Spiral Path (Night Calls Series Book 3) (37 page)

I leaned slightly to one side, looking down the snow-dusted
cobblestone walkway and across drifts covering shrubs and berm. I saw a tiny
puff of wind lift snow crystals, swirl them, and let them collapse back onto
the landscape.

Shaw flicked his wand suddenly. Then the breeze swelled, and
a larger ribbon of snow rose like a waterspout, twisting like a dust devil
before it exploded into white powder. Smaller devils twirled in the path of the
wind, some of them looking like small funnels, others looking briefly like
chaotic balls of yarn.

“Like dancing hoar frost,” I said, remembering the white ice
crystals that formed at home on cold, clear nights when trees and the very
ground were colder than the air.

“There’s always a pattern,” Shaw replied, his attention
focused on the capricious snow. “Find the pattern, and collapse it on itself.
Whichever direction it’s moving? Push it faster, but start with large movements
and make them smaller, tighter. If you can make it so tight there’s nowhere
else to go, then I have another trick to show you.” Turning to look at me, he
added: “You must be fast, to see the pattern. You can do it with heat swirling
above a fire, or water in a stream, or a dust devil. Sometimes you can do it
above a freshly-ploughed field. Pattern and power.”

“Pattern and power,” I repeated, looking out over the snow.
If I swung my arm as if I was making a snow angel . . . .
 
I saw the next snow devil move, a
thicker funnel, and swung my arm like a windmill.

Snow devils rose like morning mist, swirling like
waterspouts, creating a soft ground fog. The new cloud bank rose, taller than
our heads.

“Less power,” Shaw advised. “More focus.”

“How can I be focused and make big movements?” I said,
stopping what I was doing. The snow devils expanded and relaxed into a soft
fall of tiny snowflakes.

“Focus your mind and eyes,” he suggested. “Your arm is just
to wind up, or unwind, what you’re looking at.”

Unwind
? I thought of that bathtub down the hall from
my room, the water careening about as it hurried down a hidden pipe. If I
pictured moving it backwards . . . .

The next gust of wind scooped up snow in a wave, swirling it
like water in a cup. I watched the movement, seized the snow devil, and froze
it, just for a moment. Then it whipped back around like water swirling
counter-clockwise. Finally the snow devil collapsed into snowflakes.

“That made more sense,” I said aloud, suddenly cold.

There was silence—even the children were quiet—and then Shaw
said, “Did you realize that you didn’t use your arm to do that?”

I touched the wand in my pocket, and looked at him.

“I do that, too,” he added. “You see exactly what you want
in your mind, and you make it happen. We have to be careful about that. If we
don’t give it limits . . . .”

“Magic must have limits. Or it’s like a whirling wind,” I
said promptly. “There’s no way to know where it will strike.”

“You saw it collapsing after it whirled back around, didn’t
you?” he asked.

I thought my way through it. “Yes.”

Cousin Esme’s warm voice suddenly intruded. “That is common
for practitioners who prefer their left hands for work.” She had come up behind
us. “It does not surprise me that you can learn how to do this inside your
mind, without moving your hand or wand.” In a low voice she added: “It can be
very useful to have a practitioner in a group who can wind energy with the mind
alone.”

A sudden gust of wind sprayed us with fine icy pellets.

“Try again,” Shaw said, looking back out over the cold,
glittering lawn. “Pattern and power. Wind it to the right—faster, tighter.”

Cousin Esme walked away from us again.

It took eight tries, but I got it. I had to watch for a snow
devil and then seize it before it either collapsed or flitted away into the
air. Then I pretended I was winding yarn, and it worked, once I thought about
making that first tiny core of wool.

Once I was winding and unwinding with snow devils, Shaw
asked: “Can you do it without a snow devil? Just grab some lines of power and
wind them up?”

I found myself wishing I had stuffed extra biscuits into my
pockets before leaving breakfast. The edible biscuits, not the roaring ones. . . .

