“Yes,” Will mumbled. “Or try to, at least.” His face was burning hot. He had never been so embarrassed in his life; he saw now how stupid the idea was. And obviously she didn’t need rescuing—she had gotten out all on her own. The alchemist had, perhaps, been right all along. He was useless.
Suddenly Liesl threw her arms around him with such force that he stumbled backward. Will had never been hugged in all his life, and he did not know what to do. Liesl’s hair tickled his cheek, and he could feel her little heart, beating hard through layers of cloth and clothing. He stood perfectly still, praying that she would let him go, feeling even more embarrassed than he had been just a moment earlier.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think you’re very brave.”
“You do?”
“Yes. And clever.”
“Oh.” When Liesl released him at last, Will found that his head felt strange and fuzzy, as though he had just been spinning in a circle. He repeated, “Oh.”
Po made a loud sniffing sound.
Liesl was feeling hopeful again. “Come,” she said. “We can’t be far from the Red House now. But it won’t be long before they discover I’m missing and come looking for us.”
“If they’re not already looking for us,” Will said.
“All the more reason to get moving,” Po said, and as usual, it took the lead with Bundle.
The wind was a strange one that night: It blew strong, and smelled of difference and change. It sent shivers snaking up people’s backs; it made old women tug their shawls closer, and babies cry, and maids rise from their beds to check that the shutters were definitely latched.
Will and Liesl felt it. Pausing to rest for a bit, they had to huddle together in the shelter of a maple, and still they felt deeply chilled, as though the wind wanted something from them and had reached inside to get it.
Augusta felt it creeping through the floorboards of Evergreen Manor, seeping in through the walls and past the windowsills, and it filled her with nameless terror, and made her rush upstairs to check on Liesl, who was, of course, no longer there. . . .
The alchemist and the Lady Premiere, racing through the woods with their lanterns held aloft, felt it. Mrs. Snout felt it, and it brought to her a sense of regret, though she could not have said why.
Sticky, on his way to the Red House, felt it, and found he was not even warmed by thoughts of what he would do with his newfound wealth. . . .
A policeman, a sneezing old woman, and a thickheaded guard carrying a cat in a sling all felt it, as they set off through the foothills in pursuit of Will and Liesl. They had just met on the road a one-eyed boy on a donkey, who had, in response to their question about two children, replied dutifully with the phrase Mrs. Snout had made him repeat. “The children are on their way to the Red House. . . .”
The policeman muttered a curse under his breath and pulled his scarf tighter.
The old woman sneezed, and stared bleakly at the cat in the sling.
The cat shivered.
The guard fingered the hat in his pocket.
The boy on the donkey thought of his missing eye, and roundedness, and a world undivided.
And all around them, tremendous magic continued to swirl and spiral and scatter, carried on by the wind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LIESL AND WILL MADE THEIR WAY OUT OF THE forest with Po and Bundle scouting. By the time the trees thinned and the land became flat and empty again, morning had come. The sky was the color of new milk, one long sheet of clouds stretched tight. Still the wind blew, hard and strange, stirring up old feelings and memories.
“I know where we are,” Liesl said. The edge of the forest, the hard, flat fields in front of them, the dry creek bed they came upon, the wind: All of it brought her tumbling headlong into her past. She was falling, flailing, as images came rushing back: the smell of new damp earth and wild grasses to her waist; running toward the pond, which flashed like a coin beyond the willow tree; the old well with its moss-covered stones; laughter and shouting; the creaks of the old house, the way it swelled in the rain like an old woman’s joints; endless games of hide-and-seek; dark closets, and the smell of wool and mothballs.
There were other memories too, these more indistinct and also more puzzling, of the feeling of warmth tickling her neck, and a luminous and dazzling presence in the sky. The sun.
“The house is that way.” Liesl pointed. She felt she must speak in a whisper, as though they were in church. “Just beyond the stone wall. The pond and the willow tree are a little past the house.”