Magic Under Stone Page 12

  “Do you feel anything?” Violet whispered.

  “Like… magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “But I imagine it must take time. Magic can’t just happen in a moment, or everyone would be a sorcerer.”

  Fairy magic, I thought, may have begun with the earth, but it didn’t end there. Fairies could heal and cast illusions and any number of things. Human magic was the same. I only needed to find some way to tap into the spirit of things, as Erris said. What did fire mean? Heat. Light. Warmth. In the winter night, the fire didn’t feel destructive, but life-giving.

  Still, it could burn. I didn’t want to hurt myself like Celestina. I didn’t try to cast magic at first yet. I just watched the flames lap at the logs, and I watched Erris, and I allowed my thoughts to wander to different futures. What it would mean if Erris became flesh and blood, what would happen when Hollin came home, what the fairy kingdom was like…

  After a time, Violet went inside with a complaint about her face being too hot and her back too cold, and left us alone. I knew what she meant-I felt a bit like a half-cooked roast myself.

  I wonder if I could move the heat. Surely that couldn’t be too difficult.

  I reached into myself, becoming acutely aware of the warmth on my face and chest. I took a deep breath through my lips, pulling the heat into my lungs, and held it there a moment. Then I exhaled, concentrating on moving the warmth back to my spine, up through my neck and down to my feet.

  Briefly, I felt it-stronger than I expected, even-energy moving through me and dissipating. I repeated the action, and that time, I held the heat in my spine a moment longer.

  I laughed. I was shocked by what I’d done, but just as pleased.

  “Everything all right?” Erris walked over to me, using his pitchfork as a walking stick.

  I was still grinning. “I think… I just felt a bit of magic.”

  “Just now? What did you do?”

  “The heat that’s coming off the fire? I think I moved it. Inside me.” I explained exactly what I had done.

  “That’s wonderful. See? You’re a natural talent.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “No, I’m serious.” He sat down next to me. “Maybe it’s just a small spell, but what strikes me is the way you did it. You didn’t try to move mountains right off. And you used your breath. They always tell you to use your breath.”

  Now I felt sheepish. “Still. Don’t flatter me. I don’t want to start thinking myself a ‘natural talent’ or I’ll get frustrated later.”

  “Pah.” He grinned at me, then looked away, poking the ground with the pitchfork. “Well, I’m impressed. Clearly, I’m no natural talent myself, but I’m making progress.”

  “With your magic?”

  He nodded. “Things are starting to wake up for me. Not that the plants have as much to say when they’re going to sleep for the winter. It took me a while to figure it out. I don’t have… breath and heat and… well, it’s easier to connect with things when you’re alive. All I’ve got is my soul. I guess… maybe what I can do now isn’t fairy magic, it’s spirit magic.”

  I shivered and covered his hand with mine. “Don’t talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just let me think of you as alive right now.” Then I had an idea and I took his other hand. “Let me try something.”

  I drew back my hands and pulled off my gloves. He took his off too. Maybe it would help. As always, his skin felt like a living man’s, but beneath his clothes, the illusion ended, and cold metal and wood began. I thought he would yank his hands away as I slid my hands underneath his sleeves, but he didn’t. I wasn’t entirely sure what possessed me, but I kept thinking of the day he had come out from the water and told me he felt cold and wrong all over.

  I wanted to know if I could make him feel warm.

  I drew in a very slow breath, and as I released it, I tried to direct the heat from the fire and from my own heart into him. As long as I let the magic move very slowly, I felt I could guide it, and sure enough, the cold armature warmed under my touch. I slid my hands back to his fingers, and clasped them tightly a moment, keeping the heat close and contained.

  I felt Erris tremble, but I knew it wasn’t from cold. For a moment, we shared the same warmth, our eyes locked, until I started to lose my grasp on it. It slipped from me, dissipating into the air.

  Erris kept staring at me for what felt like an age.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “I know I felt something.”

