The best thief in all the Star Lands? Pah.
I am the most complete fool in all the Star Lands, Quicksilver thought. Her limbs turned to stone. Her heart became a block of ice. She couldn’t move, and she didn’t want to. It was nice, feeling so heavy and cold. She pictured herself sinking to the bottom of a black, icy lake. She would lie there, frozen and alone, for all eternity, staring up through the frigid water at the cruel world above. She would be safe there. It would be quiet and still, beneath the water, where no one could ever hurt her. . . .
Master! Fox cried. Stop! Something’s wrong!
Of course it was. Everything was wrong. She was wrong.
They passed through a cold veil—not cold like winter, but cold like nothingness. On the other side of the veil, a harsh wind was blowing. Fox released them, and Quicksilver fell onto gray, rocky ground.
“Well,” said Fox, “now you’ve done it.”
When Quicksilver looked up, she saw a sky, a forest, and distant mountains—and all of them were made of shadows.
.36.
THE SHADOW FIELDS
“What is this place?” Quicksilver whispered. The thick gray haze surrounding them swallowed her voice, leaving her wondering if she had said the words at all, or if she was at all.
She sent an experimental thought to Fox, and he immediately obeyed, shifting with a weak pulse of yellow light into his mouse form.
How could you do that? He climbed up to her collar, his tiny nose twitching furiously. You gave the skeletons to the Wolf King, and for what? In exchange for that traitor’s life? And it didn’t even work!
So she was still alive, and so was he. She looked around, scanning the gray world for Anastazia—but she was nowhere to be found.
I’m sorry, Fox. She needed to look for Anastazia, but she was so tired. She rubbed her eyes. They felt full of grit, like she’d been asleep for a long time. I wasn’t thinking.
That’s right, you weren’t thinking. And you did . . . something while I was trying to get us out of there. I don’t know what it was, but I felt how sad you were, and how angry, and scared, and all of a sudden I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t focus, and now . . . Fox climbed up through her hair to perch on top of her head. Where have you brought us, master? If you’ve killed us, I swear to the stars, I will—
Quicksilver plucked him from her head and brought him right in front of her nose. “What? You’ll do what?”
Fox narrowed his beady mouse eyes and said nothing.
“That’s right. You won’t do anything, because you’re only the monster, and I’m the witch, and you do as I say!”
“Only the monster?”
“Yes, only!” The louder Quicksilver shouted, the harder it felt to breathe, as though invisible fingers had wrapped around her throat, choking her. Her eyes filled with tears—from exhaustion, from the effort of talking, from the heaviness crushing her chest.
Sly Boots. How could he have done this to them?
“We should never have let that boy tag along with us in the first place,” grumbled Fox. “Just because you thought he was nice to look at—”
“Oh. Oh. Is that what I thought?” Quicksilver barely resisted the impulse to shake him. “I let him tag along because I felt sorry for him!”
Fox scoffed. “You wanted to show off.” He cleared his throat and assumed a high-pitched voice. “‘Oh, I’m Quicksilver! I’m a big bad thief! Watch me steal things, pathetic little boy! You’re so adorable it makes me stupid and careless! You’re so dreamy it makes me give away really important magical skeletons for no good reason at all!’”
“Even if he were as handsome as a prince—even if I cared about handsomeness and princes—I’d still hate him right now, I’d hate him more than anything—”
Quicksilver stopped, gasping for air. She dropped to her knees, and Fox took his dog form.
Quicksilver? he thought, in his normal voice. What is it?
It’s so hard to breathe. Don’t you feel it? Quicksilver placed her hand on her chest. Her heartbeat was a stampede. It’s like trying to get out from under something heavy.
“The Shadow Fields,” Anastazia said faintly. “They . . . are not for the living. Oh, child. Why? Why have you . . . brought us here?”
Fox dashed through the mist to Anastazia, who lay nearby, half-hidden in a shifting pool of blackness. Quicksilver followed, slowly, part of her hoping that if she turned now, and ran away, what she saw before her would disappear. . . .
