Brightly Woven

“That’s rich coming from the wizard who can’t tell east from west, let alone up from down,” I snapped. “We’ll go to Andover, but when it takes us a week and a half to get there, don’t cry to me about it.”

  Owain was the one to break the tense silence that followed. “Going to Andover first, eh? I’ve never taken that route before, but I wouldn’t mind trying something new. Never fear the unknown, Mother Bess always says.”

  We both turned to look at the fuming wizard.

  “Fine,” North said at last. “If we don’t follow her, who knows what kind of trouble she’ll get herself into.”

  I shook my head, rolling the map back up and handing it to the wizard.

  “Are you sure it’s a good plan to bring the lass with us?” Owain asked quietly as I sat back down in front of my loom.

  “If I had my way, neither of you would have anything to do with this war,” North said.

  “But then it would be your choosing instead of ours,” Owain said. “And there’s nothing right about that.”

  I worked the blue thread through the warp, watching North, who was leaning against the wall, looking out the window. “I should just go alone,” he said.

  I was on my feet a moment before an earsplitting clap of thunder and a sudden downpour drowned out his next words. Mrs. Pemberly shrieked in surprise from downstairs, but the biggest crash of all came when Owain fell off the bed.

  “How can you even suggest that?” I said. “What good would that possibly do?”

  “As if you could ever understand,” North scoffed.

  I looked at him. With dark circles framing his eyes, an agitated curve to his spine, that ugly sneer: Who was this person?

  Seeing that my words had done absolutely nothing to pull North from whatever depths he was clinging to, Owain did what came naturally. He smacked North upside the head hard enough to send him sprawling into the window. And when it seemed that North would turn around and return the favor, Owain hit him again, harder.

  “What put this madness into that head of yours?” Owain asked. “Going alone, without any help, a mad wizard after you—you’ve lost it, lad.”

  As if summoned, the rain began once again, and with it thunder that seemed to make the walls of the building quiver. Owain returned to his bed, and I sat back down in front of the loom. I couldn’t clear my thoughts, and my throat knotted itself as I looked at the outline of North’s hunched shoulders.

  The mirror on the far side of the room tumbled to the ground, sending a spray of glass onto the floor.

  “Wretched thing,” Owain said, standing to clean up the mess. “An unlucky sign, that is.”

  North remained exactly where he was. The feeling of disquiet that washed over me was as cold as the rain had been; its sting didn’t ease until I disassembled the loom.

  Owain and I had just climbed into our respective bedding when North finally spoke. It was only two soft words, but it didn’t matter whom they were meant for.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I bit my lip, wondering what I could possibly say. I couldn’t even look at him.

  Owain waved him off, turning over on the floor. “Go to sleep, lad.”

  And wake up your old self, I added to myself. Please.

  “In a moment,” he said, though he finally sat down on his own bedding. “I’m not tired.”

  Of course not. I twisted my blanket between my hands. He tried to hide it, telling me it was water or mead or some kind of ale, but I could always smell the honey and lavender on his clothes and breath. I realized I hadn’t smelled it for some time.

  I wasn’t sure when I drifted off, but later that night I awoke to a fantastic show of lights, burning beneath my heavy eyelids. Even after I opened my eyes, the vision persisted. All around me, a thousand threads of light wrapped around my body and fed into the ground. Red, blue, yellow, green…a pulsing rainbow that began at my heart and seemed to be sewn into every bit of my skin. It was a dream I hadn’t had since I was a very young girl.

  It would have been frightening had there not been the heavy shadow hovering just at the edge and the sweet sense of calm he brought.

  “North?” I asked.

  A hand, finally free of its glove, came to rest on my forehead. It trailed gently down my face and softly over my eyes until they were once again closed, then over my nose and my parted lips.

  “You’re dreaming, Syd,” he whispered next to my ear.

  Of course I was.

  “Sod it all!”

  I dropped my washcloth on the floor, ducking my head back into the room. Owain was stumbling, half awake, to where North stood, letter in hand. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Pemberly bring it to him.

  “What—?” I began.

  “We’re under attack by what appears to be a wolf,” he read aloud. “It howls all night. The children think it’s some kind of demon. The crops have been torn up, and not by the hands of an ordinary man. One child claimed that the wolf climbed into her window, and it was made of light.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means we’re leaving right now,” North said. “For Arcadia. It’s north of here, in the mountains. Two days of traveling, maybe more.”

  “What in the world is in Arcadia?” I asked. It was no place I had ever heard of, but Owain and North continued their conversation without me.

  “I’ll come with you,” Owain said. “You’ll need support if it’s as bad as it sounds.”

  “No, if Syd and I are delayed for long, we won’t make the treaty deadline,” North said. “I think you should ride ahead to Provincia and try to get an audience with the Sorceress Imperial or even Oliver.”

  “And tell them what? That you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed?” Owain said.

  North snorted. “I doubt they’ll care about that. Tell them that I’m going after a rogue wizard.”

  “Who?” I repeated. “Dorwan?”