As if I had spoken, Shaw dug into another pocket, pulled out
a folded handkerchief, and handed it to me. I unwrapped it and found several
pieces of venison jerky inside. I took a piece, and flipped the handkerchief
back over the remaining pieces. As he took back the packet, I nodded my thanks
and bit carefully into the hank of dried meat.

Soft and seasoned just right. His mother had a good touch
with jerky.

I studied the snowbank, watching the wind spray snow
flurries into the air and then sprinkle ice crystals in a shimmering veil.
Somewhere beyond that frozen landscape was a woven mat of golden threads,
binding the universe together.

Death had taught me how to look for the weaving of life. I
could find those threads, weave those threads in new ways . . . .

Break those threads.

It was easier in dreams, or when you ate a certain kind of
mushroom. But it could be done by, well . . . just softening
your gaze.

I let my vision go unfocused this time, allowing my mind to
wander.

First there was a golden glow, as if late afternoon summer
light was filtered through the tree branches. Then slender threads of power
sprang into place, as if someone had flipped a bolt of Highland plaid across everything
before us. The gleaming threads of silver and gold were flexible, filling
hollows and arcing over hills, swirling in spots.

I wondered what the swirls meant. They meant something; of
that I was sure.

I looked for a place where the lines seemed to run through
the air and did not touch a tree. Then I reached with my mind and poked at a
thread. It vibrated, like the string of Shaw’s violin. The buzz was pleasant.

I grabbed a string of light and whipped it around, as if I
was trying to coil it up. Strange sounds echoed in my head, a hive of busy
bees. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just odd. Suddenly I had golden thread wrapped
into a loose bundle, like the flax on the distaff of a spinning wheel. I was
going backwards for spinning, except . . . I was spinning a
shell!

But where did the snail start? Did it find something to
begin its shell?

I remembered the tiny balls of dough in my right palm.

Holding the image of my golden distaff in my mind, trembling
with the effort, I dropped one ball of dough from my right hand into the palm
of my left. Then I touched a loose thread to the dough ball.

The dough exploded into dust.

Somehow I hung onto my weaving of light, although the end of
the thread flickered like a firefly. I knew I had another dough ball, so I
cupped my palms to drop dough into my palm once again. This time I tried
looping the thread back into a slipknot, and lassoing the ball.

Gently . . . .

I rolled the dough to my fingertips and back to my palm,
pretending I was tangling the center of a ball of yarn. Finally it was large
enough that I could start winding figure-eights, shifting the dough a twitch
each pass, making the tiny energy package bigger and bigger.

“Allie, I think you can stop winding now.” Shaw’s voice was
very calm, but the sudden pop of my name made me think he really wanted me to
leave off what I was doing.

I held onto the dough ball, and released the soft distaff of
remaining energy back into the sky.

My palm was full of light. It was like a golden river
pebble, smooth and solid. I looked over at Shaw.

He reached carefully and held his gloved hand above mine.

Did I imagine it, or did he wince slightly?

“That’s good,” he said aloud. “Now check to see what you
have.”

“I have a ball of light,” I told him.

He relaxed, an exhalation of tension. “Oh, you can see the
energy? Then you know what’s there.” He looked over at Cousin Esme, who was
back on the bench. “The dough was a good idea, better than a pebble.”

“Much better,” she said softly. “The dough dissolves into a
puff of flour once you have used the energy attached to it. A pebble could be
reused, but it also might burst the next time you tried to use it. A gem is
much harder, and safer as a focus of power. Noble metal also carries energy
well. But something solid could carry your unique energy signature, and
possibly be used against you.”

As if I would ever have noble metal—

That meant a coin
could be used for storage!

I would never pick up a penny off the street, never, ever—

Shaw had given me that halfpenny.

I had a ball of energy in my pocket . . . .

“What can I do with this spell?” I asked aloud.

“Store energy. Store an entire spell someday,” Shaw replied.

“How long does it last?”

Shaw turned his head sharply, surprised. “I . . .
I don’t know. I’ve tucked spells inside items for several days.”

Ah. So you can carry energy with you. That could be handy.

Not that I was planning to need that energy . . . not that I knew
how to tap it . . . .

