Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (22 page)

“That’s a lot of . . . things.”

“You have experience.”

Older than Raea
, he had said. How many thousands—millions?—of years was that? I lean against the bed frame, taken aback by the enormity of the idea. I only remember a handful of years. I can’t absorb the idea of missing
so many
others.

Arrice bellows up the stairs, calling me for something I can’t quite hear—a visitor?—and my mind reels backward. My joints stiffen.

Franc can’t see Fyel. I can only assume that’s also true of Arrice, Cleric Tuck, and all of the other people wandering around Carmine or Cerise or Dī as a whole.

But Allemas can.

Allemas
can
.

“Why can Allemas see you?” I ask, my voice strengthening. I don’t care if Franc hears me. “Why can Allemas see you if the others cannot? How are we three connected?”

“You are so close, Maire,” he says, and that smile is gone, as if it never were. “Remember who you are.”

“How?” I shout it. I am so sick of all the half-truths, all the mysteries swirling like living shadows inside me.

“Maire?” Franc calls from the next room.

Fyel frowns.

Dropping to the bed, I grab my wooden boot and strap it on. Fyel doesn’t try to stop me. He told me I need to learn for myself, yes? Then I will learn.

I am not a slave.

I am not a victim.

I am not
this
.

I trudge into the hallway. Franc meets me at the door. Allemas lies supine on the bed.

“What are—” Franc starts.

“I’ll watch him first,” I say, my tone more curt than it should be toward my dear friend. “Go downstairs.”

“What?”

“
Go.
I need to be alone with him. I’ll be fine. Go.”

Franc eyes me, mutters a “Fine with me,” and leaves the room.

I enter it and slam the door behind me. Fyel does not follow. Franc does not return. Allemas does not open his eyes.

“Wake up.” I say.

Allemas lies still.

I march to him, my splinted right foot thunking on the floorboards. “I said
wake up
!”

Nothing.

I grab the front of his still-damp coat. “Open your eyes, Allemas! Tell me how you know him, how you know
me
! Tell me what you are!”

He stirs.

I have never inflicted intentional harm on anything. Not on the people around me, not on animals, not even on the insects that so love to taste my wares.

But I slap him.

I bring my palm down hard across his pale face, and my hand stings when it connects.

“Who. Are. You?” I grab his coat again. “
What
are you?”

His breathing stays even. He stirs but doesn’t wake. Doesn’t answer.

I utter every curse I know and release him before grabbing fistfuls of my own hair. I crouch, elbows on my knees. Think. Think.
Think.

I try to remember everything I can about Allemas. The slave pens where I met him, the house where he held me prisoner, never fully explored. The customers we served. The maze in the forest where he left me for so long. Where did he go each day? How did he travel? What
is
he?

I picture his house. The blazeweed surrounding it. He knew I would try to escape. It was his cage for me. The kitchen, unstocked. Did he live there? Only sometimes? The dark, empty cellar. The unfurnished front room. My bedroom with its dozen locks and bricked window. His room—I’d only ever entered it once, to grab a clean change of clothes. What else was there? What could he be hiding? What were in the closets—

Vertigo and nausea strike me. I fall onto my knees, colors swirling beneath them.

And then I’m there.

I’m . . .
here
.

Slowly, stiffly, I stand, face to face with weathered wood and an unmade bed and the smells of age and forest.

I am in Allemas’s house.

The men on horses find all the people from all the places and I am looking and looking at all the faces.

CHAPTER 25

I stand, tree still, for a long time.

I want to believe I’m dreaming, but dreams feel so different from reality, and this is very real. Even so, I walk to the window and peer outside, seeing the forest where the trap injured my leg. Seeing a setting sun unhindered by clouds, a little higher than it should be. How far must this place be from Carmine if the night hasn’t yet touched it?

But, more importantly,
how did I get here
?

