Magic of Wind and Mist

  “A friend?” The man smiled, slow and easy and unsettling. “Not a friend from your world, I wouldn’t think. Was this the same friend who taught you to flatten realities?”

  “What?” His question caught me off guard. “Flatten realities?”

  “Yes. All of this.” He gestured and drew in the room with his arms. “How could a little human girl like you call me here?”

  I drew myself up, gathering all my courage. “I guess little human girls aren’t as weak as you think.”

  The man laughed. “I suppose not. Tell me, are you the one who beat back my operatives in the human village?”

  “Your what?” I frowned. “You mean the costumed men?”

  The man waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, they took the form of that silly human magic. Their defeat was no real trouble for me, at any rate. I was merely curious. I sincerely doubt you’re the one who actually defeated them.”

  I didn’t say anything, remembering the rush of the north wind, my own stilted confusion.

  “You must have had help bringing me here, then, as well.”

  “I didn’t.” I glared at him, a colossal act of bravery. “I called you on my own. I have questions for you.” I took a deep breath. “You never told me if you’re Lord Foxfollow or not.”

  A pause. The silence amplified my fears.

  “Of course I’m Lord Foxfollow,” he said. “That was who you called.” His voice shifted into a woman’s voice—my voice. “Whoever’s responsible for the attack on Finnur of Tulja!” He grinned, rakish. “Or do you not trust your own magic?”

  I wanted to falter, but I stood strong. “Why did you send those monsters after us?”

  Lord Foxfollow’s smile stayed fixed in place. “My deepest apologies,” he said. “I never meant to send my menials after you.”

  “What?” I said.

  Lord Foxfollow waved one hand dismissively. “It’s a dull story. Now, why did you call me here?”

  I looked up at him, at the lovely carved planes of his face. He smiled at me and his gray eyes glittered. “Come, my dear,” he said. “You went to all this trouble to bring me to this space. And you claim you did it all on your own too.” He strode over to me and trailed his fingers down the side of my cheek. His touch was cold and damp, like ocean spray or winter humidity. Or mist.

  I shivered and pulled away from him.

  “My friend.” I tried to choose my words carefully. “His name is Finnur Corra. He was bitten by one of your mons— by one of your menials, and he’s fallen into a coma. I need you to help me.” I lifted my chin defiantly, but I felt like I was caught in a web. A silvery, gossamer, glittering gray spider’s web.

  There was a long silence.

  And then Lord Foxfollow roared with laughter.

  “Oh, my dear, my dear, you collapsed realities to try and save your friend? That’s sweet, it really is.”

  “So you’ll help him?”

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I did as he asked without thinking. In the shining light of that reflective space, his skin was suffused with a pale, moonlight glow. His eyes roiled like storm clouds. The silvery web tightened, and I looked at his mouth to get away from his eyes.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do anything to help your friend.” I saw his answer more than I heard it, the words rising off his lips. “I could, of course, my powers are . . . quite impressive. But I simply don’t feel the need to waste them on a human, particularly when it’s a human’s fault he’s hurt.”

  “What?” My legs and arms burned, and I realized that tears were dripping down my cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

  “My dear, my dear.” Lord Foxfollow smiled and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t move. He pointed his cane at the mirror across from us. Our reflections were a pair of smeared blurs, distorted by mist. “Why talk when I can show you? I can re-create the past much more easily than you can remember it.”

  The mirrors melted away and revealed the Rilil docks at night. Stars swirled overhead. The boats were tucked in their usual places. Everything was quiet and empty.

  “I’ll show you,” Lord Foxfollow whispered, his lips pressed close to my ear. I trembled from the pain in my heart. “I’ll show you . . . the Penelope II.”

  The scene blurred and the jagged, uneven lines of the Penelope II appeared, illuminated by the soft blue light of a magic-cast lantern. Lord Foxfollow squeezed my shoulder more tightly. He smelled like cold, damp steel and men’s perfume, and it made me dizzy.

  “Watch close,” he whispered. Even his breath was cold.

