The darkness drowned me.
A faerie clasped my chin. He screeched with glee as thorns burst from the earth and strangled the life from the old tailor.Rot from life, he shrieked.Make them scream down in the vale. Make them choke, little bird.
Feel the pain. Accept it. Let it pass. But I was drowning in it. I swam for the surface, thrashing. The claws held me fast. There was no life here, not a sliver of warmth—but I remembered…
I remembered where to find it.
I slid my hand into the pocket of my waterlogged coat. Warmth bloomed in my palm. I tightened my fist around the still-warm pebble.
I did not falter before the darkness. I stepped through it, and I was free.
A summer tide surged in my chest and trickled warmly through my veins: A magic most curious. I let it spill from me like a golden thread. I guided it into the depths of the pond, flooding the frozen currents with warmth.
I imagined a wild, wild revel of life; flowers and petals and fish and frogs.
The water sighed in delight.
“That is quite enough, girl!”
I could not make sense at first of the sight before me. There was Almira, gesturing wildly at me, and a thicket of leaves and flowers around her.
She grunted, splashing in the water. “Help me, girl. I cannot get out.”
Indeed, the lilies had grown thickly and densely, barring her escape. I tried my best to don a sombre expression as I snatched her walking stick to move the flowers aside. “I did it,” I whispered. “I did it.”
“Well done, girl,” said Almira, wringing murky water from her dress, “if a bit over the top. We shall work on your restraint next. Now come, girl. Let us plant a seed.” With a toothless grin, she placed an apple seed in my palm. “I have always wanted an apple tree in my garden.”
We planted the seed at the top of the cat-shaped hill.
We planted it deep, deep beneath the snow.
“Adrik!” Lorell cried when I came to his house at noon.
He was pacing the parlor and his face lit up with such relief when he heard the creak of the door, I felt cruel to correct him. His sigh of disappointment was deep and my pride, I’ll admit, a little wounded.
“Good afternoon to you, too,” I snapped.
“It is not that, girl,” he grumbled, sinking into the chair just to stand a moment later. “They are searching the forest again.”
I froze, dread rendering me stiff. “Who is lost?”
“It is Nasha again. They wish to cut her free, at last.”
We sat in silence with a meagre meal of old potatoes neither of us touched. Lorell busied himself with opening and closing the kitchen cabinets, rummaging through our dwindling stores, and muttering under his breath about pastries and bakers.When I informed him that it was time for supper, he flinched and patted his bright-red cheeks.
“You head to the bakery, girl. I cannot bear to face him tonight.”
Once I’d returned laden with chocolate tartlets from the bakery, I read to Lorell until the moon hung over the river, a silver half-coin. Torchlight ruptured the darkness between the trees. I leaped from the chair.
“They are back,” I whispered, holding my breath until I caught a glimpse of copper-red in the snow. “He is back.”
Adrik came through the door with a breath of cold and snow, and with a murmur of brine. I did not see much of the figure bundled in his arms, but I glimpsed a blackened hand and a tangle of vines sprouting from ice-blue veins. I coughed on a mouthful of bile as I led Lorell after him into the chamber. When I left to collect Nasha’s wife, I found Almira at the door, face grave and pale as death.
“The wind whispers,” she murmured. “Go home, girl. Rest. We do not need your help tonight, but we will need it tomorrow, and we will need it more and more in the days to come.”
I snapped awake that night, as if roused by an urgent call.
The wind came through the window, filling my ears with a strange whisper. It led me down, down, down the stairs, that whisper, into the teahouse. I sat for hours on the floor, golden magic spilling from me as I breathed life back into the death I’d wrought. I began with the tulips and I did not rest until the roses blushed anew, golden-leafed vines glistened in the candlelight, and thick moss draped like a cloak over the ceiling.
