فصل 28

28.

In Which Several People Go into the Woods

Xan sat by the fireplace, twisting her apron this way and that until it was all in knots.

There was something in the air. She could feel it. And something underground—a buzzing, rumbling, irritated something. She could feel that, too.

Her back hurt. Her hands hurt. Her knees and her hips and her elbows and her ankles and each bone in her swollen feet hurt and hurt and hurt. As each click, each pulse, each second pulled them closer to that point on the gears of Luna’s life when every hand pointed toward thirteen, Xan could feel herself thinning, shrinking, fading. She was as light and as fragile as paper.

Paper, she thought. My life is made of paper. Paper birds. Paper maps. Paper books. Paper journals. Paper words and paper thoughts. Everything fades and shreds and crinkles away to nothing. She could remember Zosimos—dear Zosimos! How close did he seem to her now!—leaning over his stacks of paper with six candles burning brightly around the perimeter of his desk, scratching his knowledge into the rough, clean space.

My life was written on paper and preserved on paper—all those bloody scholars scratching their notes and their thoughts and their observations. If I had died, they would have inscribed my demise on paper and never shed a tear. And here is Luna, the same as I was. And here am I holding on to the one word that could explain everything, and the girl cannot read it or even hear it.

It wasn’t fair. What the men and women in the castle had done to Xan was not fair. What Xan had done to Luna was not fair. What the citizens of the Protectorate had done to their own babies was not fair. None of it was fair.

Xan stood and looked out the window. Luna had not returned. Perhaps that was for the best. She would leave a note. Some things were easier said on paper, anyway.

Xan had never left so early to retrieve the Protectorate baby. But she couldn’t risk being late. Not after last time. And she couldn’t risk being seen, either. Transformations were difficult, and she had to contend with the possibility that she might not have the strength to undo this one. More consequences.

Xan fastened her traveling cloak and slid her feet into a pair of sturdy boots and packed her satchel full of bottles of milk and soft, dry cloths, and a bit of food for herself. She whispered a spell to keep the milk from spoiling and tried to ignore the degree to which the spell drained her energies and spirits.

“Which bird?” she murmured to herself. “Which bird, which bird?” She considered transforming herself into a raven and taking on a bit of its cunning or an eagle and taking on a bit of its fight. An albatross, with its effortless flight, also seemed like a good idea, except a lack of water might impede her ability to take off and land. In the end, she chose the swallow—small, yes, and delicate, but a good flier and a keen eye. She would have to take breaks, and a swallow was small and brown and nearly invisible to predators.

Xan closed her eyes and pressed her feet to the ground and felt the magic flow through her fragile bones. She felt herself become light and small and keen. Bright eyes, agile toes, a sharp, sharp mouth. She shook her wings, felt so deep within herself the need to fly she thought she might die of it, and with a high, sad cry of loneliness and missing Luna, she fluttered into the air and slid over the fringe of trees.

She was as light as paper.

Antain waited for their child to be born before he began his journey. The Day of Sacrifice was weeks away, but there would be no more births in the ensuing time. There were about two dozen pregnant women in the Protectorate, but all of them had only just begun to show their bellies. Their labors were months away, not weeks.

The birth, thankfully, was an easy one. Or Ethyne claimed it was easy. But every time she cried out, Antain felt himself die inside. Birth was loud and messy and frightening, and it felt to Antain as if it took a lifetime or more, though in truth they were only at it for the better part of the morning. The baby came squalling into the world at lunchtime. “A proper gentleman, this one,” the midwife said. “Makes his appearance at the most reasonable of hours.”

They named him Luken and they marveled at his tiny toes and his delicate hands and the way his eyes fixed upon their faces. They kissed his small, searching, howling mouth.

Antain never felt more sure of what he had to do.

He left the next morning, well before the sun rose, with his wife and child still asleep in the bed. He couldn’t bear to say good-­bye.

The madwoman stood at her window, her face resting on the bars. She watched the young man slide out of the quiet house. She had been waiting for him to appear for hours. She didn’t know how she knew to wait for him—only that she did. The sun had not yet come up, and the stars were sharp and clear as broken glass, spangled across the sky. She saw him slip out of his front door and close it silently behind him. She watched him as he laid his hand on the door, pressing his palm against the wood. For a moment, she thought he might change his mind and go back inside—back to the family that lay asleep in the dark. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes tight, heaved a great sigh, and turned on his heel, hurrying down the dark lane toward the place on the town wall where the climb was least steep.