“Do you carry extra energy because you might be too tired to
pull it from the air?” I went on.

“A practitioner might not have a wand, but she could have
jewelry, or tobacco, or a compounded pill, or—”

“A dough ball,” I finished, smiling. “Without a wand, what
would most folks do with their tiny spell?”

“Say a word, make a gesture, recite a verse—lots of things
can ignite a spell. And if worse comes to worst—” Shaw held out his hand for
the dough ball.

I dropped it onto his palm. He swung his arm, flinging it
into the snow between the manor and the carriage house.

The snow burst like corn from a fireplace, tossing white
powder into the air. Ice misted at least six feet above the ground.

Well, that’s
disturbing.

“Yes,” Shaw said, and I realized I had spoken aloud.

“It must be simple,” Margaret said, the “t’s” in her words
cutting. The empty kitchen echoed slightly—not the actual words, but a tone,
humming like a struck bell.

It will be
. It had
to be—the children sentenced to kitchen duty might be willing, but other than
Daniel and James, their ability to be useful was unknown. At least Daniel could
make oatmeal, and James could clean.

I shook my head to clear it, and tried to focus. My entire
day had been a struggle. The magic spiral still vibrated within me, inviting me
to join its dance.

“Do you know how to cook anything?” I asked as we walked
into the deserted kitchen, its clean butcher block tables sanded, its floors
swept and washed down. The huge roasting fireplace was banked for the night.

Somehow all week I had resisted that question, but now I
needed to know. In all our discussions about food, Margaret had never so much
as suggested she could boil water without scorching the teakettle.

My attention shifted to the wall where the soups and stews
were made, a brick ledge waist high and more than arm deep, running the length
of the wall, every half foot or so a rectangular opening with a woven cast-iron
trivet inset above a pit of unlit charcoal. Gleaming copper stock pots sat upon
the cast iron trivets, like soldiers in a row.

This could work . . . .

“I can make macaroons and pound cake.”

I turned my head toward her, and found Margaret had closed
her eyes.

She sounded a little desperate, as if she was leaping for a
rope while falling into a creek.

“Those skills will be very useful,” I assured her.

Margaret sighed and opened her eyes. “I have written down
everything Mrs. Gardener told us,” she said, looking down at the notebook she
was carrying. “We could have as many as one hundred sixty people a meal, but
they never allow the Saturday group to plan for more than eighty.”

“Less food to feed the pigs when things go wrong,” I said,
running a finger along the top of a copper pot. What an amazing pot. It would
be an heirloom in my family.

“I would imagine so.” She took a deep breath. “I simply want
to survive this day and put it into the past as quickly as possible.”

I caressed the huge cast iron kettle Mrs. Gardener used for
hot cereal. “We are going to live out of soup pots, Margaret Rutledge,” I
announced. “I am going to teach you how to make lentil soup and a winter beef
stew.”
But there is nothing to do on
Saturday except eat hidden treats or go hungry . . .
“The curious will come,” I
went on. “Daniel Williams has told the children that I will teach them how to
make biscuits.”

Margaret actually looked more pale than usual. “Miss Alden
has told me she looks forward to seeing what I make for Saturday.” Her
expression became set, flinty, as my mother liked to say, determined beyond
common sense. “She hoped that the chaos could be kept to a minimum.”

My own lips tightened. Those were fighting words.

I had yet to face them, and I was already tired of Miss
Alden and Miss Bradford.

Maybe I knew nothing of fashion, but I could make a meal.

I set a hand on her arm. “We know what we will make. You
could make cookies for dessert, tiny ones. Is there really a lot of dried
coconut?”

“There is a fortune in dried coconut,” she said in a low
voice. “And no limit on spices or herbs. I never made the connection between
having a maze and the ability to get supplies cheaply!”

“I would be surprised if there are not mazes dedicated to
going places like the Spice Islands,” I replied. “If it is really just opening
a door, and the same amount of effort opens it . . . . ”

“More energy for more distance,” Margaret said absently,
still examining her notes. “It is not easy to do, thankfully. Or else armies
would move through mazes.”