“Suspicion?” Jonas echoed.
“Any sudden bursts of magic on you might attract unwanted attention, from those who wish you harm,” Zéphyrin answered, his vagueness so clearly intentional that Twist gave him a sour look and saved himself the trouble of asking and being refused explanation. “And,” the dragon went on, “kitsunes are masters at deception. Suffice it to say, you’re better off traveling with a kitsune.”
Twist looked to Vane to find him still quiet and nervous. “And why is Vane frightened of meeting this particular kitsune?” he asked. Vane looked up at him.
“Inari is the oldest and wisest of his race,” Hala said, looking at Vane with a gentle smile before turning back to Twist. “Some say that she is a god. Others say she only took the name of a god. Either way, her opinion is the most respected among all kitsunes. I think a one-tailed little cub has every reason in the world to be anxious about facing her.”
Vane gave a quiet sigh, his hands clasped tightly on his lap as he looked dismally out at the city as it passed them. Twist was startled to see what looked like true trepidation on the fox’s face. For once, he seemed to be honestly, deeply concerned. A flash of sympathy appeared in Twist's heart, unexpectedly.
“If she likes me,” Vane said softly, “she could help me to progress and grow my second tail. But if she thinks I’m still too young, then she won’t give me a second glance. I’m excited to meet her,” he added eagerly to Twist. “I just don’t know if I’m ready…” he added, his voice dripping with anxiety. Myra looked to Twist with a slightly worried expression, apparently feeling some honest sympathy for the fox herself.
“You don’t have to come, you know,” Jonas pointed out, not seeing Vane as he looked to him through his black goggles. Vane looked back at him sheepishly.
“But if he doesn’t come with us, he’ll be stranded here at the South Pole,” Twist said to Jonas. “Besides, this sounds like a good opportunity for him.” Vane turned to Twist with hesitant, new hope.
“He should have stayed in Australia,” Jonas grumbled. Vane gave a quiet sigh. Myra shot Jonas a disappointed glance.
“He came along to try to keep us from getting ourselves killed, remember?” Twist asked Jonas. Vane nodded eagerly at him.
“Why are you defending Vane?” Jonas scoffed. “I mean, it’s Vane. How many times has he nearly touched you? How often have you wanted to punch him square in the nose? Look at your wrist, for heaven’s sake!”
Twist rubbed absently at the scar Vane’s sword had left in his pale flesh: a thin, hard line running from the far side of his right hand to the left side of his arm, up over his wrist. Try as he might, Twist struggled to find many pleasant memories of his dealings with Vane. He couldn’t, however, remember any actions of Vane’s that had been wholly malicious. Even the scar was caused more by Twist’s inability to properly block the blow than by Vane’s aim. More recently, Vane had acted very much like an ally. He’d even said he thought of them as friends. Twist looked up to find the fox watching him with depthless black eyes full of uncertainty.
“If you behave yourself,” Twist said carefully, “then I personally have no problem with you coming along the rest of the way, if you wish to. More than that, I think you should come.”
A wide, brilliant smile bloomed on Vane’s face. “Really, Twisty?” he asked excitedly. Twist sighed upon hearing the pet name. Jonas looked pointedly at Twist despite his opaque goggles.
“Please don’t take too much meaning from that,” Twist muttered stiffly. “I only mean that this sounds like a pleasant happenstance for you personally.”
“Ah, you old softy…” Vane said, his eyes glinting wickedly. He leaned closer to Twist—still well out of reach across the carriage—and shielded his voice from Jonas with a hand. “You like me, don’t you?” he asked Twist in a whisper.
“I’m not going to answer that,” Twist said flatly.
“Sure, sure…” Vane purred. He sat back with a smile on his lips and a playful light in his eyes. The white tip of the fluffy black fox tail that curled around beside him bobbed happily on the seat.
Twist shook his head, looking away. At the very least, Vane didn’t look as nervous anymore. Twist wondered glumly if calming the fox was worth whatever nonsense was sure to come later.
