“Don’t,” Yarrow said.
She gulped back the tears that were about to spill out. “I’m sorry.”
“Look at your notes and figure out how to break it,” Yarrow said, calm and confident and just as soothing as her librarian voice. He didn’t sound angry or fearful.He should, though,she thought.He should be angry at me.But he wasn’t. “You can do this.”
Terlu shook her head. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Later, you can do the should-have, shouldn’t-have. Right now…” Crossing to her, he knelt next to her. “Terlu Perna, look at me. It’s not your fault.”
She almost smiled. “It’s absolutely my fault.”
“Well, yes, but you’re trying to pull off a miracle. You weren’t really expecting it to work right away, were you?” Gone was the Yarrow who had been throwing himself at the iridescent wall like a furious bear. Now his voice was soft, his eyes understanding, and his hands on her shoulders gentle.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be deadly right away! It’s a bubble. Not…” She shook her head. Wallowing in guilt wasn’t going to help. “Okay, how to break a spell. You broke the spell on me. I broke the sleep spell on the plants.” In both cases, though, they’d used an additional spell to reverse the effects of the initial one. She didn’t have a counterspell on hand that she could cast on the bubble that would break it. Maybe there was one, but she didn’t know it. If shehad access to the full library of Laiken’s notebooks… But all she had were the spells she’d brought with her, the ones that she thought were relevant. Perhaps the clue was in them somewhere. Spreading her notes out in front of her, she studied them.
“You read,” Yarrow said. “I’ll keep trying to break through.” He hefted up a pot and hurled it at the barrier. The bubble bowed out, absorbing the impact, and the pot was flung back into the circle. It crashed to the ground and shattered.
The words swam in front of her. She balled her fists and tried to focus. Her throat felt dry. Swallowing hard, she said, “What if we dig under it…?”
He pulled out a trowel and, kneeling, began to dig. As he dug through the soil by the edge of the bubble, she tried to read.What if it didn’t work, what if the air ran out, what if no one found them…Her thoughts chased one another, tossing up horrible scenarios.
A few minutes later, he reported, “It goes into the earth.”
Of course it did. It had formed a sphere.
Donotpanic,she ordered herself.You can think your way through this.
He rested his hands on his knees. “Can you… I don’t know… reverse the words?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Every spell requires the correct words to activate certain ingredients…” An idea came to her. A spell was words plus items. What if you took away the items? Getting excited, she suggested, “What if we destroy the ingredients?”
The protective shield was an active spell, continually maintained. Laiken’s notes had been clear about that. In fact, her primary theory about why the greenhouses were failing was that the ingredients had degraded. She’d even thought about trying to refresh the ingredients rather than recasting the spell, but since she didn’t know where Laiken had positioned the original ingredients for each greenhouse… Regardless, that wasn’t the case here, and the bubble had thankfully formedbeyondthe ingredients, trapping them inside with Terlu and Yarrow.
Yarrow began to stomp on the paste, smearing it into the dirt.
“That won’t destroy it.”
“Fire?” he asked.
“Maybe?” Except, didn’t fire use oxygen? “Wait, what if the fire eats all the air?”
“Do you have another idea?” Yarrow asked.
Wordless, she shook her head.
He withdrew a fire-starter from his pocket. Looking around, Terlu spotted more dried and withered plant material within the bubble. She broke as much of it off as she could to serve as kindling. Carrying it to Yarrow, she handed it to him. He wound it into a kind of makeshift torch and then lit the end.
A spark caught. The flames spread along the dried plant matter. He blew on it, and she wondered how much air they’d used already and how much more the fire would eat. If this didn’t work…
Squatting, he held it to the paste. It charred at the lick of flame. Meticulously, he crawled around the perimeter of the circle, burning the ingredients.
She held her breath.
How much air was left?
What would it feel like when the air was gone? Would it hurt? Or would they just fall asleep? She pushed those thoughts from her mind. It had only been a few minutes since she’d cast the spell and sealed them in. There were plenty more ideas to try before their lives were in danger. Except that she didn’t have any more ideas. She knew very little about how to break spells without access to a specific counterspell.Perhaps that’s something I should have studied before trying to cast any.
As each wad of grasses burned to ash, Terlu fed him new kindling. He added it to his makeshift torch, trying to keep the flames from touching his hands. She saw him wince as a spark landed on his fingers. She opened her mouth to tell him to be careful and then shut it again. He knew to be careful; he had to be thorough.