I spin around, half expecting Allemas to come through the door or crawl out from under the bed. Holding my breath, I listen, but no creaks or footsteps sound in the house. It is early, silent save for the faint buzz of forest bugs beyond the walls. The crickets have begun to sing.

Did I will myself here? The way I will cakes, the way I’ve, many times now, willed Allemas?

I shake my head, though there is no one there to see it. No—those sensations, that flying sickness. I’ve felt that every time Allemas has transported me somewhere with his unseen magic. Did
he
bring me here? Is there something he wants me to see?

But would Allemas
ever
send me somewhere where I wouldn’t be under his direct supervision?

Is he that broken?

I take a deep breath, then another, and walk to the other side of the room. The floorboards groan beneath my weight. Allemas’s simple bed is here, the same as before. I’m not sure he’s ever slept in it. There’s a headboard as well, empty save for dust. A closet. Sparse.

I move to the closet and open its door, looking inside. There are a few clothes hanging up. I pull each garment from its hanger and rifle through the pockets, pat down seams for anything hidden. I find nothing but a piece of copper, which I pocket.

I move to the bed and search the covers. Double-check the headboard. I walk over each floorboard, testing for loose ones, anywhere Allemas may have hidden something, but my search comes up fruitless.

I don’t understand.

I sit on the end of the bed and clasp my hands before me. I had been thinking of this house when I came here. I
wanted
to be here. But the entire time I was held prisoner here, I wanted desperately to return to Carmine . . . If I’m the one who sent myself here, why didn’t this power work before?

No, not Carmine. I wanted to be with Arrice and Franc
, I think. I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t know if they were
alive
.

I lean forward, worrying my lip, and the crystal in my breast-binds pricks my chest. Straightening, I pull it out and study its disproportionate sculpting. I turn it over and over in my hands, wondering.

Can I do it again?

I close my eyes and think of my bakeshop. I picture its shelves, its meager display. I imagine the smell of browned butter and flour, the broken windows, the clouds outside.

I gasp as the nausea assaults me again, stronger this time, and clutch the crystal. I can’t risk losing it. I grit my teeth, my stomach flopping, until the world stills and I fall back onto my rump, the bed gone from beneath me.

I breathe deep, swallow, and breathe again, coaxing the sickness down. Open my eyes to thin twilight. A storm-kissed chill caresses the bare skin of my arms.

The bakeshop.

I shoot up to my feet, stumbling as I fight against vertigo. “Good gods,” I murmur, staring at my locked front door. Turning slowly, I take in the place, which looks exactly as I left it earlier that day. I touch the wall. Solid.
How?
Do I move the way Fyel does, by merely appearing?

I look down at the crystal in my hands. Could it be . . . ?

Hurrying to the back of the shop, I fix myself a glass of water and drink it slowly to settle my stomach. I wish I had some ginger, but Allemas didn’t bring me any, and I don’t yet have the funds to make the order myself.

I kneel, clunky with my wooden boot, readying myself. My fists tighten around the crystal, one above the other.

All right, let’s try this.
The forest labyrinth. I don’t understand the spells controlling that place, but I built the house with my own hands. I think of white icing and gingerbread and a glade among the trees—

The dizzying, wrenching sensation hits me as hard as though I’ve belly flopped into a shallow stream, and I feel at once as if I’m not supposed to be doing this—this magic. Or, rather, that I might be too human for it.

But I do not relent. I drop my head down. Clench my jaw. Pinch my lips. Tighten my hold on the crystal into a white-knuckle grip.

The floor under my feet grows soft. Grass tickles my good ankle and my forehead. The scents of confections change to the scents of sun-hot leaves and earth. Sunlight burns my neck.

I open my eyes, marveling at the grass growing in my shadow. This time I’m slower to get up, and I wait for my head to stop spinning before I lift it.

The glade. Early afternoon. This place is even farther from Carmine than Allemas’s house.

I let out all my breath. It takes me a moment to collect the rest of my thoughts.