The troll took the carriage back to the gates of the city. Twist and his companions followed Zéphyrin and Hala out onto the seemingly endless plain of ice, wind, and sunset outside the once-again-hidden walls of the city. Twist pulled his borrowed fur coat tighter around him as the biting, ice-scented air clawed at him. He glanced back the way they’d come but could see nothing but an empty field all of the way to the horizon. Once the magical shroud was allowed to fall back into place, the city was utterly undetectable. For a fleeting instant, Twist wondered if Captain Nemo’s black flag was hidden behind a similar illusion.
“Ah, there she is,” Zéphyrin said, drawing Twist’s attention.
He followed the dragon’s gaze to find a solitary figure standing a little way off to one side. There was no ship or visible opening in the snow-strewn ice sheet near her, but Twist could have sworn that he hadn’t seen her there a moment before. As they all walked closer, Twist began to see the figure more clearly.
The flowing folds of the white silk, robe-like, Japanese-style dress she wore waved playfully in the wind, the red accents at the hem flashing like fireworks around her. The dress itself looked far too thin for the temperature—the neckline so wide that it nearly passed one of her otherwise bare shoulders—and she wore no hat, scarf, or gloves to protect her flawless porcelain skin from the cold. Her snowy-white hair was cut short to only graze the top of her neck but hung in a long, pointed wing, tipped in bright red, over her right cheek. Twist found her fine, soft, young features arrestingly beautiful as he and the others came closer. Her pure black eyes fixed him with a mysterious energy that set his heart racing faster when her dainty, brilliant red lips curved into a smile.
“What is it?” Jonas hissed to his ear, startling him. “Why is your heart racing? What’s happening?”
Twist opened his mouth to respond, but his words fell dead when he looked back to the sublime beauty of the young woman. Her eyes were still fixed on him, her mouth still curved just so, and her head tilted so that the fine red point of her glimmering hair fall at a fetching angle. Somewhere in the world outside of that staggering image, Twist heard someone sigh heavily in annoyance.
“Inari,” Zéphyrin said brightly as he stopped and offered her a bow. The others stopped beside him, while the woman in white bowed more deeply than he had, in reply. She looked to Zéphyrin when she rose again, finally taking her endless gaze away from Twist.
“Master,” she greeted in a sweet, low, and haunting voice.
Twist shivered. He looked away from her before she had a chance to fix him with another alarmingly pleasant gaze. His attention caught on Myra, who stood beside him: her arms crossed, her expression warning and turned squarely on him, her blue jewel eyes aflame. Twist stared back at her in shock, utterly bewildered as to what he had done wrong. Zéphyrin was speaking meanwhile, offering pleasantries and details to the woman in white.
“Twist…?”
He shivered again to hear the woman speak his name, once Zéphyrin had introduced him. He looked back to her out of reflex and found her smiling at him once again. Her eyes had taken on a sparkle of curiosity and delight.
“That’s not your real name,” Inari purred playfully, stepping closer. Her pale-pink toes were bare beneath the white silk of her long dress. Fright tingled on Twist’s skin under her direct attention, but he couldn’t move as she held him still with her alluring black eyes. “Of course it isn’t,” she said, as if only just thinking so. “Do you even know your name, sweetheart?”
A few disordered sounds fell from Twist’s mouth awkwardly, but none of them approached language. A hand fell to his back, and Twist’s Sight filled with blinding white fog for the merest instant. As it dissipated to
the edges of his attention, he felt his mind clear drastically in its wake. He realized that his heart was pounding and he felt a little faint.
“What are you doing to my friend?” Jonas asked. His goggles were on over his eyes as he seemed to look accusingly at Inari.
“Oh, you are very handsome,” Inari said happily, looking Jonas over with her shining black eyes. “This is going to be a lovely trip.”
“Right,” Jonas toned flatly. “So all foxes really are alike, then.” He turned to apparently look at Vane, standing a few steps behind him. “Are none of your people civil?”
Vane looked back at Jonas, wide-eyed, and wrung his hands absently.
“Oh?” Inari toned, leaning around Jonas to peer at Vane. “Oh my…”
Her face washed over with joy as she looked at him. Vane’s face paled as he stared back at her through his fright. Inari moved closer to him, sweeping quickly around Jonas. Vane backed away a step while Inari gazed at him as if he were made of gold. Twist stared in shock to find quite a few furry, white, red-tipped fox tails hanging from under the wide red belt of her dress, like a bizarre bustle.
