“It’s all right,” Isolfr said gently. “It’ll be just like before. I need her to hear, though, from you. If I could have found another way to do this, I would have.”
Gillean hesitated. “And you’re sure I’m protected?”
Isolfr paused, just for a fraction of a second, before answering yes. It left an uneasy feeling in my belly, that pause.
“I was valet to Lord Foxfollow,” Gillean told me. “He is a dangerous man, my dear. He has tired of all the power in our world, and so he wants to go after yours.”
“Is that where Kolur’s going?” I said. “To meet with this lord?”
Gillean didn’t answer. He had a glazed look, like the past had entangled him completely.
“I served as valet to his father, too,” Gillean said. “That had been pleasant enough. But when he died, and this Lord Foxfollow assumed his title—” He closed his eyes. Isolfr moved forward by a step, one hand held out as if to catch Gillean before he fell.
Gillean took a deep, shuddery breath and regained his composure. Isolfr stepped back. “Oh, it was awful, my dear. He’s an awful man. You wouldn’t know it speaking to him, not at first, because he’s quite charming. He always knows what you want to hear. It was through pure manipulation that he gained all the lands in the Mists. But I don’t imagine your world will go so easily. You humans have always put up a fight.”
I was at once horrified and bewildered. Of course the Mists had tried to gain access to our world before—Ananna had stopped one such man, and her lover Naji had done the same long before he met her. But Ananna was a pirate queen and Naji was one of the Jadorr’a, and it made no sense to me that Kolur would be swept up in that sort of destiny. He was a fisherman. And not even a very good one.
“But the worst is when Lord Foxfollow’s charm fails him.” Gillean let out a ragged breath, and Isolfr moved close to him and put his hand on his arm. Gillean nodded. “When he can’t manipulate you into doing what he wants, he sends out his horrors. They were formed out of the magic of our world, a dark spell banned many decades ago. Lord Foxfollow pays no attention to such rules. His horrors take no solid form. They’re constantly shifting, constantly changing. I can’t imagine the havoc they would do here if they were released. I remember when he sent them after his cousin Rothe, when he learned that Rothe had been meeting with one of Foxfollow’s rivals. It wa—”
Another ragged breath. Tears shimmered on his cheeks. Isolfr wrapped his arm around his shoulder with a gentleness I didn’t expect.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t need to go on if you don’t wish to.”
Gillean sighed, a shuddery, start-and-stop noise. “Thank you.” He looked up at me. “Forgive me, Miss Hanna. I wanted to be more helpful to you.”
He seemed so small and frightened, standing there in the golden light. He wasn’t what I imagined the Mists to be at all.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I think you have—helped me.” That wasn’t true; I still didn’t understand why Isolfr had brought me here, or what Lord Foxfollow had to do with Kolur. But Gillean looked so shaky and awful that I couldn’t express my confusion out loud. I didn’t want him to feel his pain had been for no reason.
“Give me a moment,” Isolfr said. “I want to see him back to his home safely.” He and Gillean walked several paces away from me. I fiddled with my coat and watched as Isolfr conducted a simple protection ritual. Wizard’s magic; human magic.
Cold swirled through the liminal space, the first wind since we had arrived. I could tell that it came from somewhere else.
Isolfr kissed Gillean on the forehead, and then Gillean evaporated on the wind.
Everything stilled.
Isolfr turned back to me. I straightened up, ready to demand answers. Before I could, though, Isolfr said, “Blink.”
“What?” I willed my eyes to stay open.
“Blink.”
“No. Tell me what’s going on.” I opened my eyes a fraction wider. “You warn me about all this danger, and then when I ask where you’re going, you just say north?” My eyes were dry and itchy. “You tell me to watch for the Mists, and then you bring me here and show me this poor terrified man who tells me that a man is after us, a man who’s a terror in a land of terrors.”
“It’s not a land of terrors,” he said quietly.
“Shut up!” My eyes burned. “He’s going to send horrors after us? Why? What did Kolur do? Just tell me wha—”
We were standing aboard the Penelope. The wind rattled the sails. Kolur snored over by the helm. Everything was dark.
