Page 126 of The Moorwitch

So I do the only thing I can: I let go of the guide thread and lunge at him. I grab Lachlan by the rim of his breastplate and then push with all my strength. He gives me one startled look before I shove him through entirely, back into the bedroom.

The tapestry crumbles the moment he’s gone, its magic spent. It’ll be no more than a pile of ashes, now.

Turning back to the others, I see them watching me with clear terror in their eyes. Captain whines, his tail between his legs. I remember my own overwhelmed senses the first time I walked through the thread-world and know they must be feeling the same thing. Even Sylvie, for all her bravado, looks afraid.

“It’s all right,” I say, my voice warped and distant in my ears, as if sound does not operate by the same rules here as in the real world.

“Where are we?” breathes Mrs. MacDougal.

“The world is a tapestry woven by the Fates,” I tell her. “And we have crossed to the other side of it.”

“Bloody hell. Well, can you get us out again?”

“I . . .”

I look all around for the guide thread that would have led us to the ruined castle—no further out of Lachlan’s reach, in the end, but with more time to think of something else.

But the thread is gone, lost to the flow of millions around us. Nothing is familiar here; this place is always changing. One might as well search for a familiar ripple on a river’s current.

“Come on,” I urge queasily. “And whatever you do,touch nothing. These threads are forbidden to all.”

At least we are alive. At least Lachlan cannot reach us here.

But what if I never find a way out? I have only minutes before Lachlan’s debt comes due and I pay for it with my life. Will that leave Sylvie and the MacDougals to wander the wrong side of reality until they die?

“If we just keep going,” I say, “we have to find a—ugh!”

I squeeze Sylvie’s hand as a mighty splinter of pain opens through my body; I feel I am cracking in two, head to foot. The spasm lasts longer than any have before, and I hear the distant, rattling sound of my own scream echoing back to my ears.

Lachlan must be doing this, wrenching the noose he’s tied around my heart. I can feel his fury in the fire that spreads through me and know I don’t have much time left before I succumb entirely to it.

I pry my eyes open, feeling nauseated. The others are clustered around me, alarmed and at a loss. Captain pushes his nose against my arm, as if trying to spur me to my feet.

“Help me up,” I croak.

I hobble onward, shuddering and fighting to stay conscious, the pain a swirling red whirlpool sucking at my feet. All it would take is a single moment of weakness and I would tumble into it for good, sinking deeper and deeper until I am obliterated entirely.

Deliriously, I begin to think the thread-world is no true place at all, but a manifestation of the pain inside me, and that I’ve dragged all of us into the pit of my own madness. I stumble forward, onward. And all around us, all the while, the threads of the world pulse and writhe.

I gradually become aware of a hand in mine, and I look down to see a small girl, not Sylvie, holding on to me. Her brown hair hangs in loose curls, her freckles stark against her porcelain face. She is so familiar, from her upturned nose to her clever little fingers to the spool tucked in her pocket.

“We’re going to die in here,” she says.

I shake my head. “Have to keep moving.”

“It was always going to end this way for us. Alone, powerless, and—don’t you remember our ninth fault?—fearful. Perhaps that’s all we are. Perhaps when you unravel us down to our weft, fear is the only thread left.”

“I still have my magic.”

“No, we don’t. We couldn’t summon a thimbleful of energy now. What point is there of going onward? Even if we make it out, what good are we to anyone? We are whatshesaid we always were: a mouse. Weak and stupid and unworthy. Magic is not for the faint of heart.”

Her words whittle away my courage. “Please stop!”

But she clings to me like a leech. “We should hide. Bury deep into these threads. Let go of the others. Let them find their own way through. We cannot help them.”

“I’m not you anymore. I stopped being you the day I left the house on Wimpole Street.”

“Wrong!” Her voice is shrill in my ear. “I’ve been your truest self ever since that day! Every decision you made,Imade for you. I kept youalive, till you went and bungled off in your own direction. Whydidn’t you just give the branch to the faerie? Then we would be free! I could have kept us safe!”