Magic Under Stone Read online

  The jinn looked around him a long moment, while Violet looked at the ground. I wondered if jinn could track, but they were not forest creatures, and no recognition dawned on his face.

  Good. Maybe Erris was right about water foiling his abilities.

  He looked at me a moment, and at Violet another, and then he gave the reins a twitch, and his magnificent horse moved away with a fluid grace it seemed wrong for a horse to possess, like a woman so beautiful no other can compete with her. I think the horse knew it too, which made it all the worse.

  I prayed that he would not find Erris in the water. I wanted to follow the jinn, but my presence would do no good; I might even give some accidental hint as to Erris’s whereabouts.

  “He didn’t… say good-bye,” Violet said. She coughed.

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll stop by the house for tea when he’s done looking for someone else to kidnap,” I muttered. “Let’s get you to the house, you look peaked.”

  I put my arm around Violet’s shoulder. I was still feeling kindly toward her because she had looked so small on the jinn’s horse, even though she had acted foolishly. She let me lead her along.

  “What happened back there with you and the jinn?”

  “Nothing.”

  I recalled a time on my uncle’s farm when I had eaten a sweet yam bun I wasn’t supposed to have. My response when my uncle asked me where it had gone was much the same. But I didn’t want to demand an answer. That tactic had not exactly endeared my uncle to me. “You seemed awfully eager to sacrifice yourself on Erris’s behalf.”

  She made a little grunt. I doubted there was anything more I could say, so I let her be.

  As we neared the house, Celestina came running toward us. “Did you find him?”

  “The jinn is searching the grounds, but Erris is hiding… in the ocean. I think it’s out of our hands now…” I took a deep breath.

  Celestina startled me with an embrace. “It will be all right,” she said. “I only hope he doesn’t burn down the house if he can’t find Erris. Or take us hostage. Or some awful thing.”

  “I don’t think… he’s really cruel,” Violet said. “When I was crying, he was rather nice.”

  “What? When was this?”

  Violet looked a little flushed. “I didn’t mean to cry, but for some reason, I got so upset about… trying to protect Uncle Erris, so I started crying.”

  “What did he say to you?” I asked. I wanted to know as much as I could about this perplexing creature.

  “I don’t know. We talked a bit. And then he helped me onto his horse. And that was when we saw you, Nimira.”

  Celestina took a deep breath. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re all right, but it certainly gave me a scare. And where is your other hair bow?”

  “I guess I lost one.”

  We had just entered the warm, cozy kitchen. Violet took an apple from the counter and sat down heavily. Celestina had just baked apple pies yesterday, and now she took one from the pantry and cut a huge slice from it. “Do you want any?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. I moved to the window, and stared out even though there was no sign of the jinn. The loudest sound in the room was Violet’s slow crunching of the apple.

  After a bit, Celestina said, “Come away from the window, Nim. There’s nothing we can do now.”

  “I’m all right here.”

  My thoughts were racing. I wondered what I would do if the jinn found Erris. Would I go to the fairy kingdom and try to save him? That seemed too impossible to even consider. But where would I go instead? Celestina liked me, she would surely let me stay the winter, but what about when Ordorio returned? Maybe he would agree to help rescue Erris and I could accompany him, although I wasn’t especially useful. Ordorio was Violet’s family, not mine, and I wasn’t Karstor’s concern either. I wondered if everyone would shut their doors to me if Erris disappeared. He was really the person who mattered.

  Then it came back again to what I would do with Erris, anyway. If he remained an exiled automaton, we could never marry. Would I just remain the keeper of his key? And if he became the fairy king…?

  The more thinking I did, the more hopeless I felt. It was best not to think at all, ever, but that was impossible to maintain.

  I needed to make myself useful.

  “I want to learn magic,” I said suddenly. “We can’t let this happen again.”

  “It’s dangerous without proper instruction,” Celestina said. “And no one gives proper instruction in magic to women.”