  He put a hand to my shoulder, and then his arms were around me, pulling me against him, and my lips parted, inviting him.

  He kissed me, still trembling, his lips tasting like life-perhaps all illusions, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be mere friends. I wanted this. I wanted to know he desired me like I desired him even if he couldn’t have me-yet.

  “Nim.” He spoke in my ear now. “Why did you let me kiss you?”

  “You chose to kiss me.”

  “Yes, but- That magic you just did…”

  I drew back a bit, suddenly feeling as if it had been very illicit. “I just thought you’d want to feel warm. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.”

  “No, it’s not…” He sighed. “You did nothing wrong. I felt like my old self for a moment, is all, and- You looked so beautiful, doing magic. I can’t explain it. There was something so confident about the way you took my hands, and…”

  He sounded so anguished. Suddenly I felt awful. My own body was so warm, tingling with a desire I couldn’t help, but my lips were dry as if he had never kissed me at all. The glamour left nothing behind. It was cruel to make him feel like his old self.

  “I’m just so tired of pretending I don’t want you that way!” I covered my face, taking a deep breath to keep back the tears. “Ever since I was fourteen, I’ve had all these men looking at me, while I danced. Ogling me. It made me feel like I didn’t want to see men. Or boys. It made me feel like love was just a lie, no one around me seemed to really feel anything for each other. Even friendships meant next to nothing-I was just so alone. But here, with you… Even if you can’t hold me and I can’t touch you like we wish, it’s still better than trying to act like we don’t care. Or maybe you don’t care. Maybe you hate me because I have to wind you every morning and it’s all my fault. I never know what you really feel. First it’s this and then it’s that!”

  “Nim, I…” He sounded choked. “Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m not! I’m making a great effort about it too!”

  “All right. I’m trying not to cry.” He pressed his palms to his temples. “Seventeen is far too old to cry, but it’s also far too young for… for this. I just-I need…” He swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know what to do. I crave someone to hold me and… and help me with this. So badly. No one can really give me those things.” His voice broke as he said, “I miss my family, Nim.”

  I pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my nose. “I will hold you and help you, as much as I can. You just have to let me.”

  He nodded, fidgeting with the edge of his coat.

  I stood up and moved in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. Moving slowly, acknowledging each other with the slightest of gestures and expressions, I settled onto his lap, and put my arms around him, and drew his head to rest on my shoulder. I think it helped that we were so far away from anyone who would care. We could form our own ideas of what reality ought to look like.

  “I truly do believe that your real body is alive somewhere,” I said. “I’m not going to lose you.”

  He put his hand to the back of my head and held me close, so close, and then I did start to cry, but my magic warmed my tears.

  Chapter 16

  Even if Erris and I had tried to pretend the kiss had never happened, I don’t think we could have. Some things simply can’t be ignored.

  Sometimes I was jealous of Err
is winding down and sinking into automatic sleep, because he didn’t have to lie awake at night and think about it all.

  The snow came more regularly now, and every morning I woke to windows furred with frost and loathed the thought of leaving the cocoon of my bed, but I used these mornings to work on magic. I would light a candle and draw a thread of warmth from it. Every day I seemed a little better at making heat from almost nothing, and one day I found I no longer needed the candle.

  I didn’t want to stop pushing the magic farther by inches. One morning, I tried warming Erris’s key first and using it as a channel for magic when I wound him.

  He didn’t let me slip out of his room that day. He caught my hand and smiled. “Look at you, Nim! What’ve you been up to? Pretty soon we can use you to cook toast.”

  “I’ve been practicing. It’s easy to want to practice when it’s so cold.” I hesitated. “But I can’t make fire. I haven’t even tried. With what happened to Celestina… I wish I had someone to guide me.”

  “You’ve been very cautious so far. You started by moving heat and now you’re learning to make heat, so maybe you can do the same with fire. Move it first.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I just don’t want to burn the house down. Celestina will have a fit if I start practicing magic indoors.”