Gods damn him. I’d blinked.
“Thank you.” Isolfr materialized at my side, his skin glowing silver like magic. It made him lovely to look at, but I shoved him away, furious.
“Tell me what’s going on!” I shouted.
“I am!” Isolfr twisted his pretty features into a scowl. “Lord Foxfollow knows that Kolur is coming. I can’t warn Kolur myself, because it will only make matters worse. Kolur doesn’t like me. So I’m warning you.”
“What? Kolur doesn’t like you?”
Isolfr pointed out at the sea. “Those terrors that Gillean spoke of are tangible. Real. Lord Foxfollow will find a way to send them through the gaps between the two worlds. I can’t tell you what they’ll look like, because they’ll adjust to whatever veins of magic they came riding in on. They may be beautiful; they may be ugly. I hope they won’t look like any creature you’ve ever seen before, but I’m not sure I can guarantee that either.”
He took a deep breath. I gaped at him and shivered in the cold.
“I’m trying to keep you safe,” Isolfr said. “It’s my duty. I don’t have any say in the matter. I can’t explain further, not right now. But I won’t let Lord Foxfollow hurt you. Any of you.”
He stopped, his chest heaving. I’d never seen him so sure of himself, and it disoriented me, to see him standing on the deck instead of swimming in the sea, his expression burning and intense.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t understand.”
Isolfr’s shoulders slumped. He looked sad. “You will, eventually. I promise.” He put one hand on the ship’s railing. “But you can understand this: feel the magic.” He looked me right in the eye, and for a moment I was mesmerized. “Feel the wind. Don’t worry about the direction. You’re a strong enough witch that when the horrors come, you’ll feel a shift, like the whole world’s gone dark.”
My heart fluttered at the thought that I was a strong enough witch, and so I nodded even though it wasn’t much to go on. But before I could ask him to clarify, he vaulted over the side of the boat with a splash.
When I rushed up to the railing, the water was empty.
CHAPTER SIX
I didn’t see Isolfr for four days.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. I went up on deck at night, standing in the sweet-scented wind while Kolur snored on unawares. But the water stayed dark and empty, and I felt a dull ache inside my chest. Maybe I’d been wrong to trust him—he’d toyed with me, then left me alone without any real answers.
One night, I felt a presence on the wind, a sense of intelligence swirling around me. I tensed and grabbed for my bracelet, thinking back on the warning Isolfr’d given me about sensing the Mists’ horrors. But this presence wasn’t a horror. It was simply there, surrounding me and the boat and the ocean itself, like it belonged in this place.
During the days, I spent most of my time hanging around Frida, studying her hand movements as she called down the winds. Papa could do a bit of wind-magic, and he’d taught me what he knew, but it wasn’t much. Frida was a real witch. Sometimes when she was tracking our path on the carved map, I stood a few paces away, behind the mast where she couldn’t see me, shadowing her movements with my own hands. I wasn’t trying to cast her spells. I just wanted to understand how the movements felt. She moved more like a dancer than a witch. Maybe that was the trick.
The day after Isolfr took me to the in-between place, I spent
the morning watching Frida throw new protection spells over the boat.
“They wore out more quickly than I expected,” she told me, rubbing the bannisters with sparkling ground conch shell. “The north is tricky.”
My stomach tightened up. “Maybe it’s not the north,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes clear. “Did something happen?”
I hesitated. Kolur still wouldn’t listen if I tried to mention Isolfr, but Frida was a witch. She had trained in Jandanvar.
“This boy, Isolfr,” I said. “He’s been swimming alongside the boat. I let him aboard last night and he didn’t hurt me at all, and I’m sorry if—”
But Frida had moved down the railing. The wind whipped her braid around, and she lifted her head and squinted at me. “You have to do much more spell repair once you pass Skalir. Everything’s thinner here.”
I sighed and dropped my head back. The sky was empty, a flat grayish blue that reminded me of the Empire mirror Bryn’s mother kept in her bedroom. So Frida wouldn’t listen when I said Isolfr’s name either.
