Brightly Woven (14 page)

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

T
he 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.

“Why, yes, I do.” North gave an exaggerated bow. “You are looking absolutely lovely this evening, Lady Aphra.”

“You have a patroness?” I whispered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, did I not mention that?” North let out a low, nervous laugh.

“No,” I said, my hands tightening into fists. “Actually, you didn’t.”

Lady Aphra took a step closer to him. “I’m glad my letter found you.”

His face darkened. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I believe you,” she said. “The wolf’s been quiet for the past few nights. We’re hoping he’s moved on.”

“Doubtful,” North said. “It’s a wizard casting a specter, I’m sure of it. It’s a trick he’s used before, but only when he needed to create some revenue—he terrorizes families with it and then sweeps in to act the part of the hero and earn a few coins in the process.”

“Why would he come here, then?” Lady Aphra asked. “We don’t have much wealth.”

“He’s here for us—for me.” North’s face darkened. “He lost us when we twisted out of Dellark, and the only way to call me out again was to threaten you. It’s my fault; I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Lady Aphra said, finally casting her eye on me. “You’ll be the ones to fix it.”

Lady Aphra provided us with North’s usual room in her cottage, and we slept on rolled blankets stuffed with hay. It wasn’t so much the sleeping arrangement or my bedding that had me waking nearly every hour—it was the cold air that seeped in through the floor beneath me and the small windows on the wall. Pressing my frozen fingertips under my arms and curling myself into a tight ball, I faded in and out of the darkness.

There was no hint of Dorwan that night. Instead, I dreamed again of the threads of light. They were still wrapped over my skin but had loosened enough for me to lift my arms and free my hands. My fingers groped for the edges, taking some of the warm strands and pulling them up from the ground. The ends fluttered around in the air above me; there was a spark of light as they touched, and they weaved among one another as though invisible hands were guiding them.

I sat up straight, cold dread settling in my stomach like a stone. My skin tingled with the memory of warmth, but my vision was splotched with black, and it took several minutes before my eyes readjusted to the dim light of early dawn. I pressed my hands against my face and breathed in the cool air. North was snoring in the far corner of the room.

The pieces of my loom leaned against the wall. I still hadn’t begun North’s single cloak—with all our traveling, the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. Now, in the quiet, hours before the others would rise, I picked up the pieces of the frame and fit them back together.

The hardest part was deciding where to begin; I knew I wanted the edges to alternate between colors, framing the scene inside. But would he find it odd if I began with shades of yellow, of dust?

It was strange how easily I fell back into it. The colors came together fluidly and my fingers worked quickly. The usual daze of color and imagination came over me, and by the time I began work on the yellow-and-brown mountains
of Cliffton, my thoughts were somewhere else, caught in the snare of the picture I would weave.

The window shutters clattered against a sudden light breeze. The air whistled through the cracks in the wall and caressed the branches of nearby trees. Everything seemed to fall into perfect rhythm: my breathing with the wind, my fingers with the branches. Mr. Monticelli’s words floated up in my mind.
Steady hands, eyes always on the art, mind always on the art
…

I knotted, took up a different shade of yellow, began a new row and didn’t stop until I felt a hand clasp my shoulder, breaking the spell the loom had cast over me.

North leaned forward to take a closer look at my work but didn’t lift his hand.

“What are you doing up?” he whispered.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Was your bed too uncomfortable? I told you to take that extra blanket.”

“It was a little cold,” I admitted.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked loudly, then dropped his voice. “You should have woken me up! We’re up in the mountains now—I forget you’re not used to colder weather.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh yes, I’m going to freeze to death while sleeping in front of a fire and under a hundred pounds of blankets. I said I was a
little
cold!”

“Do you want me to relight the fire for you?”

“No, I want to know where you’re going,” I said.

He looked pleased.

“I was going to put protective wards around the village,” he said.

I finished my row and stood.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Coming with you, of course,” I said.

“It’s freezing out there,” he protested.

“I’ll bring a blanket.”

“Why the sudden interest in my work?”

“It’s not that sudden. Why the reluctance to let me come?”

North and I stared at each other, waiting for the other to back down. Finally, North chuckled. “I’ll wait outside for you. Wear something warm, all right?”

The problem was that I didn’t have anything particularly warm to wear, just a thin shawl. I did the best I could, layering my stockings and underskirts. I was sorely tempted to crawl back into the little warmth my bed provided.

Outside, North was sitting on the cabin’s small stoop, his head tilted up at the remaining stars. The air had a strange scent, crisp and fresh, but…cold. It bit at my nostrils and the tip of my nose. The scent was unlike that of desert rain; it was unique and telling.

“It smells like it’s going to snow,” North said, as if reading my thoughts.

“Snow?” I gasped. “Do you think—? I mean, do you believe it’s really going to snow? Is this what snow smells like?”

North looked at me in pure amazement.

“Right…,” he said. “Right, desert. No snow.”

I felt childish, as if my excitement had somehow betrayed me.

“Well, I do hope it snows for your sake!” North said. We both rose to our feet, but North’s hand caught me and held me back. He unknotted his cloaks, pulling the crimson red material from the pile. I thought for a moment he intended to create one of his balls of light, but instead the cloak fluttered down onto my shoulders. He stuck the tip of his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he tied it securely around my neck.

“There!” he said. “We’re ready to go. Is that a little warmer?”

It felt like heaven, actually. I was warmed down to my very core.

“Don’t you need this?” I asked, feeling a little bit guilty. He secured the rest of the cloaks back in place before taking my hand.