  It was snowing that morning, but when it stopped after lunch, I took a lantern out and teased the flame with my gloved hand, trying to connect with its spirit. At first I could still only move the warmth around, and then I realized the fire itself felt a little more fickle. Shy, even. Maybe because I was starting with a mere lantern flame, whereas I’d tried moving the heat with a steady bonfire. Or maybe kerosene fires were simply more difficult to connect with than wood fires. Soon I could “catch” the fire with my mind, but it slipped away if I tried to manipulate it. I must have tried to hold on to it a hundred times before I made any progress. Just as I finally managed to make the accursed thing grow and shrink in some small measure, the snow started again.

  I came inside and slammed the lantern down on the counter by the kitchen door and started unraveling myself from my scarf. Violet was at the kitchen table, reading, one stockinged foot tucked under her and the other scratching the cat’s back with agile toes.

  “Are you mad?” she asked.

  “No, just-I can’t get it right. Well, I can move a candle flame. After hours of trying, I can move a candle flame.”

  “If it helps at all, I don’t think you were actually outside for multiple hours,” Violet said in a bored tone, still staring at her book.

  “This is serious. I mean, I’ve been working on magic for weeks and I can move heat and I can barely move fire, which is all well and good, but it’s not going to help me fight off a jinn! I don’t know how stupid I must have been, to think I could learn anything useful in one winter. I guess I’ll make the jinn nice and warm, and Erris can talk to some mushrooms-”

  Erris wandered in, eyebrows raised, obviously lured by my shouting. “Are you all right, Nim? You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

  “It’s just… Well, you’ve been having magic lessons with Violet; is she learning anything?”

  “I can talk to mushrooms now,” Violet said, rather sarcastically.

  Erris nodded. “I was thinking of a poisonous mushroom army.”

  “Are there even any mushrooms growing in the snow or are you two just toying with me? Because I’m in no mood. I just spent hours-or at least, an hour-trying to catch a candle flame, and as soon as I did, it started snowing and I had to come inside.”

  “I think you’ve done enough for today anyway,” Erris said, pulling out a chair for me. “Sit down. Have an apple.”

  I kneaded my aching head. “I’m tired of apples.” I took a deep breath, knowing I was verging on a tantrum. “I’m sorry, it’s just-I had so much success with the heat magic at first, but moving the candle flame took forever. It’s made me realize how silly this is. I can’t become a sorceress in a few months, no one can.”

  “At least it’s something you can do to feel in control,” Erris said.

  “Like giving a baby something to suck on,” I muttered. “What will happen when the jinn returns? What if he takes you away from me? You can’t hide in the sea now; it’s freezing out there.”

  “I don’t know,” Erris said. “Maybe he won’t come back.”

  “I bet he will,” Violet said.

  “Violet, one would almost think you fancy the jinn, the way you talk.”

  Violet finally put her book down and glared at me. “The jinn was nice to me. He is a person, you know. Jinns have to do what their master tells them, they can’t help it. They’d rather be free.”

  I frowned. Jinns in stories were always trying to get free, but they weren’t especially nice about it, and our jinn hadn’t struck me as especially nice either. “Well, whatever his sweet and angelic intentions may be, we still have to consider it a serious threat, because he can’t help it, and I’m sure he will come back, so we can’t be complacent.”

  “We’re doing our best,” Erris said. “And you’re beating yourself up over it. I doubt he’ll come back in the dead of winter and risk getting caught in a blizzard. We’ll all work on our magic and see how far we can get.”

  TELMIRRA

  Sometimes Ifra forgot all about Violet, but every time he pulled the plaid hair ribbon from his pocket, the memories rushed back like a sweet surprise-the kiss, the haughty way she spoke, the fire in her eyes despite her fragile body, and the small hand pulling off the ribbon and thrusting it into his palm. “I don’t want you to forget me,” she had said.

