Nell thought she had never been in a room more beautiful. So this, she thought, is what they meant by the heart. A heart should look this way, lovely with color and tinted, falling light, with a thick oval table of polished red wood and embroidered chairs, with rosewood doors and tapestries like these on the walls.
She moved around the table, looking from one scene to the next: a broad-shouldered old man marching through defeated warriors toward a tent where a woman stood half concealed, her face etched with joy; people flowing from the gates of a gray city into an amber and green field, wheat bent on either side of them. She rested her hands on the backs of the chairs as she circled the table. Polished cherry, the color of the table and with needlework cushions, they stood five on one side and six on the other, with a larger chair at the head, its arms carved with images of corn and wheat and grapes and flowers.
The last chair, at the foot of the table, was out of place. It was pulled away and faced the wall. Absently, she ran a hand along it as she passed. She had come almost all the way around the room when a cold spot stopped her. There were no windows except the ones above, and she held still, clutching the back of the last chair a minute, in case the outer door had been opened. But it was closed. Still, she felt chilled.
Her heart pounded as she took a step forward. Now she felt like she’d swallowed ice, so that the cold reached down her throat into her belly. It was coming from the door nearest the foot of the table. Curious, she pushed it open. The cold worsened. It was not the brisk, sharp air of a winter’s day but the dank, awful stillness of a cellar that had been shut up too long, full of scurrying sounds and without light.
The room on the other side was dim, lit from above with the edges of the stained-glass skylights that crossed over the threshold. Once she stepped through the door, the cold was bearable. There were warm spots here. Unlike the richly appointed center room, this one was empty except for a long narrow table resting along the side wall. Several objects sat on it, clustered there in the colored shadows.
A narrow, dangerous-looking ivory knife, etched from hilt to tip with strange figures, rested on a stone that dripped water steadily into a shallow dish and a drain that Nell saw led to the wall. Beside it a dirty canvas sack, and next to that a branch in full flower, a fragrant cutting from a tree. With a pang of alarm, she realized that Mistress Meva must not have known what she was talking about, saying no one came here. The branch was freshly cut!
Abruptly, she turned and hurried from the room, the cold intensifying as she moved away from it, like a dog snapping at her heels. She darted back to the center room and then to the next chamber in the circle.
The library.
As the other room had thrummed with cold, this one was warm and sweet with leather and old paper and the richness of oil lamps. So many of them stood in the corners and against the bookcases that she wondered how the room hadn’t gone up in flames long ago.
She turned to shut the heavy door, anxious to put the thick wood between her and that crowded space next door full of the cold she had roused. But she realized she’d be in the dark if she did. No edge of skylight peeked over the doorframe above and no window broke the line of books on the walls. Nell searched for a match, a bit of flint, something to light the lamps.
There was nothing. If only she could make fire, as Max had!
But why not? Opening the lock had emboldened her. She could almost feel that sizzle of electricity Max said was in the air. Carefully, she sat down across from the largest lamp, a branched candelabra, oil and wicks ready for lighting. What had the old man said of fire? It devoured.
She’d known plenty of heat in the long walk in the mountains, too much of it in the tiled room. She remembered the feeling of being suffocated by it, heat taking the air she was meant to breathe. That was devouring, she thought. Heat swallowed the air. She was suddenly aware of it in the room, rising off her skin, warm in her breath. Could she use that? She imagined pulling it to her, a churning, gathering pressure. She’d seen a flower in her mind, and it had unfolded in her hand. Now she saw a bright, flickering spark, ready to ignite the lamp’s golden oil, red blooming in the shadow.
A warm gust blew across her face, and the central lamp blazed up, bubbles surging in the oil as it fed the new fire.
The room was alight.
A man is a thing unformed, edgeless as water,
Ever-changing as cloud,
Soft clay at the base of the creek
To be trod underfoot and remade.
Only with the armor of thought
Does the shaped join the shaper,
Sharing in the gifts of the making.
Rise, my sons, and become solid as the mountain,
Strong as the onward rushing sea
That pounds the sand
To remake the edge of the world.
Such says the mind that made all.
Such is our gift and our joyous call.
At last, the books satisfied Nell. She had pulled out a fragile old volume called The Mind of the Universe and turned its pages, silky with age. Words bounded from the page, and she felt like a person who had gone to sleep working at a problem and woken from a dream that made everything clear. But, like a dream, the meaning was as fragile as cobwebs, and she had to grasp it carefully, slowly, only half understanding.
As the newborn bird is blind,
As the fledgling falls from the nest,
So are we
Rising from the dark,
Untaught and unprotected.
But we, too, may soar into the light and above the wind
If we force open our eyes
And spread our arms to the sky.
Her heart leaped, reading it. But she couldn’t understand exactly. At some points, the passages seemed like a conversation, one person to another, an argument.
And yet beware, for we are
But creatures of thought and change,
And we dance the line
Uneasily.