  The water around the Penelope II began to churn in a way far, far too familiar to me. I shrieked, and Lord Foxfollow clamped one hand over my mouth. “You don’t want to miss anything,” he said.

  The water rose up around the boat, solidifying into the gleaming, cold shapes of the monsters. They crawled aboard, one after another.

  I yanked his hand away from my mouth.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I sobbed. “What does this have to do with not helping Finnur? Stop. Stop it!”

  Lord Foxfollow flicked his cane, and suddenly I could see aboard the ship. Frida and Kolur were crouched beside each other under the masts, firing pistols into the onslaught of monsters. Isolfr was nowhere to be seen. Of course.

  “We have to send them away,” Kolur shouted. His voice sounded strange, tinny and distorted. “Like we practiced back in Jandanvar.”

  “Send them where?” Frida shouted back.

  “Does it matter?”

  Everything in my body went cold.

  “Ah.” Lord Foxfollow’s arm slipped away from me. “She understands.”

  “This is a trick,” I whispered. “This is a lie.”

  Across the room, Frida climbed up the highest mast and Kolur fought his way to the bow of the boat. The wind buffeted them, knocking the boat around in the bay. Ocean water splashed over the side. I knew they were doing magic, even though I couldn’t feel the ripples of it in my own body. I could see it, a swirl of wind and water and starlight.

  The monsters disappeared.

  Kolur collapsed across the deck.

  Lord Foxfollow brandished his cane, and all I could see now was my reflection again. Lord Foxfollow smiled at me in the glass.

  “He sent them to you,” he said. “He’s strong for a human. Much stronger than he looks.”

  For the first time, I noticed a hardness in Lord Foxfollow’s voice, like a vein of ice running through water.

  Lord Foxfollow grabbed my chin and jerked my face toward his. My whole body was numb. He tilted my gaze up until I met those flat gray eyes. I was falling into them, tumbling through them, and I knew with a shuddering certainty that Kolur had sent the monsters to me on purpose. It was punishment. Punishment for not helping him.

  Lord Foxfollow’s fingers dug into my face. His nails were sharp. The pain bled spots of light into my vision.

  “Don’t blame me,” Lord Foxfollow said. “Blame Kolur Icebreak.”

  The memory of those images flickered through my thoughts, one after another. The monsters swarming the boat. Isolfr gone. The pop of pistol shots.

  Send them where?

  Does it matter?

  He didn’t do it on purpose. My certainty otherwise was a cold mist inside my head, but it didn’t come from me. It came from Lord Foxfollow.

  “You’re a monster!” With a tremendous force of will, I pulled away from Lord Foxfollow. My feet clattered across the mirrored floor. He couldn’t hurt me here, he couldn’t hurt me here. “Just like your menials. A monster.”

  Lord Foxfollow tilted his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’m just different from you.”

  Rage bubbled up inside me. I thought of Kolur standing at the wheel of the Penelope, the wind blowing his hair away from his face. I thought of Asbera weeping over Finnur, and of Finnur himself, frozen and tormented because of one bite to the shoulder.

  And although t
here was no wind in that place, I gathered up what magic rested inside of me, a residue from all the spells I’d cast, all the winds I’d called down. I gathered it up and I wove it into a hard knot of fury and then I cast it at Lord Foxfollow, a cyclone of light.

  It struck him in the chest and dissipated. Of course it didn’t hurt him. Lord Foxfollow looked at me sadly.

  “My dear,” he said, “that was highly uncalled-for.”

  All my anger turned to fear.

  “Begone,” he said.

  The mirrored room disappeared, Lord Foxfollow disappeared, and I drifted, dazed, through a cold and dark space.

  He had undone my magic with a single command, and I understood then that he could have done that from the very beginning. That he was only humoring me.

  The dark space brightened. Spots of light appeared overhead. I blinked at them. Stars. They were stars. I was lying flat on my back, staring at the stars.

  No, not lying.

  Floating.

  I flailed, my heart racing. I caught a glimpse of what lay below me: dark ocean and the Annika, so small it looked like one of Henrik’s toys.

