The Assassin's Curse (25 page)

  I piled up the wood and sat in the sand and struck stone against stone until a spark caught. You're supposed to feed the fire dead dry grass, which is easier to find in the south, so I made do with twigs from the dead tree branches. Luck was on my side. I had the fire going just as the sun, what little of it I could see, was dropping down to the horizon. In what I was pretty sure was the east.

  I tried not to dwell on it.

  The fire grew and grew as the island fell dark. Naji kept on sleeping, the blue from his tattoos mingling with the orange firelight. I never crawled into the lean-to myself, 'cause I didn't want to leave the heat and light of the fire, and so I fell asleep out there in the open.

 

The next morning, I rolled over onto my back, sand crunching beneath my weight. It was still dark, although whether that was 'cause of the time or 'cause of the rainclouds I couldn't stay. At least the fire was still burning, casting light up and down the beach–

  Except it wasn't.

  I sat straight up and screamed. The fire was nothing but a pile of dark ashes. The light was coming from me.

  I screamed again and pushed myself up to standing and stumbled down to the edge of the island. Streaks of light radiated out behind me, and I froze in place, terrified. The sea crashed and churned beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and held up one of my hands and squinted at it, and I could see bright lines moving beneath my skin, those veins and arteries where my blood should be.

  "No," I whispered, because I knew that all those stories about the Isles were true, that I really was turning into moonlight. "No, no." I took stumbling, shambling steps, trying to work through my panic. We couldn't build a boat and live out on the water, and we couldn't stay on land, neither.

  Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes, blurring my skin's light and turning it into golden dots that scattered across the beach. I stumbled over the sand. The wind picked up, smelling of brine and fish–

  "Get away from the edge!"

  Hands grabbed me by the arm and dragged me backward, away from the churn of the ocean. I flailed and screamed. It was only Naji, but he was glowing too. Not just his tattoos. All of him.

  "We're turning into moonlight!" I screamed.

  "No, we're not. You almost ran off the side of the island. Come."

  His voice was stronger, the voice I remembered from that night in the desert. He led me back to the lean-to and sat me down next to the fire remains.

  "What's going on?" I wailed.

  Naji blinked at me. It was unnerving to see him with his bright skin and his dark eyes, the opposite of how his magic worked.

  "We're fine," he said. "Do I look like I'm in pain to you? There's no danger. At least as long as you stay away from the edge of the island."

  "But the stories–"

  Naji reached over pulled the charm out from under my shirt. "It's keeping you safe," he said. "As far as you're concerned, this is just… an effect. A courtier's trick." His glow brightened for a few seconds.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes." Naji pushed a piece of my hair out of my eyes. The movement was distracted and careless, but the minute he did it he dropped his hand into his lap and looked away. I felt myself growing hot and I realized that my own glow had brightened and turned a rich syrupy color. "I imagine it was caused by drinking from the spring. In a few days' time I should have enough strength to cast a spell to keep it from happening entirely."

  I sighed as my panic mostly disappeared.

  "Think of it this way," Naji said. "We won't need to worry about lanterns when we walk down to the spring."

  "What! The spring! You said that's what's doing this to us!"

  "It's also giving us water. Which we need if we aren't to die. Which I need if I'm ever to be well enough to track Eirnin."

  "You seem well enough now," I muttered.

  "I'm not." He stood up and held out his hand.

  We trudged through the woods, our glow throwing off weird, long shadows that seemed to wriggle and squirm between the trees. Naji had the sword, but I had to stop myself from reaching over and grabbing it from him. I always feel safer with a sword in hand.

  The spring was waiting for us, looking as normal as ever. Naji knelt beside it and took to drinking, but I hung back. His glow shimmered across the surface of the water.

  "Ananna," he said, "I swear to you that it's safe."

  I was thirsty. And I knew I couldn't go without water. What would be the use of coming all this way, just to die of thirst?

  "Fine," I said, and I sat beside him and drank my fill.

