“It’s an airship,” Nessy said. “It’s how I got here.”
“How does it work?”
“Well, first it needs fuel,” she said. She opened a water skin she had brought and began pouring its contents into a metal keg behind the seats. When she had emptied three water skins into the keg, she straightened.
“Now, I’ll sit in the front, and you sit in the other seat, right behind me. It will be a tight squeeze, but there are ropes on the seats for us to tie our bags down.”
Sitting down firmly in the front seat, Nessy immediately began to tie her bag tightly to part of the wire framework. I did the same thing.
When I had finished tying my bag down, I heard a rapid clicking noise and realized she was cranking on foot pedals under her feet. I looked down and saw that there was a set of foot pedals by my feet as well.
“Want me to pedal, too?” I asked.
Nessy nodded. “We have to get the engine going!” she shouted to me over the clicking. “When steam comes out of that pipe there—“ she pointed—“We can stop pedaling.”
I began pedaling, and soon enough, steam belched forth from the pipe. Nessy gave a satisfied yell and grabbed the steering wheel in front of her—remarkably like a ship’s helm in books—and pulled a brass lever.
To my surprise, the craft moved slowly forward. Nessy gave another happy yell, and shoved the lever all the way.
“Hold on!”
The craft shot forward and up, flinging us into the air as if we had been shot from a slingshot.
“Oh, forgot these!” she yelled, reaching back with one hand to pass me a pair of round, brass-rimmed goggles. I pulled them on and saw she had also donned a pair.
I stared at the land—my home—far below us, somewhere among the spiky pinnacles of rock where we flew. Before us, the sea stretched like a steely blanket. I shivered. The air was cold, and I could feel a few raindrops on my face.
“Like it?’ yelled Nessy.
“Yes!” I gulped. “But it doesn’t seem safe!”
“Airships never do!” she shouted back, and began to laugh.
“No, Nessy! I mean the weather! What about the rain?” It was raining steadily now.
Nessy kept laughing even louder over the rain. “I’ve hidden long enough!” she yelled, but not to me. “You can’t keep me forever, and I’ll not have my son just two breaths away from you any more!”
The gray sea was far below us. I struggled to breathe through the rain in my face. “Nessy? Nessy, what are you talking about?”
“You can’t win forever! I’m coming back for him! We both are!” Her hands on the wheel were pale white from gripping and from the cold.
I could feel the airship straining against the wind. What if it wasn’t strong enough? What if all the years in the cave had weakened it, and it broke? I shuddered as the rain grew still harder. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but still too close to us.
I couldn’t see the sea below, just a mass of gray.
A harsh gust of wind hit us, and right before it tossed us around like a fallen leaf, I heard a metallic clang. Turning around, I saw one of the pipes had burst from its place and now hung at an awkward angle.
“Nessy!” I screamed to her.
She laughed wildly.
“What is the matter with you?” I yelled. The rough ride was making me feel sick.
I had one last resort. Drawing a deep breath, I focused the way I had that day when Temet had left, when I had gone into the water and felt myself controlling the water around me. This was bigger, though, so much bigger.
I felt my palms sweat as I twisted the craft slowly around to point towards home.
Nessy screamed in anger, trying to jerk the craft to its original direction. “It’s broken!” she howled.
I clenched my teeth, guiding the craft towards home, exhilaration flooding through the fear I felt. I could do it! I could do what Temet could do!
The airship faltered for a moment. I thrust my hands forward, as if I could control my Magic with them, sweat mingling with the rain on my skin. I squinted against the rain, every fiber of my body taut.
Nessy still screamed about her loss of control of the craft.
She turned to me and saw me, a look of focus on my face, my hands outstretched. And she knew.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
“We’ll be killed if we try to go further,” I shouted back through the rain. “The storm is too strong, or the airship is too weak!”
Her expression turned from surprise to anger. “You—you can’t do Magic! You
can
? You can! How long have you hidden it from me? How long? Release the airship at once!”
“Nessy, we have to go back! We’ll wait for a calmer day!”
“No!” she screamed. “Release the craft, or I’ll take it myself!”
I felt her Magic press against mine, trying to overpower it. I resisted, surprised at my own strength.
She stared at me, mouth open in surprise, eyes wide. “You’re like him,” she said.
I heard a crack and felt the wooden seat under me shatter. I fell, a sickening feeling overtaking my stomach. Above me, I saw the airship break apart like a pile of twigs.
Chapter 8
Temet
Three days later, Aesath arrived from his day’s lessons looking grim, a rolled-up paper in his hand. Temet was alone in the Orphan House. His own lessons would not start until next week, to give him time to recover fully from his sickness.
He felt fully recovered already and had spent the better part of the day tearing apart pillows and re-assembling them perfectly with Magic, just to practice. He would impress the Order and their Ten Ring; he would terrify them with his Halfway Magic. Then he would make them give him a ship so he could search for his family, no matter how long it took.
Aesath stood in front of him, holding the paper out to him. “I was told to circulate this among the Orphan House, just in case it was someone anyone knew. One of the Order’s boats found a body this morning.”
Temet laughed. “Small chance of that from me. I’m almost alone in the world.”
Aesath looked at Temet, face serious. Temet realized Aesath was staring at the top of his head. His hair. Ice blond. Could it be…?
Temet tore open the scroll.
Rendered perfectly by some wizard’s near-perfect Imaging Talent was a picture of Nessy.
Her hair and dress lay wet and lank about her. There was not a single scratch or drop of blood on her body. She must have died by drowning, he realized. Her face was paler than ever before, still and calm in death, the old smile he remembered gone.
Temet felt tears in his eyes. “She’s dead? How?” he whispered.