  “Oh, come now,” I said. “Don’t say that.” It was true, magic was something women simply didn’t do in this country, beyond perhaps a little healing or birthing magic. But I hadn’t taken Celestina for the type to follow all the rules. “My life is clearly dangerous whether I like it or not. We should be prepared.”

  “Yes,” Violet said. “We should learn magic! Won’t Papa have some good books on it somewhere?”

  “No,” Celestina said. “I’m not going to have your father coming back to find the house burned down!”

  “If we’re careful, I doubt we’ll burn the house down,” I said. Magic could be dangerous-I knew it well-but I imagined it would be less dangerous if we had time to practice. “Celestina, we can’t just let the jinn come back and take Erris. Or Violet!”

  “Maybe Erris could teach me fairy magic,” Violet said.

  “That won’t help the rest of us!” I said. Goodness, if Erris started teaching Violet how to talk to the forest while I sat around uselessly, I would scream.

  “No one is learning magic until Mr. Valdana comes back!” Celestina shouted, shoving back the empty plate she had been eating pie from moments ago. “He left me in charge and I must insist.”

  “Why?” Violet asked.

  “Because it’s dangerous, as I just said.”

  I had never seen Celestina be short about anything. I raised my brows.

  “I hear the horse,” she said. I thought she was only looking for a diversion, but when I pushed aside the curtain, sure enough, the jinn had ridden his horse to the door and slid off as easy as I might climb out of bed. He knocked on the door.

  Celestina shot me an apprehensive glance, then opened it. “Yes?”

  “Where is he?” the jinn said.

  We were quiet, although Violet stood from her chair.

  “You’ve foiled my magic.” He put his hand to his heart and dipped his head, an acknowledgment. When his head came back up, his eyes met mine. “He was the first thing King Luka asked of me.”

  His voice was soft, and yet, I could feel his power like the electricity in the air before a storm, and I wondered how we would ever foil him twice.

  His eyes lingered briefly on each of us, and then he turned back to his horse. Celestina shut the door, and Violet moved to the window. We all watched him go.

  “I’m going to study magic,” I said firmly. “But first, I must get Erris.”

  I waited awhile and approached the shore warily, still looking and listening for the jinn in case of trickery. And when the sea came in view, it looked empty, like it had surely swept Erris away without a trace.

  I screamed his name. The sea winds roared in my ears. I cupped my hands around my mouth and called even louder.

  He stood up from behind the rock, just where he’d said he’d be. I tried to hide how scared I had felt. He straggled up to me, clothes soaking wet. His hair was still dry. He never had to submerge himself completely, but he’d still been in the water over an hour.

  “Are you all right?” I touched his wet shoulder.

  “I think so.” He clutched his chest. He looked quite pale. After a moment he said, “I feel cold and clammy all over. Not right at all.”

  “You’ll probably feel better as you dry out,” I said hopefully. What would it be like to feel the cold sea rush not just over your skin, but all through your insides?

  “Yes…”

  “Well, let’s get you back to the house.”

  “Yo
u go on without me,” he said.

  “But-”

  “I want to be alone,” he said, with the slightest hint of desperation.

  I regarded him a moment, reluctant, and he nodded toward the line of trees, urging me on.

  “You always want to be alone,” I said softly. I turned from him, sniffing back the tears, and started to walk away.

  “I’m sorry,” he called.

  I couldn’t take that. Like he could just yell out that he was sorry and everything would be all right. “I was so worried about you,” I said, my hands trembling as I turned back around. “I know you want to be alone, but-but can’t you ever let me care for you anymore? I was so afraid I was going to lose you today, and now you’re safe, but you’re pushing me away.”

  “I can’t be good company right now,” Erris said. “I feel all… all wrong. Usually I sort of feel like I’m made of flesh and bone, even if I’m not, but right now I feel… all wrong.” Indeed, he seemed very shaken. He sat down on a nearby rock and clutched his hands together.

