The lights in the room brightened, the side door slammed shut and locked into place. Isolfr gave a little moan. I dropped my head over toward him, too tired to drag myself out of the pillows but sick with the fear that I had hurt him irrevocably.
He stirred, curling up into a ball, and then fell still.
The walls wheezed and hissed. The sky began to glide past the opening in the ceiling.
We were on our way to Lord Llambric once again.
Except I didn’t know what else we’d find on the journey there.
CHAPTER SIX
I fell asleep in the pillows and didn’t dream. When I woke, the sky had darkened into that eerie gray-green color, the shade of nighttime here. I couldn’t see any stars. You never could. I thought of Papa teaching Henrik and me the constellations after dinner. He’d sketch them out on the floor with a stick he’d blackened in the fireplace, the shapes of our collective ancestors: Hilga and Kjartan and Valdi and Asta.
“If you look up in the sky,” he’d say, looking straight at Henrik and me, his voice grave, “and you don’t see these constellations, you’ve sailed into the Mists.”
Funny how those stories were so much more true than I’d ever expected. It wasn’t just the constellations that were missing. It was everything that made up the sky: the sun and moon and stars and clouds. All of it, gone.
I closed my eyes to stop the tears. It didn’t work.
And then I heard a shuffling in the corner. Isolfr.
“Are you okay?” I wiped at my eyes, hoping he wouldn’t know I’d been crying, and slowly eased myself to my feet. My entire body ached, my joints creaking like old cabinets, my muscles burning with the intensity of standing. The pain in my back twinged.
Isolfr stood over at the counter near the shelves that we used to prepare our food. He lifted his head, the movement too slow.
“The magic,” he croaked.
“The magic? What magic?” I stumbled forward, kicking pillows out of my way. Isolfr lifted a tiny red vial and tapped its contents into a stone bowl. Everything seemed to be happening underwater. “What are you doing?”
“Magic,” he said again in that harsh, raspy voice. He tried to set the bottle down on the counter and ended up knocking it on its side; pink powder fanned out across the surface. Isolfr looked down at it in dismay.
“You need to be resting,” I said, and I stumbled over to him and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. He immediately leaned his weight into me, his eyes closing and his whole body sighing with relief.
“I need—I won’t recover from this. I’ll turn into the Mists.”
His voice was right in my ear, soft, not panicked or urgent at all. It took me a moment to register what he was saying. I’ll turn into the Mists. To the place itself? A shudder of revulsion rippled through me.
“I’ll fix it,” I said. “You can lie down and tell me what to do.”
He mumbled something unintelligible against my ear. His breath was as cold as the north wind, and there was a dampness to his skin I’d never noticed before. The Mists.
“Did I do this to you?” I asked quietly, leading him toward the closest pile of pillows.
He didn’t answer. I suddenly felt very hollow.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, easing him down.
“You saved me from the dragon,” he said. “You saved—I just need your help again.”
“All right,” I said, kneeling to help him lie down on the pillows. He stretched out and his head dropped back. His eyes closed. He didn’t move.
“Isolfr?” My breath grew sharp with panic; Isolfr didn’t need to sleep and I didn’t know what it meant if he fell asleep now, after I blasted him with foreign magic and knocked him out of the sky. “Are you okay?” I shook his shoulder. “You can’t slip off like this. I need you to tell me what to do!”
His eyes fluttered. He gazed up at me through half-closed lids.
“Add sysab and coral powder to the bowl,” he said, speaking slowly, with long gaps between his words. “Mix them. Then—”
“You rest,” I said, afraid he was going to fall asleep, or die, or drift off permanently into the ether. “But stay awake. Tell me what to do as I’m doing it.”
He nodded. It was a small movement and looked painful. I rose to my feet, shaking, not wanting to turn away from him. He was pale, but not in the moonlight way I’d gotten accustomed to. Instead, he looked sickly, especially in the eerie magic light of the carriage. His eyes were glassy and overly bright, his lips cracked and flaking.
“Hurry,” he whispered.
