by Maya, Tara
“Blaze! Smokeytoes! Sootsy!” Kemla cried to the three Red fae, fire sprites, whom she knew best. They leaped out of the smoldering ruins of the burned half of the shack as though they had been awaiting her summons all along.
“You’re going to help me catch a horse,” Kemla told the three sprites. “Make the horse fear fire on three sides, driving it to me. Then, once I’m on it, drive it up the hill.”
The Red fire sprites chortled with wicked delight. “Can we set their tails on fire?”
“Just do as I tell you or I’ll set your tails on fire.”
“Which horse do you want, Kemla?” asked Smokeytoes.
“Which do you think?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “The best one.”
Kemla’s plan worked too well. The fae frightened a sleek dappled mare in Kemla’s direction. As soon as it took off, all the other horses started to run too. The whole herd came galloping straight at Kemla.
She gripped the hoop in her hands, trying to remember what she had seen Tamio do with it. Ignoring the pain in her bad leg, she used a dancer’s move to vault onto the back of the dappled mare as it tried to run past her. She dropped the hoop over the neck of the horse and yanked.
Big mistake. The horse bucked, nearly tossing Kemla off its back.
“You’re choking it! You’re choking it!” Smokeytoes shouted at Kemla.
“Tell the vassily you will set the horse on fire unless it submits to me!” Kemla screamed. She clenched her thighs, but stopped yanking on the wooden hoop. The horse began to run again. In conceiving this plan, Kemla had held a vague notion that she would be able to control the horse with the hoop, as Tamio did. Not at all. The horse was a brutal earthquake of rippling fur underneath her, to which she clung with one goal only, to keep her seat.
Fortunately, her horse, and the rest of the small herd, stampeded up the hill, toward the market square. All was going as well as could be expected, until suddenly, at the point where the hill crested onto a flat tabletop, the horses all turned away as one and began to run parallel to the crest of the hill.
“What are you doing?” Kemla didn’t know if she addressed the fire sprites who were supposed to be helping her, or the invisible vassilies, or the stupid beasts themselves.
“Something’s blocking us,” Smokeytoes answered, flickering like a spark on the wind beside Kemla. “We can’t get in, Kemla!”
Before Kemla could make up her mind what to do about the barrier, a new problem came nipping at their heels. Literally.
Three Raptors flew behind them, gaining fast.
“Vassily!” Kemla cried to the invisible spirit of her horse. “Enter into this beast now and lend it all your speed, or we will both die!”
The dappled mare bunched and smoothed beneath her with redoubled swiftness. Though Kemla could not see the horse glow, she knew that the vassily had possessed the horse fully. They began to pull ahead of the Raptors again.
Then the mare lurched and Kemla almost toppled.
Three more Raptors had circled the hill from the other side. Kemla and the panicked horses now found themselves trapped between two contingents of the enemy.
Dindi
Dindi ran before the War Chief could stop her. She darted through the tunnel under the root, and found she could access a fringe of land before she hit something hard. She rubbed her forehead.
The sky was still dead white. She knew this to be the rainbow shield that the White Lady had established to keep out the Raptors.
She touched the shield, which, for something that was supposed to be invisible, shone immensely bright. Not only that, but when she examined it closely, she could see that it was not solid like stone, but woven, like cloth. The threads were hundreds of strands of different tinted light, and she could pick out each of the six colors. Yatus, who rode flies, could dart between the weave, as could a few other kinds of miniature fae, such as willawisps, ice wisps, and ant-riding abatwos. Nothing larger than a mouse’s tooth could pass the barrier.
She heard the thunder of hoofs. Two dozen horses raced around the far curve of the shield. Kemla rode upon the lead beast. Raptors chased the horses. Then, from the other side of the hill, another trio of Raptors swooped in, trapping Kemla and the horses in the middle, up against the shield.
Time slowed down. Everything around her moved in slow motion. Her whole world narrowed to the threads of the shield.