  “Who else?” North dragged a hand through his matted hair. “I knew he had been too quiet; I knew he would bait me—but not Arcadia, never Arcadia.”

  “What’s in Arcadia?” I asked again.

  “A lot of innocent kids,” he said.

  I asked, “What if we don’t take the bait?”

  North shook his head. “If you think for one moment that Dorwan wouldn’t hesitate to kill a child, then you’ve clearly overestimated his humanity. He’s not bound by anything—by wizard law, by the ways of the hedges. He does what amuses him, and we’ve become his latest game.”

  “Why waste the days of travel?” I said. “If we don’t go to him, won’t he have to come to us?”

  “I won’t let him hurt one of the kids,” he said. “If I don’t help them, no one will.”

  Within minutes, Owain disappeared before I could even give him a proper good-bye. We twisted as far as we could from Mrs. Pemberly’s, but when the black cloak fell around us, I immediately knew something was wrong.

  “You took us east!” I said, pulling out the map to make sure. “I said north!”

  “I took you north!” he snapped. The wizard stepped away from me, but the moment I held up the map, his anger deflated with a harsh breath.

  “You took us east,” I said. “Twist us back and try again.”

  “I told you,” he said, his hair hiding his face, “it’s not something I can do on a whim—you have to give me a moment!”

  “Then we’ll walk,” I said. “It seems a more efficient method of travel than to rely on your complete and utter lack of direction. How in the world did you make it all the way out of Cliffton?”

  “I had a guide,” North said, storming past me. “Does that make you feel important?”

  “No,” I said bitterly. “But it does make me feel useful.”

  North bit the side of his thumb, slowing so I could catch up to him. I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but pulled it back at the last moment. Something about him reminded me of Henry, and that made me wonder what my friend would say if he knew I cared about the wiza
rd.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Arcadia means a great deal to me. Oliver and I spent a lot of time there while we were training with our magister. I thought it was the only safe place left in the world.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, but he only looked away.

  Many miles and muddy roads later, a grimace on North’s face and a new limp told me it was time to stop for the night.

  “Lift up your pant leg,” I said, watching his features twist in pain as he sat.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can hardly walk, and your cloaks are a mess,” I said. “I’ll bet that dragon did a number on you.”

  North grunted, looking away. An ugly burn revealed itself inch by inch as he rolled up his pant leg. I took one look at the angry, puckered red burn and shook my head. The bandage he had tied around it was loose and dirty.

  “All I have is an elixir for the pain,” I said. “If we pass by a market, I’ll see if I can find what I need to help heal the burn.”

  As North drank the remnants of an elixir I had made at Mrs. Pemberly’s, the look of relief on his face changed to one of surprise.

  “You made this?” he asked, smelling the empty bottle. “It’s a wizard elixir, one of the strongest I’ve had. Where did you learn how to mix it?”

  I traded Proper Instruction for Young Wizards for his ripped cloaks and sat down to mend.

  “I haven’t seen one of these in years!” He thumbed through a few pages. “And you’re even reading it—great gods, why would you punish yourself like that?”

  “I’m trying to learn, you know,” I mumbled. “You never tell me anything. I have to find the information out somehow.”

  “Ask me a question about magic, then,” he said. “Any question.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Why did you choose me?”

  “I believe I said a question about magic, not my sanity.”

  “What do the colors on your cloaks mean? You have five of them, but Dorwan only had blue on his knife.”

  “I could have chosen one color for my talisman, but I wanted to be able to use all magic, not one,” he said. “Dorwan stole that talisman from someone, by the way.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  North pulled his green cloak free and held it up. “Each color corresponds to a type of magic. It’s something the wizards invented for themselves, and it has little to do with the actual magic. The colors began as a courtesy in duels, so a wizard would know what world of pain he was about to visit. Now a wizard generally announces his specialty with the prevalence of any color.”

  “So why do you have black as your outer cloak, then?” I asked. “I thought that color was used just for traveling?”

  North smiled mysteriously, rolling over on the ground. “Black is my color.”

  “Then why have all of the colors? Is that even allowed?”

  “I use all of them equally,” he said. “And of course it’s allowed. Most just choose not to do it because it’s difficult to have to carry so many talismans. Besides, my father used all the colors. I guess it felt right to honor him like this.”

  “So the…talismans,” I said. “Each can only be transformed into one kind of magic?”

  “Right, it’s all about channeling the elements, changing the talisman into the one element each attracts. Magisters are the ones to choose the talisman for the apprentices, and depending on what element your talisman is best attuned to, that’s your specialty.”

  “And the cloaks took to all magic?” I said. “That was lucky.”

  North laughed. “Yeah, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled when he handed me a piece of red wool on my fourteenth birthday, especially when he turned around and gave Oliver a sword. Oliver’s never let me live that one down, even after I left them.”

  “Boys,” I said, shaking my head. “Were you fourteen when you finished training?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Oliver went to Provincia to join the Guard, and I went anywhere but Provincia.”

