Such a brutal attack could only stir up harsh feelings, so I shuffled past the young man and continued on my way before he could respond. The Wildwoods granted me a speedy departure from him, though the walk was slow, excruciating work over a packed down trail. I took a sip of a pain potion from a flask tied to my belt. The going got easier until I could walk without hindrance.
Up until that encounter, I hadn't realized how hard it would be to face Rossalinda's family. Surrounded by such an attitude as that, I worried how I would ever be accepted by the village. My coming had been tainted, and I knew how easy it would be to spoil my presence altogether.
There was just so much I could do now, but how I behaved would influence how the others treated me now and in the future. I did want to be welcome for other visits. And I did want to participate in their death rites. Which meant I had to find out what those were, and what would be a gracious gift to give.
When I stopped for a break, it was in a park-like clearing with benches made of rough-cut lumber. I sat down with relief, wondering where it was the Wildwoods had taken me. It wasn't Aunt Linnia's.
There was something isolated about this clearing, a place where the birds didn't sing and nothing rustled in the bushes. A few bees went from flower to flower across the meadow, but nothing else moved. My breathing returned to normal and my sweat dried. I stood up to leave.
“Not going so soon?” Lyall asked.
I found Lyall this time, chewing on a bit of grass, his pack there beside his feet in the gravel.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Nice of you to ditch me to the battalion last time.”
Lyall grinned. “Wonderful people, aren't they? Such a gracious welcoming party.”
I considered his sudden reappearance and the path the Wildwoods had taken me on, and knew there was a reason behind it.
“I'm sure they are wonderful people when you don't intrude unexpectedly in their territory with fake documents and a fire drake.”
Lyall took the blade of grass out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “That was your fault, not mine.”
“They think you disappeared.”
With a groan, Lyall muttered something unintelligible, then said, “I should have trusted the message with someone else. You'll have to do. When you get back, you tell them that I'm one of the Wildwoods' chosen, and they'll understand.”
I didn't want to do anything for him right now. “Rossalinda's dead.”
“I know.”
“I didn't come here to see you.”
“I know that, too. But I need to see you, or rather, we need you to see something.”
I frowned, watching as he tossed his pack over his shoulder and waved his pipe for me to follow. Life in this forest…I shook my head. On one hand, I loved not needing to delve into the bowels of markets in order to find potion ingredients, but on the other hand, I liked being able to control where I went and to some extent who I met along the way.
We proceeded along Lyall's path, a narrow affair riddled with currant bushes and tiny wild geraniums. Birds whistled and fluttered in front of Lyall, holding chirping conversations with him before flapping off again. Their messages Lyall nodded to and sometimes responded to with a whistle. Grabbing tree limbs snagged my hair, annoying me, before I realized that we'd left foliage and greenery behind us. What was in front of us were the drying remains of a forest.
It was like the dead, burned forest that the husks had teemed out of, but not as far advanced. There was a feeling of mourning about the place, as though it were in the process of dying, but not yet gone. I found I was listening to the silence around us, that my heart had picked up, and all my senses were in tune to catch any strangeness around us.
Lyall twitched his finger.
He was pointing to a tree which still had yellowed leaves clinging to its branches. I took a minute staring at the black lines following the grain of bark-like bulging veins before I saw what Lyall had brought me to see. It was a symbol branded into the inner flesh of the trunk. The tree wept sap all around it, building up a sticky residue like dribbling candle wax, but the mark itself would not be touched nor would it be healed.
My mind flashed back to when I'd taken Caerwyn's Recallation potion, how the paint on walls had seemed to be bleeding. But here was an actual, living entity, and it was bleeding with the single substance it could bleed with. I touched the cool trunk. This time, the spell was stronger. And different.
I stepped back and examined other trees. I found four more, set up in a star formation, and the zone in between them was noticeably colder than the rest of the forest. My breath fogged before my lips and it felt like invisible hands tickled my flesh.
I returned to Lyall. A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye, but there was nothing there. In fact, there seemed to be nothing at all which could move. All the wildlife had abandoned this place. My magic stirred restlessly, putting me ill at ease. Lyall waited for me against the smooth bark of a young tree which was already dead.
Something made the hairs on my neck stand up, and I whirled on my heel. I saw what had caught my attention.
A crow hanged from a noose in the center of the branded trees, swaying as the wind brushed by it.
I gasped but by the time I raised my hand to point it out to Lyall, the crow, noose and all, was gone. As if it had never been there.
“What is it?” Lyall asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“What about the spell?”
I licked my lips, unnerved to the point of wanting to be gone.
“An Unwritten.”
“You mean the spells so dark that they were forbidden to ever be recorded?”
“The same.”
Lyall frowned. He tapped out the ashes in the bottom of his pipe even though it seemed to already be clean. “What does this one do?”
“I don't even know what the last one did, not really.”
