Page 108 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Nothing. No hint of comprehension. I only heard their desperate gasps, as if they were suffocating despite the holes I’d punctured through the jar’s tin lid.
I tried again.
“Do any of you know why my magic isn’t letting me access the insect world?”
Again, they seemed to shriek with frantic breaths. I glanced at the stripes of shadows and moonlight against the desk and sighed. One minute.
I’d lasted one minute with these creatures, and they were already choosing to panic themselves to death rather than talk to me.
I carried the jar back outside, dumped the ants gently onto the snarl of roots at the base of their home tree, and trooped back to the study room, slumping into my usual chair and massaging my temples.
“Maybe the tome would help you figure it out?”
Willa had scrambled up the leg of my chair and onto my lap. I jumped, but not because of her sudden presence—at this point, I was used to her skittering up my body during random times.
No, I jumped because of what she’d said.
“What tome?”
Willa blinked at me. Her tail curled around her body.
“You know, the one you hid behind the clock a few months ago? The one that says the you-know-what.”
I felt myself shrink inward. The room seemed to zoom out and out and out until I was nothing but a grain of sand lost in the roaring tide of a deep ocean.
Was this why Coen had been acting like he’d swallowed a fistful of rocks lately? When he’d erased Emelle’s memory about Lord Arad, had he also erased mine about…whatever this was?
I straightened myself to my fullest height, until I was no longer a grain of lost sand. Until I could kid myself into thinking I was the flagpole of one of those pirate ships in the distance, tall and domineering and a spike of force against the wind.
“Tell me everything,” I said to Willa.
CHAPTER
40
Half an hour later, I had the tome tucked between my arm and ribcage and was dashing out of the house and into the night with Willa on my heels.
The crickets stopped chirping momentarily to listen to my footsteps. An older female owl swooped above me, hooting, “A rush in the night leads to thrush in the light,” but I ignored her.
Coen had told me after the game that he and Garvis were going to stay on the field and practice some maneuvers they’d picked up from the Shifting team earlier today. They might have gone to bed already, of course, but I didn’t think so. Mostly because Coen hadn’t told me goodnight yet, but also because I knew him, and I was beginning to know Garvis: they were both hellishly competitive, and would do anything it took to smash their opponents in their upcoming game. Including staying up to practice until the first smudges of dawn graced the sky.
I could hear them as Willa and I crept closer, sticking close to the cold shadows of the houses and stadiums. They were out there, alright, two young men in a swath of white moonlight, kicking those balls back and forth in zigzagging motions.
The grass sensed my distress before Coen did. Each blade quivered around me, bowing inward and giving a low whistle to match the deep ringing in my ears.
I whistled back on instinct even as I continued striding forward, and the grass—that manicured pool of soft green, cut and groomed and perfectly tamed—turned absolutely feral to match the wild scampering in my heart.
A ripple of bent blades shot toward Coen and Garvis. The ones around their feet lunged up and out, twining around their ankles and pulling them down.
I finally stopped, looming over the two men sprawled to the ground.
“What the hell?”
Coen nearly cricked his neck to look at me.
My face felt strangely slack. I held the tome out, letting the foiled lettering catch the moonlight.
Coen’s face creased. “Oh. That.”
