We travel well into the night, stopping at a copse of trees that Alexus assures me is close to Hampstead Loch. The moon is bright, but it’s still difficult to see out here, and yet he knows this land so well that he can determine where we are even in the dark.
Each of us locates our own place to sleep, choosing to make beds of tall, flattened grasses like back at the stream. They’ll provide extra warmth. I use the leather satchel for a pillow, and though Alexus offers me the gambeson to curl up inside, I decline and use the cloak instead.
No matter how badly I want to rest, I know sleep won’t find me. My family used to lie in the grass just like this in the summertime, trying to catch sight of a falling star. Mother, Father, and Nephele are heavy on my mind tonight.
Besides, the vale still reeks of smoke and death, every breath triggering the rise of a memory I wish I didn’t possess. Alexus doesn’t build a fire, regardless of the cold, and honestly, I’m glad.
I’m even more glad when he dozes long enough that I feel able to get up and head out for a walk. The barrier isn’t far, and that’s where I go. I’ve stared into the night long enough that my vision has adjusted enough to get there.
I place my hand on one of the rough branches, the worry about who might be maintaining this wall still gnawing at me. Near instantly, a vibration travels through the wood.
A moment later, an image tries to form in my mind, though the edges are blurred. It’s a body. The figure of a gaunt man lying on a stone table. I can’t make out much else.
The man’s head turns, eyes focused and wide, like he sees me. Aneerie chill chases over my skin at the connection, just as his mouth opens like he’s about to scream.
Gasping, I jerk my hand away from the branch and stumble back. Yet somehow, I find the bravery to stalk forward and touch it again, to try to see the end of the vision.
Nothing happens. I try over and over, but still nothing. Was it my imagination? A hallucination? Am Ithatweary?Thatdamaged from the attack? Damaged enough to be haunted by senseless, waking dreams? Because what else could that have been?
An owl hoots in the night. That’s all it takes to make me head back toward the copse of trees—and Alexus.
With every step, I can’t stop thinking about that man’s face. It wasn’t a daydream or hallucination. If anything, it felt as though someone somewhere was trying to tell mesomething.
I glance over my shoulder at the malevolent barrier.
I just don’t know what.
Come dawn,I’m covered in frost and met with disappointment.
The barrier is sealed tight near the entrance to Winter Road. In fact, it seems even denser here. Every massive branch has more thorns than the one before it.
“It’s almost like they knew someone might follow, even though they slaughtered so many,” Alexus says.
We decide to ride back east, hoping to see some penetrable place in the wall that we might’ve missed in the dark. Unfortunately, we again find no weakness, at least not until we reach the flag we left on the outskirts of Penrith.
“Looks like this is it,” Alexus says, almost grumbling. “We should get started.”
From the irritation on his face, I take it we’re close enough to the ridge he mentioned that entering here is going to be a problem.
I dismount and walk to the forest’s edge, where I sit and begin trying everything within my power—which, decidedly, isn’t much—to get inside. First, I try simple, common magick: the conjuring of a wood-eating blight. Once upon a time, when Finn and I were young, we managed to cast such a disease on Betha’s favorite flowering bush, all because she made us collect its buds for her soap, and we’d grown tired of bloody fingertips from its thorns. We were barely ten years old and didn’t give an owl’s hoot about such things as smelling fresh. This isn’t a bush, however, and Finn isn’t here to craft his part of the song.
My heart squeezes around the empty place he used to inhabit, and I force myself not to cry again.
Later, when the afternoon sun sits lower in the sky, and I’ve tried the handful of magickal designs that exist in my arsenal, I’m ready to give up.
Then I think of lightning.
I’ve always been drawn to thunderstorms, the way the air pulsates with power beforehand, making me feel like—if I just stand outside long enough—I can absorb it. Sometimes storms tear through the vale mid-summer, leaving behind a path of destruction for us to heal. But other times—the times that thrill me most—lightning bolts arc across the sky, white-hot light tinted in lavender, fracturing fevered nights as wild and restless as me.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to capture lightning. And when I try my hardest to craft a song built from ancient words, begging Loria to imbibe my spirit with a bolt of energy—the kind that can split even the heavens so I might part this godsforsaken wall—nothing happens.
Not a damned thing.
Alexus crouches beside me, watching the tiny construct of my magick fall apart. He’s been mostly silent as I tried and failed and tried again, which is a lot given that we needed to get through the wall hours ago.
Sensing his growing disappointment, however, I let the final silver strands of my spell collapse, my hands along with them.
He drops his head and lets out a quiet sigh. When he looks back up, eyes pinched, he says, “Might I give some instruction?”