“But they are different?”
“Oh, yes. Very. For one thing, the symbols in the last spell were far more plentiful.”
“But its simplicity doesn't diminish this one's strength.”
“No,” I said. “This one may be worse yet.”
We stared for a while back at the pentangle of trees. I remembered the last Unwritten, how it had bound soul after soul together in a nightmare of a beast, a shadow-dragon. I'd never taken the time to draw parallels between it and me, that the beast was both human and dragon, and that I was as well. That my form was bluish and silver, that his was black. I'd never stopped to think that its strength had been growing while mine had been, and that Railey's interference had damaged it—and damaged me. Until I had bumbled into the house, it hadn't had the chance to grow. If it hadn't been for me, would it still be sitting there, not dying, not growing?
“Move out,” Lyall ordered. A couple steps later, he whistled a marching song. My arms and legs were tired, my ribs sore from the compression of my wrappings. But I kept pace well enough with the lithe man as we moved through a trail which became wider. Leaves scraped by my skin, and the sun warmed my head. Fear began to abate, replaced by my wondering once again what was to be done with the funeral.
The Unwritten wasn't to be left behind so easily, but there wasn't much I could do about it yet. I'd learned last time that there was more to them than met the eye, and I'd have to research into it before I did anything. But before I could do that, I needed to settle matters with the village.
My arms bore scratches from rose thorns, stinging at first then numbing. The merciless march continued and continued, my guide lost deep in thought. A sunburn pinked my neck, and I stopped to tug a collar out of my dress. Lyall stopped and watched as the collar became a tiny scarf like the airplane stewardesses wore.
Our march was done. Lyall stood next to the same bench I'd been sitting upon when he had met me earlier. He reached into his pack and organized various camping items across the seat. I waited beside the tree he had waited for me at. My breathing settled with the calming of my heart, and I s
wiped sweat off my brow. When Lyall found a small bag, he put the rest back into his pack in a meticulous order. Insects buzzed overhead, and I tugged out long sleeves to keep the biters from having a feast in the humid air.
Lyall unfolded a swatch of plaid. In his lap rested a hand-bound book, seemingly a journal. When he opened the cover, the binding creaked, and I realized that its pages were made of large, oval leaves which had the tips and ends cut off. Despite what I expected, it was supple and pliant like thin leather.
“What is that?”
“My gift for Rossalinda's family. I want you to deliver it for me.”
“Sure,” I said. “But, what's with the pages?”
“The pages?” Lyall held the book up for me, confused. “They're just regular old things.” Then he stared at me thoughtfully. “Sit here. I'll show you.”
So I sat next to him, putting space enough between us for the book to rest spread open. Lyall bent down, grabbed a fistful of grass, and dropped it on the book. After a second, he added a purple larkspur spike with a few flowers on it.
“I am going to make paper.”
“Just like this?”
“Just like this.” And he arranged the grass blades in one layer, put the flower at an angle, and he laid his hand down over the top, whispering words. He closed the book, counted to thirteen, and opened the book back up again. The grass blades were pressed into each other, dry and appearing to be brittle. Lyall reached into a pouch and sprinkled something over them.
“Dust from the roots of the Grandfather Tree by Lake Alarum,” he explained. Then he brandished the new page, picking it up and bending it this way and that. “And done. Here, you can have this pouch. Every fey needs a supply of Grandfather Tree Dust.”
“Thank you,” I said and tied it about my belt. “So, is the book special because you made it?”
Lyall's jaw dropped. “By the Will-o-the-Wisps, feyling, what would make you think that? No, it's because I'm going to do this.”
He put his hand on the first page, closed his eyes, and a flash happened under his palm. When he lifted it up, a three-dimensional illusion arose of a woman in a rocking chair with her husband by her side, cooing over a baby. I stared, uncomprehending at first, then I realized that the people in the illusion wore clothes more similar to Lyall's attire than to what the village currently wore.
“That was Rossalinda's birth?”
“My memory of her. I don't have many others of her in particular, mind you, but they should appreciate what I can give them.”
I cocked my head to the side, thinking. “Can I…do you mind if I, if I can, that is…”
“Spit it out.”
“Enchant the whole book so someone simply has to put their hand on it and remember her, to give an illusion like that?”
“I think it is possible. Whether or not you are able do it, I am not to say. I'll by all means donate the book to the cause, if you discover you can do it. It may be possible if you enchant a carrier oil and anoint the book with it. Let me show you how to do what I did. The rest is for you to accomplish.”
All I could do was nod. Lyall took my hand, put it palm-flat on a new page, and Lyall began to teach me a new way of casting an illusion while I dreaded mistakenly ruining his book.