In those four days, we never saw any land, only hunks of icebergs that Frida or I melted or moved with wind magic. They made me feel lonely, those icebergs, drifting out here in this emptiness on their own.
One day at lunch, we all sat huddled around a heat charm, eating the dried salted fish from our stores. We still had enough for a couple of days of normal eating, plus more if we skimped. Neither Frida nor Kolur had said anything about it, though.
“How long till your errand’s done?” I said, breaking the silence.
Kolur glared at me.
“I didn’t ask when we’d be back home.” The sails creaked overhead. “Just about your errand.”
Frida sipped from her water skin, silent.
“I told you, girl, it’ll only be a couple of weeks, and then I’ll have you safely back on Kjora.”
“It’s been a couple of weeks.” I pointed at the remains of our meal. “Are you planning to stop anywhere soon to restock? We’re going to have to start taking rations, you know.”
Kolur gave me a cool look and then turned to Frida. “How close are we to Juldan? I imagine we could stock up on supplies there.”
“Oh, not far. A day’s sail. Half a day if I can get the winds to behave. It’s a bit out of our way, but nothing too terrible.”
Juldan. I thought about Papa’s carved map. Isolfr had told me the truth, then; we were far north, although not as far as Jandanvar.
But Juldan wasn’t our destination. We were just resupplying.
I frowned across the meal at Kolur, wondering how much longer until I’d get to go home. I’d be much more excited about this adventure if we were actually doing something.
Kolur seemed to make sure he looked everywhere but at me.
I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. Frida had done up the navigation calculations and announced that we’d be sailing into the Juldan port late tomorrow morning. My mind spun with plots to keep Frida and Kolur on land, to convince them to forget their madness and sail back to Kjora. Passage on a ship back to Kjora would be too expensive for a fisherman, and passenger ships were rare besides, so I figured I wouldn’t be getting home otherwise. But maybe I could try to convince a crew into letting me join them. Ananna had done that. She’d spun a good yarn about betrayal and set sail that very evening. Maybe I could manage the same when we were in Juldan. I could call down the winds, after all, and it wasn’t like Kolur needed me, what with Frida on board. Besides, if I joined with a crew, maybe I’d have a chance for a proper adventure, like the kind in stories.
But then my thoughts wandered away from the north. What if sailing home to Kjora meant that this Lord Foxfollow would follow us there? What if going home meant bringing horrors back to my parents and Henrik and Bryn?
I wondered if that meant I believed Isolfr. If I trusted him.
Things didn’t make sense.
I stayed awake through the night, staring up at the lantern’s light sliding back and forth across the ceiling. The air crackled like a storm was coming. My body buzzed. I rolled over onto my side and slid my hand under the knot of fabric I used for a pillow.
Sparks shot up my arm, radiating out from my bracelet.
I shrieked and yanked off the bracelet and stumbled away from the cot, dragging blankets and my makeshift pillow with me. The bracelet glowed.
I knelt down beside the cot, my breath caught in my throat. The air around the bracelet throbbed, humming with enchantment. Slowly, I reached out with one finger and poked it, this time prepared for the spark. It trilled up my arm, igniting all the residual magic inside me. I closed my eyes and grabbed the bracelet in my fist and concentrated—
Gray mist. Sharp, curving claws. Black ocean water. Light. Light. Light dripping like blood. Mist.
A scream.
I dropped the bracelet and jumped back. The air was still crackling around me. I leaned up against the wall and took deep breaths and tried to decide what to do. Kolur, I had to warn Kolur. Or Frida. No, she would have sensed the magic before I did, she should already know—
I heard a noise.
It came from up on deck: a slurred thump, a muffled shout. I cried out and then slapped one hand over my mouth. I was so scared that I started to cry.
Footsteps bounded past the cabin door, coming from the direction of the storeroom. They disappeared and reappeared overhead.
I was too frightened to move. I closed my eyes and strained to listen. The wind whistled around the Penelope, and it sounded as if it were weeping, too.