It still stands, the gingerbread house. Just as I left it, though smoke churns up from its biscotti chimney, white and soft against the pale sky. Birds chatter in the trees around me. I find one foot, then the other, and stand. I’m near the well. I surpassed the spelled maze. I’m
here
.

I stare at my crystal and the prism of colors the sunlight creates on its surface. “What
are
you?” I whisper.

The sound of children’s laughter draws my focus to another part of the glade, opposite of where I first found the crystal. Two children, a young boy and younger girl, dart from the trees, their gaze glued to the gingerbread house. The hem of the boy’s pants and the apron over the girl’s skirt are soiled. They look famished.

“Wait!” I call, limping toward them. They hesitate, ogling me with wide eyes. Whether it’s because I startled them or because of my appearance, I’m not sure. Both, I imagine. But these are obedient children and they heed me. They’re thin but bright eyed. Their hands are clasped, and I smile at that, though I can’t imagine how they managed to find their way here.

I think of Allemas’s customer and say, “You shouldn’t be here.”

The little girl looks at the house longingly but doesn’t speak.

“W-We’re lost,” the boy says.

I glance down to the crystal. “Come here.”

They don’t move.

“I promise I won’t hurt you,” I say, offering them a smile. “Best get out of the sun, or you’ll be as red as me.” I move toward them and crouch, putting one arm around each. I slip the crystal over the boy’s shoulder and tell him to grasp its end.

“I want you to think very hard of home, and hold on tight, okay?”

The boy nods, focused on my eyes.

“You, too,” I address the girl. “This isn’t where you should be.”

The boy closes his eyes, and as soon as she sees him do so, the girl follows suit. The glade around us ripples, slower than I’m used to, but the motion gains strength until green and brown blur together, until the birds become a quick screech, until I press my tongue against my palate to keep the contents of my stomach down.

And we stop in the crook of a very old tree. Far ahead I see a small, shabby house, unpainted, with a tall stack of firewood leaning against its side.

The girl begins to cry.

The boy releases me and hugs her, resting his chin on her shoulder, staring down to the hard-packed ground. I look ahead to the unlit house, free of chimney smoke. My stomach sours.

“Where are your parents?” I ask.

The boy looks up at me, his arms still embracing his sister. He doesn’t answer at first, but I wait, and after a minute he says, “Dead.”

The sunlight turns cold. “Both?” I whisper.

The boy buries his face in his sister’s hair.

I swallow, noticing again the gauntness of the children’s features and the loose fit of their ragged clothes. Orphaned . . . and for how long? The sight of that gingerbread house must have enticed them greatly.

“Do you have any other family?” I try.

The boy shakes his head. The girl cries silently into his shirt.

I lick my lips, taking in the two children. Arrice and Franc are getting too old to take in more strays, and we haven’t the money to—

Part of my memory, separate from the darkness, sparks. Crouching down again, I offer the children the crystal and say, “I know where you’ll be taken care of. Would you like to go?”

The girl turns her red-splotched face toward me and eyes the crystal. She nods once.

“Hold on,” I instruct, and once we’re nestled together, I think of gingerbread—not the house in the woods, but the dough rolled out on a narrow countertop under the supervision of a loving, childless woman. I think of her sweet-scented walls and careful decorations, her sloping roof and tinted door window.

We appear on the street, and a man down the lane starts, stares, then looks around to see if anyone else saw us materialize. Ignoring him, I point to the blue house with the peeling paint.

“The woman who lives there is named Daneen, and she’s very nice. She’s been expecting you,” I half fib. “Go knock on the door and tell her Maire sent you, okay?”

The boy looks at me with quivering eyes.

“I promise it will be all right. Go on. Aren’t you hungry?”

He glances to his sister, who presses a hand against her small belly. Grasping her other hand, he walks the two of them up to the blue house as I backtrack down the road, stepping nearly out of sight. After a long moment the door swings open. I can just barely see Daneen’s forehead and skirt as the little boy talks to her. She gasps and ushers them in, leaving me smiling.