  “No.” I struggled against invisible bindings. “No. Foxfollow!”

  My voice carried on the wind. The wind, sweet-smelling and gentle—that wasn’t Foxfollow’s doing. He would have just dropped me into the maelstrom of monsters down below. No, this was the north wind, buoying me along, keeping me adrift.

  I stopped struggling. The wind caressed me. It was cold, yes, but it was a comfort, too.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, although I wasn’t sure who I spoke to.

  The wind whistled in response, and then it floated me down slowly, gently, and laid me to rest in the bow of the Annika.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lost. Everything was lost.

  I sat up. The familiar creaks and moans of the Annika were drowned out by the shrieking of the monsters in the water. The boat rocked back and forth as the north wind blew us steadily home.

  But we couldn’t go home.

  “Hanna!” Asbera’s voice rang out in the crystal night. She ran over beside me, Reynir at her side. “What happened? Benedict said you disappeared—”

  “I was trying to help Finnur,” I muttered. “But I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Trying to— How?” Reynir threw his hands up. “By just disappearing? Can you take the rest of us with you? Or take Finnur with you, at least?”

  “I didn’t go somewhere that could help Finnur.” I stood up, shaky after flying on the wind. The monsters thrashed against the side of the shield.

  “I was worried,” Asbera said. “I thought something had happened to you, too.”

  “Something did. But I’m fine.” I stalked away from the railing, back toward the brazier at the boat’s center. Baltasar sat beside it, staring into the flames. He glanced up at me when I joined him.

  “Worried about you, girl,” he said.

  He sounded exactly like Kolur. I looked down at him, at the firelight bouncing off his skin, and felt like crying. What if Lord Foxfollow hadn’t been lying? What if Kolur had sent the monsters to me on purpose?

  I shook my head. “I just wanted to help. But I didn’t find anything.” I sat down in front of the brazier and stuck out my hands to warm them.

  Reynir and Asbera walked over to the fire, although they hung back, sticking to the shadows.

  “Isn’t anyone watching Finnur?” I asked.

  “Seimur is.” Asbera frowned. “I was—we were worried. What were you trying to do?”

  I took a deep, shuddery breath. The night howled with sound, clawing and shrieking, and so I focused my attention on the crackle of the wood inside the brazier.

  “Find the person who hurt Finnur.”

  Baltasar gave a bitter laugh. “Did you?”

  “He’s of no use.” I closed my eyes against the tears. “What are you going to do when we get back to Tulja?”

  Silence. When I glanced over at Baltasar, he was staring into the flames.

  “Well?”

  “Been trying not to think about it,” he said. “Enough to worry about.”

  Behind him, Asbera gasped. “No,” she said, and stumbled over beside us. She knelt beside Baltasar and grabbed his hand, her eyes big and imploring. “No, you can’t—we have to go home. Finnur’s dying.”

  “I know he is.” Baltasar wouldn’t meet her in the eye. “Told Reynir to come up with something.”

  Asbera and I both looked over at Reynir at the mention of his name, but he was looking down at the deck.

  “I don’t have anything yet,” he said in a cold voice. “But perhaps Hanna can find a way, if she can meet with our attacker in some realm in the sky.” His eyes glittered in the firelight. “I’d prefer not to see my home destroyed and my family murdered.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Asbera said. “That doesn’t help.”

  “You aren’t helping. You’re the reason we’re going home in the first place. I told Baltasar we should sail in circles until we found a way to get rid of them.”

  Asbera’s eyes flashed with anger.

  “Enough!” Baltasar roared.

  Magic flooded across the deck of the ship, bright and hot and smelling of the south wind. I jumped and drew into myself, searching for my own magic. Asbera grabbed for my hand. Baltasar hoisted up his pistol.

  The enchantment faded away, twinkling on the air. One of the monsters had almost broken through our shield.

  “They’re getting stronger,” Reynir said in a flat voice.

  I scanned across the magic, sucking down breath, trying to steady myself. Over on the starboard side, the shield was marred by a thin line of light, illuminated by the stars.

