Page 39 of Echo North

“What is the oldest magic?”

“Love. That is what created the universe, and that is what will destroy it, in the end. Threads of old magic, binding the world together.”

I watched him in the shifting light, his eyes fixed on some faraway point I couldn’t see.

“The North Wind gave away his power to be with a human. That is how it began.”

“How what began?”

A low growl came from the wolf’s throat. “All of this,” he said heavily.

I blinked back out into hurtling stars. “Then it’s his fault.”

“Fault? No. He held on to the thing he loved. It is more than I ever did.”

“Wolf.” I stretched out a hand to touch the scruff of fur on his neck, and he didn’t pull away. I tugged the ribbon on the hat, thinking he hadn’t quite answered my question. “What did you lose? Who did you love?”

“Nothing. No one.”

But his eyes saidEverything. Someone.

He sighed, a long huff of air.

“I wish you would let me help you.”

He buried his muzzle in the crook of my arm. “My lady, you cannot help me.”

But I didn’t believe him.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUTthe old magic?” I asked Mokosh.

We stood in a castle’s high tower that was open to the air, while dwarves sailed above us in ships that somehow flew, painting the sky with swathes of swirling light. That book world had no moon or stars; without the dwarves’ brushes, the darkness would be complete.

In the castle below, a centaur-king was having a party, and the whisper and rush of cymbals and strings drifted up to us.

“Magic is in everything,” said Mokosh matter-of-factly. She finished the painting she’d been working on with one last flourish of her brush—it was a view from the tower, dwarves and flying ships and all. I stood before an easel as well, but I wasn’t a painter, and had given up after only a few brushstrokes, alternating watching Mokosh and the sky instead. She glowered at her canvas. “My mother would hate this.”

“I think it’s beautiful.”

Mokosh waved my comment away. “Shall we go down and join the party?”

“I’m not much of a dancer,” I confessed, trying not to think about my father and Donia’s wedding, or the various village holidays I spent lurking in the background, because no one wanted to dance with a girl marked by the Devil.

“Oh, then I’ll teach you! It’s the easiest thing in the world. Here.” She grabbed my arms and moved me to the center of the tower, just as the white underbelly of a dwarf ship sailed overhead. It gleamed like it was made out of pearls. “All you have to do is listen to the music and move your feet, you see?”

She steered me around while I tripped over her spectacularly, until I began to learn, little by little, what to do.

“Stepback,” she said. “To the side, then forward. That’s it! You’re not entirely hopeless, you see?”

I let the music sink into me, and after a while the movements became more natural. High up in the tower, it seemed like everything was dancing, the flying ships and the dwarves’ paintbrushes and Mokosh and I, all part of the same intricate pattern.

“Is there magic where you come from?” I asked Mokosh, when we’d grown tired of dancing and sank to the floor opposite each other. The stones beneath us hummed with music.

“Certainly there is. My mother couldn’t rule without it.”

“And theoldmagic,” I pressed. “The magic that governs the world—do you have that kind?”

Mokosh frowned. “My mother has the most magic of anyone. Of course she has the old magic, too.”