The madwoman blew him a kiss for luck. She watched him pause and shiver as the kiss hit him. Then he continued on his way, his steps noticeably lighter. The madwoman smiled.

There was a life she used to know. There was a world she used to live in, but she could hardly remember it. Her life before was as insubstantial as smoke. She lived, instead, in this world of paper. Paper birds, paper maps, paper people, dust and ink and pulped wood and time.

The young man walked in the shadows, checking this way and that to see if anyone followed him. He had a satchel and a bedroll slung across his back. A cloak that would be too heavy during the day and not nearly warm enough at night. And swinging at his hip, a long, sharp knife.

“You must not go alone,” the madwoman whispered. “There are dangers in the wood. There are dangers here that will follow you into the wood. And there is one who is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”

When she was a little girl, she had heard stories about the Witch. The Witch lived in the woods, she was told, and had a tiger’s heart. But the stories were wrong—and what truth they had was twisted and bent. The Witch was here, in the Tower. And while she didn’t have a tiger’s heart, she would rip you to shreds if given the chance.

The madwoman stared at the window’s iron bars until they were no longer iron bars at all, but paper bars. She tore them to shreds. And the stones surrounding the window’s opening were no longer stones—just damp clumps of pulp. She scooped them out of the way with her hands.

The paper birds around her murmured and fluttered and squawked. They opened their wings. Their eyes began to brighten and search. They lifted as one into the air, and they streamed through the window, carrying the madwoman on their collective backs, and flowed silently into the sky.

The Sisters discovered the madwoman’s escape an hour after dawn. There were accusations and explanations and search parties and forensic explorations and teams of detectives. Heads rolled. The cleanup was a long, nasty job. But quiet, of course. The Sisters couldn’t afford to let news of the escape leak into the Protectorate. The last thing they needed was to allow the populace to be getting ideas. Ideas, after all, are dangerous.

Grand Elder Gherland ordered a meeting with Sister Ignatia just before lunch, despite her protestations that today simply was too difficult.

“I don’t care two wits about your feminine complications,” the Grand Elder roared as he marched into her study. The other Sisters scurried away, shooting murderous glances at the Grand Elder, which thankfully he did not notice.

Sister Ignatia felt it best not to mention the escaped prisoner. Instead, she called for tea and cookies and offered hospitality to the fuming Grand Elder.

“Pray, dear Gherland,” she said. “Whatever is this about?” She regarded him with hooded, predatory eyes.

“It has happened,” Gherland said wearily.

Unconsciously, Sister Ignatia’s eyes flicked in the direction of the now-­empty cell. “It?” she asked.

“My nephew. He left this morning. His wife and their baby are sheltering at my sister’s house.”

Sister Ignatia’s mind began to race. They couldn’t be connected, these two disappearances. They couldn’t. She would have known . . . wouldn’t she? There had been, of course, a marked drop in available sorrow from the madwoman. Sister Ignatia hadn’t given it much thought. While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.

Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.

She smiled and rose to her feet. She gently laid her hand on the Grand Elder’s arm, giving it a tender squeeze. Her long, sharp nails pierced his robes like a tiger’s claws, making him cry out in pain. She smiled and kissed him on both cheeks. “Fear not, my boy,” she said. “Leave Antain to me. The forest is filled with dangers.” She pulled her hood over her head and strode to the door. “I hear there’s a witch in the wood. Did you know?” And she disappeared into the hall.

“No,” Luna said. “No, no, no, no, no.” She held the note from her grandmother in her hands for only a moment before she tore it to shreds. She didn’t even read past the first sentence. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Caw,” the crow said, though it sounded more like, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Anger buzzed through Luna’s body, from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet. This is how a tree must feel, she thought, as it is hit by lightning. She glared at the torn-­up note, wishing that it would reassemble itself so that she might tear it up again.

(She turned away before she could notice the pieces begin to quiver slightly, inching toward one another.)

Luna gave the crow a defiant look.