  I went to his side. “I don’t care whether you’re good company or not. I care about you. And as hard as this is to deal with, is it really easier to deal with it alone?”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t look at me.

  “When you were trapped at a piano and you couldn’t even speak, wasn’t that worse? But you wanted me around then.”

  “It was worse. But… I felt like a ghost then. A ghost tethered to an object. Now I feel… alive. But all wrong. When I’m around other people, even you and Celestina and Violet…”

  He didn’t finish, but I knew what he was getting at. “Erris, don’t you think I feel horrible about all this? I lay awake at night wondering if I was right to try and save you, because… I gave you this. I gave you the best I could. I loved you, and…” My voice was starting to break up now. “I couldn’t give you enough, and now I can never really have you. I didn’t save you after all.”

  I started to cry. I felt awful about it. He was the one with his insides full of seawater and I was the one sobbing. “I’m sorry,” I said. My turn for those feeble words.

  “Please don’t cry,” he said softly. He took my right hand, even as I covered my face with the left, and separated my fingers in a way that made me shiver. When the only place we ever touched was our hands, it was astonishing how sensitive they became to the slightest of caresses.

  “Nimira,” he continued. “I thought we were fine friends. I tease you, and you laugh, and we make music together. What else can I do?”

  “No!” I shouted. “Enough about ‘fine friends’! I can’t stand it. All this teasing and laughing seems like a charade! I can tell you’re in despair, and you never tell me about that. If you meant what you said when you told me you loved me-and I meant it-then let us be open with our hearts and minds!”

  “Look at me,” he suddenly said fiercely. And when I did, he pulled open his shirt so I could see gears ticking and their rhythm like a heartbeat. “You can’t really love this.”

  I’ll admit it was always an unnerving sight, the contrast of Erris’s deeply living face and the clockwork under his clothes. I could pretend it didn’t disturb me, but I think he could sense even the slightest hint of horror from me. And in fact, I was fighting deep in my core not to cry again, because I had done this to him.

  “You can’t tell me what I love,” I said.

  “You love a fiction,” he said. “A romantic story of a fairy prince. But fair maidens don’t fall for beasts. I know how the story goes.” There was disdain in his voice. Disdain, for me, as if I were too stupid not to think beyond myths and fables!

  I picked up a rock and dashed it on the stones in front of him, and then I stormed off to learn magic, whether anyone liked it or not.

  Chapter 11

  When I returned to the house, Violet was sitting in the kitchen by the woodstove, arms crossed and feet splayed out. Her face was dry, but it looked like she’d been a bit weepy herself. She looked up at me with the very same doleful expression Erris gave when things weren’t going well-eyelids slightly lowered, brown eyes soulful. The family resemblance had never been so clear.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “Where’s Celestina?”

  “She had things to do outside, she said.”

  “Well, all right.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I started to go.

  “Are you really going to learn magic?” Violet asked.

  “Yes. I am. Someone must do something.”

  “Can I learn with you?”

  I didn’t really want to include her. It was her house, however, and her father’s books I’d be searching for information, so it felt wrong to tell her no. “I don’t know how far I’ll really get,” I said.

  “We should ask Erris for help,” Violet suggested.

  “Erris is in no mood to help anyone. He just wants to be alone every waking second. And even if he says yes, it won’t do me one bit of good, will it, because I am not a fairy.” I knew I was being snappish, but I just didn’t care to be nice at the moment.

  Violet’s eyes widened at my tone. She coughed, and she was rarely capable of coughing just once or twice. It was as if she had to reach down and give her lungs a good resettling before she was done. Sometimes I think she only coughed when she felt like it, to remind us all she was sick and fragile.

  “It’s no wonder he wants to be alone,” she said. “You’re so sour.”

  “I’m not sour!”

  “You didn’t like me from the start.”

  “Because you’re spoiled, and you act like a child.”

