As I stepped gingerly across cold paving stones and looked back, I could see Gwendolen; a pale, blanket-wrapped blur at the upstairs window that raised a sleepy arm and waved at me. Mother stood beside her, adding her own farewell, and as I travelled back up the road to the forest I felt light and free, enjoying the cool summer morning and feeling in its dryness the promise of a hot, sunny day. Gwendolen would be happy: her dance would be fine and warm.
There was a tint of gold to the horizon, but in the forest it was still dark. The half-light from the unrisen triad didn’t penetrate beyond the first rank of trees, and the slight chill became more noticeable once I passed that boundary, particularly since I chose to forsake the path and travel by the forest lines. Once off the path, deep forest was always colder and darker. Today I travelled swiftly, without dawdling. I arrived in a more than typically ungraceful manner just outside Akiva’s cottage with a very good idea of why Akiva had always insisted on my being back inside before it got dark. There were many not-so-nice things that I’d briefly glimpsed along the forest threads as I passed.
Akiva’s face, crabbed in a frown, appeared briefly in the window as I trod the path through the front garden. The door was snatched open before I got to it.
“Quickly, Rose,” she said. “Throw your trunk down and listen closely.”
I set my trunk down on the floor, but before my fingers even left the handles, it was whisked away by Akiva’s magic, which had been buzzing busily around her since I entered the house. I distantly felt the trunk settle beside the bed in my little bedroom, and looked at Akiva with bright, glittering eyes.
“Pay attention, child!” Akiva snapped, with no patience this morning for my delight of magic. For the first time I saw lines of worry in her face. “One of the wardens has gone missing and I’m needed at the council. It will take two days at the very least: in the meantime do not invite anyone into the cottage or even the garden, unless they’ve come for a tea or a lotion. If one of the other wardens was responsible for her disappearance as Mara seems to think, you should be safe enough while we’re all at the council; but I’d rather not take the risk.”
A vague ray of hope made me ask: “Was it Cassandra?”
“No,” Akiva said shortly, and I could see that she had been thinking the same thing: if a warden had to disappear, it was a pity it couldn’t be Cassandra.
“Maybe it was something nonhuman.” I thought of the gryphon, wondering what other, more dangerous, animals populated the forest– not to mention deep forest. “She could be dead.”
Akiva shook her head, the lines etched deeper. “If she was dead, I would know. Ward magic flows back into the forest when a warden dies; it would have been visible to us all. No, she’s met with foul play, and around the forest that usually means another warden.”
“Was she a friend of yours?” I asked, catching the note of sorrow in her voice.
Akiva nodded briefly, but said: “Enough questions, child. Listen to me: you need to check the boundaries every day, the way I showed you.”
“But I don’t know if I remember properly!” I objected, taken aback. “Besides, I thought you only did that once a week.”
Akiva fixed a steely eye on me, silencing my objections. “You’ll have to remember, Rose. Every day, and wear the hood just in case you stray over a boundary.”
“Why will that help?” I asked desperately, feeling as though I couldn’t breathe. There was too much information flying at me all at once, and I had a horrible feeling that I would do something dreadfully wrong by accident.
“The hood is something of my wardship,” Akiva said rapidly. There was a rustle in the air as she flung the hood around my shoulders. It was oddly light. I had long ago proved my theory that it was a leaf-hood by an exercise of judicious sneaking: now I looked closer at it and saw the forest lines running deep and strong through the leaves. Horned hedgepigs! So that was how Akiva saw the lines when she was away from her own wardship: she carried her own little wardship with her. She saw my comprehension and nodded approvingly.
“The leaves are from my wardship. When a warden goes from her wardship to another she needs something from her own: it helps her to get back and it allows her to draw on a certain amount of her power. Even if you absolutely trust the other warden to send you back safely it’s still wise to have your own power to draw on.”
I said: “Oh,” stupidly, because I had just realised why it had been so difficult to get back into Akiva’s wardship after the gryphon, and how I had gotten back after all. My stout little cudgel had done it: a small piece of Akiva’s wardship, pulling me home.
