“I’ll watch Four,” I quickly said, catching sight of the narrow-eyed look on Yael’s face.
He glanced to me and inclined his head an inch, a slight challenge lighting his eyes. I realised that we hadn’t had much alone time together, and it was probably starting to bother him. I would need to rectify that as soon as I could.
“And I’ll watch Seduction,” Yael volunteered.
“I’ll take Strength,” Aros offered.
“Pain,” Rome grunted.
Coen nudged his head in Siret’s direction. “I’ll take Trickery. Where do we go from the Garden of Everlasting?”
“Wait,” I inserted, before anyone could reply. “Why aren’t we just disappearing somewhere in the first place? Why run into the garden at all if the plan is to use a pocket in the end?”
“Because Staviti is smart enough to know that if he attacks, most people could just disappear—the same way he did on Champion’s Peak.” Emmy was the one to reply—evidently having figured out what I couldn’t. “If he’s confident enough to attack, he won’t wantyourunning away, Willa. It’ll be like walking straight into a trap. He will have set up some kind of backup plan in case you disappear through a pocket.”
“What could he possibly do?” I asked, directing the question at Cyrus and the Abcurses.
“Staviti might not have created this world, but he manipulates it as easily as he would a lump of clay,” Cyrus replied.
“Heis the one who makes the entrances and exits to Topia from Minatsol,” Coen added. “When we use pockets to travel, it’s like imagining where we want to go on a single page. We visualise where we stand, and then we trace our way along the map to where we need to be, and then we fold that map in half until the two points are touching … and then it’s easy. We just jump through the map.”
“Sounds … easy to learn,” I muttered.
Rome chuckled, the sound barely more than a husky sound from the back of his throat. “Staviti knows that you haven’t had time to memorise all the maps and terrains of Topia, so he won’t bother trying to tamper with your connection to the land. The most likely course of action is that he will reroute all pockets to a location of his choosing.”
“Why hasn’t he already done that?” Emmy asked, voicing the question that had just popped into my head.
“Because it would take an inordinate amount of energy,” Pica explained, shocking us all with her sudden reappearance. She had abandoned her gardening to eavesdrop on our conversation, apparently.
She stepped out from behind Cyrus, a happy smile stretching across her face. She held a rose to her nose, breathing in deeply before tossing it up into the air. It rose a foot above her head and then broke apart, the petals spreading out in the air around her head.
“If you imagine,” she said, looking up at the petals as the thorns of the rose stalk began to peel away, in an almost gruesome manner, “these petals are the glue that holds Topia together, the malleable spine that runs through not just this world but Minatsol too. All the beautiful gods are bending this land to jump between points on a map—but it works, because they all use the same map.” She paused, and the petals began to dance, bending and twisting, passing over each over and brushing by each other. They all moved with the same peaceful energy, and for just a moment, I forgot that it wasPicaspeaking. I was filled with an odd warmth, as though I had just witnessed something ethereal.
“There are no contradictions,” Pica continued, as the petals danced. “Nobody is trying to bend the map in a way that it won’t bend. If one of these gods tried to step through a natural pocket, but Staviti rerouted them somewhere, he is bending the mapthreetimes.”
Suddenly the dance changed. What had appeared harmonious at first now appeared painful. The petals were beingwrung. Their movement was stunted as they twisted around and around themselves. I wanted to turn away or to force Pica to stop what she was doing, but I was suddenly too afraid to speak. She tortured the petals with an exuberant look on her face, her eyes shining with happiness and …love.
“Now imagine that he isn’t just doing that for one god, or a handful of gods—because pinpointing individuals would take up too much of his concentration. He wouldn’t be able to function outside of his task. He wouldn’t be able to attackyou.” Suddenly, her eyes were on me, her attention narrowing to a single point of focus, the happiness in them flaring to glee.
I took an involuntary step backwards until I was pressing all the way into Siret’s chest. His arms came around my shoulders, wrapping over my chest and forming a solid barrier between me and Pica. I couldn’t relax, though. Not while the petals still warped in their painful movement above us.
“So what will he do instead?” I asked, hoping to break the spell that Pica was weaving over all of us.
“He will foldeverypocket three times,” she answered. “Every person who tries to travel in Topia during our party—because he won’t be able to hold it for longer than that. He hasn’t done that before because … well …” She flicked her fingers, and the thorns of the rose suddenly flew through the air, tearing through the petals and raining the pieces down onto the ground. “It will put too much pressure on the map,” she explained.
Just when I was about to assume that she had traded in her usual brand of soppy-centred crazyfor something wildly more psychotic, she dropped to her knees, gathered the petal pieces, and hurried them over to her garden bed, carefully poking each one into the soil and whispering over them until they began to sprout into new plants. One rose death to bear a dozen rose babies.
“If only gardening were that easy,” I muttered. “We would have had so many potatoes growing.”
Emmy snorted out a laugh, and the spell was broken. I visibly shook off the after-effects of Pica’s demonstration, allowing Siret’s body to absorb whatever I was shedding.
“What would you have done withso manypotatoes?” Emmy asked, as Cyrus wrapped a large arm around her shoulders. I could tell from the look on his face that he wanted to drag her back to his cave and as far away from Pica as possible. I didn’t blame him.
“I would have started a potato empire,” I answered, as though my reason should have been obvious. “We could have been rich. People would have come from far and wide to worship the Dweller Potato Queens.”
“Oh, you’re letting me share the crown.” She laughed. “That’s nice.”
“Well … you’d naturally have to harvest all the potatoes and stuff … so it’s only fair.”