  Nothing happened on the walk back – no whispers on the wind, no flare-ups of Naji's curse. He led me off the path we'd flattened out on our trips to and from the spring to pick some nuts and berries, and I was so hungry I ate 'em without waiting till we were on the beach. This time, they seemed enough to fill my belly. The sun pushed out from behind the clouds and washed out enough of the glow that I almost got to thinking everything was normal.

  "We shouldn't stay," Naji said.

  "Are you hurting?"

  "No. I just don't want to linger."

  Stepping out on the beach eased my tension up some, the way it always did. Out in the open, my glow had almost entirely disappeared in the pale northern sunlight.

  "The lean-to," Naji said.

  "What about it?"

  "It's gone."

  I stopped in place and squinted down the beach. He was right. All I saw was trees and shadows and sand.

  The fear slammed back into my heart.

  "Someone knows we're here," I said. "The wizard? He's trying to scare us off?" My voice pitched higher and higher. "He ain't gonna help you after all? We got stranded here for no reason?"

  "I don't think that's it." Naji pulled away from me and marched to the place where our lean-to had been. And that's when I saw it: the smear of ashes from our fire. The lean-to had been replaced by an enormous bone-gray tree, twisting up toward the sky.

  "Curse this island," Naji said.

  I couldn't speak. The best I managed was little gasping noises in the back of my throat.

  "It's the magic," Naji said.

  "I know it's the magic!" I shouted. "This island ain't nothing but damn magic!" Desperation welled up inside of me. He wasn't never gonna get better and the wizard wasn't never gonna cure his curse and we were gonna die here just cause of some glimmer of hope Lelia had nestled inside him. "What if we'd been inside?"

  Naji turned toward me. Even though the glow was mostly washed out by the sun, his eyes seemed much darker than normal. "We should be grateful that we were not."

  I turned away from him and walked over to the fire ashes. Kicked at 'em with my boot. The tree that had been our lean-to rustled its branches at me and showered down a rain of gray, twisting leaves. Everything about the island was gray. The sky, the sand, the shadows, our home.

  I was becoming more and more convinced that the rest of my life would be nothing but gray.

 

We spent the next few days sleeping in fern tents that I built out on the beach. A storm rolled in one afternoon and soaked through all the wood and our tent, but Naji had gotten enough of his magic back that he was able to build a little fire afterward. It must have exhausted him, though, cause he stretched out on the sand afterward and slept, the glow of his skin and the glow of his tattoos fighting it out in the dark.

  We always moved our location, and we always used different ferns for the tents. We took different paths to the spring. Naji said that would keep the island from changing too much, though he didn't explain how. At least that was back to normal.

  Things fell into a routine. I didn't get used to 'em, but they were at least a routine.

  Then one morning I woke up and Naji was gone. The familiar sick panic set in. I was on my feet immediately, tearing the tent apart, screaming Naji's name. A million possibilities raced through my head. Maybe he'd turned into moonlight after all, and I was next. Maybe he'd turned into a fern and I was ripping him into shreds in my fear.

  I dropped the fern and I stepped back, almost stepping into the fire. The beach was silent save for the wind and my racing, terrified heartbeat.

  "Naji?" I said one last time. All my hope was lost. That wasn't much of a surprise, though, cause I really didn't have much of it left.

  "Ananna? Are you alright?"

  Naji popped up in the shadow of a tree.

  "You!" I shouted. "What's wrong with you?"

  He blinked at me.

  "I thought you got turned into a fern."

  "Oh. Oh, Ananna, I'm sorry, I didn't think–"

  "You go on and on about how I can't be left alone and then you just leave me here?"

  Naji walked up to me. He moved with his old grace, slinking across the beach instead of shuffling. I'd hardly noticed that particular quality was coming back along with the magic.

  "I was restless," he said. "I'm sorry. You weren't in danger."

  I suppose that was something, but my heart was still beating too fast.