I opened my mouth, bursting with questions, but Akiva cut them short. “Not now, child: I have no time. The boundaries every day, and never without the hood. Everything else as usual.”
She left me there with the cloak of light summer leaves around my shoulders, and light as it was, I felt as though a heavy weight had settled on me. When the sound of her footsteps had faded down the path, I turned around in the cold, empty house like a dog making itself comfortable. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Akiva hadn’t taken time to light a fire, so I lit one myself, in spite of the fact that the rising triad would soon make the place uncomfortably hot. I had the desire for a good, strong cup of tea.
I made a leisurely breakfast, but it was still early when I finished. The soft light of the fire showed unusual disorder about the base of Akiva’s workbench, scraps of foliage and dried herbs. I set myself to sweeping the mess up. As I swept scraps of herbs from the worktop onto the floor with the palm of my hand I noticed the little phial that sat, stoppered and labelled, in the very middle. There was a scrap of paper pinned beneath it, on which Akiva had written in her small, crabbed hand: ‘Kelsey Hale; no charge.’
Kelsey, I thought, narrowing my eyes. I knew Kelsey: she was a heavy woman with lank grey hair and a sour smell about her, and there always seemed to be something wrong with her. I uncorked the small phial, cautiously sniffing, and was both pleased and hugely amused to discover that I knew what it was. It was a simple tea laced with mint, and although it was pleasantly sweet smelling it had exactly no medicinal value. Kelsey, always complaining of this or that malady, and suffering from none, would be neither helped nor hurt by the mixture. I replaced the stopper with a laugh in the silence of the house, and was startled at the sound of it. For a moment it had sounded just like Akiva’s dry, amused chuckle. I wondered if I would come to be like her after living long enough alone– supposing, of course, that I ever did become warden after her. Maybe I didn’t need to go to sea, after all, to live a single life.
I put the fire out when I had had enough tea, and retreated to my room to unpack the rest of my trunk. The triad was beginning to creep through the trees, bringing light and banishing the slight chill in the air, and by the time I was out in the garden, the golden light was a warm glow, heating the top of my head. I kept the leaf-hood around my shoulders as I worked, instinctively unwilling to take it off: it made me no hotter and didn’t weigh on my shoulders. It wasn’t very much longer before I had forgotten about it completely.
I didn’t stop for lunch. It was such a beautiful day, and the work was a pleasure rather than a chore after so long away. My prolonged break from Akiva’s garden had done me some good – or perhaps I simply had a mind to work – and it was still comfortably light when I finished both my and Akiva’s work.
It was an unexpected relief: the triad might have set by the time I finished walking the boundaries, but it would not be by long. I still remembered some of the grimmer things I had seen in the darkened forest.
When I at last set out to go around the boundaries, the littlest sun was high in the middle of the sky. I had a brief moment of panic part way to the northern boundary when I thought that I had forgotten Akiva’s leaf-hood, but my swift about turn to go back home flicked the edges of it into my peripheral. It was still weightlessly tied around my shoulders. And as I neared the boundary I came into satisfying proof of t
he hood’s usefulness: my sight of forest lines no longer ended at the boundaries. I could still see them beyond the borders, fainter than the ones in Akiva’s wardship, but true and clear. I grinned, fierce and happy, and decided that perhaps I wouldn’t make a mess of things after all.
That first night was full of unseen noises in the deepening gloom, and the sudden, sinister snapping of twigs. Once, a huge, blacker-than-night shadow swept through the forest overhead on silent, strong wings, while I crouched to the grass, still as a rabbit in the gaze of an eagle. It was gone in less than a second, but it was many more minutes before I stood up, blowing out my cheeks in mingled respect and relief, and moved on.
At the western border, as dark was beginning to fall in earnest, I heard distant, savage wailing. I didn’t linger there, skimming past threads and giving them only the slightest testing touch as I passed, but the wailing seemed to hang eerily on the air as I hurried, made up of myriad, high-pitched voices that followed me hauntingly. At the meeting of the western and southern borders, I passed a thread that gave off a hint of the black, tarry magic I recognised as Cassandra’s.
