Page 113 of The Moorwitch
No matter what, keep your eyes on me.
The faerie queen had called the revel an “homage,” her people’s celebration of her rule. I had forgotten, but now the words echo through me again. Of course Lachlan would not know these steps, he who was thrown out of Elfhame on the day Morgaine became its queen. I doubt he would bend his pride to learn them, for it would mean acknowledging the crown on his sister’s head. No doubt whenheruled Elfhame, the spell was some other form of homage tohim, a dance or some other pattern that would only be known to those who had paid tribute to him before.
I dance round and round the circle, hardly paying attention to the thread, not thinking of where I will spin next or what stone I will twist my knot around. It justhappens, the spell part of the dance, the dance part of me.
Soon there is a web strung across the circle, layers of thread glittering like spun silver. The dance takes even these into account, spinning or lowering me just at the right moment, so that I pass within a handsbreadth of the threads without disturbing them.
Faintly, I wonder how I must look. If someone came wandering out of the wood and saw me whirling about in silence, eyes half shut, spinning thread like a spider, they would think me possessed.
The dance is accelerating now, reaching a crescendo. The steady flow of it becomes a heady, tumbling cascade, faster and wilder, more demanding. I must leap over threads, then duck beneath them, keeping my line taut. Some stretch above my head; others so low in the grass I cannot even see them, but the dance knows they are there. The dance guides me deftly over them. I sense now that if I faltered for a second, if I lost even an ounce of trust in my memory of that night, I’d lose all sense of it entirely. The dance would abandon me and leave me standing in the middle of the dark wood with nothing but a pile of strings. It is as much a test of faith as a pattern for magic. It will show me the way, but only if I am worthy of it.
My wrists are feeling the exertion, the bandages loosened by my movements. One ribbon unwinds entirely and drifts to the ground; the other hangs in loose tatters.
I can’t stop for them, or for anything else. My heart, strangely, has stopped paining me. I wonder if Lachlan knows I am here and approves of my efforts. Perhaps so long as I stay on his ordained path, it will not trouble me at all.
Ruthlessly, I wrench my thoughts away from the pains, or lack of pain, and scour every conscious thought from my head. I’ve come too far to fail now due to a wandering mind. I let the dance take full control of my limbs, until I am a puppet operated by memory and instinct alone.
And then, all at once, it is done.
I whirl and then stop, my hands above my head, my feet spread, my chest rising and falling as I pant for breath. The spool in my hand is empty, but the last length of thread is caught between my thumb and forefinger. The spell is complete; all it awaits is magic to fuel it. The dance ended with me in the center of the circle, a spider at the middle of her web, surrounded on all sides by crisscrossing white lines, taut and trembling. My exhalation fogs the air and dissipates into the threads, pale and then gone.
Carefully, I tie off the knot, then let the empty wooden spool drop to the grass. Then I reach wide, take hold of the thread to my right and left, and channel.
The old magic of the forest rises to meet me, as if it had been waiting impatiently for this moment, and my invitation. Like a gust of wind through an open doorway it roars into me, and I gasp.
It has beenyearssince I felt a power like this.
Lachlan must have released his hold on me almost entirely, giving me full access to the energy around me for the first time since ...
Since before I ever met him.
I cannot ever recall a strength like this, a torrent of magic rushing through me, with only the slightest reproach from my heart, just enough of a squeeze to remind me that somewhere, leagues distant, the exiled faerie king is still holding the other end of the string that binds me.
Well, curse Lachlan and his plans. It occurs to me that not once since Conrad left me in my room have I thought of how I’ll acquire a branch from the Dwirra.
I’m going to reach Elfhame, I know that now.
And as I release the flood of magic swirling in my heart, my fingertips glowing where it wicks into the threads, I know that when I step through the portal, I will do it not for the faerie king or his followers, or for my stolen heart, or for all the magic in the world. I will do it for the man who gave me silk from the sea. I will save him, as he saved me.
No matter the cost.
No matter what the queen of Elfhame might demand ofme.
Chapter Thirty-Two
My second trip through the portal is nothing like the first, for I do not throw myself headlong but rather step through cautiously. I pass through a shimmering film of light, then turn and see it harden into glass, a great round pane held in a silver frame. It is a much faster and more pleasant experience than telepestry, and I cannot help but wonder how the magic of it works. It seems to be another of the secrets Lachlan has hinted at—the powers fae wield that they do not share with us mortals.
I end up not in the Wenderwood, but in the faerie queen’s palace, in the chamber where Conrad and I escaped the night of the revel. The portal room is deserted, the empty frames in their alcoves the only witnesses to my arrival. I suppose If I’d not come through at the last minute before, I would never have got lost in those horrid trees, hunted by Morgaine’s spider-wolves. I would have arrived here, as the portal intended.
The glass shimmers behind me. Nearly opaque enough to be a mirror, it reflects my pale, startled face back to me, and I see how bedraggled I am, with tears and blood and mud on my dress and arms. I look as if I crawled off a battlefield.
The same warping, impossible hallways wait for me, and I follow blindly, my hand trailing along the left wall so that I do not end upgoing in circles. Every door I find, I open; all the rooms are deserted, though cluttered with the most absurd collections. Pianofortes and suits of armor, looms of gold and beds of silk, indoor gardens, statues of Greek gods, fountains, piles of exquisite clothing, empty birdcages, burning braziers, crystal jewelry; none of it organized, all of it tarnished and faded.
Stopping short when I reach a mirrored dressing room, I step in and find the first thing I recognize here—the gray silk gown with the skirt layered in gauze petals. Conrad must have brought it back after the revel. Hurriedly I wrench off my torn, bloody dress and put on the gown, then pull white gloves from a drawer and tug those over my sore wrists, all the way up to my elbows. At least I don’t look as though I’d been brawling behind a pub. As I finish with a pearl-and-crystal comb to hold up my hair, I glance in the mirrors and think I might just look like a girl capable of bargaining with a faerie queen. The only thing I cannot find are shoes. I leave my filthy boots behind and continue in bare feet.
Hurrying onward, I make out voices echoing ahead, stretched and warped as if heard through a tunnel. I walk more quickly, starting to sweat, my instinct for self-preservation pulling at me like a frightened rider trying to rein in a galloping horse.
What are you doing, you stupid girl? Don’t you know what will happen to you? Go back. Go back now!