness. I’ve felt that every time Allemas has transported me somewhere with his unseen magic. Did he bring me here? Is there something he wants me to see?
But would Allemas ever send me somewhere where I wouldn’t be under his direct supervision?
Is he that broken?
I take a deep breath, then another, and walk to the other side of the room. The floorboards groan beneath my weight. Allemas’s simple bed is here, the same as before. I’m not sure he’s ever slept in it. There’s a headboard as well, empty save for dust. A closet. Sparse.
I move to the closet and open its door, looking inside. There are a few clothes hanging up. I pull each garment from its hanger and rifle through the pockets, pat down seams for anything hidden. I find nothing but a piece of copper, which I pocket.
I move to the bed and search the covers. Double-check the headboard. I walk over each floorboard, testing for loose ones, anywhere Allemas may have hidden something, but my search comes up fruitless.
I don’t understand.
I sit on the end of the bed and clasp my hands before me. I had been thinking of this house when I came here. I wanted to be here. But the entire time I was held prisoner here, I wanted desperately to return to Carmine . . . If I’m the one who sent myself here, why didn’t this power work before?
No, not Carmine. I wanted to be with Arrice and Franc, I think. I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t know if they were alive.
I lean forward, worrying my lip, and the crystal in my breast-binds pricks my chest. Straightening, I pull it out and study its disproportionate sculpting. I turn it over and over in my hands, wondering.
Can I do it again?
I close my eyes and think of my bakeshop. I picture its shelves, its meager display. I imagine the smell of browned butter and flour, the broken windows, the clouds outside.
I gasp as the nausea assaults me again, stronger this time, and clutch the crystal. I can’t risk losing it. I grit my teeth, my stomach flopping, until the world stills and I fall back onto my rump, the bed gone from beneath me.
I breathe deep, swallow, and breathe again, coaxing the sickness down. Open my eyes to thin twilight. A storm-kissed chill caresses the bare skin of my arms.
The bakeshop.
I shoot up to my feet, stumbling as I fight against vertigo. “Good gods,” I murmur, staring at my locked front door. Turning slowly, I take in the place, which looks exactly as I left it earlier that day. I touch the wall. Solid. How? Do I move the way Fyel does, by merely appearing?
I look down at the crystal in my hands. Could it be . . . ?
Hurrying to the back of the shop, I fix myself a glass of water and drink it slowly to settle my stomach. I wish I had some ginger, but Allemas didn’t bring me any, and I don’t yet have the funds to make the order myself.
I kneel, clunky with my wooden boot, readying myself. My fists tighten around the crystal, one above the other.
All right, let’s try this. The forest labyrinth. I don’t understand the spells controlling that place, but I built the house with my own hands. I think of white icing and gingerbread and a glade among the trees—
The dizzying, wrenching sensation hits me as hard as though I’ve belly flopped into a shallow stream, and I feel at once as if I’m not supposed to be doing this—this magic. Or, rather, that I might be too human for it.
But I do not relent. I drop my head down. Clench my jaw. Pinch my lips. Tighten my hold on the crystal into a white-knuckle grip.
The floor under my feet grows soft. Grass tickles my good ankle and my forehead. The scents of confections change to the scents of sun-hot leaves and earth. Sunlight burns my neck.
I open my eyes, marveling at the grass growing in my shadow. This time I’m slower to get up, and I wait for my head to stop spinning before I lift it.
The glade. Early afternoon. This place is even farther from Carmine than Allemas’s house.
I let out all my breath. It takes me a moment to collect the rest of my thoughts.
It still stands, the gingerbread house. Just as I left it, though smoke churns up from its biscotti chimney, white and soft against the pale sky. Birds chatter in the trees around me. I find one foot, then the other, and stand. I’m near the well. I surpassed the spelled maze. I’m here.
I stare at my crystal and the prism of colors the sunlight creates on its surface. “What are you?” I whisper.
The sound of children’s laughter draws my focus to another part of the glade, opposite of where I first found the crystal. Two children, a young boy and younger gir
l, dart from the trees, their gaze glued to the gingerbread house. The hem of the boy’s pants and the apron over the girl’s skirt are soiled. They look famished.
“Wait!” I call, limping toward them. They hesitate, ogling me with wide eyes. Whether it’s because I startled them or because of my appearance, I’m not sure. Both, I imagine. But these are obedient children and they heed me. They’re thin but bright eyed. Their hands are clasped, and I smile at that, though I can’t imagine how they managed to find their way here.
I think of Allemas’s customer and say, “You shouldn’t be here.”
The little girl looks at the house longingly but doesn’t speak.
“W-We’re lost,” the boy says.
I glance down to the crystal. “Come here.”
They don’t move.
“I promise I won’t hurt you,” I say, offering them a smile. “Best get out of the sun, or you’ll be as red as me.” I move toward them and crouch, putting one arm around each. I slip the crystal over the boy’s shoulder and tell him to grasp its end.
“I want you to think very hard of home, and hold on tight, okay?”
The boy nods, focused on my eyes.
“You, too,” I address the girl. “This isn’t where you should be.”
The boy closes his eyes, and as soon as she sees him do so, the girl follows suit. The glade around us ripples, slower than I’m used to, but the motion gains strength until green and brown blur together, until the birds become a quick screech, until I press my tongue against my palate to keep the contents of my stomach down.
And we stop in the crook of a very old tree. Far ahead I see a small, shabby house, unpainted, with a tall stack of firewood leaning against its side.
The girl begins to cry.
The boy releases me and hugs her, resting his chin on her shoulder, staring down to the hard-packed ground. I look ahead to the unlit house, free of chimney smoke. My stomach sours.
“Where are your parents?” I ask.
The boy looks up at me, his arms still embracing his sister. He doesn’t answer at first, but I wait, and after a minute he says, “Dead.”
The sunlight turns cold. “Both?” I whisper.
The boy buries his face in his sister’s hair.
I swallow, noticing again the gauntness of the children’s features and the loose fit of their ragged clothes. Orphaned . . . and for how long? The sight of that gingerbread house must have enticed them greatly.
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