Could Dindi open it? One way would be to rip a tear in the fabric. But even if she could ‘sew’ it back together again, she somehow knew it would be weaker after that. The enemy might be able to tear open the seam.
There was another possibility. On loosely knit cloth, one could wriggle aside the threads without breaking them, making a hole that did not rip the pattern but only pushed it aside. Were the shield woven of real yarn, of course it would have been impossible to wriggle aside the threads far enough to make such a large hole without breaking them. But these ‘threads’ were made of light and infinitely flexible.
Dindi knew what she had to do, but not how to do it.
Stop thinking about it! she ordered herself sternly. If what you suspect is true, then you've done magic before, without thinking. That's what you need to do now.
She could see how waves of color undulated out of her movements and streaked towards the colors in the shields. She tried repeating those steps consciously, to repeat the effect, but that only started to tangle the threads. She shut her eyes to keep from distracting herself with her own work. In the end, pure intuition guided her steps and brought her to a rest. She opened her eyes. The hole in the shield was not large, but it would be big enough for one horse at a time to cross to this side. Dindi slumped in exhaustion. She felt like a pitcher that had poured itself empty.
The unfolding of this revelation seemed to take forever, but in fact, mere seconds had passed.
The horses poured through the opening, beginning with the horse that bore Kemla. When the last horse came through, Dindi realized she had only completed half her job. Now she must close the shield again before the faery beasts arrived. A part of her ached to simply let them come and slay her rather than force her leaden limbs to dance again. If only she weren’t so tired…
Across the field, watching her, she saw the man in black, seated on the back of a giant raven.
She had seen such a man before, in Yellow Bear. Deathsworn. The Deathsworn were human vultures. They gravitated toward disease, disaster and discord, knowing death would follow. It was a bad omen, but not so strange to see one here. The Deathsworn would not interfere in the dispute, only wait to collect the corpses.
And yet, she feared this man in black.
Dindi remembered a nightmare she’d had the night her clanhold was attacked: A snowy field, flashes of green and orange, a man on a black horse sweeping her away into unfathomable darkness. Dread of that darkness galvanized her as mere monsters had not been able to do. She began to dance again.
Umbral
Umbral watched the maiden stand before the tapestry of a thousand colors and weave them flawlessly. Nothing could hide this spell. Not when she unwove the weave of the Last Aelfae herself as if it were a child’s first basket. She had to be one. He needed only one more test.
In his delight, however, he had grown careless. There had been no doubt that she had seen him, and known he was Deathsworn. He remedied that. He cloaked himself in darkness and urged Shadow toward the gap in the shield before she closed it. The next time she saw him, he would wear the Mask of the Obsidian Mirror, gain her trust, and she would deliver her secret into his hands.
Dindi
Dindi tightened the weave on the shield until the hole re-sealed. If she had dragged cords of stone across the sky, she could not have been more wearied by the work. Raptors arrived moments too late. They pounded on the shield, faces twisted with fury and confusion. Their screams dimmed in her ears, her vision blurred, and she sank to her knees in cold slush. Both shield and fae seemed to fade from her sight. Everything gray
ed. The man in black, however, she could still see, across the field. He executed an ironic salute to her, then flew away on his raven.
Quixotic disappointment mingled with her relief. She drew a draught of icy air to bolster her strength enough to regain her feet.
Kemla roundly cursed the horse who had just dropped her. The horse tossed its head in haughty disregard.
“Why, you stupid, ungrateful beast—” Kemla shook a rider’s hoop at the horse. The mare skipped away to join the rest of the horses, further down the field.
“Kemla! Are you all right?” Dindi's query died out as it left her lips. Kemla’s appearance mocked the question. Cold discoloured her skin. Her long hair had been damped by sweat-melted snow, and now clumped with ice crystals and blue ice wisp fae. Her clothes smelled of smoke. She sat on her rump in the snow, clutching at her bad leg in agony.
“Dindi! You have to warn the clans. The Raptors—”
“We know.”
