“Look on the bright side,” Elodie said. “You two gentlemen can share a room. You’re bound to become great chums.”
“I’ve never had a chum,” both men said, the professor wistfully, Algernon with a grumble that suggested friendship was too costly to allow.
“Well, there you go, then,” Elodie said. “It’s perfect.” And she fled before the conversation entered dangerous territory—that is, the swampland of why her husband didn’t want to spend the night with her.
A long, perfumed bath eased her bodily aches, dinner cured at least some of her empty feeling, and an evening of poring over topographical maps of Dôlylleuad’s surrounds while sitting on the bedroom floor kept her from knocking on Gabriel’sdoor and demanding what he’d meant when he’d said she had “vivacity.” Finally, she forced herself to retire so she would be well rested for the next day.
But the bed that had previously been too small now seemed lamentably overlarge, and the room’s quiet served only to make her thoughts as loud and disturbing as thunder. Assisted by two glasses of wine, Elodie managed to enjoy “sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,” but woke feeling suffocated, as if not only the sleeve but the entire cardigan of care were currently wrapped around her like a straightjacket.
She writhed irritably, then sat up all at once, blowing crumpled strands of hair away from her face.
“Confound it,” she said to the wan light that softened the room. What exactly she confounded was unclear, even to her; essentially, a general atmosphere of confoundment surrounded her heart, the professional situation, and pretty much every choice she’d made for nine years that had ultimately led her to this room, at this time, with her husband sleeping on the other side of the wall.
Flinging back the quilt, she rose and paced to the window, automatically drawn to check on the village’s status. Dawn was unfurling across its slate rooftops and red-gold trees, giving them a cold, delicate luminescence that capped the lingering shade of night. The eastern horizon blushed like a woman who had just woken to the kisses of an adoring spouse, and the steam fog drifting over the river might have suggested bridal veils or tumbled white sheets had Elodie not found herself become half-sick of metaphors.
Most importantly, she saw no disasters farther than her own reflection in the shadowy windowpane. With her whitecotton nightgown and loose, unbrushed hair, she looked spectral, lost, and unmourned.
Or, more prosaically, a little hungover from last night’s wine.
Deciding that “prosaic” should be the order of the day, since “romantic” had got her nowhere thus far, she left the peaceful view of the slumbering village and visited the bathroom. Upon returning, she was about to dress when a soft flicker caught her eye through the window. She paused, watching cautiously.
Windblown leaves floated past outside, and the world gave a sigh that seemed to echo what she felt in her own heart. Reaching automatically for her weather station, Elodie felt a slight flicker of concern. The general readings were normal, but the thaumometer’s needle trembled in a strange way. It was surely nothing…and yet, before she knew what she was doing, she found herself walking downstairs, barefoot and still in her nightgown, hair streaming down. By the time she reached the front door, that flicker of concern had become a hard knocking in her heart. It was probably too much imagination. Or perhaps it was some tiny clue—an unexpected breeze, a trembling needle—that alerted her expertise. Whatever the case, something definitely felt odd…shivery…rhyfedd.
Opening the door, she looked out at the dusky morning. The unlit houses of the village seemed to be part of the land, little stone hillocks with their right angles blurred by shadows. The faint breeze was a poem Keats might have written. And the inn’s narrow, bright garden smelled like a geographer’s heaven, loam-rich and with a slight fetid odor of rot. Elodie found herself being lured outside. Through the white picket gate, onto the street, she wandered toward the dawn.
Mist swirled around her, strangely warm, like steam froma bath.Mist and yet a breeze,she thought worriedly. The street’s cobblestones felt warm too beneath her feet. The oddness of it slowed her, making her strides heavy. She stopped in a wide patch of oak shadow, and pressing her hands to her heart, she closed her eyes as she drank in the quietness.
There’s nothing wrong,she told herself. The possibility of a line cascade had her nerves humming, that was all. She ought to go back to the inn andask Gabriel to kiss her againlook at her maps again, instead of wandering around out here getting cold.
Only it wasn’t cold, was it?
“Cold enough to want a good, strong coffee,” Elodie grumbled aloud. She turned back.
And could not move.
Startled, she looked down and realized that what she stood in was not oak shadow. It was quirksand.
Like quicksand but much,muchworse.
Its thick, implacable magic clung to her legs, making every step an agony. She had probably less than five minutes to get free or else be clamped to the ground forever.
“Oh, drat,” she muttered.
—
Gabriel had barelyslept through the night, acutely conscious of his wife lying on the other side of the bedroom wall while every muscle within him ached to hold her close again. At dawn he gave up and rose, aggravated, restless, and desirous of a good, brisk walk to enliven himself.
Which was the truth, as far as it went. There did exist an even truer truth, however: that he desired a far more interesting manner of exercise, if only it weren’t made impossible bythe bedroom wall (and more to the point, his wife’s dislike of him).
But this was swiftly and decisively repressed by his brain, which avowed that, henceforth, good sense would rule. Two days in Elodie’s company had rendered him an emotional mess, and Gabriel could not abide mess. It made his blood itchy. Consequently, the time had come to reinstitute self-discipline, self-respect (and a rather desperate self-entertainment, which had probably contributed to his lack of sleep).
He dressed in a shirt, field trousers, and a brown jumper made of the softest wool, and was in the process of buckling his boots when a sudden argent brilliance swamped the window, scattering dapples of light through the dim room. Gabriel reacted instantly, not even pausing to make the bed before he rushed out. Finding Elodie’s room empty, he ran downstairs and out into the dawn.
Almost at once he saw strands of moon-bright magic forming overhead, binding the village within their compass. Onlyalmostat once, however, becausethe very firstand most imperativething he noticed was Elodie standing farther along the road, hair and nightgown billowing around her as she gazed up at the sky. She was a wild goddess. She was an angel come to rescue him from a slow, cold fate of loneliness.
She was a bloody nuisance who was going to get herself killed!Furious, Gabriel took off at a run toward her.
Thaumaturgic energy wove above him like the Lady of Shalott’s web. Little breezes dusked and shivered.I’m being enchanted,Gabriel thought, reaching for the iron hook around his ear only to remember that, in his haste, he’d left it on the bedside table. He began seeing images of Elodie lying in a boatthat drifted downriver while he lay beside her, kissing her closed eyes and soft mouth and the gentle swell of her—
