Page 57 of Sightwitch
I froze midstep, as did Captain. We stood there, braced for shadow wyrms or voices or Death Maidens to sing.
The Rook, however, seemed as bored as bored could be. He hopped and pecked around the fallen bricks as if hunting spiders—except I knew he would never deign to eat a spider.
I didn’t trust his complacency, though, so with measured steps, I crept toward the doorway. With each inch, sounds trickled in. Frogs, crickets, a breeze … and something else. Something that buzzed atop it all and shivered in my teeth.
“Cicadas.” The word popped from Captain’s mouth, seeming to surprise him almost as much as it surprised me.
“But we don’t have cicadas here,” I said. “And … are these tree roots?” Curiosity dashed away my caution. I strode over and touched the gnarled plant that twined around the rubble. It was tough, but more bark-like than root-like.
“It’s a grapevine,” Captain said, a puzzled lilt to his voice. “Andthatis my button.”
I swung around to face him, and sure enough, the Rook had a silver button clenched in his beak.
My forehead scrunched up. “You must have come this way. But how? And where does this door even go?”
Captain shrugged, but it was a distracted movement. Already, he was darting past me, aiming for the rubble and the vines.
“I don’t remember being here,” he said, “but these sounds, this breeze. I do know them. Which means …” He bent forward, hands splaying on the stones. “It means I ought to go through, don’t you think?”
He lifted one leg as if to climb—
“No.” The word slashed out, and I lurched at him. With the movement came Tanzi’s face and Hilga’s frown and the shattered hourglass. All of it roared through me in a punch of stomach-stealing fear.
I was out of time.
“You can’t go that way.” I thrust the map at him. “It very clearly says ‘No,’ and besides … I …”
“You what?” He scrutinized me, and for half a moment, as the blue off the archway pulsed over us both, I was hit with the sense of falling.
Just a whoosh of air and a sharp pop in my ears.
Then it passed, and I was left blinking as the words, “There is no bridge,” fell from my tongue.
“No bridge,” Captain repeated slowly. He too, I thought, had felt that strange punch of vertigo.
But then my words seemed to settle in his brain, and he straightened up off the stones, breaking free from my grasp.
“I see,” he murmured. A halo of snow fluttered to life around his head. “You want me to fly you somewhere, even though I don’t know how.”
“Youdo,” I countered. “The magic is still in you.”
“If that were true, then don’t you think I would have summoned it against the shadow wryms?”
“You’re using it right now!” I pointed, and the map—still clutched tight—crinkled in my hand. “That snow is from you!”
He glanced left, right, and his widening eyes told me that until that moment, he hadn’t even noticed the snow. All this time, he’d been changing the temperature, and he hadn’t even realized.
“I … don’t think …” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m doing this.”
“Youare.”
“Then I don’t know how!” Captain backed away, almost tripping over the Rook who hopped and squawked.
The snow chased after, and this time, the faintest wind gusted up from Captain’s toes.
What little color he possessed leached entirely from his face.
“Magic is what makes a person cleave.” He clasped his arms to his chest, as if he could keep the wind and the snow at bay. “If I try to use this power, I might cleave again. Then what?”