“I’m going after her.”

“Caw,” the crow said, though Luna knew he meant, “That is a very stupid idea. You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“I do, too,” Luna said, sticking out her chin and pulling her journal from her satchel. “See?”

“Caw,” the crow said. “You made that up,” he meant. “I once had a dream that I could breathe underwater like a fish. You don’t see me trying that, now do you?”

“She’s not strong enough,” Luna said, feeling her voice start to crack. What if her grandmother became injured in the woods? Or sick? Or lost? What if Luna never saw her again? “I need to help her. I need her.”

(The bits of paper with the “Dear” and the “Luna” fluttered their edges together, fusing neatly side by side, until no evidence of their separation remained. So too did the shred bearing “By the time you read this” and “there are things I must explain” underneath. And underneath that was, “you are ever so much more than you realize.”)

Luna slid her feet into her boots, and packed a rucksack with whatever she could think of that might be useful on a journey. Hard cheese. Dried berries. A blanket. A water flask. A compass with a mirror. Her grandmother’s star map. A very sharp knife.

“Caw,” the crow said, though it sounded more like, “Aren’t you going to tell Glerk and Fyrian?”

“Of course not. They’d just try to stop me.”

Luna sighed. (A small, torn scrap of paper scurried its way across the room, as nimble as any mouse. Luna didn’t notice. She didn’t notice it creeping up her leg and along the back of her cloak. She didn’t notice it burrow its way into her pocket.) “No,” she said finally. “They’ll figure out where I’m going. And anything I say will come out wrong. Everything I say comes out wrong.”

“Caw,” the crow said. “I don’t think that’s true.”

But it didn’t matter what the crow thought. Luna’s mind was made up. She tied on her hood and checked the map that she had made. It looked detailed enough. And of course the crow was right, and of course Luna knew how dangerous the woods were. But she knew the way. She was sure of it.

“Are you coming with me or what?” she said to the crow as she left her home and slid into the green.

“Caw,” the crow said. “To the ends of the earth, my Luna. To the ends of the earth.”

“Well,” Glerk said, looking at the mess in the house. “This is not good at all.”

“Where is Auntie Xan?” Fyrian wailed. He buried his face in a hankie, by turns lighting it on fire and then dousing the flames with his tears. “Why wouldn’t she say good-­bye?”

“Xan can take care of herself,” Glerk said. “It’s Luna who worries me.”

He said this because it seemed like it must be true. But it wasn’t. His worry for Xan had him tied up in knots. What was she thinking? Glerk moaned in his thoughts. And how can I bring her back safe?

Glerk sat heavily on the floor, his great tail curled around his body, reading over the note that Xan had left for Luna.

“Dear Luna,” it said. “By the time you read this, I will be traveling quickly across the forest.”

“Quickly? Ah,” he murmured. “She has transformed.” He shook his head. Glerk knew better than anyone how Xan’s magic had drained away. What would happen if she became stuck in her transformation? If she was permanently ensquirrelled or enbirded or endeered? Or, even more troubling, if she could only manage a halfway transformation.

“Things are changing in you, dearest. Inside and out. I know you can sense it, but you have no words for it. This is my fault. You have no idea who you are, and that is my fault, too. There are things that I kept from you because of circumstance, and things that I kept from you because I didn’t want to break your heart. But it doesn’t change the facts: you are ever so much more than you realize.”

“What does it say, Glerk?” Fyrian said, buzzing from one side of Glerk’s head to the other, like a persistent, and annoying, bumblebee.

“Give us a moment, will you, my friend?” Glerk murmured.

Hearing Glerk use the word “friend” in relation to himself made Fyrian positively giddy with happiness. He trilled his tongue against the roof of his mouth and turned a backflip and a double spin in the air, accidentally knocking his head against the ceiling.

“Of course I’ll give you a moment, Glerk, my friend,” Fyrian said, shrugging off the bump on his skull. “I’ll give you all the moments in the world.” He fluttered down to the armrest of the rocking chair and made himself as prim and still as he possibly could.

Glerk looked closer at the paper—not at the words, but at the paper itself. It had been torn, he could see, and had been knit back together so tightly, most eyes would not have caught the change. Xan would have seen it. Glerk looked even closer, at the threads of the magic—each individual strand. Blue. A shimmer of silver at the edges. There were millions of them. And none of them originated from Xan.