Anastazia’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Bright red ribbons of blood on her arms, neck, and chest marked where the white wolf had attacked her.
“I’m sorry, Anastazia,” Quicksilver whispered, holding her hand. “We’re sorry for fighting, we didn’t forget about you, we were just—”
Anastazia shook her head. “The Shadow Fields . . . they do that. They sit heavy . . . upon the souls . . . of the living.”
The blackness in which Anastazia lay gathered and pulled apart and gathered again around her body. Dark, shivering tendrils caressed her face and snaked around her wrists.
Quicksilver slapped them away. “Get away from her! What are these things?”
“The Shadow Fields . . .” Anastazia’s eyes fluttered shut.
Fox hurried around Anastazia, pawing at the tendrils, trying to yank them away.
“Anastazia?” Quicksilver shook her. “Don’t fall asleep, all right? Let’s get up and go on. We’ll find the nearest town and ask someone to help us.”
When Anastazia opened her eyes again, they were dim and cloudy. “The Shadow Fields,” she said, her voice a thin thread of sound, “are where . . . the shadows of witches and monsters go . . . after they . . .”
The smoky tendrils returned, greater in number this time, and no matter how much Quicksilver slapped and kicked at them, they kept growing, and swarming, until it was difficult to see Anastazia at all.
“Anastazia!” Quicksilver clawed at the cloud of blackness enveloping her older self, watching as her dull red hair faded to white, and the blood on her skin caked and turned gray. “Stop it! Leave her alone!”
“It’s all right, child,” whispered Anastazia, touching Quicksilver’s arm. “You will be fine. Just think of . . .”
Quicksilver stared in horror. Anastazia’s arm was dull as a gray sky, and just as vaporous. When she touched it, her fingers slipped right through.
“Anastazia? What’s happening?”
But there was no longer anyone there to answer her—only slowly shifting darkness. Quicksilver clawed through it, searching for something warm and solid to grab on to. Perhaps they were in some sort of bog, and Anastazia had slipped beneath soggy ground. Quicksilver would find her, and drag her out. They would laugh about this later, telling stories to everyone they met about that silly moment when Quicksilver thought Anastazia had died and left her all alone to navigate a strange, sunless world.
“Oh, yes! I had nearly forgotten about that. Wasn’t it the funniest thing?” Anastazia would say. “You were so frightened, my child.” And then she would kiss Quicksilver on the cheek, and Quicksilver would pretend she hated being kissed, but in fact she would not at all, and then they would move on to the next town without a care in the world, for of course by that time, they would have destroyed the Wolf King, and the Star Lands would be safe and beautiful, and they would roam the kingdoms forever as the greatest pair of witches to ever live. . . .
For a long time, Quicksilver simply sat there and stared at where Anastazia had once been. Her shabby cloak and gown lay in the dirt, the old leather journal atop them.
Fox nudged her arm with his snout. “Quicksilver . . .”
“I don’t understand. Where did she go?”
“I think it’s best if we—”
Quicksilver whirled to face him. “Where did she go, Fox?”
Fox gazed up at her with sad brown eyes. “She’s gone, Quicksilver. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me or
not, I’m afraid it’s the truth.”
Turning on her heel, Quicksilver stormed away from him. She ignored the bizarre country around her—the clusters of thorny black flowers that bobbed in the unfriendly wind. The shadows that flitted from one dark tree to the next, watching her progress. The black mountains on the gray horizon.
Fox, Anastazia’s cloak and journal between his teeth, trotted to catch up. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find her, Fox. Those—those shadow things, they obviously took her somewhere, and I’m going to find them, and when I do, I’ll tear them apart so fast they won’t even get the chance to beg me for mercy.”
“A rather violent sentiment,” Fox said dryly. “Will you use your fangs or your claws, when you do all this tearing?”
“Fox, this isn’t funny!”
“No, it isn’t.” Fox cut in front of her and dropped the journal and cloak at her feet. “Put on this cloak, and put the journal in your pocket. You’re shivering.”