I backtracked to the thread, where I stood for some time staring uselessly at the trap. I didn’t have the smallest idea of how to get rid of it. I didn’t seem to recall Akiva actually doing much to the earlier traps. She had made a complicated gesture that looked like she was twisting a spindle back the wrong way, and said: “None of that nonsense, please.” And that had been pretty much that.
I looked narrowly at the thick, rope-like strands of Cassandra’s magic for a brief moment and came to the conclusion that this was exactly what she had done. She’d seen it as thread, and treated it as such.
I knew a little something of that. I curled my fingers into the threads of it, and twisted. To my satisfaction the rope-like magic did the same for me as it had for Akiva, and before long I had the delight of watching the newly disorganized scarves of Cassandra’s magic being absorbed into the forest. I made sure every skerrick was gone before I travelled along again, leaving a plumper, richer section of forest behind me.
The disembodied wailing continued to haunt me as I travelled, though it grew fainter, but nothing else impeded my swift journey around the rest of the boundary. I arrived home at last an hour or so after nightfall, exhausted and glad to be within the safety of four walls once again. It was with some relief that I laid out the fire and prepared my evening meal, and at last sank down in Akiva’s chair to prove to myself the maxim that a watched pot never boils. But boil it did, and I sat quite some time in contentment with my cup of strong tea and brown bread-and-cheese.
I remembered Akiva’s hood when I took myself off to bed, but the knots she’d tied in the tapes refused to loosen beneath my fingers. Perhaps my fingers were numb. Perhaps Akiva had tied them too tightly. I found that I didn’t much care. I undressed beneath it, right down to my cotton shift, and crawled into bed, hood and all.
Chapter Seven
I dreamed of Akiva. She must have been with the warden council, because there were ten women and three men seated about a round table with her, fidgeting with their various cuffs and handkerchiefs and aprons. I was thoughtfully surprised at the men: despite meeting Gwydion, I’d gotten the impression that warden was a distinctly feminine calling. He was there, too, looking solemn enough to be merely playing at being an adult. I grinned, conscious of a sense of fellow feeling, and wished I could nudge him companionably.
Cassandra was there too, her eyes darting back and forth from warden to warden. Unlike the other wardens, who were dressed more sensibly in plain cotton and aprons, she wore a scandalously gauzy gown that left very little to the imagination. I saw Gwydion wink at her, ruining his solemn air, and although she didn’t return any acknowledgement, at least she didn’t freeze him with a look. That surprised me.
I scanned the faces more quickly than thoroughly, but only those three were familiar. There was something about the tall, severe lady with salt and pepper hair that seemed to jump in my memory, and I studied her narrowly, my thoughts speeding away behind my eyes.
As I watched she banged a gavel on the cedar tabletop.
“Order, please.”
I winced as the gavel connected with that beautiful tabletop, and half the wardens around the table mirrored my pained expression.
The businesslike woman said impatiently: “Stop pulling faces every time I bring the meeting to order, Gwydion.”
A voice muttered rebelliously: “We weren’t in disorder, blast you!”
Unabashed, Gwydion said: “It’s a hard thing to watch you ruin a beautifully crafted bit of wood. You do know it’s still running with magic, don’t you, Mara?”
“I do not now, and never will, coddle my wardship and its every twig and stick,” Mara said shortly. “Stick to the business at hand: we’re convened today to begin an enquiry into what happened to Kendra. Who saw her last?”
One of the male wardens, flushing, said: “I think I did. She was helping me to put up a warding around some meat-eating trees that migrated to my wardship.”
“There’s no need to be coy,” Mara said impatiently. “We all know you two spend your spare time with each other. When did she leave your wardship, and where was she going?”
The blush on the warden’s face deepened. “We really were putting up wards,” he said. “She brought a few twigs with her to do the magic but nothing else. She trusted me.”
“Perhaps, but wandering about with no more of her wardship than a few twigs when she has to pass through two wardships to get to yours is hardly wise. I take it she burned out the twigs doing your wards.”
The male warden looked wretched, and I felt sorry for him. He said: “Yes. She burned them up and said that it didn’t matter, because she had to pass through Akiva’s wardship anyway, and that Akiva had something of hers there.”
