Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (6 page)

I turn about, taking in the full view of my surroundings. The green blazeweed blurs together with the brown of the woodland and the blue of the sky. I blink, and tears cascade down my face.

The smallest flash of white touches the edge of my vision, and when I turn, I see the ghost from Carmine hovering over the weeds.

The water tastes like fishes and the fishes taste like water.

CHAPTER 5

I startle and scramble to my feet. That same jittery sensation that plagued me when I saw him in Carmine fills my chest and belly like smoke, and I forget the throbbing of my heel for a moment. He watches me with those same indescribable eyes, the rest of him white, white, white. A breeze passes through the weeds and woods, yet it doesn’t tousle his hair or rustle his clothes like it does mine. His water-like wings, almost prismatic, flap once before curling along his arms.

“You are broken,” he murmurs. The words are spoken low and soft and crumble to the ground like pieces of stale bread.

I glimpse back at the house, then return my focus on him. I limp forward, three steps, then pause, keeping a safe distance between myself and the specter.

“Who are you?” I clutch my hands and press them to my chest, the knuckles whitening.

He doesn’t move, only looks me up and down. His facial features, entirely human from what I can see, are heavy, sorrowful. There’s a strange sort of beauty to them.

“So many holes,” he says. He hovers closer until he’s just a foot from the edge of the blazeweed. I hold my ground. “You have become . . . fragile.”

I lower my hands and ball them into fists. “Am I the only one who speaks directly?” A growl lines my voice. “When I’m allowed to speak at all. I’ve had my fill of strange men and their riddles.”

He hovers a step backward, but the slightest smile pulls at his lips. “Forgive me.”

A voice inside of me chants,
He knows you he knows you he knows you
.
I take a deep breath. “I saw you in Carmine. Who are you?”

The frown returns. “I cannot tell you that.”

I rub tension from a muscle in my neck. “Surely you have a name.”

His gaze intensifies. “Fyel.”

“Fyel,” I repeat, and my skin prickles. I’ve heard that name before, haven’t I? Someone in my village, perhaps? Did one of the marauders call another “Fyel”? I try to place the name, but the more I ponder it, the more foreign it sounds, as though it, too, is being swallowed up in the void of my mind. “Why can’t you tell me? Why are you here? You know me from . . . from
before
, don’t you?”

He remains firm, stoic. I rub the palms of my hands into my eyes and force another long breath in and out of my lungs. Then I stare at him, unabashed in my gaze. His body appears human, too, except for his coloring and those curious wings that extend over either elbow. Is he a wandering spirit? Do we all inherit wings once we die?

“Please,” I beg, keeping my voice low. “I’ve been trying to remember for more than four years. Anything you know—please tell me. Where I’m from, who I belong to, why I’m here . . . I’ll do anything for just one answer.”

As I wait for him to speak, I feel as though there are invisible hands on either side of me, pushing in toward my center. The strain makes it hard to breathe.

His expression wilts under such sadness I fear his eyes will melt off his face. His lips pinch together. He shakes his head, and now I’m the one melting, my insides puddling into a cold heap at my heels. “You remember nothing else?”

I shake my head, and he remains silent. Perhaps thinking.

I take a deep breath, then another. Glance back to the house. I don’t have much time. “Can you at least tell me where I am now?”

He looks up, then glances behind him. “You are near Ochre.”

“Ochre?”

“I believe that is what it is called. You know it?”

I nod, although I’ve never been there. It’s a city-state northwest of Carmine, far away. I take my gaze from the specter—Fyel—and peer through the woods, turning slowly until . . . there. Ahead of the house. Brown and purple mountains in the distance: the Shadow Peaks. At least now I know where to run should the opportunity ever arise.

“I’m not a slave,” I say, though I don’t know why this spirit cares.

“I know.”

I turn back to face him. I can see the trunks of trees through him, as though he is fog taking the shape of a man. He hovers over the blazeweed.

I stiffen, straighten, and a bubble of hope presses into the base of my throat. I sprint to the edge of the blazeweed, toward him, until we’re only feet apart.

“Can you take me over it?” I ask, pointing to the fiery plants. “Can you carry me over the nettles?” Lowering my voice, I say, “I must escape. He’s a mad man . . . I’m not a slave! I have to go home. Please, will you help me?”

Fyel’s face falls once more, and that tentative bubble in my throat bursts. “I am sorry.”

Tears sting my eyes. “
Why?
”

“I am not part of this world,” he whispers, holding up his hand. I see the outline of blazeweed leaves through his palm. I remember our brief meeting in Carmine, but I lift my fingers to touch his regardless. I pass right through him. He feels no different than the air around us, and I wonder, briefly, if I’ve gone mad.

“I don’t understand,” I say, but before I can beg for more information, I hear the rattling of locks at the back of the house and stiffen.

