“Nevertheless, we need to hurry. It’s at least half an hour’s walk to Wytham.”
“Not on the velocipede,” Elodie observed, and Gabriel muttered something about preferring to literally die in a magical cataclysm than mortify himself riding that infernal machine again. Elodie would have laughed were they not on the verge of said cataclysm. But when she tugged on him, he went with her, and awkwardly mounted the velocipede behind her with the attitude of a knight preparing to sacrifice himself in battle.
Leaving the city, they followed a narrow path winding through fields toward Wytham Village, the velocipede juddering boisterously over packed dirt and pebbles. Cool breezes swept across the fields, scented with a tang of river water and the fresh sweetness of grass. The sunlight shone warm and soft on Elodie’s face. It would have been a lovely afternoon but for the sense of approaching doom that seemed to grip everything in the environment. Elodie heard no birdsong, no farm noises, no laughter of students returning from drunken gambols through the meadows. As they rode through Wytham, she noticed windows being shuttered as if the habitants sensed stormy weather. Even the sky looked like it was trying to escape, clouds swept thin by fast winds at its heights.
Past the village, farmland stretched to the northern edge of the woods some half a mile away. It was an area much studied in various university courses, so here and there among the ryegrass could be seen ranging poles, rain gauges, roped-off quadrats, and a yellow raincoat someone had left behind. Elodie and Gabriel clambered off the velocipede, and as Gabrieladjusted his trousers’ seat he gave Elodie a frown that warned against her making some provoking comment. Elodie considered teasing him nevertheless, but she could see that he was actually quite painfully frazzled by the loss of his dignity, and she did not want to cause him any more hurt. So she turned away again, all professional briskness and wifely care, to assess the horizon instead.
“Smoke,” she reported. “Somewhere near Witney, I’d say. Might be unrelated.”
“Definitely related, considering it’s blue,” Gabriel pointed out as he removed the ER kit from his back. “And the breeze is starting to pick up.” He tossed her a dowsing rod from the kit, then took out a thaumometer for himself. Shouldering the kit once more, he pushed windswept hair back from his forehead as he regarded the view. “Thankfully no one’s here.”
They began to cross the field. Both had spent many hours guiding students to investigate its natural and thaumaturgic features; as a consequence, they strode forth with calm certainty. Beneath Elodie’s confidence, however, anxiety fluttered. Would this mad plan succeed? Or was that death burning its way closer? Her usual steady optimism began to falter in the cold, fraught wind. To distract herself, she said lightly, “Someone might well be here. It’s possible to go unseen if you lie down in the long grass.”
Gabriel glanced at her askance.
“I’ve been stepped on more than once,” she explained.
“Why were you lying in the grass in the first place?” he asked in bewilderment.
She shrugged. “Just feeling the world.”
“Feeling the world,” Gabriel echoed, clearly unable to grasp the concept. “How do you quantify the results of that?”
“I don’t. I just…feelthem.”
His face wrestled with confusion. “That sounds like the geographical equivalent of reading free verse.”
Elodie laughed. A friendly quiet came to rest between them, quivering ever so slightly with the possibility of more questions and sweeter discussions (should they not be killed in the next hour by an overwhelming force of magic, that is). Then Gabriel halted abruptly.
“Fey line,” he said, tapping his foot against the ground.
They looked at the unremarkable stretch of grass beneath them. Elodie pointed her dowsing rod at it, and the silver branches quivered.
“Well done,” she remarked. “I suppose you counted your steps.”
“Of course not,” Gabriel said, affronted. “I triangulated the lay of the wood’s shadow at this point in the afternoon with the position of the church tower and the willow that marks the 5-SEQ-107 deposit back there close to the stream. How do you find it?”
“Oh, the same way, for sure,” Elodie said, nodding emphatically.
Gabriel checked the thaumometer. “Two thousand and fifty conjures. Fifty-one…fifty-two…”
“It’s coming,” Elodie said. Goosebumps arose along her arms.
Setting down his kit, Gabriel withdrew from it the leather satchel containing Hereford’s artifacts. Elodie removed her opera coat, dropping it to the ground, and began rolling up her sleeves.
“Here.” Gabriel passed her a trowel. She handed him back the dowsing rod in turn, then knelt to thrust the trowel as deeply as she could into the ground.
“I feel like Merlin,” she said. “Except, you know, with a little spade instead of a sword. And dirt instead of a stone. On second thought, ignore me.”
“Right,” Gabriel said absentmindedly. He was holding the thaumometer over the leather satchel. One eyebrow arched.
“Good reading?” Elodie asked.
“Off the scale.”
Thus encouraged, she began digging with heightened vigor, creating a trench that dissected the surface of the fey line. Once she had it deep enough, she used her hands to brush away dirt and roots. Gabriel crouched to prop the charter, writ, and prayer book upright in the space she had created, establishing an unassuming and unlikely barricade.
“Paper to stop a torrent of supercharged earth magic,” he said with disbelief.