Mara’s eyes turned to Akiva thoughtfully. “Did she meet with you, Akiva?”
Akiva shook her head, lips compressed, and the male warden sank his head into his hands with an anguished groan.
“I should never have let her go! It’s my fault, all my fault.”
“David, control yourself!” Mara said sharply. The warden stopped moaning but didn’t take his head from his hands. I stared at him, fascinated and horrified to see that he was actually crying. My right arm twitched, surprising me with an unfamiliar urge to throw my arms around him and squeeze fiercely.
“There were no traces of Kendra in my wardship,” said Mara crisply, ignoring David. Horned hedgepigs, but she was cold!
“So I must assume she disappeared between David and Akiva’s wardship. Are there any objections?”
“Objections?” Gwydion was clearly startled. His gaze swept around the table and then pinioned Mara. “Is it a statement or an accusation? Are you suggesting that Akiva had something to do with this?”
“Of course not,” Mara said patiently. “However, warden law states that in a case of disappearance in a rich wardship, that both the person last seen with the victim and the person to whom the victim was going be remanded in custody. I realise you all think you’re above suspicion, but consider how unlikely it is that this could have been done by anyone but a warden! Until the matter is cleared up we have a very rich wardship now free to be reclaimed. Complain if you wish, but those are the facts of the matter.”
“Who’ll take Kendra’s wardship?” Gwydion’s voice was sharp and only just escaped cracking. “You, Mara? Of course, as our illustrious head, it would be your right.”
Akiva’s eyes turned on him, and her dry voice, unexpectedly amused, said: “Oh, we can point fingers as long as we like, Gwydion. But I speak for Mara here: let her control the wardship at least for the present. We’ve never had reason to doubt her motives.”
“How will you like confinement?” Gwydion’s voice no longer had the sharpness to it; instead, it was amused. He must be quite fond of her, I thought.
Akiva smiled. “I have a new apprentice, as you are very well
aware. It will be a rest for me from her exuberance, and a chance for her to prove she can keep the wardship a few days without major disaster. So far I am not overly hopeful.”
Gwydion threw back his head and laughed. “What has she done this time?”
Cassandra’s violet eyes darted toward Gwydion and Akiva, darkening with anger. “Why are we speaking about a stupid little chit of a girl? I came here to talk about Kendra, and now I am bored. I will not stay.”
Mara held up one hand. “We still have more to discuss, Cassandra. Gwydion, try to stay on topic for more than two minutes . . .”
I rose to consciousness gradually, the voices fading as I rose. Remembering my dream-laced dragon-fever, I didn’t doubt that I’d dreamed truly, and I woke scowling in sleepy resentment.
My waking was accompanied by a feeling of nausea. I found the room distorted around me and blinked my sleepy eyes, but when I squinted around again the room was still blurred.
Horned hedgepigs, what was going on? The window was somehow too long and smaller at one side, and the panes wobbled as if they weren’t quite solid. I gazed around me suspiciously. While I looked at one section of wall it seemed to sit still as the rest of the room seethed in my periphery, yet when I looked slowly and deliberately around the room again, it was still. I wandered through the house in my slip and cape, touching walls and window frames that felt solid to the touch but moved alarmingly in the corners of my eyes.
I sat down at last in Akiva’s chair, dizzy and ill, and pulled the cape tighter around my shoulders. There was no doubt that something was very wrong with the house, but I couldn’t tell where the fault lay. There was no emanation of magic from any point in the house that I could find, and although my inexperience made it difficult to say for sure, I came to the conclusion that the problem lay outside the house.
I didn’t eat much in the way of breakfast that morning: I was afraid that it wouldn’t stay down. The shifting walls reminded me unpleasantly of being at sea, and I’d never been much of a sailor: it was the one flaw in my piratical plans. Still, I managed to gulp down a piece of dry toast before I made my unsteady way out into the garden, where everything was mercifully steady and solid. In fact, the garden looked so very normal that I thought for a moment it had escaped the general force of twisting magic that was wreaking havoc in the house.
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