Fyel looks up as well, and the nameless color in his eyes blazes brighter. His proffered hand retracts into a tight fist. “No.”

I look back to him. “What?”

He scowls and lowers himself closer to the earth, though he still doesn’t touch it. “Stay away from him,” he growls, sounding older and more masculine. “
You
must get away.
”

“Then help me!” I cry. Another lock clicks from the door.

“I will, I swear it. I will do what I can. But you must trust me.”

The door opens, and Fyel vanishes.

Allemas’s slick voice calls out, “You can’t run. That’s blazeweed.”

The muscles in my back tighten into thick cords. “I know.”

“You haven’t moved the rocks.” He frowns. “I told you to move the rocks.”

I face him. “Why?”

“It’s discipline. Move the rocks. Here to here.” He points, though the desired location has changed from the first time he gave the order, a little farther to the east. “Then you can make magic, but not for me. I know someone else who can use you. Move the rocks. Rocks.” He points again.

I grind my teeth together until they threaten to chip. The stones are not especially large, but they
are
heavy. Some I have to roll across the dirt to move them. Sweat tickles my forehead, but I throw myself into the work, grateful for some outlet for my anger. I don’t understand any of this, Allemas or Fyel. I peer toward the woods several times as I work, but the specter is nowhere to be seen.

Allemas watches me, as usual. I’m beginning to grow used to it, which worries me.

Fyel’s words run through my head again and again. “
You must get away.
”
I couldn’t agree more, but what does the specter know that I don’t?

I drop another stone in the desired location and meet Allemas’s stare. My boldness doesn’t unnerve him, and I wonder why. I wonder what he has in store for me.

I wonder what he knows.

I cross the yard and retrieve another stone, my thoughts spinning in a new direction. He trusts me to make cakes. I could poison them . . . but I will not kill him. Cannot. The very idea makes my stomach turn. But if I could make him sleep, maybe make him sick? I’m not sure it’s possible since every ingredient I have comes directly from his hands. Could I will slumber into a confection?

My magic is gentle, subtle. I don’t think I would be successful. Not as successful as I need it to be.

“All done,” Allemas announces, and he opens the door into the house. “Come, come. I need specific things. Things to grow and things to shrink.”

I pause in the doorway, leaning my weight on my left foot. My right is burning from its encounter with the blazeweed. “I don’t think I can—”

“You can, you will. Try try.” He points to the ingredients still left out on the counter; I haven’t put them away, nor have I cleaned up the mess from this morning. “I need a cake. And another, unbaked. One to grow and one to shrink.”

“Grow and shrink? A . . . person?” I ask, and he nods, and my head hurts.

I have never tried to alter a person’s physical form with cake—or any baked good—but I get to work to satiate my buyer’s demands. If he notices my limp, he doesn’t remark on it.

I crush berries and pour them into batter, which I stir while contemplating tallness: trees, sky, ceilings. The blacksmith and the clock tower from my village, towers and beanstalks. As I add flour, I think of plants drinking in rain and sunlight, growing tall and strong.

One unbaked. I wonder at that request as the first cake goes into the oven and I start the second. I decide on something savory and chop thyme and basil into fine bits. Small, tiny bits, until their green color stains the countertops. Small, small, small. I think of mice and sand, of newborn babes and freckles. I picture plants again, but now the sun is too hot and the ground too dry, and they shrivel. I think of their seeds flying on the wind, wishing I could ride them to safety.

I think of the first time I stepped into the village square with Arrice. All those eyes watched me, marking me as new, unknown, and strange, and I looked back, unable to remember names or faces or anything, and I felt so very, very small.

I whisk the batter until my arms hurt, making it as smooth as I can. Allemas produces a bottle for it, and I funnel the batter in with a spoon and my hand. When I finish, he ties it with a tag that reads,
DRINK ME
.

“What is that for?”

He doesn’t answer me, only moves to the oven and pries open the door.

“You’ll make it fall,” I say.

He glances at me, his face blank as a new canvas.

“The cake. You’ll make it flat.”

He shrugs. “As long as she can eat it.”

I don’t know who “she” is, but I don’t ask. I busy myself with cleaning up spilled flour and scrubbing green stains. I place my ingredients into the cupboards. They’re mostly bare.

After I take the first cake from the oven, Allemas escorts me to my room and locks me inside. I watch out the window until he leaves, carrying the bottle and pan with him. He doesn’t take his wagon.

Returning to the door, I test its locks, trying to wriggle my fingernails beneath them. I slam my weight into the door, but it holds strong. Moving back to the window, I grab bricks and heave, but the mortar, though messily done, is unrelenting.

You must get away
, Fyel had said. And I will.

Somehow I will. I do not understand up. Down is down but up should be down too.

CHAPTER 6

While Allemas is gone, I plan my escape.