  “Then tell me how to act like a woman!” Violet suddenly tore from her chair and ran up the stairs, coughing and crying at once.

  I wished I weren’t wearing trousers. I didn’t feel prepared for womanly instruction in them. Well, I’d be a poor choice to help her anyway. I wasn’t even a woman from this continent, and I certainly knew little about fairies. I sat down by the woodstove in the chair Violet had just vacated, yet I felt unsettled. Should I go after her?

  Celestina, with her trousers and pickles and apple pie, was obviously growing into the sort of woman who would probably make a good rustic wife and mother, but I wasn’t that sort of woman, and I doubted Violet was either. Was it possible she had said those things because she truly wished I would talk to her? Was that why she’d asked me about falling in love?

  I went upstairs. I found her flung onto her bed, face buried in the pillow, but door open, the classic pose of the young woman who hopes someone will notice her despair.

  “Violet,” I said.

  “I wish Ifra had been able to kidnap me!”

  “Ifra? You know his name?”

  “I asked his name before he left. Maybe he would have tried harder to kidnap me if I hadn’t been wearing hair bows. He probably doesn’t think I’m anybody.”

  “Violet, you really don’t want him to think you’re anybody, and I don’t think you want to be delivered to King Luka. He doesn’t sound like a very pleasant sort of person.”

  “I almost wish Erris hadn’t come to help me get well,” she said. “When I’m sick it doesn’t feel possible to leave the house, so I mostly don’t think of it, but I can’t stand it now. I feel like I could go mad. I don’t want to wait forever, especially if fourteen-year-olds are more grown up than I am!”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I really know how to be a woman, myself. I’m only a few years older than you.”

  “You aren’t wearing hair bows,” Violet said scathingly, yanking at the one still in her hair. The knot refused to release entirely, leaving her with ribbons dangling on her shoulder.

  “But do we want to be proper women? Women in Lorinar don’t learn magic, and that’s what I think we should do.”

  “Yes. All right.” She still looked sulky, but it seemed to cheer her up enough to slide off the bedspread.

  We went upstairs to look for Ordorio’s magic books. There was still the locked door, which Violet rattled irritab
ly, but I pointed to the next room. “I saw some books here. We can find the key for this door later.”

  The books in the other room, alas, proved to be things like histories of Lorinar and encyclopedias of herb usage-perhaps useful at another time, but not for learning magic.

  We went downstairs. Celestina was back and kneading dough in a bowl.

  “Where were you two?” she asked. She sounded a little cross, like she knew perfectly well.

  “Nimira was just talking to me about things,” Violet said. “I was upset.”

  Celestina nodded. This seemed to appease her a bit. Maybe she was relieved I had talked to Violet.

  I hadn’t realized how cold the upstairs had been until I was near the heavenly warmth of the woodstove again. Erris really should be by the woodstove, drying out. I stared out the window for a long moment, willing him to return.

  “Where is Erris?” Celestina said, apparently reading my mind. “It’s cold out there.”

  I had a sudden image of Erris’s wet gears clogging with ice, trapping him in a cold prison, and I shuddered.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My throat was tight. “He wants to be alone.”

  “I wonder if he wants to be alone as much as he thinks he does,” Celestina said. “When I burned myself, I said I wanted to be alone, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want people to look at me the way they did. He must feel kind of burned all over.”

  I nodded slowly. “I just don’t know how to… I mean… I feel like he already hates me sometimes.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Violet said. “He talks about you. He says you’re such a good singer.”

  That was almost worse. I didn’t want to be just a “good singer.” “I mean in some deep down way,” I said.

  I couldn’t tell them how Erris and I had argued, how I felt or how I thought he felt. My pride was like a web of knots encasing me, holding everything in, and while the tension could be uncomfortable, it was more terrifying to think of everything spilling out.

  “I know he doesn’t hate you,” Celestina said. “I see how he looks at you.”

  “How does he look at me?”

  “I don’t know. He just looks happy.”