“You know?” Kemla echoed. Her voice rose an octave. “You mean I went through all that for nothing? You already knew?”
“Not for nothing. They’re going to need you for the War Dance.”
Dindi tried to dispel the ice wisps with a gesture, but the fae ignored her. She realized that even the ice wisps had become fuzzy and faint to her. Dindi had only lost sight of the fae once before. Just what had she done to herself with that dance?
But she could not rest yet. She struggled to hold on.
“Are you blind, you fool?” Kemla demanded. “I can’t dance. My leg is broken.”
“It’s not broken,” Dindi said. “It’s just hexed.”
By concentrating, she could see a tangle of bands of colored light wrapped around Kemla’s brilliant red, orange and gold aura, especially around her leg, where two clashing shades of crimson and orange twisted around and gnashed at one another like dueling snakes. The distant tail of one of the snakes slithered out of Dindi’s own aura. Dindi released the serpent coils of magic.
Kemla stood up; she jumped up and down.
“I am cured!”
“You were never injured. The pain was in your head. It was a hex.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I’m the one who hexed you.”
Water on the point of a boil shimmered and warped just before the bubbles formed. Kemla’s face trembled and warped in the same way before her fury boiled over and she launched an attack.
“I will kill you! I will kill you!” screeched Kemla.
Dindi staggered at the grey edge of exhaustion. She did not even try to defend herself. Kemla punched her across the face and Dindi collapsed in the snow like a ragdoll. Kemla might have made good her vow to kill her, had a man not tackled Kemla at just that moment.
It was Tamio.
Kemla squirmed in his arms. But Tamio laughed in delight.
“Good for you, Dindi, for putting that silly, vain, self-centered toad in her place. What a delicious prank! You should have come to me! I would have lent you a hand! Is that why you hid your magic before? Were you planning this all along?”
“Let me go, you worm!” Kemla fumed.
“Not until you promise not to harm my betrothed.”
“You two deserve each other!”
“We were destined for each other,” Tamio said smugly. He released Kemla, who withdrew from them both several steps.
Dindi lifted herself painfully from the ground.
“Tamio, the truth is, I didn't do it as a prank. I didn't do it on purpose at all. I didn't know I had magic, so I didn't realize I could hex anybody. I just thought how nice it would be if she hurt her leg a little, and at the time, I was dancing…and I guess that made magic… Then, just like that…”
Dindi trailed off as a terrible, terrible thought occurred to her. Just like that… Tamio had proposed to her with the same inexplicable suddenness. He had come courting her the day after Jensi's wedding, when she had danced, dreaming of just such a miracle… Oh, mercy.
She stared at him, searching for the patterns of magic. She could see them, bright emerald strands, harnessing his aura like hoops around the neck of a horse. The jade strands led…to her own aura, where they originated. There was no doubt about that. It wasn't entirely self-evident where the hex left off and his natural aura began, because his aura had begun to grow over the spell, like ivy over an old wall. Purple was trying to fight back, eating away at the alien Green. In time, he might even have cast off the hex on his own. Or it would have become so much a part of him that it would have been inextricable. She pushed away the temptation laden in that last thought.
“What's wrong?” he asked her. “Why are you looking at me like that? Dindi, aren't you happy to find out you have real magic?”
“No!” She shuddered. He stared at her, uncomprehendingly. She had to tell him the truth, but she knew how he would react. Her last ally would be gone. “Tamio, there's more. You aren't going to like it. Kemla was not the only one I hexed without knowing it.”
“Ooh, who else?” he asked eagerly. Until her level stare made him pale. “Not me!”
“Yes.” She flushed with shame.
“That's absurd!” He laughed, but he sounded uneasy.
“Then it won't hurt if I try to undo it. Stand still. Watch me as I dance and you should be able to see streams of color as I unravel the spell.”
Dindi began to dance around him, skips and claps, focusing on the alien Green strands entangled with his aura. Just as a gardener would weed a garden, she picked them out and tossed them aside with her movements. Tamio's eyes widened.
