It was almost like watching a dance as well, I decided, one with intricate movements and endless possibilities for missteps. His cloak billowed out behind him as he marched up and down, swirling dramatically every so often as he turned.
After a long time, he sank to the ground and sat cross-legged, staring straight ahead with his jaw set. Cornelius and I exchanged glances, and I ventured to walk over to him.
“Well?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I can find no way to make an opening large enough for us.”
I thought quickly. “What about one large enough for Cornelius? Maybe he could carry something through, something you imbue with enough magic to ...”
“And then what? What is a cat, even a talking cat, going to do with it on the other side? He cannot cast a spell. Only I can do that.”
If I gave him the little seal,I thought.Maybe Cornelius could carry it through, and maybe he could will it to . . .
No. I couldn’t do that to Cornelius, put him in that kind of danger alone. Although the idea of keeping Sylvester in the Other Kingdom had an appeal. Perhaps the barrier would keep him safe from the seal, while the rest of the magic-workers died on the other side of it. Even if just Cornelius and I went through, and Sylvester stayed ... I could use the seal, and perhaps he would be all right.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Nor I.” He sighed. He twisted his hands in a sudden, violent motion, and a fireball appeared between them. He juggled it between his palms, frowning. “And it’s harder for me here. My magic doesn’t work as well. Even for trivial things such as this.”
“So, what we need,” I said slowly, “is a vast store of heart magic for you to access. Enough that it overcomes the difficulty of using your magic here at all and is strong enough to break down the border, at least temporarily.”
“Well, no such magic store exists, convenient as it would be.”
“The House,” I said.
“What?”
“The House. The whole thing is heart magic. And it has a life of its own. Growing, changing ... spreading. It’s enormous. Room after room. All heart magic. And it’s part of you.” I looked at Sylvester. “If it’s part of you, can you still ... feel it, from here? Can you use it to pull us through?”
Sylvester looked thoughtful. He balanced the fireball on his index finger and spun it. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I suppose it is a store of magic, of sorts. Although it is a little ... unpredictable.”
“It’s the best plan we have,” I said. “And the only one. We can at least try.”
So, try we did. Or rather, Sylvester did, standing very straight with his arms at his sides and eyes closed at the edge of the mist, as Cornelius and I hovered anxiously about him.
The mist shimmered and swayed. It may have been my imagination, but there seemed a new alertness about it, as if it was craning to see what we were doing.
Sylvester pressed his hands together, and an eye-aching blackness appeared between his palms. He drew them apart slowly, forming the blackness into a long tablet, and placed it on the ground like a tiny obelisk. He stepped back, and so did we.
There was an odd resonance to it, a hum, like a tuning fork just struck. It looked like it longed to be bigger. It was unsettling to look at it for too long, honestly—you started to feel like you might fall into the density of its blackness and keep on falling.
Sylvester made an odd gesture, and the sense of pressure and resonance grew stronger. I half expected it to pop open like one of those trick snakes the sprouts bought from the traveling peddlers, but instead it swallowed us up into blackness, arcing overhead and blotting out the sky so that we stood surrounded by warm, uncomfortably fleshlike darkness that seemed to be very faintly breathing.
There was no sign yet of our own kingdom, but I imagined I could somehow still feel its presence—a bristling menace at the edge of my consciousness. Cornelius had dug his claws into the skin of my shoulder, but I only noticed that once the world stilled around us, and I could catch my breath.
“Sorry,” Cornelius said, and released my shoulder as gently as he could.
“It’s all right.” If I’d had claws, I would have stuck them out too. I could tell that this was the House, even though there was nothing remotely House-like about the long, dark throat in which we found ourselves. It still felt familiar.
I suppose it had either tucked the kitchen and throne room and bedchambers away inside itself somewhere, or re-formed them into some other shape, as was its wont. The floor moved ever so slightly under my feet, so slightly that I would have thought I had imagined it, if it weren’t for Cornelius hissing, just a little, under his breath.
“It’s ... different,” I said, which didn’t begin to cover it.
“It can take many forms,” said Sylvester, “as you have seen.”
“Well, I wish it had taken on a less unsettling one,” I muttered.