I stumbled over to the shelf and scanned up and down, looking for the spell ingredients. Every now and then I would glance over my shoulder at him, to make sure he hadn’t closed his eyes, hadn’t drifted away. He watched me, slumped there among the pillows, hardly moving.
Eventually, I found both vials on the bottom shelf, labeled neatly in an elegant, aristocratic hand. I scooped them off the shelf and bounded over to the counter.
“How much of each?” I said.
Isolfr stirred. “Equal parts to the kuzar. It’s already in there. I didn’t measure—”
“I’ve got it.” I frowned down at the bowl. This was basically earth magic, all this mixing and stirring, and I hadn’t practiced it much except for when I helped Mama cook dinner. But I knew messing up a potion like this was much worse than messing up a meal.
Still, I measured out the sysab in my palm, holding it up against the kuzar in the bowl. When it looked equal, I added it in, then did the same with the coral powder. I used a long metal spoon sitting beside the bowl to mix them together.
“Now what?” I said, looking over at Isolfr. My chest was tight and I was anxious that he’d fallen asleep, but he lifted his head and blinked at me.
“Add the milk of maelys,” he said. “It’s on the shelf there.” He pointed vaguely with one hand before his arm dropped against the pillows like a weight. He leaned back and took a deep breath. I heard the wheeze in his lungs and knew I had to hurry.
“How much?” I said.
“If it’s an apothecary’s bottle, the whole thing—”
“An apothecary’s bottle?” I was in over my head. I could control the wind if I was in my world, but I couldn’t control the strange magic of the air here, and I should not be mixing up potions like an earthwitch. I was just going to make Isolfr worse.
“The same size as the dry ingredient vials,” he said. “If it’s larger, it’ll be twice the size, so half of it.”
I fumbled around on the shelf, the roughness of his voice scraping against my thoughts. My heart beat too fast and made my hands shake. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to find the milk of maelys—it was sitting on the same shelf where the dry ingredients had been. It was the same size bottle, too. I dumped it in.
“Next?” I called out, urgency turning my voice to a whine.
“Mix together.”
I did, whisking the liquid into the powder. It turned frothy like beer.
“Keep mixing,” Isolfr said, “until it changes color.”
My chest constricted. “What color? It’s dark red now.”
“Yes, good.” Isolfr sucked in a long breath of air. I clutched the spoon more tightly and stirred more quickly. “It will change to pale green. Keep—” His voice faded away. I looked up over the bowl and saw that his head had sagged down into the pillows.
“Isolfr!”
I was about to drop the spoon and run over to him when he jerked his head up and said, “Don’t stop!”
“What?”
“The spell! Don’t stop stirring.”
I whipped the liquid into a frenzy. “I won’t.”
“Good.” He slumped back. His wheezing was louder, a sound emanating from deep inside his chest. I kept stirring the potion, one hand pressed against the counter to brace myself. I stared down at the frothy liquid and willed it turn to green. It wasn’t red anymore, at least, but a murky brown color. I stirred harder.
�
�Isolfr,” I said, because I wanted him to keep talking to me, wanted to know for sure he was still alive. “What were those things?”
“The dragons?”
“Is that what they’re called?”
He made a soft grunt of affirmation. “They were created by wizards of the Mists a long time ago.” He took deep a breath. “Mists magic, mostly, with some magic from our world—the essence of fire.”
I frowned down at the potion. It was still brown, but the brown was starting to lighten, to turn the color of maple bark.
“Were they sent by Lord Foxfollow?”
Isolfr didn’t answer.
I looked over at him, still stirring. “Isolfr?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was quiet, distant. “Perhaps. Or maybe they just live in these skies.”
“Would Trystan send us this way, if there were dragons?” The word was vaguely familiar—someone in the village had told me stories of dragons when I was a little girl. Not Mama or Papa, but one of the elders. They were not a creature of our world, she’d said, but of the Other. A creature of heat and mist.
“No.” Isolfr wheezed. “Not if he knew.”