Chapter Thirty
Deceptively simple seemed to be the watchword of the Wildwoods. The spell Lyall taught me was in no way as easy as he made it seem, though that wasn't a surprise,. I managed to do as he had done, and projected a three-dimensional illusion of my memory of Rossalinda serving food and bantering with her mate onto a clean page. The real question was if I could enchant the whole book to do that in a flash…and if Rossalinda's family would find it a suitable gift for the funeral.
With a firm check on the exhaustion creeping into my healing body, I stood upright. Debating mentally if this would or would not work would get me no where. I just needed to follow through with it and see what happened.
I rubbed my eyes, scrubbing away the image of the Unwritten that Lyall had shown me branded into the trees. That was a subject to research into later, not now. According to Lyall, the spell had been there for some time and it hadn't changed, so it was doubtful that there would be an immediate evolution. I needed to take care of one item at a time.
“You have as good of a chance of the enchantment as anyone,” Lyall said. He put on his pack. “I bless you and your smelly old fire drake.”
I smiled. “I bless you and your smelly old feet.”
Lyall bowed and picked up his walking stick. “Well played. Find me when you know what to do with those trees.”
I would have replied, but he was already gone. He'd stepped behind a shrub and just evaporated into thin air. Around me the clearing buzzed with crickets and bees which were growing increasingly interested in me. I clutched the knobby shaft of my own walking stick and took a deep breath.
“To Aunt Linnia's.”
I turned around, took two steps onto the main trail, and nearly stumbled over my own feet when I saw her house right before me.
It hadn't been that long since I'd been to her home, but it seemed to have altered since then. The flowers were in full bloom, different flowers than before, of course. Today it was a desert southwest theme. Yuccas, all kinds of cacti, succulents whose names I didn't know, even a tree laden with pineapples, a gravel surface in between everything. Out of the sod-roofed cottage, a stream of smoke trickled up into the canopy of evergreens far overhead.
There was a rustling in the leaves just off to my side and I looked—and screamed. For a split-second I didn't know if I should run or charge with my walking stick as a club.
It had emerged from a side opening of the caves and glided silently up next to me. It had eight legs which were glossy except for the hairlike barbs on those spear like legs. Its body boasted a thin brown fur with a golden spot on its back. The eyes were multifaceted and lidless. It had mandibles the size of my forearms.
It hadn't been nearly so freaky in the caves.
The mouth wriggled open and shut, revealing a proboscis tube thing. I didn't know the anatomy of a spider that well besides what it had taken for me to pass middle-school science class, and I'd frankly forgotten most of that in the years since. I was now glad to have no idea what I was staring at.
“Reginald, go home,” came Aunt Linnia's voice as she approached from the main opening of the caves. The spider paused, like a dog who was told to leave a visitor alone, and retreated through shrubs to stop in front of Aunt Linnia. “There you are,” Aunt Linnia said, scratching the spider on its hairy body.
Aunt Linnia had been in to harvest spider silk and now had bundles of it cast over her back, the raw silk shining and golden in the sunlight. I watched in awe as 'Reginald' bent low and went through the open door to the spider's cave. Her stray spider successfully contained, Aunt Linnia locked the door and greeted me.
“We are doing a siesta today. What will you have? There's Long Island iced tea, blue curacao, tequila…a bit of everything.”
“The blue stuff,” I said, embarrassed to not be able to pronounce it. “Aunt Linnia…what was the spider doing out?”
“Oh, Reginald. He gets restless, so I let him go for a walk. He's harmless and very friendly. The poor thing doesn't understand why people run away screaming from him. Terrible scene when he tries to comfort them.” Aunt Linnia shook her head at the memory. “I'm glad you didn't do that.”
By the time we were sitting down on the porch with drinks in hand, it was dusk. Aunt Linnia played a flute which called Will-o-the-Wisps out of the Wildwoods, and those lights darted this way and that to the tune of the music which had continued even after Aunt Linnia put the instrument down on the table. There were the hoots of owls and chatters from squirrels or chipmunks in the trees beyond our lit area.
The normalcy of reclining in a chair with a drink and chatty company overcame my earlier unease. Soon we were talking about anything and everything. Time was endless and the sunset remained in dusky
hues between the branches by the time we came to the reason for my visit.
My voice was sore from talking and my body felt leaden. After the booze had relaxed my muscles, remaining awake took great effort. I shifted so I had an easier time looking at Aunt Linnia while I explained the encounter with Lyall and the book. Of the Unwritten, I said almost nothing, leaving it as a topic for later. Aunt Linnia thought about the oil and enchantment with a fresh martini held aloft, mindlessly examining it against the Will-o-the-Wisps.
“It is possible…you could put the same enchantment on the oil that you would usually put on the page, and then spritz the pages of the book with the oil, and the pages will absorb it. It won't be the book which is enchanted, but for all purposes, it should work.”
“All I ask is that people put the hand on it, think of a memory, and bam, there's an illusion.”
Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) Page 19