“Why, you’re just a cub!” she cooed, reaching out quickly to ruffle Vane’s hair with a hand. His shoulders hitched up, but he didn’t pull away. “How sweet,” Inari went on brightly. “I haven’t met a one-tailed fox in ages. And you are just darling!”
“Th-thank you…” Vane muttered, his eyes on the icy ground.
“Come now,” Inari said, lifting his chin with a single, fine finger. “I’m not going to bite. Tell me your name, sweetheart.”
“Erm…” Vane muttered, looking suddenly horrified. He looked to Jonas. “What’s my name?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “I forgot!”
“Your name is Vane,” Jonas said with a frown.
“Yes! That’s it.” Vane looked overwhelmed with relief. “Thank you, Jonny. Oh, I could just kiss you.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jonas growled at him. “And don’t call me Jonny.”
Inari laughed brightly, her black eyes sparkling as she smiled at Jonas now, too. She then turned to Zéphyrin and Hala. “Well,” she said, “I don’t want to take up all of your time, Master. Thank you for bringing them to me. I’ll see that they reach the astrolabe as quickly as possible.”
“I’m sure my brothers will appreciate your haste,” Zéphyrin said cordially. “Thank you for taking them.”
“It will be my pleasure,” Inari said with another deep bow.
Zéphyrin turned to the others. “I hope you have a pleasant trip,” he said with a smile. He tipped his tall top hat to Myra, who smiled and gave him a curtsy in response. “Try not to argue too much,” he said sagely to Twist and Jonas.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Jonas said as Hala also began to offer good-byes. She paused, looking to him curiously. Jonas pulled Skye’s bottle out of his pocket. “She can’t spy on you anymore if you leave. When were you planning to release her?”
Hala and Zéphyrin shared a thoughtful glance. “I suppose there is no harm now,” Zéphyrin offered.
“What about the astrolabe?” Hala asked him. “Do you guard that secret?”
“I don’t care one way or another about it,” Zéphyrin said with a smirk. “You know that.”
Hala gave a shrug and glanced at the tiny glass bottle in Jonas’s hand. The instant her gaze fell on it, the bottle burst into a sparkling cloud of orange smoke. Jonas backed away a few hurried steps, pulling his goggles up to his brow so that he could watch as the smoke billowed larger and thicker. In a moment, it suddenly cleared to reveal Skye—now at her natural size once again—standing on clearly unsteady feet. Myra gasped in delight, while Twist was startled by the strength of his own joy to see their friend free once again.
Skye raised a hand to her head an instant before her knees began to buckle. Jonas rushed closer, catching her as she fell, and dropped to his knees on the ice under her weight.
“Oh, I forgot about the change in air pressure…” Hala muttered, frowning.
She snapped her fingers, the sound echoing oddly in the air. Skye let out a moan and then fell still, her head against Jonas’s chest as he held her safely wrapped in his arms. Myra gasped again, but the sound rang with horror this time as she knelt down beside them.
“What the hell!?” Jonas bellowed at Hala.
“I fixed the trouble, but it’ll still take her body a moment to equalize,” Hala answered easily. “She’d be in pain if she were conscious for it, so I knocked her out. She’ll be fine when she wakes up.”
Jonas grumbled rude things under his breath, rubbing absently at Skye’s back, while Myra cooed sorrowfully over Skye and reached out to gently adjust the short, ember-bright red hair that fell over her closed eyes. Vane and Inari both watched the events with mild interest and quiet confusion. Twist noticed the ungrateful expression on Hala’s face as she looked down at Jonas, who hadn't so much as acknowledged that the djinn had done as he'd asked.
“Thank you for freeing her,” Twist said, offering a short bow. Jonas shot him a glare.
Hala’s expression warmed over Twist. “Just be sure that she doesn’t get herself into trouble again too quickly,” she cautioned with a smile. Jonas began to speak, but Twist quickly cut him off.
“We will be sure to do that. Thank you again.”
Zéphyrin chuckled to himself, watching Jonas’s silent frustration continue to smolder. “Well, good day to you then,” he said brightly. “And good luck to you,” he muttered to Inari.