I thought I heard voices, droning with a low murmuring panic.
Sweat prickled over my skin.
Someone shouted.
I couldn’t stay here. Isolfr had warned me about this. He had chosen me for whatever stupid reason, and now that the time had come, I just stood in my room and cried.
Kolur and Frida were hurt or dead, and I was left alone on the Penelope to die, too.
I snatched up the bracelet. It was cold, but it didn’t make me see anything, thank the ancestors. I took a deep breath and eased open the cabin door. I leaned against the frame. I listened.
Voices.
As quick as I could, I darted into the storeroom and grabbed the big straight knife we used to clean fish. It still glittered with scales from the last time I’d needed it. I held the knife close to my chest. My bracelet burned me, it was so cold.
I slid forward, cautious, terrified.
The boat rocked with the weeping wind.
I finally reached the ladder, but my fear had me paralyzed. Voices drifted down from the deck, fevered and distorted from the wind. One of them sounded like a woman’s. Frida. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe I could save her. I’d never saved anybody. But Mama had. And Papa, too. Maybe there was a first time for everything.
I clutched the ladder and heaved myself up, the knife sticking out at an awkward angle from my right hand. The cold wind blew over me. It smelled of the sea, and it smelled of blood.
I peeked my head up out of the hatch. All the lanterns had burned out and everything was cast in silver from the moonlight. Two figures were hunched over at the bow of the ship. A woman, a man: Frida and Kolur.
Frida’s long, dark braid swung back and forth in the wind.
“Kolur?” I gripped the knife more tightly.
Kolur turned toward me. Something lay at his feet. “Hanna, get down below.”
“No! What’s going on?” I scrambled the rest of the way up on deck. Frida looked at me as well, her expression unreadable. “What is that?” I pointed with the knife at the lump at their feet. It didn’t move.
The deck was smeared with brightness.
“Well?” I moved forward, faking a bravery I did not feel. “What is it? What’s going on—”
I froze. The sails snapped in the wind.
The thing at their feet was a body.
A body on the deck. A body that bled light.
Isolfr. In the moonlight, his body
shone like alabaster. I shook and trembled and a bile rose up in my stomach. The boat seemed to tilt on the waves.
But then Kolur moved toward me and no longer blocked the body’s face, and I saw its features twisted up in an expression of fear.
It was Gillean.
Gillean of the Foxfollow.
The knife clattered to the deck. I stumbled backward. My foot caught on the edge of the hatch. Kolur grabbed me and pulled me forward. The sudden movement made my head spin.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Kolur said in a low voice. “I woke up, and I found—” He nodded his head in Gillean’s direction. “You probably shouldn’t see it.”
I yanked away from him. The world seemed to have less air in it, like we were all underwater. Gillean stared blankly at me in the moonlight. Light smeared on his face, and there were ragged tears in his jacket, all soaked with that same bright blood. Bite marks. Slash marks.
From sharp, curving claws.
Frida put her hand on my shoulder. “Kolur’s right,” she said. “You should go down below. It’s safer. We don’t know how this man got here, but he’s from—” She hesitated. “He’s from the Mists. You can tell from the way he bled.”
“I do.” The confession erupted out of me. “I know how he got here.” A tear streaked down my face. Another. Another.
“You what?” Kolur stomped up at me and looked me hard in the face. “What? How could you possibly know—”
“I told you!” I shouted. “Isolfr, the boy in the water! He introduced me to—to—” I couldn’t say Gillean’s name. My voice trembled. “It’s Lord Foxfollow. He has horrors.”
I could tell they didn’t remember anything about Isolfr. And why would they? They were enchanted.
I grabbed my knife again and tore away from them, my tears hot and frustrated, and ran to the railing. The water was dark and still. No Isolfr.
“Where are you?” I whispered. I could feel Kolur and Frida staring at me. The horrors traveled on veins of magic, that was what Isolfr had said, and I had felt it earlier, the magic harnessed by my cheap protection charm from Beshel-by-the-Sea.
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