six
Thenextmorning,Iwoke at the break of dawn. I hadn’t been able to sleep much. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like I’d been drowning. Sucked beneath the powder-blue surface of the water into the blackness beneath. Feelings of hunger, tentacled limbs, lack of oxygen, total desperation.
Silas rose early with me, and after a quick breakfast of toast and coffee, we exited Wisteria Cottage together. The glow of the morning warmed the edges of the earth gently, as the nightmare slipped away with the darkness. It was hard to believe anything bad could happen on an island so beautiful, and yet, my time on this island had been peppered with harrowing experiences already.
“I’m going to return to Seer Goddard,” I said. “I don’t think anything will have changed, but Atlas said to be persistent, so...”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“No need. I think it will be better if I go alone.”
Silas gave a physical pause, like his body tensed up as he prepared to argue. But one look at my eyes, and he forced out a slow breath.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t like it, but I am not going to argue.”
I grinned as I rose onto my toes. “I can see how hard it was for you to say that. I appreciate it.” I plunked a quick kiss on his lips.
Silas grabbed me by the waist, pulled me closer, pressed himself to me. He gave me a lingering, deep kiss that banished the nightmares to a distant realm. Beside Silas, it felt like nothing bad could happen. Moments like this felt like something close to happiness.
“What are you up to today?” I asked as we made our way beyond the rock wall that blocked off Wisteria Cottage. “Any big plans?”
“I’m heading to Ranger HQ. I need to check on the various investigations. See if they’ve made any progress figuring out where the kraken and the lycanthrope came from, and who placed them on our island.”
We parted ways with one last kiss, and I proceeded to make my way up the winding path to Seer Goddard’s small hut. I was barefoot this morning, so the walk took me longer.
I picked my way through the stony path with my bare feet, stubbornly trying to put into practice what both Liza and Atlas had told me. If I wanted to understand The Isle, I needed to listen to the people who had experience here.
Liza had raised the point that I needed to be more perceptive physically. The moment she’d shown me the life left in the scorched earth, I’d felt a new burst of hope. While I wouldn’t walk around barefoot for the rest of my life, for now, as I tried to earn Seer Goddard’s trust, I’d do just about anything to show him I was sincere.
When I arrived at the top of the hill, I stood outside the hut at a safe distance. I had no clue if I should call out or knock or simply wait, but my question was answered before I could decide.
“Dear girl.” The same dusty voice spoke from inside the hut as yesterday. “If all I needed you to do to prove your allegiance was walk barefoot, I would’ve told you to remove your shoes myself.”
I waited, my hands behind my back, trying not to let his words sting. I didn’t comment, just bowed my head and waited.
“That will be all.”
I turned at the dismissal, resigned but not upset. I’d expected as much. I truly hadn’t believed I could prove my intentions to Seer Goddard overnight, especially when it seemed like he had no desire to believe my intentions in the first place.
I turned and picked my way back down the mountainside, but instead of returning to Wisteria Cottage in defeat, I decided to return to The Forest to take another look at the scorched earth Liza had shown me yesterday.
I crossed the river in front of the castle, staring up at the bone-white beauty glistening beneath the early morning sun. The waters flowing beneath it sparkled like it’d been dusted with glitter, and the bougainvillea on either side of the river bloomed in fiery pinks and lush purples.
As I entered The Forest, a hush descended as though I’d entered a soundproof bubble. The canopy of trees had a way of masking any sounds except those right beside me: the occasional crack of a twig, rustle of the grasses, cheep of a bird.
I’d never walked through a forest barefoot before. The thought of walking barefoot anywhere in New York City was thoroughly disgusting and was on par with licking a public toilet seat. While my jaunt through The Forest barefoot wasn’t exactly pleasant since I didn’t have the hardened calluses of Liza’s soles, it did make me pay a lot closer attention to my surroundings.
I let out a sigh of relief when I stumbled upon a flat, grassy surface that felt like marshmallows beneath my toes. The scorched earth lay just behind the grassy meadow. Slowly, I made my way up to the intersection of life and death.
I kept my feet planted on the green grass, but as I knelt and rested my hand on the scarred remains of land, my heart thumped in my chest. This was the real reason I’d come back to The Forest today. I was chasing the feel of magic. The electric zing of potential coursing through me. The path to getting in touch with the powers that swirled inside me.
It was like an elixir, a drug, this feeling. The downside to accessing my magic was that I didn’t knowhowto access it when I wasn’t threatened for my life. Thus far, my magic had been directly tied to the level of fear and adrenaline in my body.
The closer I’d been to certain death, the harder my magic rebounded out of me as protection: the lycanthrope; the kraken; the Furies. I struggled to understand how I could learn to use my magic successfully when it only surfaced in times of grave peril. It wasn’t the best time to learn new spells when I was getting pulled beneath the water by a viscous creature.
But yesterday, for one of the first times, I’d been able to access that electric zing of magic when Liza had shown that there was life in this dead earth. I’d felt that life, that undercurrent of power. I’d identified it, felt the fissures of it radiate through my body. It had felt calming and exhilarating, instead of desperate and wild. I already craved more of it.
I closed my eyes, splayed my hands on the ground. The ashen grass crumbled at my touch. My fingertips dug into the surface of the dirt. The harder I pressed down, the more I could feel the magic.
