Page 53 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“Something bit me!”

Yolanda went to where Carlotte had been standing. “There’s nothing here. Just this bush.” She waved a hand through its leaves and jerked it back with a yelp.

“Told you.” Carlotte shook Leetar off and hobbled back.

Livira turned away, distracted by the glimpse of a reflecting surface between the tree trunks. “Is that a…pool?”

“They moved!” Leetar said. “When you touched them. The leaves.”

Carlotte reached out gingerly, squealed, and snatched her hand back. “I can touch them!” She did it again. “I really can.” She buried both hands in the leaves. “I haven’t touched anything in years. I mean except me. And you three, just recently.” She moved her hands. “This issoweird.”

“There’s another one.” Livira pointed to a second pool. Then a third. The others ignored her, still discussing how they could all touch the bush that had “bitten” Carlotte.

Livira turned around, taking in their surroundings. Fragments of sky fingered in through the foliage, the sun absent now, hidden behind slate-grey clouds.

“We’re in the Exchange. Somehow.”

That got Yolanda’s attention. Pink eyes widened in recognition. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

“It wasn’t like this?” Carlotte turned from the bush and looked around too. She slapped a tree and examined its bark with fascination. “It wasn’t so wild?”

“It’s changed,” Livira agreed. And the Exchange was not a place that was given to change. She was sure of that. Change was a time-thing. And yet somehow, though it was different, it was also the same. She had been to this place before, she was sure of it. “What does it mean? Can anyone just wander in here now? What if the skeer find it?”

“It means that things are falling apart quicker than I thought possible,” Yolanda said. “I think the book is calling you back to it.”

“That’s a good thing?” Livira edged closer to the nearest pool, pushing the undergrowth aside with her feet. Brambles grappled at the hem of her robe.

“The closer you get the more you’ll accelerate the damage,” Yolanda said. “But also, it’s probably the only way to ensure that it stops. Though, if you make a mistake, that would be the end of everything.”

“A mistake? What exactly is it that I have to do?” Livira asked.

“I’ve no idea.”

“Are you surethis is the right pool?” Carlotte’s grip tightened. Already Livira’s bloodless fingers were heading towards the whiteness of Yolanda’s.

“There’s only one pool,” Livira murmured, seeing in her mind a faint, timeless recollection of a wild wood, a stream, a glowing sphere larger than she was. “There’s no pool…only the nexus.”

The water before them began to glow, lit from within by its own light.

“The nexus,” Yolanda agreed. “You’ve seen it?” A sharp look, her face made sinister by the shadows painted across it from below.

Livira nodded. “It doesn’t matter which pool. The book’s part of me. I’m part of it. It’s calling.”

The pool that wasn’t a pool flowed and rose and in the space of three moments became that same ball of radiance Livira had seen in the memories of her years as the Assistant.

“Touch it.” She reached out with the hand knotted with Carlotte’s and with the one knotted with Yolanda’s.

They touched it and were gone.

Livira stumbled intoa cool white mist. For a moment she stood, blinking, her robe pulled tight around her. She wondered if she might be in some strange sort of in-between domain. An insubstantial, interstitial place.

“Where’s the girl gone? Yolo? I want to say she’s called Yolo.”

“Yolanda.” Livira turned to find Carlotte standing behind her, looking even colder than she felt. Behind Carlotte, the portal through which they’d come decorated a stone-block wall, the shimmer of its light lending a glow to the nearest fog.

“Where’s Leetar?” Carlotte started off into the mist.

Livira caught her arm. She could see the ground beneath their feet, brick-paved, and literally nothing else save the wall behind them. “Maybe we should wait.”

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