There was that. She wondered if it had been written when the change came. Then another:
The wise know a great secret:
We are no bird
But a fanged, wild thing,
Crouching,
Waiting
To return.
She guessed it had already returned. A few pages later, the passages spoke of the language of creation. Nell put her finger on that word. She looked up at the lamp, blazing before her.
What else could she create? she wondered.
“Barriers are small things to one who understands,” she read. “Take care, seeker, for in this, there is danger as well as joy. In all things balance. Where there is illumination, there is also darkness.”
Barriers, she thought. Barriers are what keep us here. Something held the window back. Could this book show her a way to break through?
She stifled a desire to flip the pages, searching. The book was old and fragile.
Then she heard something. A sound, in the center hall.
Someone was coming.
Nell slammed the ancient book shut and hurried to the bookcase, where she wrestled it into place, sending up a cloud of old dust that made her long to cough.
But she swallowed against it. Someone was in the center hall. More than one person. Footsteps echoed across the floor. She had no time. Where could she hide?
There was no place to go. The table offered no shelter. The walls were all books.
And the lamp was lit.
Before she could move to snuff it out, they were there — the Master Watcher and the Guide.
She had meant to surprise the old man. She had hoped — she had expected — to see the look on his face, the look he had given to Max, given also to her. Her eyes darted again to the light, hoping he would understand what that meant, hoping to see the expression on his face change the way the books said things changed — from dark to light.
The change came, but it was only from surprise to horror. The Guide looked from the burning lam
p to Nell, and she wondered how she had ever yearned to go to him.
He was terrifying.
He stood a step ahead of the Master Watcher, a tall old man with rigid posture and a great mass of white hair swept back from his forehead. Something radiated from him now, but it was not love or joy or welcome.
It was power, and anger. His fierce, bright eyes were alive in a way she had not seen before, or expected, in an old man, to see. They burned with rage.
Nell looked from the Guide to the Master Watcher. Lan looked smaller, suddenly, standing almost stooped in the doorway. His face was drawn, half furious and half afraid. Seeing that fear in the Master Watcher’s face made Nell quake more than his anger would have. But she could not look at the Master Watcher long; the old man drew her so. His shoulders trembled with fury as he stared at her and then the lamp, his mouth twisted and his brows coming down over those frightening too-bright eyes.
“The exile sent you,” he growled. “As I suspected. Sent you.”
Nell took a step back, wiping her sweating hands on the sides of her dress. The music was all gone from his voice. It grated harsh in her ears.
“Who do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“No shame, even now? Sending children! Are we taken for fools, then?”
Nell didn’t know what he wanted from her. Couldn’t he see what she’d done? Where was his laughter? Where was his praise?
“No one sent me,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
The old man took a step into the room, and Nell fell back against the books. He approached the lamp, staring into its fire. “Rebel,” he growled. “What did the exile teach you?”
Nell looked at him, not understanding. The man seethed, and Nell flinched, trying to be ready for the blow.
Behind him, the Master Watcher whispered, “It’s only rumor, master. No one is certain the exile exists.”
At the sound of his voice, hesitant, placating, Nell looked his way. Could he help her? Would he?
She couldn’t tell. His face was strange — she saw fear there, but something else. Hope.
The Guide half turned, and the Master Watcher drew back as if slapped.
“Was it you alone? Or the others, too?” the old man demanded.
She shook her head, trying to think past the knocking of her own pulse in her ears.
“No one even knows I’m here! I came alone!”
At that, the hope disappeared from the Master Watcher’s face like a light extinguished. Now Nell could see nothing but fear. The Master Watcher inched closer to the old man.
“The girl said it was this one only. Not the others. No need to take the innocent.”
The Guide flinched. “If they are innocent.”
The younger man nodded. “The boy —”
“Never mind the boy! I know the boy!”
Nell looked from one to the other.
“I only came because I wanted to study, too,” she said. “That’s all. I wasn’t hurting anything. I can do things! I’ll show you!”
A fresh wave of anger rippled across the old man’s face, and even the Master Watcher glared at her.
“Ingrate!” the old man spat. “Did we welcome you here so you could spy on us? So you could sully this place with your shameful, grasping boldness? Here? Here in the very heart of the sanctuary?”
He stopped himself, narrowing his eyes. He turned to the Master Watcher, but when he spoke, it was as if no one else existed. “There’s no need for anger,” he said. And this time, his voice was cool. “Calm in all things. The punishment is clear.”
Nell grew suddenly cold. Punishment?
The Master Watcher said nothing. Lips tight, he watched the old man.
“Child,” the old man said, and his voice was gentle now, as seductive as when she’d first seen him in the round room. She felt the stir of that voice inside her and leaned forward. But the old man continued, “As Guide and Protector of this sanctuary, I pronounce the punishment upon you.”
He looked at her out of his creased face, then raised a finger and pointed at her. She cringed.
“Exile,” he said. “For now and always. Exile.”