Then he wheezed again, a long whistling sound, louder and more painful than the others. I stirred faster. My arm was growing tired but I didn’t slow down. The brown was turning yellow-gold, like autumn grass.
“It’s yellow,” I said. “Is that close—”
“Keep stirring.” Isolfr took deep gasping breaths. “You’re close. Concentrate. Concentrate.”
I stared down at the potion, hypnotized by the constant circular path of the spoon. The yellow lightened. I thought of all the green I’d seen in my world. Spring leaves and the stems of flowers. The dress I wore to the midsummer celebrations last year. Grass stains on the hem of my skirts. The leeks Mama chopped and simmered for dinner. The sea in sunlight.
Slowly, the potion began to streak with that same pale green I was imagining.
“It’s changing!” I cried, breathless. “What do I do next?”
“Feed to me,” he croaked. “When it’s green, it’s ready.”
I kept stirring, whisking out the last of the yellow. Then I tapped the spoon against the side of the bowl the way I’d seen Mama do and laid it down on the table. The potion gleamed in the light, letting off a scent like crushed flowers, sweet and earthy. I picked the bowl up and carried it over to Isolfr.
He’d gotten worse in the time it took me to stir up the potion. The waxiness had left his skin and been replaced by an eerie translucence, and his eyes were filled with a dull light. I gasped and fell to my knees beside him. He turned his head toward me, hair falling across his forehead. His mouth moved, tracing the shape of my name, but I couldn’t hear his voice.
“It’s ready.” I shoved the bowl at him. “Is it all right? Is that the right color?”
Isolfr’s gaze drifted down to the bowl. He nodded. I tilted the bowl up to his lips and let him drink. He gulped at the potion, his eyes closed, the line of his neck moving up and down. Some of it dribbled down the side of his face, staining the pillows. When he finished he slumped back and let out a long breath.
“Thank you,” he said. Already his voice was stronger, clearer.
“What was that?” I stood up, weak with relief. I set the bowl on the counter and grabbed a washrag and sat down beside him. “What sort of spell?”
Isolfr didn’t answer right away. I dabbed at the green lines tracing out of the corners of his mouth, and his head tilted toward me, eyes searching. I pulled the rag away.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
He stared at me. I felt a hollowness deep inside my stomach.
“I fell out of the sky,” he said. “Thanks to you. You saved me.”
I shook my head, wrung the rag around in my hands. “I blasted you with magic. I’m sorry, I was just—”
“You were trying to get me away from the dragon.” Isolfr shifted among his pillows and rested his hands on his stomach. “I know that. It was Mists magic, though.” I heard the hitch in his voice, the hesitation. “How did you—”
“I don’t know. I was trying to find the magic on the wind and that was what I got.” I tossed the rag up on the counter. The carriage rumbled along, the dark patch of starless dark green sky staring down at us. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“I’ll be fine.” Isolfr propped himself up on his elbows, moving as he if wanted to sit up. But the exertion must have been too much for him, because he collapsed down again, taking in deep breaths of air.
“You have to rest,” I said, as if I knew.
Isolfr nodded. “I know. I just wanted to show you that you don’t need to worry.” He smiled up at the ceiling, although it was a bitter, frightened smile. “If the dragon had carried me off, that would have been much worse. It would have sucked the essence out of me to fan the fire burning in its belly.” He sighed and dropped his head down again. “They’d do the same to you, windwitch. Although it seems you’ve got a bit of earthwitch in you too.”
I blushed at that and shook my head. “It was just adrenaline. I couldn’t have you dying. This Lord Trystan’s never going to listen to me on my own.”
Isolfr chuckled. “Well, you’re a pretty girl, and he likes pretty people.”
My blush deepened, heat rushing up through my face. I looked down at my hands, heart hammering in my chest. I couldn’t imagine that a creature like Isolfr, with all his otherworldly beauty, could possibly find me pretty.
I snuck a glance at him, fumbling around in my head for the right words. He was staring up at the hatch in the ceiling and looked lost in his own thoughts. Maybe he hadn’t even realized what he said.