  He understood that so well.

  His tutor, of course, had warned him a thousand times not to develop feelings for anyone. Procreation was important to further the race of jinn; affection, on the other had, was dangerous.

  Yet Ifra wondered how affection could be helped if one was to take things as far as procreation. His tutor could speak of these things so coldly, but much of his advice seemed impractical in the real world, when everyone around Ifra was full of life and love and hate instead of calm meditation.

  When Ifra returned to Telmirra, a girl approached and took his horse to the stables. Ifra hoped he would ride the horse again. It had a lively, pleasing nature, and he had to stifle his emotion at seeing it led away. Belin met him in the main hall.

  “You came back empty-handed?” he said.

  “Well, for now, but-”

  “Follow me. We’ll talk in my quarters.”

  “Where is the king?”

  “He’s not feeling well today. He asked if I would speak for him.”

  Ifra followed Belin to the gardens, and then through a little gate in the wall, and down a path through the woods. It wasn’t really a long walk, but Ifra felt more and more apprehensive as they approached a smaller wooden building, the size of a large house, constructed in the same style as the palace. A fire crackled on the hearth, and an array of carved wooden animals pranced and lumbered and scampered across the mantel. Whoever carved them had skillfully captured motion from static wood. Evergreen boughs were hung on the walls, and the rafters were painted with bright patterns of knots, vines, and trees.

  Belin didn’t bother to sit. As soon as the door was shut behind them, he said, “You don’t have Erris. What happened?”

  “Erris has some sort of ability to disappear when I’m near,” Ifra said. “The strange thing is, I sense him in two places-in the northeast edge of Lorinar, and… well, right near here. Very near.”

  “Here? It must be because he died here. You can’t pay attention to that. How much did you bother trying to find him there?”

  “Several times,” Ifra lied. “It’s no use. I get close and-he vanishes.”

  “Well, what did you think would happen, coming back here? My father told you to bring us Erris Tanharrow. All he’s going to do is send you right back out again.”

  “I thought he might have a better use for me.”

&nbs
p; “We need Erris Tanharrow. We can’t just go poking around the human land ourselves, jinn. No one else can fetch him.”

  “I’ll try again.”

  Belin groaned. “You wait here. I’m going to talk to my father. I’ll send for you shortly.”

  Ifra nodded. His heart was pounding. Belin wanted him tied to the throne forever, so that when Luka died, Ifra would belong to him. How long before Luka gave in?

  Maybe he should have tried harder to fetch Erris. Yes, he really should have. But he’d been troubled by the thought of disturbing Erris and his family for some reason… What was it? His hand moved to his pocket and pulled out the hair ribbon. Violet. Yes. Of course. He didn’t want Violet to see him dragging her uncle away.

  About half an hour later, a young man opened the door and told Ifra the king wished to see him.

  Luka was in bed, his glamour allowing no hint of illness to show through, except that he looked tired and had a cup of strong-smelling tea. He looked displeased, although not angry like Belin.

  “Sit down, Ifra. I want you to tell me every detail of what happened when you tried to take Erris. Who did you see, how close did you get before he disappeared, what attempts did you make to find him-everything.”

  Magic tugged on Ifra, making it harder to lie than he expected. He had never tried to lie to a master before. “I came through the woods. I met a girl there… a girl from Tiansher, which was unexpected.”

  “That must be Nimira, the girl the Lorinarian papers spoke of,” Belin said.

  “But…” Ifra’s memory was oddly hazy. “I could no longer feel Erris’s spirit there. I searched the area, but I had to give up.”

  “You said you tried several times. What happened the next time?”

  “They expected me the second time. I never even saw anyone, but the same thing happened. When I got close, Erris seemed to disappear.” Ifra knew he was speaking a little too quickly, to rush out the lies.

  “So you just gave up?” Belin said. “You didn’t threaten them?”

  “I-No.”