I feel something soft settle on me, like snowfall, and look up. I’m glowing. The bluecaps have drifted down from wherever they were and settled on my arms and shoulders. I sniff and smile at them. They’ve never particularly liked it when I’ve been upset.
After some time, I feel something brush up against me: the cat, I think, drawn with instinctive cat sensibility, to the person most in need of her. I grope about and then pat her, and her tentacles wind gently up my arm. She even drops her illusion for a moment: I can feel her and see her at the same time. I scoop her up in my arms and she accepts my embrace with quiet feline dignity.
After a moment, I wipe my eyes and look up. Everyone is staring at me, which feels awful. I set the cat down and rise to my feet and brush off my skirt.
“Tanadelle,” Mother says, heavily. “I don’t really know where to begin.”
I sigh and look out the window.
“In any event, we had better get back to breaking the curse,” Father says, more gently. “We can discuss this later. Elsewhere.”
“Oh, it’s broken,” the sorcerer says.
Chapter 48
As a group, we all whip around and stare at her.
“I beg your pardon?” Mother says.
The sorcerer gestures toward the sounder, which sits up and wags its tail at me. “Tiddles,” she says. “Sniff.”
But Tiddles—Tiddles—simply grins a toothy grin and remains seated.
“There you go. Broken.” She smiles a little smugly and crosses her arms.
“When did you break it?” Honey asks, sounding astonished. After all, up until about five minutes ago, the woman was snorting dust off an old book.
“Didn’t,” she says, uncrossing her arms and wiggling her fingers at me. “I presume she met the conditions of her curse with her little outburst just now, and that was that.”
“By throwing a strop?” my father says. “She broke her curse by having a temper tantrum?”
The sorcerer shrugs. “Stranger things have happened.”
The room is so silent I can hear the birds in my little garden, three stories below. Everyone is staring at the sorcerer, a few of us with our jaws agape.
She looks around and shrugs. “What can I say? Deep magic is a funny thing.”
“She can leave?” Mother says. She looks at me. “You can leave?”
Not daring to believe it myself, I open the casement window and push my hand into the sunlight, expecting to feel the invisible barrier.
I don’t. My arm simply moves outside, into the cold late-morning air, up to the elbow.
“Well,” I say, a little wanly. “My arm can.”
The room explodes, everyone talking over everyone else. My father is hugging me, saying something very genial and telling me it’ll be all right, we’ll figure it all out. The moment he lets go of me, Sasha and Amaritha tackle me, talking over each other, each taking one of my hands—the bluecaps took flight once things got noisy and are whirling in the air above my head—while the girls twirl around me. I extract myself long enough to seek out Honey, standing in a corner, looking a bit grim, and Bash, standing in a different corner, also looking a bit green about the gills. The sounder hops about us, making its funny, trilling kind of bark. I dare a glance at my mother and find her in deep conference with the sorcerer.
I am more than happy to be swept up in Sasha’s joy; she’s telling me about how we must go to thesomeplace, and see thesomethingthat Amaritha’s been working on; it’s her project and a larger-than-life representation ofsomething, although none of it quite makes sense to me, since Amaritha is joyfully telling mewe must go visit Sasha’s room at home, which she’s decorated entirely in black silk, even the ceilings, and it’s such astatement.
My mother clears her throat, and we calm ourselves.
“Well then, Tanadelle,” she says. “I suppose we’d better get along and go have our discussion.”
Ah yes, our discussion about how I apparently broke the nearly unbreakable curse on myself simply by admitting that I don’t want to go back to my old life.
“Actually, I’d prefer if we stayed here,” I say. My heart is hammering in my chest as I speak, and my hands are shaking, but I stuff them into my pockets, and no one can see my heart.
“This is hardly the place—” Mother begins.