  I started with the top cloak, his color, and worked my way in. The black—the cloak that twisted all of the elements together and allowed us to travel—had seen the most trouble and was split almost entirely down the middle. Next, red, fire, sorely torn almost down the middle. Yellow, air and light, untouched save for a singe that even I could not fix. Blue, water, missing a corner. Finally, green, earth, five gashes from top to bottom.

  How many times would I have to repeat the same process? I had been with him for only a few weeks and already my stitching crisscrossed every cloak. Sewing wasn’t the same as weaving, not even close. Weaving was the creation of something new, the coming together of a pattern or a scene that took on a life of its own. Mending wasn’t anything more than an insult to battered fabric. It was a lucky day, indeed, when I had to do only one. Five of them were enough to cramp my fingers and strain my eyes.

  “Would it be possible,” I said, “to have one cloak able to channel all magic?”

  North looked thoughtful. “I’ve read about it being done in the past, but I’ve never found a cloak with an equal amount of every color, and I’ve certainly never been in the position to commission one. But yes, I think it would be possible.”

  The green cloak slipped from my fingers and floated to the ground. That was the solution, wasn’t it, to both our problems? A single cloak would provide him with all of his colors at once, rather than having to switch back and forth between the thin, ragged pieces of cloth. I could picture exactly how I would make it, with everything from woven dragons to shimmering grass and mountains. It would be sturdy and well made—to save his skin and my patience. As long as I kept track of how much thread I was using, it could work.

  I looked at my loom; the moonlight seemed to be shining directly on it. It was a personal gift, but how many other times had I woven things for friends? Henry had at least three blankets; the other boys in the village had everything from socks to hats…so why did this feel different?

  “Syd?” North mumbled, rolling over again to face me. “Put them aside for now. They’re good enough.”

  I blew a curl off my face. “I thought you’d gone to sleep.”

  “Takes me longer to fall asleep these days,” he said.

  “I might have some sleeping draft in my bag,” I said.

  North made a face. “I just meant I’m not much for sleeping outdoors anymore.”

  I folded the cloaks. “Did you—in the past, I mean?”

  He was silent so long I was sure he had drifted off, his gray blanket tucked around his body. I unfolded the blanket my mother had hastily packed. It was poor protection against the coming winter, but it was something.

  “When I was younger, after I finished my training,” he said quietly into the darkness. “I never had enough money to rent a room.”

  I watched his face closely, studying the way his dark lashes fell against his cheeks. I could see him years ago, wrapped in the very same blanket, lying there, on the cold dirt between the trees.

  “Where was your mother? Your father?”

  North’s eyes remained closed.

  “They…left me a long time ago.” He turned back away from me. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Of course it matters,” I whispered, holding the braided metal of my necklace between my hands.

  “Sleep,” he said. “There’s still a long way ahead.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next afternoon, our shadows were long against the dying grass, spread out over the ground like one of my blankets. It was a strange shape, but one that was ours.

  Which is why it was so disturbing suddenly to find another, unfamiliar shadow trailing ours.

  At first I thought North had slowed, but the shadow was moving too quickly. It skimmed in and out of the grass, like one of Henry’s little brothers in a game of go-seek-find. By the time I had enough sense to point it out, North had seen it, too.

  “A neat little hedge trick,” he said, seeing my startled look.
“But it can’t do anything to hurt you.” He threw a stone, which struck the shadow and passed through it. The shadow scattered, falling apart into small pieces before pooling together again on the ground. It disappeared back into the blades of grass and did not reemerge, even after North threw another rock.

  “Where did it go?” I asked. “What happened to it?”

  “It’s a messenger shade,” North said. “It’s going back to Arcadia to tell him we’re coming.”

  “Then we should go after it,” I said. “If he knows we’re coming—”

  “Syd, I want him to know,” North said, taking my bag and putting it on his own shoulders. “I want him to know this little game is about to end. Come on.” He pressed a hand to my back and urged me forward.

  “How is it even possible?” I began, when we were a good distance away. “How can he play with shadows like that?”

  North gave me a wry smile. “The next time I come across a den of hedge witches, I’ll be sure to inquire for you.”

  A few days later, we were at the foot of a mountain path when he finally said the words I had been begging Astraea for. “I think I can twist the rest of the way.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s worth a try,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “If I miss and we plummet to our deaths, you can blame me.”

  We were falling once again. I clutched North’s chest, hating the way it felt—as though my heart had sunk to the bottom of my stomach. Even the warm, tingling sensation that ran from my head to my toes couldn’t quell my discomfort.

  My feet hit the ground—Wood, I thought, thank Astraea—with a dull thud. When my eyes finally came into focus, I saw an old woman. She sat next to a small fire in a hearth, tapping her fingers in an impatient rhythm. North cleared his throat behind me. The woman merely clucked her tongue in disapproval, rising from her chair like a queen.

  “You’re later than I expected,” she said. “Do you have anything to say to your patroness?” This woman was russet and deep wrinkles. Her skin was dark, well worn like soft leather.

  My father once told me that you could tell the rank of a woman by the tone of her skin. Fine ladies never had to work outside and were therefore milky pale. However, despite being as translucent as a ghost, I was not included in this category; I was pink skin and freckles all over.