فصل 11

11.

In Which a Witch Comes to a Decision

Xan gathered books by the armload and carried them from the ruined castle to her workshop. Books and maps and papers and journals. Diagrams. Recipes. Artwork. For nine days she neither slept nor ate. Luna remained in her cocoon, pinned in place. Pinned in time, too. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t think. She was simply paused. Every time Glerk looked at her, he felt a sharp stab in his heart. He wondered if it would leave a mark.

He needn’t have wondered. It surely did.

“You cannot come in,” Xan told him through the locked door. “I must focus.” And then he heard her muttering inside.

Night after night, Glerk peered into the windows of the workshop, watching as Xan lit her candles and scanned through hundreds of open books and documents, taking notes on a scroll that grew longer and longer by the hour, muttering all the while. She shook her head. She whispered spells into lead boxes, quickly slamming the door shut the moment the spell was uttered and sitting on the lid to hold it in. Afterward, she’d cautiously open the box and peek inside, inhaling deeply as she did so, through her nose.

“Cinnamon,” she’d say. “And salt. Too much wind in the spell.” And she’d write that down.

Or: “Methane. No good. She’ll accidentally fly away. Plus she’ll be flammable. Even more than usual.”

Or: “Is that sulfur? Great heavens. What are you trying to do, woman? Kill the poor child?” She crossed several things off her list.

“Has Auntie Xan gone mad?” Fyrian asked.

“No, my friend,” Glerk told him. “But she has found herself in deeper water than she expected. She is not accustomed to not knowing exactly what to do. And it is frightening to her. As the Poet says,

‘The Fool, when removed

from solid ground, leaps—

From mountaintop,

to burning star,

to black, black space.

The scholar,

when bereft of scroll,

of quill,

of heavy tome,

Falls.

And cannot be found.’ ”

“Is that a real poem?” Fyrian asked.

“Of course it is a real poem,” Glerk said.

“But who made it, Glerk?”

Glerk closed his eyes. “The Poet. The Bog. The World. And me. They are all the same thing, you know.”

But he wouldn’t explain what he meant.

Finally, Xan threw the doors of the workshop wide open, a look of grim satisfaction on her face. “You see,” she explained to a very skeptical Glerk as she drew a large chalk circle on the ground, leaving a gap open to pass through. She drew thirteen evenly spaced marks along the circumference of the circle and used them to map out the points of a thirteen-­pointed star. “In the end, all we are doing is setting a clock. Each day ticks by like the perfect whirring of a well-­tuned gear, you see?”

Glerk shook his head. He did not see.

Xan marked out the time along the almost-­complete circle—a neat and orderly progression. “It’s a thirteen-­year cycle. That’s all the spell will allow. And less than that in our case, I’m afraid—the whole mechanism synchronizes to her own biology. Not much I can do about that. She’s already five, so the clock will set itself to five, and will go off when she reaches thirteen.”

Glerk squinted. None of this made any sense to him. Of course, magic itself always felt like nonsense to the swamp monster. Magic was not mentioned in the song that built the world, but rather had arrived in the world much later, in the light from the stars and moon. Magic, to him, always felt like an interloper, an uninvited guest. Glerk much preferred poetry.

“I’ll be using the same principle as the protective cocoon that she sleeps in. All that magic is kept inside. But in this case, it will be inside her. Right at the front of her brain, behind the center of her forehead. I can keep it contained and tiny. A grain of sand. All that power in a grain of sand. Can you imagine?”

Glerk said nothing. He gazed down at the child in his arms. She didn’t move.

“It won’t—” he began. His voice was thick. He cleared his throat and started again. “It won’t . . . ruin things, will it? I think I rather like her brain. I would like to see it unharmed.”

“Oh, piffle,” Xan admonished. “Her brain will be perfectly fine. At least I’m more than fairly sure it will be fine.”

“Xan!”

“Oh, I’m only kidding! Of course she will be fine. This will simply buy us some time to make sure she has the good sense to know what to do with her magic once it is unleashed. She needs to be educated. She needs to know the contents of those books, there. She needs to understand the movements of the stars and the origins of the universe and the requirements of kindness. She needs to know mathematics and poetry. She must ask questions. She must seek to understand. She must understand the laws of cause and effect and unintended consequences. She must learn compassion and curiosity and awe. All of these things. We have to instruct her, Glerk. All three of us. It is a great responsibility.”

The air in the room became suddenly heavy. Xan grunted as she pushed the chalk through the last edges of the thirteen-­pointed star. Even Glerk, who normally wouldn’t be affected, found himself both sweaty and nauseous.

“And what about you?” Glerk said. “Will the siphoning of your magic stop?”

Xan shrugged. “It will slow, I expect.” She pressed her lips together. “Little bit by bit by bit. And then she will turn thirteen and it will flow out all at once. No more magic. I will be an empty vessel with nothing left to keep these old bones moving. And then I’ll be gone.” Xan’s voice was quiet and smooth, like the surface of the swamp—and lovely, as the swamp is lovely. Glerk felt an ache in his chest. Xan attempted to smile. “Still, if I had my druthers, it’s better to leave her orphaned after I can teach her a thing or two. Get her raised up properly. Prepare her. And I’d rather go all at once instead of wasting away like poor Zosimos.”

“Death is always sudden,” Glerk said. His eyes had begun to itch. “Even when it isn’t.” He wanted to clasp Xan in his third and fourth arms, but he knew the Witch wouldn’t stand for it, so he held Luna a little bit closer instead, as Xan began to unwind the magical cocoon. The little girl smacked her lips together a few times and cuddled in close to his damp chest, warming him through. Her black hair shone like the night sky. She slept deeply. Glerk looked at the shape on the ground. There was still an open walkway for him to pass through with the girl. Once Luna was in place and Glerk was safely outside the chalk rim, Xan would complete the circle, and the spell would begin.

He hesitated.

“You’re sure, Xan?” he said. “Are you very, very sure?”

“Yes. Assuming I’ve done this right, the seed of magic will open on her thirteenth birthday. We don’t know the exact day, of course, but we can make our guesses. That’s when her magic will come. And that’s when I will go. It’s enough. I’ve already outlasted any reasonable allotment of life on this earth. And I’m ever so curious to know what comes next. Come. Let’s begin.”

And the air smelled of milk and sweat and baking bread. Then sharp spice and skinned knees and damp hair. Then working muscles and soapy skin and clear mountain pools. And something else, too. A dark, strange, earthy smell.

And Luna cried out, just once.

And Glerk felt a crack in his heart, as thin as a pencil line. He pressed his four hands to his chest, trying to keep it from breaking in half.