Page 41 of Sightwitch
DREAMS
It is the day of the full moon.
I could not sleep all night. Lisbet did not return to the Grove, and though it is not unusual for those with powerful Sight to meet with the Goddess for longer, it worries me all the same.
Cora coughs and coughs. Leigh will not let me in to see her.
Which leaves me alone in my workshop to watch silver time drip past.
He will be at the Sorrow today. In three more hours, the girls’ father will arrive, but there will be no daughters to greet him.
“You should still go,” Lisbet had said to me.
So I will. ’Tis only polite, after all. Otherwise, he will worry and wonder and wait.
Oh, whom do I fool?
I will go to the Sorrow because despite Vergedi Knots and Arlenni Loops to fill my days, it is his face that fills my dreams.
LATER — 5(I think?) hours left to find Tanzi
Foxfire climbed the walls at all angles in this new space. It lent my dark skin a greenish sheen.
The Rook had already fluttered off down the wide hallway. The man, meanwhile, wheezed beside me.
“Thank … Noden,” he gasped. I spun toward him, knife slashing high.
It was instinct. My blood still throbbed in my ears from the escape—and from the fall too.
Only pure luck had kept me on the dull side of Lady Fate’s blade. How long until that luck ran out?
The man doubled over, coughing and complaining that his lungs didn’t seem to work. I gripped the knife hilt ever tighter. I didn’t know who he was nor how he had entered the mountain. Fleeing the wyrms together did not suddenly make us allies.
He glanced up at me, eyes watering. “You’re”—cough—“holding” —cough—“it wrong.” He waved weakly toward my knife.
I couldn’t help it. I glared. “It’s still sharp, isn’t it?”
“That angle … is easy to disarm.” Somehow, he looked even more awful than before. Like a cave salamander—one of the slimy ones that Tanzi and I always found in the subterranean streams.
He straightened, wiping at his brow. It spread the black oil farther across his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He lifted his hands defensively. “I did just save your life, after all.”
“I never asked you to.”
“Oh.” He huffed a ragged laugh. “We can go back out there, then. Try it all again, except this time Iwon’tgrab you when you fall to your death.”
My glare deepened.
“Hmmm.” His hands fell. “Clearly humor is not your thing.”
I winced. It was too much like what Tanzi always said.Laugh, Ry! It’s funny, don’t you think?
At the thought of Tanzi, I lowered the knife—though I didn’t sheathe it.
Instantly, the man’s shoulders relaxed. He tried for a grin, though it was easily as terrifying as the one from before. Perhaps even more so, since now he looked like some skeleton-salamander hybrid.
“Sorry again. For the, ah …” He wiggled his fingers. “The touching. Earlier.”
I grunted. Then, with the briefest of eye contact, I said, “Thank you. For saving my life. Now walk.” I motioned in the direction the Rook had gone. It was the only way forward.