  "I have something to show you."

  "What could you possibly have to show me? Did your sword turn into a courtier's dress?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "Or did you find the wizard? Did you–"

  "No. I'm not that well yet. But I think you'll appreciate it nonetheless."

  He turned and headed off down the sand. I followed him because I didn't much want to be left alone again. After fifteen minutes we came across an old fallingapart little shack, set back into the woods, still within sight of the beach.

  I didn't trust it at all. "Does somebody live here?" Though I had to admit it looked long-abandoned, the stones in the walls cracked and warped, the thatched roof dotted with holes.

  "Look at it, Ananna. But the answer's no, no one lives here. I cast a history spell. A small one, but enough to tell."

  I stepped up to the shack's door and nudged it with my foot. Inside, the stone floor was coated with sand and old ashes and the thin, glassy sheen of sea salt. There was a tiny hearth in the back, where Naji had started a fire, and a pile of stone jars and a rotted bed in the corner.

  The warmth spread over me, welcoming as an embrace, but I just looked on it with suspicion

  "It's some island trick," I said, turning toward Naji. "It'll be like the lean-to. We'll go fetch water and come back to find it turned into a big pile of stones." I thought about the stones on the beach and shivered.

  "It's not. I cast a history spell, remember?" Naji leaned up against the doorway. "It's been here for almost seventy-five years. And the first spell cast on it was one of protection."

  "And it's still working?"

  "It was very strong magic. Very old magic."

  I glowered at him. He stepped inside and the fire flickered against his rotting clothes. "Would I do anything to put you in danger?"

  He'd done plenty to put me in danger. He'd dragged me across the desert in the white hot heat. He'd gotten me stranded on the Isles of the Sky. But I'd let him. I'd done it all cause I wanted to break the curse as much as he did.

  I shrugged and didn't look him in the eye.

  "You should sit by the fire. It's a work of magic in and of itself that you haven't gotten sick yet."

  "I'm fine."

  "Let's not risk it."

  I had to admit, the firelight looked awfully inviting.

  And Naji looked healthy, not in any pain at all. I took one step cautiously through the doorway, and then strode across the shack to the hearth. The heat soaked into my skin, and I sat down, drawing my knees up to my chin. Naji sat down beside me.

  "Why'd you do this?" I asked.

  "Do what?"

  "Find a shack."

  "Because we need it," he said. "I don't know how long it will be until I'm fully healed, and it isn't helping that we have to sleep out in the cold every night."

  I didn't say nothing, just leaned closer to the fire. Naji got up and paced around the room liked a caged jungle cat.

  "I hope the wizard can break your curse," I said, speaking into the fire.

  Naji stopped pacing. I looked over at him, and he stared back at me from across the room, the firelight flickering across his scars. But he didn't say a word, not about the curse, and not about anything else, neither.

 
 
 

The shack looked halfway destroyed, but I was grateful for it when a storm blew through later that week, cold driving rain and dark misting winds. There was a hole about the size of my fist up in the roof, and water sluiced across the far wall, opposite the hearth, but me and Naji huddled up next to the fire and stayed dry. Naji kept rubbing his head, though, and I think it might've had something to do with the whispering on the wind. This time I could make out what it was saying: a voice speaking a language I didn't understand.

  The next morning, the sun broke through the clouds, sending down pale beams of light that dotted across the beach. It was hard to imagine the storm from the night before and harder still to remember the voice, which seemed more like a dream as the day wore on. I thatched the roof with fern fronds and pine needles, and Naji swept out the inside with a broom I made for him from more pine needles. When we finished, we sat down to eat berries and some pale creamy tuber Naji dug out of the ground. Neither were very satisfying.

  "I might be able to catch some fish," Naji said after we'd finished. "I think that may be the reason I'm not healing as quickly as I expected. I don't have enough strength just eating berries."

  "We'll need a line. I guess I could make one out of that net Marjani gave us–"