“I am not,” protested Quicksilver, though now that Fox had said it, she realized her skin was covered in goose bumps. The wind here had teeth. Tiny shapes that reminded Quicksilver of snowflakes—though they were black and gray instead of white—gathered around her feet in drifts. Her shoes were soaked through.
“Please, master.” Fox nudged the cloak toward her. “You won’t do anyone any good if you freeze to death.”
“I’m not cold,” Quicksilver said, more quietly now. She picked up the cloak.
“I know,” said Fox soothingly.
Quicksilver settled the cloak about her shoulders, fastened the clasp, and slipped the journal inside one of the cloak’s many pockets. The fabric was heavy, lined with sheared wool, and though it had been ripped and mended many times over, it still warmed her. It smelled like Anastazia—like the chocolate-and-mint candies Olli had bought for her, and like her clean, cracked skin.
“I’m not cold,” she whispered, sitting down, wrapping her arms about her legs, becoming a tiny ball of girl on the ground.
Fox scooted beneath the cloak to curl against her chest and tuck his face beneath her neck. As Quicksilver cried into his fur, he said nothing more aloud, and instead sent her the same thought, over and over, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
.37.
WORTHLESS, USELESS
Quicksilver did not sleep. She existed in a fuzzy state between sleep and waking.
It was gray there, as gray as the world around them, and quiet, and warm, and smelled of wool and Anastazia and Fox. She kept very still in this cocoon. Even flexing her feet or shifting her body sent pain flooding from her heart to her fingers and toes, and reminded her of where she was, and what had happened.
But when she lay still and quiet, all of that faded. Everything faded. She stared blankly at the grayness around her. Shapes shifted and gathered to watch her, peeking out from behind the dark trees before flitting away. Shapes moved through the sky like birds, and crawled along the gritty, rocky ground like rats, and still Quicksilver lay there, unmoving.
Who cared if a bunch of shadowy shapes were looking at her? If they wanted to eat her, they might as well do it. She was worthless, useless. She had failed Anastazia, and Fox, and Sly Boots, and all the witches. She had no parents, and she was alone.
You didn’t fail Sly Boots, Quicksilver. He made his own choice. You cannot blame yourself for his betrayal. And your parents—
“Don’t,” she whispered.
She wasn’t so sure Fox was right about Sly Boots not being her fault. He hadn’t been himself recently—the look in his eyes and the way he talked, so sharp and strange. Where had his fear gone, his nervousness and clumsiness? Slowly all of that had disappeared, and he had become an angry, coldly smiling boy who had led them right into the Wolf King’s trap.
It was like cruelty had slowly sunk inside him, changing him. Did that have something to do with the mind magic? Had some of it snapped off and hit him, like it had Anastazia? Made him vulnerable to the Wolf King just as it had turned Anastazia’s mind mushy and confused?
Had Quicksilver ruined everything in that one frantic moment?
Of course she had. It was her destiny, to ruin things.
Maybe, she thought, gazing at the flat, gray sky, if I fill up with stones, I really will never be able to get up. How nice that would be.
Fox lifted his head, growling.
Maybe, Quicksilver thought, if I fill up with stones, there will be no more room for anything else, and I won’t be able to remember Anastazia anymore.
A sob escaped her. She was not used to crying, and the more she tried to stop, the more she felt like her chest would squeeze itself into a hard, unbreakable knot. People died all the time; this she knew. But how did the people they left behind ever go on? How did anyone bear this feeling?
If you don’t stop thinking like this, I’ll bite you, just see if I don’t, Fox thought angrily. We don’t have time to grieve, Quicksilver.
A sharp pain pricked Quicksilver’s side.
“Ow!” She rubbed her hip and glared at Fox. “What’d you do that for? Just leave me be, Fox.”
“I didn’t do anything, what do you—ouch!”
Fox darted from the cloak, licking his backside. Something shadowy hung from his stomach—something shadowy in the shape of a squirrel.