Inari giggled coyly. With their final good-byes, the djinn and the dragon turned and walked away, arm in arm, over the endless field of ice. Jonas tapped gently at Skye’s cheek, but she failed to stir.
“Is she all right?” Myra asked worriedly.
“I’ve seen her on a beach once,” Jonas said softly. “It will be sunny and warm, and she’ll run through the waves with Kali. She’ll be all right eventually.”
“You can see the future?” Inari asked excitedly.
Twist felt Jonas’s alarm flash hot and sharp through the buzzing sensation in his own neck. Inari scurried around to face Jonas and crouched down, poised on her little pink toes, to peer at him expectantly. Whether through familiarity or the fact that her attention was trained elsewhere, Twist suddenly felt that he could see her more clearly. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed that her pale ears were a little too long and a little too pointed to belong to a human woman. Her dainty nose also seemed to come nearly to a point, and those staggering eyes were larger than they should be. She looked slightly but noticeably inhuman, just as Vane did.
“Aren’t you supposed to take us somewhere?” Jonas asked her, keeping his gaze well clear of hers.
Inari narrowed her overlarge black eyes at him as she rose back to her feet. “You might be pretty, but you’re somewhat unpleasant, sweetheart.” Vane sniggered but tried to cover it by pretending to clear his throat.
“You haven’t seen me be truly unpleasant yet, sweetheart,” Jonas sneered darkly.
“Yes, yes…” Inari said with a knowing smile and a flat tone. “You’re very frightening. Well, I suppose we should be on our way. Come along,” she said, heading off to one side.
Twist saw nothing at all before her as she strode purposefully on toward the horizon. After a few short steps, she reached into the air and rent it back like a heavy curtain, revealing a lush, colorful, dense jungle of tropical plants, clustered tightly on the ice like an oasis of summer in a lifeless world.
After only a moment of surprise at the strange vision, Jonas got to his feet and hefted Skye’s still-unconscious form in his arms. Then he and Myra began to follow Vane into the jungle. As Twist followed the others through the portal that Inari held open for them, he was stunned to feel pleasantly humid warmth wafting over the golden sand that pooled under the shade of the tall jungle trees, while the bitter cold wind of the plain continued to blow outside.
Stepping into the mouth of the tight path that cut through
the trees and colorful flowering plants, Twist found brilliant, extravagant birds and small furry wild creatures clambering about in the warm shadows of the high canopy. He heard cries in the distance that reminded him instantly of exotic lands he’d read of in novels. He spied a glistening, emerald snake on the path just a moment before he would have trodden on it. The snake hissed at him as if scolding him for his rudeness and then hurried off into the underbrush.
Myra stared around them, wide-eyed, while her wonder and delight rippled over Twist’s Sight from her absentminded touch on his arm. Jonas stood beside him, carrying Skye in his arms, and glaring around at the jungle as if it was being shamefully silly and knew it. A little up ahead, Vane was peering into the underbrush eagerly, as if hunting for some small creature that might scurry by. Twist glanced back as Inari let the illusion fall closed behind her and followed them into the jungle. He saw nothing but ice and wind all the way to the horizon behind her.
“Why don’t you just wait right here,” Inari said, glancing at Skye in Jonas’s arms. “I’ll go attend to takeoff, and then I can show you into the village. Just stay clear of the edge,” she added, pointing to the stark border between the jungle floor and the ice beyond.
“Takeoff in what?” Twist asked, seeing no airship or other conveyance anywhere about.
“Just wait right here,” Inari said, smiling at him as she turned to hurry off along the path through the jungle.
Jonas gave a sigh and placed Skye down on the ground, leaning her up against the trunk of a nearby tree. Twist wondered silently if she would be cross to wake up and find her chocolate-brown trousers or the untucked tails of her white cotton shirt sullied by the sandy ground. Myra bent down to peer at her face, taking one of Skye’s hands and patting it gently. Twist marveled at the simple, human, display of compassion that Myra so easily gave. His Sight would always bar him from making any such motions toward anyone but Jonas or Myra. Jonas stood up and glanced out at the ice field behind them.
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