Wayfarer

by Lili St. Crow

  She regularly fell asleep in High Charm Calc now, but the equations had stopped being troublesome. Often she’d wake with a jolt to find her pencil scratching through a test or a pop quiz, writing equations and solutions in a cramped version of her usual slanting narrow handwriting. She got most of them right, too, only fudging the ones she was awake enough to unwork.

  It figured.

  “No plans for Break?” Ruby kept asking. She also didn’t poke the radio into full blare until after dropping Ellie off, probably so Ell could snatch a few minutes of rest. Cami gamely tried to keep up Ellie’s part of the conversation as well as her own, and her leftover stutter had largely vanished. Maybe the extra practice was greasing the words free or something.

  Today, Ellie sighed, looking down at the linoleum as the flock of girls freed from Juno’s restrictions for a whole week spilled for the front door. “Another party,” she managed. Her tongue didn’t seem to want to work quite right. “I guess.” She has Rita doing the cooking, and the maids were cleaning top to bottom again.

  “Is the Strep still trying to catch that Fletcher kid?” Ruby kept asking about him, too.

  The sharp jolt behind her breastbone woke her out of her daze, briefly. Be cautious. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  Cami was silent, and Ellie didn’t realize trouble was coming until they hit the front door instead of the side doors. Later she thought maybe Cami had been steering them that direction, or maybe it was just habit. In any case, Ellie dug in her heels, but it was too late.

  Because down at the bottom of Juno’s wide granite steps, oblivious to the girls milling around and whispering and some of them doing everything but pointing at him, was Avery Fletcher, the gold in his hair throwing back sunlight with a vengeance. He stood there like he had all the time in the world, and he was looking right at her.

  Oh, Mithrus. Ellie let herself be carried down the stairs. It was too much effort to protest. Maybe he’d just see she was tired and leave her alone?

  No such luck, because he brightened visibly the closer she got. Then he looked puzzled, eyebrows coming together. By the time the trio hit the bottom of the steps, his expression had changed. The brightness rubbed away, and his jaw was close to dropping.

  Ruby popped her gum, hopping off the last step. “Hey, Fletch. You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.”

  “You look awful,” he returned, and for a lunatic instant she thought he was telling Ruby that. It would have been worth a chuckle or two, except he was staring at her, and all of a sudden every rubbed-bare, worn-through, shabby or broken spot on her started to throb painfully. “And . . . Christ, have you been on charmweed?”

  Ellie found her tongue. “You’re an asshole.”

  “Young love!” Ruby addressed the air over Avery’s head, obviously delighted with this turn of events. “It’s shameful how you two carry on—”

  Cami stepped forward, grabbed Ruby’s arm. “Shhh.” And wonder of wonders, she actually shut Ruby up. “Maybe you can t-talk some s-sense into her. It’s her stepmother.”

  “Choquefort?” His nose wrinkled. “Yeah, she’s a piece of work; Mom says she’s a barracuda. But . . .” He stopped, a curious look spreading over his face. Ellie swayed, wishing Cami was still holding her elbow. It was somehow easier to move with the two of them bracketing her—and when had she become the meat of the sandwich? That was always Cami’s job. “Huh.”

  There, in front of the school and everyone, he stepped forward. Ellie almost flinched, but his fingers were on her cheek, warm and gentle. He stared into her eyes for what seemed an eternity, and she had time to see the threads of gold in the dark forest-green and brown of his irises, and the faint dusting of freckles across his tanned nose. Even his skin held some gold, and she felt a dozy sort of surprise.

  “Mithrus,” he breathed. “I think I’d better take her to a stitcher.”

  “Is it that b-bad?” The fear in Cami’s tone mixed with a tide of whispers and pointing.

  Ellie didn’t care. Some strained muscle inside her had been tearing, and when it finally gave way she leaned forward with a sigh, and her forehead hit Avery’s shoulder. He was solid and comforting, and for a moment she wondered how the weedy little kid she’d known had turned into this wall.

  There was a subtle click, as if the world had stopped, some linchpin dropping into place. Ellie exhaled, and maybe Fletcher was stiff with shock. He just stood there for a moment, and she heard Cami speaking. It wasn’t important. What was important was that the spinning had stopped, and for a moment she could really, truly rest. The inside of her skull wasn’t full of noise now. Instead, it felt like her head was full of brain again. A heaviness, meaty and comforting.