I draw my finger across the old floorboards of my room, mapping out invisible lines of the house and its surroundings. There’s some sort of road that leads up to the front, or else Allemas’s wagon would never have made it here. I imagine it’s parallel to the house. The backyard is shaped as a half circle and surrounded in blazeweed. Blazeweed swarms the sides of the house and those menacing outer walls.

I don’t know what the other upstairs rooms look like, only where their doors are. I doubt Allemas will give me the chance to view them, but maybe I don’t need to.

There are two safe ways to leave this house. The first is through the front door and down that road. I assume there isn’t a village or town for several miles, but as long as I can outrun Allemas, I can get away. Allemas’s legs are long, awkward gait or not, and though I do walk a lot, I’ve spent my days licking cake batter from bowls. I’m not confident I can outrace him. What will Allemas do if he catches me trying to escape?

I pause in my make-believe drawing and ponder. I’m still not sure if Allemas truly does know something about my past, or if he’s merely mad and I’ve interpreted his ravings to suit my wishes. If he
does
know something, I’d be running from one of the only clues I have about my history, my identity, my
person
. But if it’s the latter, I’ll never find any others, unless Fyel begins to talk. But even
he
told me to run.

I eye the door. I’ll have to escape while Allemas is gone for it to work, but there’s no way out of this locked room. I may not even make it to the front door to see how far my legs can carry me.

That leaves the second option.

Allemas has left me in the backyard unsupervised once already, knowing I wouldn’t run because of the blazeweed. But there’s one side of the yard that is unprotected: the house itself.

I cannot go
through
the house, not with all those locks on the back door. But I could go
over
it. I try to picture the house in my mind. Two stories, with plenty of window ledges for footholds. If I manage to scale the side and reach the roof—especially if I do it quietly—I might be able to drop down on the other side before Allemas notices. Maybe, gods willing, I’ll find a sympathetic traveler somewhere on that unknown road to aid me, or if not, I can hide in the woods. I know a lot about the native plants and what is safe to eat. I’m not familiar with
these
woods, but if I manage to find water, I will survive. I think.

Letting out a deep breath, I inspect my heel. It’s still swollen and colored a deep fuchsia. I want to think the color looks a little better, but it could be a trick of the light. I was not able to pick all of the minute blazeweed thorns out of the flesh. They’ll have to stay there until my skin forces them out, or until I get my hands on some tweezers.

It takes only an hour to settle my plans, but a day and a half for Allemas to return, which translates to a day and a half without food or water. The moment he frees me, I rush to the kitchen and pump water into my mouth, then find some withering carrots to munch on. Allemas watches me with a curious expression.

“You can’t just lock me in there and leave,” I say once I’m satiated. “I’ll die, and then you’ll have wasted your money.”

He nods slowly, his lips half-pursed. Had he really not thought of that?

His expression brightens. “I think I found a new customer,” he says. I get no more details than that, and I hardly care.

I look out into the backyard, then around the kitchen. If I run, I won’t be able to take provisions with me. How kind will the forest be to me?

Will Fyel find me? Will he even be able to help?

Sighing, I rub my eyes. I cannot depend on the strange spirit, but he hasn’t proved himself untrustworthy, not yet. And so I choose to hope, and in my memory, I taste lavender.

There is little to eat in this house, so—without Allemas’s by-your-leave—I start to make biscuits. He doesn’t stop me, only watches as I cut the butter into the flour. I infuse the dough with the resilience of bones and mountains, the endurance of the ocean, the strength of angry winds. I think of the sturdy stonework of the shrine to Strellis in Carmine and Cleric Tuck’s broad shoulders, gods bless that he’s safe. I have made biscuits like these before, but never with such concentration. I need these to fill my belly for a long time, even if they’ll fill Allemas’s as well.

Part of me regrets the decision as I watch the biscuits bake, for thinking of sturdiness and Cleric Tuck has made me think of Carmine, of Arrice and Franc and the bodies littering the street, of the men and women penned to be sold alongside me. I’ve tried not to linger on any of them too long, tried to distract myself with Allemas, my goal of escaping, and Fyel, but Carmine always lingers nearby like the scent of sugar. I hate not knowing. I hate worrying, for it only makes a bad outcome that much worse. I look skyward, to the silent gods, and blink to keep my eyes dry. I don’t know how Allemas will react to tears.

The biscuits are done, and I’m suddenly ravenous. I eat one straight out of the oven, blowing on each piece before chewing. Allemas does the same and shrieks when the thing burns him.

He locks me in the cellar for the rest of the day.

I’m glad the biscuit burned him.

I don’t find any pleasure in the harm of others, even those who corral me like a dog, but Allemas is fast becoming an exception. And, because he sees his own mistake as an act of retaliation on my part, he has decided I need to move the stones again. For discipline.