“They found her amid the wreckage of a craft. Lashed to pieces of it were two bags, filled with clothing and personal belongings. One of the bags... contained child’s clothing. A girl child’s clothing.”
The tears spilled over. “Cemagna was with her, then. They were—they were trying to find me.”
“Perhaps,” said Aesath gently.
“Why?” he cried. The tears were flowing freely down his face.
Aesath picked up the scroll and rolled it back up.
“Nessy… and Cemagna!” he sobbed. “This was all because of me! I’ll never see them again.”
He stood up. If another wizard could use Imaging, he probably could, too. He wiped his nose and focused.
He formed her just as he had remembered her. His sister Cemagna, with the same ice blond hair and a dimple on her cheek when she smiled. He could do that easily. He could even make her move.
She stood in front of him, but it wasn’t her, even though her hands grabbed bunches of her skirt the same way they did when she was excited. It was only light and air rearranging themselves in an imitation, a shadow of the real thing.
But it deceived him for a few moments and his arms, of their own accord, reached forward to embrace her.
Loss.
Temet felt only air and lost his balance, falling to land facedown, tears flowing freely, wetting the floor under his head.
Her Image stood there still, smiling, unfeeling as a dead thing.
Temet let it dissolve back into the air, drawing his feet up under him. He lay there, curled on the floor. “Good-bye, Cemagna and Nessy,” he whispered.
TEN YEARS LATER
Chapter 9
Cemagna
I remembered that day, ten years ago, when Nessy died. I remembered hitting the water, fighting to get breaths of air, swimming for home, not knowing how I made it there, collapsing on the sand. Maybe I made the water move, the way Temet could. The memories, I knew, would always be foggy.
Perhaps they were intentionally foggy. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to think about the truth: that I had done Magic, the way Temet had, to bring myself home. We had been far out to sea, but somehow my ten-year-old self had made the swim home. Magic. That had to have been it.
I knew three things. The first was that Nessy was dead. Why hadn’t she saved herself as I had? Had she given up, overwhelmed by it all? I tried not to remember the strange madness that had taken her right before she died, when we were in the airship. The second thing was that I would never be able to leave my home again; I didn’t know how. I was alone. The third was that the spell was broken.
I could do Magic, same as Temet could. But my abilities were fitful, at times tied to emotion. I ransacked the library at home for information on Magic and Talent to read every last bit I could find. I began practicing to see what I could do with Magic, but my abilities remained fitful and unstable. But they were there. And they had saved my life.
#
I crouched beside the topmost spire of what had long become
my
home. Mine only. I had given up hope of the men ever coming to get me as they had Temet. Though I knew I was angry with the men, I kept wanting them to come so I could be reunited with Temet. But now I had given up hope.
I shivered. It was cold up here at the topmost spire of the house that only I now lived in. Reaching out from under the fur-lined cloak I wore, I grasped the studded spire and shivered again, my motion knocking the season’s first snow from the spire.
Yes, that was why I was up on the top spire. Snow. Everything was much quieter when it snowed as it had last night. It seemed as if the world would break into thousands of shards if I made the slightest noise.
I didn’t like the quiet. It meant I could think more clearly, which was something I didn’t want to do right now. So I had climbed all the way up here, as I often did, because when I was cold, it was harder to think.
I shivered again, but this time it wasn’t because of the cold. I remembered last night, sleeping in Nessy’s bed where I’d slept every day since Temet had left. I closed my eyes and remembered, clenching a fistful of snow.
I blinked and saw the image from my dream again. The water had glistened by the light of the moon, a melted dark pearl, the faintest breeze rippling the iridescent surface. Too iridescent, I mused. Since when did water glow like that?
A slippery figure glided upwards from the water, its beautiful body undulating. Somehow, it filled me with disquiet. I didn’t want to think of it or any of the dream, which was why I was up here in the cold. But evidently it wasn’t working.
Sighing, I slid down from the spire, smiling at how nimble I’d become. I could climb anything with ease, now that my legs had grown long enough. There had been many scrapes on my elbows before I’d been able to reach the highest spire.
Blinking, I saw the image again.
Jumping to the ground, I went back into the house and to the library. The library was the one room where I felt whole. Nessy had collected so many books. She had had taught Temet and me to read and write here—a skill I still knew. I had read every single book in the library. These had taught me all about the outside world, a world I had still, at the age of twenty, never seen.
#
The shining water from my other dream. A fountain. A woman, her hair ice-blond like mine, lying on the cobblestones in the dark by the fountain. The side of her head was bleeding, and she didn’t move. I couldn’t see her face to tell if she was conscious.
Faceless shapes surrounded her, dragged her away, her body as limp as a strand of wet hair.
#
I started awake, my body covered in sweat. I really hated dreams that seem so real. Getting to my feet shakily, I paced Nessy’s bedroom, my feet making shuffling sounds on the smooth crimson carpet.
Don’t think about it. Don’t let it stay in your mind
, I told myself. Maybe a trip to the library would help.
A soft, metallic clink from outside stopped me in my tracks. I bounded up to the window and stared out at the early morning fog all around, making the sea look like a dirty mirror. The snow of the other day had melted. Far down on the ground near the orchards stood something I had never seen before—a small, wheeled object with cloth covering it.
I raced down the flights of the stairs to the parlor room, where there was a window which would afford me a better look. I saw that it was a covered wagon, something I recognized from drawings in my books. Four horses were hitched to it and a man stood next to it. Who was he? What was a covered wagon doing here? How did he get here? Turning, I raced up the stairs to the library. Where was that book, that one which told me about travelers? Frantically I scanned the shelves, tapping my bare feet in impatience at myself. Where was it?