  Just a little unwelcome, too, because it meant she had to use the heaviness to think, to plan. Something . . .

  Something is very wrong with me.

  “You can follow if you want.” Avery sounded amused, and very calm. “But I plan on driving pretty fast, de Varre.”

  What am I doing? Her entire body ached, and the little tingles all over her were a product of his nearness. Why did he do that? Was it just because he was a charmer from a pretty powerful clan, or was it something . . . personal . . . about him?

  Did it matter? So far, the Strep hadn’t twigged to the fact that Ellie had tampered with the blacklove charm. If she did find out, or if she got any breath of Ellie hanging out with Avery Fletcher . . .

  She jerked her head up and tore away. Fletcher made a short swift movement, as if to catch her, but she flinched quickly enough that his hand closed on empty air. “Leave off.” Her tongue felt funny, a little too big for her mouth. “What do you think you’re doing here, charmer boy? Run on home.”

  He just regarded her levelly, his hand dropping back to his side. “You need a stitcher, Ell. You’re so drained you’re almost transparent. Where have you been working freelance?”

  “Working?” Ruby cracked her mouthful of chocolate beechgum, a popcharm noise, as she stared at the circle of onlookers. Most of them dropped their gazes and edged away, and her white, white smile widened a trifle. “What?”

  Cami was utterly still, her blue gaze locked to Ellie’s profile. And of course, she was the one smart enough to figure out what Fletcher was saying.

  “At home.” There was no point in lying. “She’s a Sigiled charmer, Fletcher. I might apprentice.” The lie was immediate, and hot against Ellie’s teeth. “Drop it.”

  “So that’s what’s been—”

  Ellie had her wits about her again, thank Mithrus. “Look, I told you to leave me alone. What does it take, huh?” She pitched it loud enough to be heard by every blessed girl in front of the school, and had the small squirming satisfaction of seeing him flinch and blanch a little. She took in a deep endless breath, and the lightning-flash of intuition inside her head told her what would hurt most.

  I can’t say that to him. I just can’t.

  So she settled for the next best thing. She turned on her heel, her mouth stinging with the words she wanted to let loose, and stalked blindly away. Ruby hurried after her, and the smell of burning insulation on the breeze was crisp and nasty.

  I’m doing that, she realized as the stairs to her left shimmered, the defenses sensing hurtful, active Potential trembling on the edge of taking spike-edged charmform. It’s me. A bubble of silence formed around her, and she kept her head up and her movements brisk. It’s anger. Like the Strep. Mithrus, please, Mithrus, God’s-son, please, don’t let it Twist me. Don’t make me a minotaur.

  “Ell?” It was Cami, the luckcharms on her maryjanes jingling and tingling, silvery-sweet. “Ellie please wait, he just wants to talk, Ellie!”

  “I don’t think she’s in the mood, honey.” Ruby had to actually hurry to keep up for once, and she sounded a bit breathless. “What was he talking about? Do we need to visit a stitcher? Gran can—”

  Charity. Always with the fucking charity. “No!” It burst out, high and hard, and Ellie fought back the charm want
ing to take shape. Forced herself to think of High Charm Calc equations instead, the difficult knotty ones that returned a different answer each time before your Potential settled. It was work trying to get them to react as if her Potential was unsettled, they kept serving up a single unambiguous answer now. “I can’t. She’d kill me.”

  “This might save her the trouble.” Cami glided along beside her, not put out by the speed of their passage at all. “What did he mean, huh? Freelance? Ell, come on. C-come on. P-please.”

  “Leave him out of this!” It was almost a scream, and her throat was dry, aching with the effort to keep rage-hot Potential pushed down, put away. “Mithrus Christ, just leave me alone!”

  Ruby’s fingers locked around her arm. She yanked Ellie to a stop, and their skirts both swung, flirting with a breeze that was part spring but mostly disturbed Potential, shimmering between them as the barriers of their personal spaces flexed and receded.

  “No.” For once, Ruby de Varre sounded—and looked—completely serious. “I am not leaving you alone. Something’s going on, and I’m going to get to the bottom of—”

  “Quit being a self-centered bitch, Ruby.” The words flew out before she could stop them, that hurtful little intuition telling her what would hurt Rube the most. “I realize it’s your default, but just try, okay?”