Quicksilver smacked it away—but her hand went right through it, sending a jolt of coldness up her arm.
The squirrel jumped to the ground and hurried off into the trees.
“What was that?” Fox sniffed the air. “It bit me, but I don’t smell anything. How does something not have a smell?”
Something slipped into Quicksilver’s sleeve, skittered up her arm, and came to rest at her neck. She shrieked, clawing at her clothes. A tiny weasel plopped to the ground before hurrying away. Like the squirrel, the weasel was made entirely of shadow.
“I don’t understand—” said Quicksilver, but then another pinch on her leg, on her back, on her thumb, alerted her to more shadow creatures. They scurried out from beneath shadow rocks and dropped down from shadow trees—voles and rats and hares, birds and beetles, lynxes and foxes. A shadow deer bounded out from the nearby shadow forest; a shadow hawk wheeled down from the sky.
They swarmed Quicksilver and Fox, nuzzling, biting, clawing, licking. They screeched and chittered and howled and yowled, but each sound was muffled, as if coming from a very far distance. Every time Quicksilver touched one of the creatures, plucking and shoving it away, her fingers met nothing but cold vapor. It was like trying to move pieces of the wind.
And yet they responded to her touch, hurrying off when she struck them, only to scuttle back an instant later, like they couldn’t help themselves. An owl landed on Quicksilver’s shoulder, shoving a shadow wren out of its way. A shadow bear lumbered out of the forest and scooped Fox into its arms, letting out a low roar of despair.
“Fox, what’s happening?” Quicksilver cried, slapping away the shadow creatures swarming upon her. “What are they?”
Fox squeezed out of the bear’s embrace and hurried back to her. A flock of shadow birds landed on him and pecked through his fur as if searching for bugs.
Quicksilver tried to stand and run, but there were simply too many of them now. She could hardly breathe; she could barely open her eyes. The coldness of the creatures weighed her down, flattened her. She reached for Fox but could not find him.
“Get away from them, you beasts!” roared a voice. “They’re not for you!”
Instantly the shadow creatures disappeared. Quicksilver sat up, gasping. Fox slammed into her chest, and she threw her arms around him. He panted against her cheek, and she had never smelled anything sweeter than his familiar, musty dog breath.
A dark hand pulled Quicksilver to her feet. A numb feeling shot through her arm, and she looked up to see a figure made of shadows—not an animal, but a woman.
Her face was featureless, and yet it somehow carried the gentle impression of a smil
e. Beside her sat a whiskered, familiar-looking shadow dog.
Fox gasped, and Quicksilver staggered back. It could not be.
“Don’t be afraid, child,” said the woman. “It’s only me. Or, I should say, it’s only you.”
Quicksilver recognized that voice now, and recognized the shape of this woman—the wild hair, the hunched back, the long shadowy cloak. The whiskered dog at her feet.
It was, impossibly, Anastazia—and the older Fox.
.38.
THE BRAVEST ME
“Who are you?” Quicksilver demanded. “What sort of trick is this?”
“No tricks.” Anastazia held out her hands as if to prove it and then turned them over to examine them. “My, I look so strange now, don’t I? But I suppose it’s not really me anymore.” Then she stroked the old Fox’s ears with one shadowy hand. He leaned into her with a little sigh.
“I’ve missed you terribly, master,” he said.
Anastazia leaned down and kissed him between his ears. “And I you, old friend.”
Quicksilver’s Fox backed away. Quicksilver?
For what felt like the hundredth time in a short span of days, Quicksilver felt herself near tears. Even though she knew it was childish, she stamped her foot in frustration. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Anastazia approached with her arms outstretched. “I know. I can see how it would be very confusing, from your perspective—”
Quicksilver flinched, and Anastazia lowered her arms.
“Please don’t be afraid,” she said. “Let me try to explain.”
“I’m not afraid,” insisted Quicksilver.
“You’re Anastazia’s shadow,” said Fox, facing his older self with a keen look on his face. “And this is your Fox’s shadow.”
Foxheart Page 20