“Luna,” he whispered. “Oh, Luna.”

It was starting early. Her magic. All that power—the great surging ocean of it—was leaking out. He had no way of knowing whether the child meant to do it, or even noticed it happening at all. He remembered when Xan was young, how she would make ripe fruit explode in a shower of stars just by standing too closely. She was dangerous then—to herself and to others. As Luna was when she was young. As she likely was now.

“When you were a baby, I rescued you from a terrible fate. And then I accidentally offered you the moon to drink—and you did drink it, which exposed you to yet another terrible fate. I am sorry. You will live long and you will forget much and the people you love will die and you will keep going. This was my fate. And now it is yours. There is only one reason for it:”

Glerk knew the reason, of course, but it was not in the letter. Instead, there was a perfectly torn hole where the word magic had been. He looked around the floor, but he didn’t see it anywhere. This was one of the things he couldn’t stand about magic, generally. Magic was a troublesome thing. Foolish. And it had a mind of its own.

“It is the word that could not stick in your mind, but it is the word that defines your life. As it has defined mine. I only hope I will have enough time to explain everything before I leave you again—for the last time. I love you more than I could possibly say.

Your Loving Grandmother”

Glerk folded up the letter and slid it under the candlestick. He looked around the room with a sigh. It was true that Xan’s days were dwindling, and it was true that, in comparison to his excessively long life, Xan’s was no more than a deep breath, or a swallow, or the blink of an eye. And soon she would be gone forever. He felt his heart ball up in his throat in a hard, sharp lump.

“Glerk?” Fyrian ventured. He buzzed toward the ancient swamp monster’s face, peering into those large, damp eyes. Glerk blinked and stared back. The dragonling, he had to admit, was a sweet little thing. Bighearted. Young. But unnaturally so. And now was the time for him to grow up.

Past time, really.

Glerk pulled himself to his feet and his first set of arms, bending back a bit to ease out the kinks in his spine. He loved his small swamp—of course he did—and he loved his small life here in the crater of the volcano. He had chosen it without regrets. But he loved the wide world, too. There were parts of himself that he had left behind to live with Xan. Glerk could barely remember them. But he knew they were bountiful and life-­giving and vast. The Bog. The world. All living things. He had forgotten how much he loved it all. His heart leaped within him as he took his first step.

“Come, Fyrian,” he said, holding his top left hand out and allowing the dragon to alight on his palm. “We are going on a journey.”

“A real journey?” Fyrian said. “You mean, away from here?”

“That is the only kind of journey, young fellow. And yes. Away from here. That sort of journey.”

“But . . .” Fyrian began. He fluttered away from the hand and buzzed to the other side of the swamp monster’s great head. “What if we get lost?”

“I never get lost,” Glerk said. And it was true. Once upon a time, many Ages ago, he traveled around the world more times than he could count. And in the world. And above and below. A poem. A Bog. A deep longing. He could barely remember it now, of course—one of the hazards of so very long a life.

“But . . .” Fyrian began, zooming from one side of Glerk’s face to the other and back again. “What if I should frighten people? With my remarkable size. What if they flee in terror?”

Glerk rolled his eyes. “While it is true, my young friend, that your size is—er—remarkable, I believe that a simple explanation from me will ease their fears. As you know, I have excellent skills at explaining things.”

Fyrian landed on Glerk’s back. “This is true,” he murmured. “No one explains things better than you, Glerk.” And then he threw his small body against the swamp monster’s great, damp back and flung his arms wide in an attempt at a hug.

“There is no need for that,” Glerk said, and Fyrian drifted back up into the air, hovering over his friend. “Look,” Glerk continued. “Do you see? Luna’s footprints.”

And so they followed her—the ancient swamp monster and the Perfectly Tiny Dragon—into the wood.

And with each footprint, Glerk became increasingly aware that the magic leaking from the young girl’s feet was growing. It seeped, then shined, then pooled on the ground, then spilled from the edges. At this rate, how long would it take for that magic to flow like water, move like streams and rivers and oceans? How long before it flooded the world?

How long, indeed?