  The other girl’s fingers bit in, and for once there wasn’t a fresh bruise hurting somewhere on Ellie’s body. The Strep hadn’t touched her for a while now, all that was left were yellow-green ghosts on her skin.

  They didn’t know anything about how bad it could get, and Ellie had to keep it that way. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but that was the way it was.

  She was trapped.

  “I’m gonna overlook that,” Ruby said softly, “because I am a self-centered bitch. Fine and good. But you need help.”

  “D-d-d-don’t fight.” Cami was breathless, and the edges of her straight black hair lifted on the uneasy breeze. “Please don’t f-f-f—”

  “Too late,” Ellie informed her curtly. “Shut up.”

  Cami’s hand flew to her mouth, caging broken words. Reddened lips, slim fingers, her skin glowing like an alabaster lamp, the Vultusino girl stared at Ellie with wide, tear-brimming blue eyes.

  Ruby’s grip lessened. She stared at Ellie like some exotic new type of bug crawled wet and stinking from beneath a rock, waving its misshapen feelers as it clacked its mandibles.

  The strained, stretched feeling inside her tightened painfully. Her skin was too taut, as if she was Twisting inside where nobody could see. Was that what it felt like when a minotaur began?

  Boiling up inside her, black and viscous, the words crowding up behind her teeth tasted like burnt metal. Why stop at just one hurtful thing? She might as well go on.

  Was this what Laurissa felt like, right before she started screaming?

  The pavement around her rippled, as if she was throwing off sunheat. Ruby’s hair blew back, and Cami leaned forward a little, pushing against the resistance.

  No. Don’t hurt them. You can’t hurt them. Even though she just had. And it was so easy, so goddamn easy, to just open her mouth and let the rest of it fly.

  So she did the only thing she could.

  Ellie whirled, her sleek blonde hair ruffling out, and ran.

  EIGHTEEN

  IT WAS RIDICULOUSLY EASY. SHE JUST PLUNGED RIGHT through the front gates, where cars and buses were locked to a standstill by the appearance of a fragile fleshly body in their midst. Someone screamed, one of the small cushioned buses laid on the horn, but she was out the gates in a flash, taking a sharp right and pounding along the cracked heaving sidewalk under the whispering elms shading this part of Juno’s northern wall.

  They had black bark and violently green leaves, those trees, and Juno’s defenses resonated through living wood, Potential turning them into towering giants with fringe-fingered arms. Their shadows clutched, but she tore through them, a bright scarf of Potential-sparks tingling in her wake before winking out, one by one.

  Ellie ran. And ran, blindly, until there was a snap, more felt than heard, and the buckle on her much-abused left maryjane broke. She went down in a heap, spilling onto a grassy verge in front of a small brownstone house, its white window casements secretive raised eyebrows. Its picket fence looked like tiny teeth, painted sticky sugar-white, and stood ruler-straight, barely holding back candybright red roses with queer frilled petals. It was too early for those roses, but the shimmer around them told her they were charmed, and the thought of charming made her sick.

  Hands and knees, her entire worn-down body rebelling, she retched pointlessly and shivered, great gripping waves of shudders coursing through her.

  A charmstitcher would be able to see what she’d been doing, maybe. Might be able to probe the vast empty space inside her head that opened up and let those wonderful pieces of work through. And they were wonderful; they sold as fast as Laurissa could show them. Her own blue bedroom was only hers now because she was making the Strep some money.

  How long could she keep that up? Laurissa was a wide gaping maw; how much would it take? Where was all of it going?

  Between her hands, velvety grass sent up a crushed green reek. Thin green blades tickled her wrists, softly, and she could almost hear them singing a piping little chorus of water and light and rest, roots a matted tapestry in damp earth. The roses answered, a high sleepy buzzing that almost—almost—made words.

  I could just collapse right here. Oh wait, I just did. There were charm-symbols flashing through her brain, awful ones. Those tables in the back of even the paperback copies of Sigmundson’s weren’t supposed to make sense to anyone whose Potential hadn’t settled, but she could see them clear as day. Charms to seize a victim’s breathing, shear metal and splinter wood, blight a tree or a small animal. Any charm that black carried the risk of Twisting, but would you care about that if you could, say, work up enough reflected Potential to stop your own heart?