Still, I cleared away the stained pillows and stretched out beside him, watching the night go by.
• • •
I stayed up with Isolfr during the night, although after drinking the potion he didn’t seem to need my help. Mostly I brought him water to help his dry throat and sat with him as I nibbled at my meal. I didn’t have much of an appetite after everything that had happened, but I knew I needed to keep up my strength.
We kept the hatch open, and every now and then I glanced up at it, afraid I’d seen a shadow pass overhead. But the sky, as far as I could tell, remained clear.
“What exactly did that potion do?” I asked Isolfr at one point, after we’d finished sharing a cup of sweet berry-flavored water. “You never explained it to me.”
Isolfr looked over at me. He was still too weak to move around, but at least his skin was no longer transparent, and his eyes had gone back to normal—as normal as someone like Isolfr could look, anyway.
“Counteracted the magic of the Mists,” he said. “You channeled Mists magic as if we were back home, but the Mists are magic, so doing that just intensified the effect.” He paused, hesitating. “You sent the magic right into me. Made it a part of me.”
I stared at him, a cold horror rising in the back of my throat. “I’m so, so sorry,” I said.
Isolfr shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize! Your intentions were for the dragon, so he received the full brunt of it.”
I slumped down against the pillows. “I should have known better,” I said.
“No one told you.” Isolfr shook his head. “If anything, it’s my fault; I should have warned you.”
I smiled at him. “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s make it your fault.”
He laughed.
Isolfr rested most of that first day after the attack. He stretched out on the pillows, staring blankly up at the ceiling or the wall, his eyes gleaming like twin moons. He didn’t move, didn’t snore, didn’t mumble to himself the way humans do in their sleep. He only stared into infinity with his silver eyes.
I wandered around the carriage, trying to decipher its secrets. Mixing up the potion for Isolfr had made me more confident in my magic, but after what had happened with the dragon, I wasn’t going to risk testing anything in the carriage. I had no i
dea what made it run or how it had been built, and my curiosity, combined with my boredom, threatened to drive me crazy. So I did things like pressing my ear against the wall to listen to the wheezing and huffing inside it, a strange mechanical noise that almost reminded me of the creaking onboard a sailing ship. I took everything off one of the shelves and felt around for a latch or a hidden cubby, and I searched for runes along the floors and walls, something to explain how the carriage was larger on the inside. I never found anything. The carriage hid its secrets well.
I slept during the afternoon, waking up again in the middle of the night. Isolfr was no longer stretched out on the pillows. I sat up and twisted around, trying to spot him.
The carriage was empty.
My heartbeat quickened. The ceiling hatch was closed, and the carriage was still rumbling us toward its destination, but Isolfr was gone—
I heard the gentle splash of water inside the bathing room.
I stood up and stumbled over to the bathing room door and knocked once. “Isolfr?” I called out. “Are you okay?”
Another splash. “Yes, thank you for asking! The potion worked so quickly—you’ve got a touch.”
Butterflies fluttered around inside my stomach. I thought of Isolfr saying I was a pretty girl and they flapped their wings even harder.
“Well, I’m glad you’re up,” I said. “I was getting bored without you. It was like being back on the Penelope.”
Isolfr laughed, and I left him to his bath. Talking to him through the door made me think of him bathing, sitting naked in the water. And thinking about Isolfr naked was a strange thought indeed. Not bad, exactly. Just—strange.
I fixed myself a plate of dried sausages and hard cheese and fruit preserved in a sweet honeyed syrup, and sat down against the wall to eat. I was sick of cold food. The hot meals aboard the Shira had me spoiled, and at least on board the Penelope II we had fresh fish to supplement the powdery, stone-hard biscuits.
Isolfr emerged from the bathing room, the woodsy scent of oakmoss trailing behind him. He was dressed in a dark tunic, his hair turned burnished gold from the water. He didn’t move with his usual unsettling grace, but the wobble in his step just made him seem more human.
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