“All over there,” he says, pointing to the side of the yard that is free of stones, “and then all back again. And if you don’t do it before sundown, you’ll pick a bouquet of blazeweed. This is learning. You need to learn.”

Those last two lines were spoken more quietly than the others, and he stopped looking at me as he said them. Talking to himself again? No, talking to me.

He is hard to understand, but I don’t argue. I see this as my chance to escape, so I lift the first stone before he retreats into the house. He grins an uneven smile and waits until I place the stone and lift the next before stepping into the kitchen, mumbling, “It’s a big job she wants, but we can do it,” as he goes.

“She” refers to the earlier-mentioned customer, I presume. I retrieve and drop a second stone. Crossing the yard, I scan the house.

One of the second-story windows has a rotting planter box hanging off it. There’s a trellis almost a full story high that holds the skeleton of dead vines—creeper ivy, I believe. The roof is lower in one place than another by a few feet. The dark brown shingles look new.

I check the window. Allemas is looking at me but turns away as I cross the yard. His face doesn’t return to the glass.

I grab a new rock. I think the trellis could hold me. I’ll have to jump from its top to reach the sill of a window. Do I have enough arm strength to hoist myself up?

I check the window. Empty, but for how long?

I have to go now. Now. Now. Now. Before he comes back. I might have time—

Now.

I drop the rock and bolt for the house, grabbing two fistfuls of trellis. I hoist myself up. Ivy snaps under my bare feet. The trellis wobbles under my weight. I skitter to its top and leap, grabbing the windowsill.

It’s dirty. My fingers slip, but, thank the gods, so many years of constant kneading and whisking have given me just enough shaking strength to pull myself up. I get an elbow on the sill and scramble until I lift a knee over its edge. I can barely fit on the narrow space, but I grab the gutter for balance.

It creaks. One of the nails holding it in place comes free.

The corners of my vision darken, and my heart speeds until the beats seem to blend together, and my legs and arms tingle as though filled with air. I stand and grapple for the roof ledge. Find it. It’s easier to pull myself up the second time.

I sprint across the shingles. Reach the edge. Look down. Another planter box juts out of a window below me. I turn and lower myself down, belly against the roof, inching out until my toes touch it. A splinter digs into my swollen heel, but I barely feel it.

The planter box breaks and I fall.

I hit the earth hard across my thigh and hip, but my palms slap against it and keep my head upright. Dust flies around me as I twist about, trying to find my feet. For a moment I don’t feel them, and I cough, grappling with direction. As the dust clears, however, my mind comes back to itself, and I shove myself upright.

Allemas shouts from within the house.

I run.

I no longer want the road—it’s too open, too direct. I want to hide. I want to be invisible.

I dash into the woods.

Plants and weeds whip about my ankles as I run. Rocks and thistles cut into my feet, but I keep running, leaping over tree roots. I topple and slide where the ground suddenly declines, and my body sinks into moist earth. Clover stains my slacks. The earth beneath me pushes
up
, softer than it did in Carmine, and I’m on my feet again, racing deeper into the wood. I stumble over one tree root, jump from another. Something dark, perhaps a hare, leaps across my path. I race past it, splitting a bush open with my body, and slip again. This time I don’t fall. I slide down a shale-studded incline and sprint toward a glade, dodging trees—

I hear the snap before I feel it.

Snap
.
Pressure. Jerking. Falling, crashing. Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

I scream.

Lightning courses up my leg, hot and cold and clawing and chewing and
eating
, worms of glass burrowing into skin and muscle, scraping the bone beneath. Devouring my ankle, my leg. Cutting. Slicing. Crunching.

I bite down on my voice, but it trickles through my teeth as stifled wails and whimpers. I try to crawl forward, but the metal clenches and scrapes. My body is ten times the weight it should be. My face is drenched in my own tears, which fall like rain to the mushroomed earth beneath me.

I turn my head just enough to see—not blazeweed, but a silver mouth clamped around my leg. A trap, like the sort used for animals, about a foot across. Its jaws clamp just above my ankle, forcing my foot to jut at an odd angle, mutilated and crooked. Blood oozes around its teeth. My hands and nose grow cold. My fingernails dig into the soil, and my whole body won’t stop shuddering.

Footsteps sound in the foliage behind me without pattern. An uneven gait, ever changing.

“I told you not to run,” he says. He stops, shuffles. Grunts.

The teeth rip out of my leg, and I scream a second time, startling mourning doves from the canopy above me. My hands waver before my eyes. My fingers double, like I’m looking at them through a screen of egg whites.

Allemas does not pick me up. Instead he grabs both my wrists and drags me back toward the house. My ruined limb hits every bump and dip along the way. Despite my pleadings to the gods, I never lose consciousness.

I scream and scream and scream.