They gave her no time to tell the others. When the old man made his pronouncement, the Master Watcher came for her, taking her by the arm and whisking her from the room. He dragged her out to stand beneath the rainbow of light in the center hall, while the old man stepped past them, disappearing briefly through the door where the strange cold had chilled and tugged at Nell. Now an icy blast barreled from it. Nell’s legs nearly buckled and she trembled. The old man emerged, a grim smile on his face, and shut the door.
The Master Watcher dragged her from the domed building and the garden as a finger of cold — terrible, bone-freezing cold — followed her into the summer air.
She was too cold, too cold and confused and terrified even to struggle, too stunned to gather her thoughts enough to try to resist. And then they were beyond the walls of the first band, and he was dragging her up the hill, toward the invisible line. The old man walked behind them, the old man and the knife of ice that even now was whittling through Nell’s skin, carving its way into her bones so that her teeth chattered and her hands shook uncontrollably.
For the first time, Nell could understand why Susan cringed at the mention of the mist, why the deep furrows had formed beneath her eyes, why she could no longer read or sleep. Through the terror and the cold, she could feel something more — a weight against her back, as if the power she’d felt drawing her to the old man and now pushing her away was gaining size and voice as it thrust her toward the mist. And she could hear now what Susan heard, hear the buzzing and the whispers. She could hear it from behind, as the old man advanced, and from ahead, in the quickly gathering vapor taking shape in the clear air of the hillside.
Abruptly, the Master Watcher stopped, and the old man was upon her. She looked swiftly at Lan and saw that despite his firm grip on her, he was pale, shaken. He looked once at the Guide, a pleading in his face. But the old man was implacable, and the Master Watcher fell back. The Guide seized her then and drew her toward him, piercing Nell with those terrible eyes.
You, she heard, sought to break the patterns of the world. Desire drove you; now let it take you.
Nell squirmed. The man’s lips did not move. His voice penetrated her head, shouted inside her mind. It was then she began to fight. She tried to pull away from him, tried to summon enough focus to fling him off her, but he gripped her like a machine, his face set, his long legs propelling them both forward as his words drilled into her thoughts. Push him away! she screamed furiously to herself. Run! But she couldn’t.
Desire, animal desire, she heard. The man’s voice whirled in her head, clouding it, confusing her. The passion of the beast, who respects nothing and knows nothing! Become, then, what you wished! Satisfy your passions; let desire, let the animal, take you back!
No!
She shouted it in her mind, struggling, writhing against his voice. Visions of beasts, of the city, of the terrible, savage things she had seen rushed into her mind, and she fought against them, fought with thoughts of home, of her parents, of their voices, of — All are animal. The beast lives in us. Listen to it. Let it claim you, the voice commanded.
He was moving swiftly, on up toward the mist, faster than seemed possible, and a wind rushed past them, blowing in her ears. It made the terrible cold harder to bear. Her thoughts and vision blurred, and it seemed, as she struggled, that there were others now, behind the old man, a silent platoon, pushing her out with their very eyes.
Welcome it. You desired it, and now it reaches for you. It is you. Return. Return, rebel, to the beast.
They had reached the mist, thick now, as substantial as a white wall, loud with the echo of the old man’s voice, and the voices of others — terrible voices, jeering, calling, magnetic.
The hillside rose abruptly beneath her, and the Guide threw her to the ground. Gasping, she looked up in time to see th
e mist gather like smoke.
“Wait!” she shouted.
There was no one. She staggered to her feet and tried to follow. Susan! she thought. Max!
But she couldn’t be heard. Voices howled through the mist, taunting her.
Try! Try! she pleaded with herself, blindly groping, trying to get her bearings. Her hands were stiff now with the cold, her feet like clubs. She stumbled.
Susan had opened the mist. She could open it, too. She had to open it!
Nell pressed her numb hands to her eyes, then her ears. The roaring would not stop. It howled from all sides, jabbing at her, hurting. She swayed and staggered backward.
Animal! it screamed. Exile!
The sound seemed to crawl inside her. It echoed behind her eyes, a dizzying, hateful wail that she couldn’t push away. It choked her, and she realized she was sobbing, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. She fell to her knees, holding the earth for reassurance that something was real. Something was solid. But her fingers were frozen and useless, unfeeling. The world spun.
The mist swirled white around her. Now patches of darkness marred it, blotches in nothingness, holes and passages into more nothingness. It yawned before her, and she rolled, choking, gasping, beneath the terrible landscape of emptiness, a pit sucking at her from every direction.
Exile! it howled. Ingrate! Beast! Beast!
The black moved overhead, a blank wave, a hole, an abyss.
And then there was nothing.
There is a time, in the hour before dawn, when the heaviest darkness drains away, leaving merely gray. It is the effect, if not the coming, of the light. Kate, never before having spent many full nights awake, hadn’t know this, but her time in the woods had taught her the night’s various shades: its twilight blue, midnight black, and that final uncertain lack of tint as night makes way for day.
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