  A crack.

  “Whatever you did,” Reynir said, “it made them worse.”

  “Maybe you made it worse,” Asbera said. “You’re the one being cruel.”

  I slumped back down in front of the brazier. Baltasar didn’t say anything, but he didn’t put his pistol away, either. One of the monsters let out a long, echoing howl that sank down into the marrow of my bones. I imagined that howl sliding over the empty ocean and disappearing into the cracks between worlds. I imagined Lord Foxfollow whispering spells to his monstrous little pets, giving them the strength to break through our stupid human magic.

  “He’s right,” I said. “It is my fault.”

  “Hanna—”

  Asbera reached out one hand toward me, but I stood up and glided out of her reach. The shields hummed, but the churning on the other side was louder and more urgent.

  I’d called Lord Foxfollow to me; I’d shot him with my magic. And all I’d done was give him reason to send his monsters after us in earnest.

  • • •

  Morning dawned, the sun a pale white disc hanging high in the sky. I felt like I’d only just fallen asleep, and I had; the nights were getting shorter. This far north, soon they’d be gone completely.

  I had slept down in the crew’s quarters, curled up in a hammock so that no one would speak with me. When I woke, I went up to check on Finnur. Asbera was sitting with him, a plate of salted fish in her lap. Untouched.

  Finnur was still pale, still cold, still breathing.

  “Baltasar says we’ll be home by this time tomorrow.” Asbera didn’t look at me. “But we still don’t know what to do about the monsters.” Her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “He’s right; we can’t go back to Tulja, not until they’re gone.” Her hands trembled as she pushed Finnur’s hair aside.

  I felt empty. Finnur looked like a corpse, his skin was so pale, so bloodless. Once again, I thought of the vision that Lord Foxfollow had shown me—Kolur and Frida gathering up the strength of their magic and sending the monsters straight to us. I shivered. Why would Kolur do such a thing?

  He wouldn’t.

  The voice whispering to me wasn’t my own. It sounded like the wind. I went very still, straining to hear it.

  He wouldn??
?t hurt you on purpose.

  Asbera kept stroking Finnur’s hair. Her cheeks glimmered with tears.

  He wouldn’t hurt me.

  Foxfollow would.

  It was an accident. Foxfollow showed me something that had truly happened, but he had been trying to frighten me, to make me feel abandoned. Except the voice on the wind was right—Kolur wouldn’t have hurt me on purpose.

  He didn’t know where he was sending the monsters. But he had sent them away.

  And I had seen it.

  I bolted out of the cabin, into the bright wash of sunlight. A handful of the crew tended to the sails, and Baltasar stood up at the wheel. The shield shimmered in the sun.

  Everything was quiet except for the monsters’ screeching.

  The sound was horrific, like listening to an animal die, and louder than it had been even last night. I walked over to the masts. Zakaria looked up at me and nodded. He had shoved strips of fabric into his ears. All of the crew had. I didn’t want to do the same, though. I thought I should listen. There might be something in the screams that could help.

  There was still no need for me to call the winds—that was the only good thing about this trip, that the winds had been on our side all this time. Or maybe it wasn’t the winds themselves. Maybe it was that presence in the wind. I couldn’t feel it, exactly, but I’d heard its voice down below.

  I looked over at the port railing, at the shield. Off in the distance, the ocean was steely and calm. It was only around the boat that the water thrashed.

  I walked closer. Slow, careful, cautious steps.

  “What are you doing?” Zakaria shouted. I ignored him. “Don’t get too close!”

  The air was thicker around the railing. The shield sparked out at me, touching the magic in my blood. I took another step closer.

  A monster leaped out of the water and slammed into the shield. Magic flared. Ocean water landed at my feet.

  The monster slid away.

  “Told you not to get too close.” Zakaria was at my side now. He pulled the strip of fabric out of his ears. “They’ve been doing that all day.”

  “Where’s Reynir?”

  “Up in the masts, strengthening the shield.” Zakaria pointed. “Could probably use your help, you know.”