“Dindi… Dindi… I can see what you're doing…”
“Then you know why I have to do it.”
“Dindi, I can feel my love for you draining away!” he whimpered. “It hurts! Stop it!”
“Tamio, it's a spell! It's not what you really feel!”
He began to weep, piteously, and Dindi nearly stopped. However, she could see that it was the hex making him act so, as it fought her for its life like a living thing. The hex did not want to free its victim. It didn't want to die. But she killed it as ruthlessly as she would have killed the disease that rotted the corn. When she had eradicated it, she stopped. If only she weren’t so exhausted, she wouldn’t have made such a mess of all this. She could have undone the spells some gentler way….
Tamio fell to his knees in the frozen mud, sobbing. Dindi bit her lip.
She reached out to touch his shoulder, to comfort him. He jerked away.
“Don't touch me!” he growled. He jumped to his feet. He was past tears now. His face twisted with rage. “You did that to me! You pretended to be without magic so none of us would be on guard against you and then you used your magic like a witch to seduce me. You tricked me into asking to marry you. You are a thousand times worse than Kemla! At least she just orders people around openly. You force them to do what you want with secret spells and hexes!”
“Tamio. For what it's worth, I’m sorry.”
“It's not worth anything! Before you hexed me, I didn't hate you, Dindi. I didn't really care about you one way or the other. But I hate you now!”
“You'll tell them what I did, of course,” she said, resigned.
“Are you crazy?” Tamio spat. “I'm not going to tell anybody. It would make me a laughing stock!”
“Oh, no, she won’t get away with her machinations that easily!” said Kemla. “You may be too much of a coward to turn her in, Tamio, but I shall denounce her as a hexer before everyone! I hope they feed her alive to rabid wolves!”
“Really, Kemla?” Dindi asked coldly. “And at my trial, what will you do when I explain that you were the one who gave me the jar containing the Malfae—and hexed me so I took it home with me, unable to tell anyone about it or even remember what you did?
“And what about you, Tamio?” Dindi jabbed her finger at his chest. “You never intended to marry me until I placed a love spell on you, so I can only guess what it was you wanted fro
m me when you placed a love spell on me!”
“You had to use a love spell, Tamio?” Kemla asked. “You boasted to me you could seduce her with nothing but the charm packed into one pinkie.”
“You gave her the fire, Kemla?” Tamio asked slowly. “It was one thing for you to convince me to seduce her. At least all I wanted was a tumble on the mats. You turned traitor to further your own personal vendetta.”
“Shut up, Tamio,” Kemla said.
Dindi took a step backward as if from a foul stench.
“You mean both of you were in on this together from the start? Scheming against me and hexing me?”
“There weren’t supposed to be any hexes, not at first,” Tamio protested. He looked shamefaced. “Things just got out of hand.”
“For all of us, apparently,” Dindi said dryly.
“What a mess.” He kicked the dirt. “We all went too far. But Kemla, you crossed the line.”
“Where did you get a jar with a captive Malfae anyway?” Dindi asked.
Kemla struggled to capture an answer. “I …don’t …know.”
“You don’t know?” Dindi repeated. “I didn’t know either, when Finnadro asked me….Kemla, let me look at your aura again.”
“Stay away from me!”
“Let her look, Kemla,” Tamio said. “I have a feeling this is bigger than just the three of us. No matter what our differences, we must defend our tribe. This is war.”
Umbral
Umbral had already seen the Orange hex in Kemla’s aura. Amdra had not bothered to bury the spell deeply. The girl found the alien thorns, and removed them, yet the trio still argued over what it meant. Dindi wanted to tell the War Chief about the hex, but the others talked her out of it, arguing they could not be sure.
Umbral waited impatiently.
Finally, they decided to go back but keep silent.
“Dindi,” he whispered. He pitched the name so only she would hear. He wore the Obsidian Mirror now. She would hear a familiar voice. “Let the others go ahead.”
