Sylvester sighed and settled back in his seat. A tiny fireball flared between his index finger and thumb, and he started running it over and under his knuckles. “I have never left my father’s kingdom,” he admitted.
“Neither have I.” I thought about it for a moment. “Nor has anyone else I know.”
It struck me as odd, now, although I had never given it a moment’s thought previously. You’d think that at least one person from the village would have left the kingdom at some point, whether for trade or family or simply for a visit.
I’d never so much as heard a story about life outside our kingdom. We knew that others existed, out there, at the ends of the roads that snaked out of our villages and away from the city, but I couldn’t remember anyone ever having been curious about them.
“Do you think we can reach it before your father finds us?”
“The sleeping spell still holds. I will know when he wakes.”
“Right. Well, all we can do is try. But there’s something I have to do first,” I said. “I have to tell my Da that they are coming.”
The idea had been forming in my head since I heard the king talk about his upcoming harvest, and now I was resolute.
“We can’t afford the time,” said Sylvester. “If we are to find this Weftwitch before my father wakes, we must leave the kingdom now.”
“I’m not leaving without seeing him,” I insisted. “And if your own father weren’t an evil, murderous tyrant, you would understand.”
We glared at each other for a moment.
“Fine,” said Sylvester at last. “We will stop there on our way. But only briefly.”
“Briefly is enough,” I accepted.
I must have fallen asleep shortly after that, because I remember no more talk. I do remember waking once or twice to find Cornelius purring in my lap, but no sooner had I surfaced than I dipped down into sleep again. I had that same old dream, with the long, dark passages and the vines, but it did not scare me anymore. Instead, it made me sad.
We arrived at my village somewhere near midnight, by my reckoning. We all woke as the carriage came to a lurching stop. Cornelius yawned and stretched, his teeth glittering in the moonlight. Sylvester’s eyes opened, silver as coins.
We left the carriage and the horses in the woods outside the village. I worried about the horses needing water and food, or even a rubdown, but Sylvester reminded me that they didn’t need any of those things, and that, no matter how realistic they looked, they weremadeobjects, like the windup dolls visiting toymakers peddled to the village sprouts.
As I touched my hand to the velvety nose of one of the great horses and felt the heat of its breath, it reminded me how subtle and insidious magic could be. Even I, despite knowing the truth, was fooled.
We left them in the thickest part of the wood in which they would fit, and we laid branches against the carriage as well, to further hide it from view, just in case some poacher was prowling in the deep wood before dawn.
Then the three of us walked down the dirt road to the village. Cornelius got tired of keeping up with us after a while and hopped onto my shoulder, wrapping his tail around my neck like a scarf.
Rain began to fall. It was one of those rains that, while not heavy, seems wetter than usual. It trickled down the back of my neck and inside my ears, and my mood dampened as rapidly as my clothes did.
Cornelius maneuvered himself down under my arm and into the pocket that hung at my waist with his magical cat gymnastics. Sylvester, of course, stayed dry. Typical. The raindrops seemed to hover around him in a glittering halo without actually touching him.
The village was asleep. It was late enough that even the pub lock-in had ended, and the last stragglers had staggered home. The sky was still black, but a slender rim of gray showed around the bowl of the horizon.
I looked carefully for any curtain-twitchers but saw none. That didn’t mean no one was watching us, of course. There was bound to be one old biddy who couldn’t sleep, glued to her window in case one of her neighbors did something scandalous. There was little enough light that she probably wouldn’t be able to identify the sorcerer, but she would probably recognize my distinctive shape, and be flabbergasted that old Foss was walking anywhere with a man.
“There’s the shop,” I said, my heart giving a leap as I spotted its dear old sign and the light glinting off the mullioned window in front. “We live behind it. There’s a door to the side.”
Really, our house spread both behind and above the shop, wrapping around it like waxed paper around a chop. You could get to our living quarters by going up the staircase behind the counter, but if you picked your way through the alley at the side, there was a door that led into our kitchen and yard. It also had the advantage of being away from any windows and prying neighbors.
Despite everything, I felt a surge of joy walking up the old path to the front door. I held Cornelius in one arm, and I knocked.
The Da who opened the door seemed both shorter and older than the Da in my memories, but it was him, roused from his rest and wearing his old striped nightgown and cap.
“Foss!” His face lit up.
He even smelled like himself, a mixture of soap and the stale blood smell that we could never quite get out, no matter how much we scrubbed. It was the smell that brought tears to my eyes as I fell into his arms, still cradling Cornelius in one of mine.
I felt a sharp pang in my heart for leaving him so cavalierly and for so long. I hadn’t allowed myself to realize how much I missed him until now, when my whole self seemed to reach out to him with arms wide open.