  Suicide by charm. Just because the books never talked about it didn’t mean it wasn’t theoretically possible, right?

  The thought wasn’t scary. What was scary was the ease with which her brain began to bubble with calculations.

  “What have we here?” Soft as the breeze through the twisting elm branches and fluttering leaves.

  Ellie jerked in surprise, and glared up at the white picket fence.

  Behind it, among the roses, was a brown face, its lower half splitting in a very white V-shaped smile. The eyes were large and liquid-dark, and for a moment they seemed simply black from lid to lid, like Marya the Vultusino house fey’s. Marya’s gaze was kind and absent, though, and this was a piercing stare.

  Then the split-second seeing was gone, and she found herself looking at a perfectly ordinary old woman with scant white thistledown for hair and a kind tilt to her thin mouth. She was small and round, and her housedress was splashed with violently blooming orchids on a pretty horrendously bright blue background. Miz Toni would have loved it.

  Immediate hot, reeking guilt filled her mouth. She had to swallow another retch.

  That thistledown hair had bits of leaves stuck in it, as if the old woman had been gardening and run her dirty hands back through it, and her weathered skin said she spent a lot of time outdoors.

  Ellie was lying right in front of her fence. “I’m sor—”

  “She’s storm-eyed, this wanderer,” the woman continued, in a chirrupy leaf-whisper. “Pale-haired too, and burning like a candle. What brings you to Auntie’s house, wayfarer? She looks hungry, yes she does.”

  She’s a charmer. Ellie felt awake for the first time in days. Awake . . . but terribly worn, scraped thin like an old-timey hide window. The ones they used to paint with ochre to keep evil out, before the Age of Iron. The Potential flowing around the woman was a little odd, sure, but Ellie had been seeing a lot of weird things lately.

  The old woman’s roses leaned around her, drinking her in. Their frilled petals throbbed, redd
er than red, and the picket fence shimmered, too. There was a hazy murmur of bees, and all of a sudden Ellie smelled flowers and crushed grass and spiced honey, and a tang of black freshly turned earth. Her nose was waking up just like the rest of her.

  Ellie took stock. Her shoe was never going to be the same. Even a mending on the buckle seemed like too much goddamn charm to scrape out of her weary body. Hunger knotted in her stomach, and everything on her ached.

  “Perhaps she doesn’t know?” the charmer continued. “Lots of them don’t know why they come see Auntie. The lonely and the wanderers, they are all Auntie receives.”

  She’s crazy, too. Most charmers got a little eccentric by middle age. She didn’t seem to be Twisted, though. “I’m sorry.” Ellie finally managed to make her mouth work. “I just . . . I ran.”

  “As if the white hounds were after her, yes. Yes yes.” The thistledown head nodded, bobbing like one of her flowers. “Come in. Auntie will make tea.”

  “I really should—” But what was there to do? Figure out how to get home, certainly, and deal with the Strep wanting her to charm until her head broke, and there was homework and Babbage chat with Cami and Ruby, who would not be happy with her.

  Well, tea. Why not? It was just an old charmer woman. A low-level one who wasn’t part of a clan or the social climbers who showed up during the season. Maybe she liked her privacy. There were a lot of solitary charmers; even Sigiled ones sometimes retreated from the world.

  It sounded like a great goddamn idea.

  “Tea. And she is hungry, this little wayfarer. Be nice to Auntie, lonely old Auntie.” The old woman’s tone brooked no refusal. “She’s hurt.” She pointed, and Ellie realized her palms and knees were skinned. Pavement burn, probably, before she’d tumbled onto the grass.

  “Yeah, I guess I fell.” She levered herself up painfully, and the sapphire ring flashed once in the mellow leaf-shaded light. The old woman didn’t notice; she had already turned and was picking her way toward a gate Ellie hadn’t seen before. The posts were striped with vivid red paint, sort of like the peppermint sticks hung on traditional trees every Yule. The trellis arch overhead was sticky-white like the fence, though, and the roses were beginning to climb it lazily. By the end of summer they would choke it with greenery and frilled blossoms. “I’m Sinder.” Awkwardly, but she had to offer something.