Page 88 of Spring's Arcana
“Silly question.” The horse’s tail flicked, and that red gleam in his pupils strengthened. “It’s theWell.”
Yeah.She wished she hadn’t worn Leo’s coat now; the breeze was like standing next to an open oven despite the tree’s shelter. “You realize all of this is really weird, right?”
“What’s normal?” The horse’s withers twitched, and he shook his glossy, cascading mane, obviously impatient with her reluctance. “Do what you came to do, Drozdova. I long to run again.”
Whatwasnormal, indeed? Especially for a girl raised in a littleyellow house by a divinity, a girl the cats talked to, a girl who was dressed by Coco and who danced with Jay, a girl who took a ride in a flying van or a low-slung black car driven by a god of gangsters and thieves? A girl who had basically told Officer Friendly, with the fleshy bulbs on his forehead and his big pink nose, to fuck off?
A girl who had played Scrabble with a god of cowboys and ridden a big black horse-motorcycle to this magical fucking desert, too. Couldn’t forget that.
So Nat squared her shoulders and cautiously approached the Well. The closer she got, the more disrepair she saw. There were gaps in the curved rock walls; the winch was almost a solid mass of rust. The wooden bucket dangling above its throat was pierced by daylight; it couldn’t possibly bring any water up.
Maybe it’s not water down there, Nat. A shiver ran up her sweating back; the backpack straps dug into her shoulders even through the coat, as if everything in there suddenly weighed more.
The prepaid cell phone might short out around magic, who knew? She probably wouldn’t get any service bars out here, either.
Whereverherewas.
She laid her hand on the well’s stone lip. It was disturbingly warm, smooth as satiny flesh, and the horse shifted behind her, one hoof digging through sand. Nat risked a glance over her shoulder, but the big beast was in the same place, still watching her sidelong, tail moving lazily to ward off nonexistent flies.
There was a metallic screech. Nat flinched, but it was just the handle attached to the crossbar, flakes of rust falling like the cherry petals as it ground into motion. The bucket dropped, air whistling through its holes—it would probably disintegrate when it hit.
Nat leaned over the waist-high lip, and peered into the Well.
The shaft went down forever, but there was a circular blue ripple at the bottom, a growing, glowing lens. Her eyes stung briefly, whether from hot sand or something she wasn’t supposed to see.
This time, Nat decided, she wouldn’t shout a silly question. She’d simply watch what was shown. The blue circle swelled, rushing up the sides of the well. Either that or she fell in without moving.
It was, she found out, terrifying either way.
STORM-BORN
Maria Drozdova, propped on a mountain of snowy pillows, hunched over her distended belly. Her cheeks gleamed with water-beads, golden curls stuck to her damp flawless skin, and her bare knees, pale-soft and dimpled, trembled as she clasped them.
A man hesitated, hovering uncertainly at the bedside. It was indeed the largest bedroom in the little yellow house, but there was no collection of bright glass bottles on the windowsill and the potted orchids were not yet tangling over the dresser. The plants hanging from ceiling hooks had not achieved even half their current luxuriousness, and were not starred with eternal blossom either. The window was full of the thin pale light of first spring, fairest and coldest, and cords stood out on the Drozdova’s slim neck as shepushed,a massive effort wringing a body too small for it.
A steady stream of imprecations in the language of the old country fell from her ruddy lips, and that great belly twitched like a live thing.
Strictly speaking, it was. Or at least, it contained one.
Leo—for so it was, much younger and with a full crop of dark hair, stubble upon his handsome cheeks—leaned over to help, to bring a pillow up, to do something, anything for her, but one of her narrow pale hands flashed and he staggered back.
“You,” she hissed, panting between great wringing efforts. “Youdid this to me.”
He could have pointed out that it took two and thatshehad selectedhim,but Leo Mishkin’s mouth was sealed, and he could only rub at his reddened cheek where the blow had landed, staring reproachfully with eyes dark and wide as his daughter’s would prove.
Maybe that gaze was the final straw, for Maria Drozdova screamed,her body twisting against itself once more. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced, even when invaders tore across her lands and left not only murdered bodies to enrich green life but also scattered metal conveyances and toxic elements rotting in great rusted piles. Her power would cover those terrible twisted hills with vines in its own time—but she had been brought unwilling to this place where the earth itself resisted her, waiting for the one who would come.
The mortals who loved spring in their native land had dragged her across an ocean, selfishly not heeding the pain their faithfulness caused. She longed to strike them down with the fiercest storms she was capable of, howling wind stripping boughs heavy with new leaf, lightning striking over and over, harvests rotting in black mud.
Summer could not ripen what Spring did not allow to germinate. Famine was the least elegant of her weapons, but she was enraged enough to use it.
Another great paroxysm followed upon its siblings’ heels, and Leo reeled from the room as the Drozdova’s massive, wrecked scream rose afresh.
Daylight thinned, heavy black clouds racing across the sun. Mortals fled the city streets, something older than roads or language speaking in clear imperatives.
Hide,it whispered,hide now, for one of the Eternal is angry.
Thunder lumbered after diamond lightning, hailstones formed in the sky’s coldest reaches tumbling through successive moisture layers, hard kernels swelling until they were too heavy to fly, icy fists falling earthward to smash whatever they could.