“You just appeared,” the man from down the street says behind me, scaring me. I turn toward him as he says, “I saw you. You’re different. Where did you come from? How—”

I clutch the crystal and disappear, stumbling when the glade again appears around me. I press a hand to my belly just as the little girl had, kneading it, urging it to be well. I stare at my greatest creation for a long time—the gingerbread, biscotti, date bars, and marshmallows—before pocketing the crystal and walking up to it. The windows are dark and show no movement, but I avoid them anyway.

Pressing my palms to the sheetwork, I ponder slavery and sickness and heartache and think,
Be bitter
. I feel the sourness flow out of me and into the edible house. This place will entice no more children.

I reach into my pocket and thumb the crystal.
You must find the other
, Fyel’s voice echoes in my mind, bouncing off the dark void within it.

“Other? There’s another crystal like this?”

I lean into the stale gingerbread to stay upright.

Another crystal.

Allemas. That’s how he did this.

Allemas has it.

I remember the sound of something hard hitting the floor when Franc and I dropped Allemas onto the bed. I hadn’t seen anything, but the crystals are nearly transparent, and the shadows beneath my bed are so dark—

“I know where it is,” I whisper, and no amount of nausea can keep me from thinking of
home
, of my room with Allemas lain up on my bed, of my closet and my trunk and the small table that holds my candle. I picture its every crevice and nook, the height of the ceiling, the smell of Arrice’s cooking wafting out from under the door. I’m so focused that I barely notice the churning of my stomach or the spinning of my head.

I’m there, crouching on the wooden floor, listening to the sounds of Arrice and Franc and Cleric Tuck outside, calling my name, searching for me.

But I don’t heed their voices.

Allemas.

He still slumbers in my bed. Shadows line the walls and the furniture. The last residues of cloud-choked twilight seep through the window.

I put my hands against the floor, my right still gripping the crystal, and crawl forward.

Allemas’s breathing sounds like a drum in my ears. It isn’t even. He isn’t asleep. Or, at least, not deeply. Not anymore.

A board creaks under my knee. I freeze. Listen. He stirs. A sigh escapes his lips.

I shift forward until my shoulder hits the base of the bed; then I lower myself onto my belly. I move the crystal to my left hand and reach out blindly with my right, running my fingertips over the floorboard. Dust clings to my clammy skin. I touch the hairpin, the piece of charcoal.

I inch farther, wedging myself as far as I can into the narrow space between the bed and the floor. Hold my breath. Reach.

I feel the tip of something glassy. My pulse speeds. Straining, stretching, I pinch it between the first knuckles of my index and middle finger and drag it out from beneath the bed.

Now that my eyes have adjusted to the weak light, I can see it: a crystal identical to mine. I marvel and pick it up.

Fyel, I found—

Both crystals buzz in my hands, vibrating faster and faster until they begin to sing, until they glow a pale fuchsia. I stare, blank, and open my hands.

They fly from my palms, arch through the air, and shoot down into my arms just above my elbows, piercing through skin, muscle, and bone.

I scream, my vision red as they drill down, tearing and shredding and ripping and searing. Hot blood bubbles up from their destruction, and for a moment I’m blind, deaf, and numb, touching a world gray and black and endless.

And then they clamp, and my skin suctions, and the crystals grow and stretch and bloom, forming long stems and feather-like petals. The crystals ripple, almost as if liquefying, and I recognize them. They’re just like Fyel’s.

Wings.

And it’s like the roof collapses on top of me, like the now-passed storm rushes down my throat, like a key has finally turned in an old and rusted lock. The black space in my mind shatters.

I remember.

I remember
everything
.

“Maire!” Fyel yells. He’s above me, his wings outstretched, his back to the ceiling, his hand extended toward me.