The bubble rose from the circle, a shimmering veil. It spread up, curving to connect above them, sealing into a dome. Like a soap bubble, it shimmered with colors as the sunlight through the greenhouse glass hit it.
“It worked,” Yarrow said, awe in his voice.
“Wow.” She hadn’t expected it to just… work. Like that. She’d thought she’d have to try out several more variations of the spell before it resulted in a dome this perfect. Walking toward the bubble, Terlu examined it.
No breaks. No seams. Also, it was beautiful. She watched the colors shift and undulate, more colors than she’d ever seen before, in shades that blurred into one another before swirling away, like a living rainbow. “If we form it against the perimeter of the greenhouse, we’ll be able to control the temperature and humidity inside the dead greenhouses. You’ll be able to have summer in the middle of winter again.” Terlu paused. “Assuming this holds heat.”
“We can test it. I can light a fire. I have a starter with me.”
“Good idea.” She loved that he came so prepared.
He crossed the walkway to retrieve dried grasses from the pots of dead plants. After collecting a few handfuls from within the bubble, he reached for a wad of grass just beyond—and his hand stopped with a thump. “Huh. It’s solid.”
He laid his palm flat on the bubble and pushed, and it didn’t pass through.
She hurried to his side. They’d walked through greenhouse after greenhouse, passing through the invisible barrier in the doorways, and it had never been a problem. This bubble spell was modeled after that. It was supposed to act as insulation, not as a wall.
Terlu knocked with her fist on the bubble. It rippled but didn’t dissipate. “Okay, maybe it’s not perfect yet. We’ll have to try again.” She told herself she shouldn’t be disappointed. Of course it hadn’t worked right away. She wondered which line she needed to tweak to make it passable without being permeable—
He pushed harder at the bubble. It bowed out but didn’t break. “Huh.”
Terlu leaned against it with her shoulder, expecting to pop out the other side—but instead she bounced back. A wiggle of worry wormed itself into her throat. It was just a bubble. They couldn’t betrapped. Could they?
He drew out his clippers and tried to slice into it. The bubble bent around the blade. “I think we’re trapped,” Yarrow said grimly.
“That’s… not good.”Don’t panic. It’s just a bubble. It’ll pop.
While Yarrow bashed his clippers against the bubble, Terlu hurried back to the spell. She read through the words. It didn’t say—Oh.She saw the line that specified the durability of the bubble. It was required to ensure that the bubble was capable of keeping in the levels of heat and humidity, but it didn’t include a line to allow everything else to pass through. Perhaps it was supposed to call back to a line in a different part of the original spell?
At the perimeter of the bubble, Yarrow was now ramming his shoulder into the bubble, putting all of his strength and weight into it. He was beginning to utter oaths under his breath. Each hit reverberated with athudthat was then swallowed by the bubble, rippling like an innocent rainbow around them.
What if he couldn’t break it? What if they were truly stuck?
“Someone will find us,” Terlu said in the most soothing-librarian voice she could manage. She told herself that she had to focus on solving the problem, not on thewhat-ifs.
“Unlikely,” Yarrow said.
“Eventually, Lotti will wonder where we are.”
“And what will anyone do when they come? It’s impenetrable.”
“Working together…” If enough force were placed on it from the outside, that could break it, couldn’t it? Granted, the spells on the greenhouses had lasted for decades, perhaps centuries, despite all the wind, snow, and rain that the sky could throw at them. They only burst when the magic decayed enough to fail. What if she’d created a spell that wasthatsolid? “Okay, maybe we need a better plan than wait for rescue.”
“What’s its weakness?” Yarrow asked.
“I’m not sure,” Terlu said, studying the spell. Concerned about the fragility of the bubbles in her prior attempts, she’d been more focused on its strength.Did I take it too far? What have I done?She couldn’t have just trapped them here for decades, without food, without water, without… “Oh. Oh no.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want it to rupture, shatter the glass, and kill all the plants. So, I made it as strong as I could.” She’d dialed up that section of the text, using a word that would amplify its abilities. It had made sense at the time. “It’s holding in air.”
“And us.”
“Butair,Yarrow. It’s not letting air in or out.”
Yarrow stopped shoving at the bubble. “You mean to say that if we don’t break out, we are going to run out of air?”
Terlu nodded. She felt tears prick her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t have messed with magic. These spells… It had just been ego to think she could understand them, and now…
