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goes wrong, drop the dagger into the bowl. Please don’t try to dump the bowl or take the spinner out.”
“How do I know when something goes wrong?”
“I’ll start screaming.”
I took off the wrist guard I wore on my left arm. There go the silver needles. The other throwing knife, the three shark teeth, the r-kit…
“How much hardware do you carry?” Raphael raised his eyebrows.
I shrugged. “That’s about all of it.”
I stepped into the oak’s shadow. I was stripped down to my T-shirt and pants, no belt, no sword, no knife. Except for the blood collecting kit and the knitted square of hair and nettle, I carried nothing. I imagined a wide circle in the oak’s shadow and dropped the knitting in the middle.
I returned to the imaginary circle boundary and began to dance.
Step by step I made my way around the circle, bending my body, following the dance. Midway through the second circle, a tight line of magic snapped from the small knitted square and clutched at me. It flowed through my head into my feet, splitting into smaller currents where my skin touched the ground, as if I had become a tree. It led and pulled me.
Vaguely I saw the boudas gather from the shadows, drawn to me like moths to a flame. They watched me with glowing red eyes, swaying gently with the silent music of my dance. And then I heard it, a simple distant melody. It grew with every second, heart wrenching, sad but wild, pure but imperfect. It caught me and wormed its way into my chest, filling my heart with what my Russian father calledtoska , a longing so intense and painful, it made me physically ill. It weakened my knees; it sapped my will until only melancholy remained; it made me miss something, what, I wasn’t sure, but I knew I missed it keenly and couldn’t take another breath without it.
I danced and danced and danced. The charmed boudas dissolved. Mist swirled around me. A dark dog trotted past me through the gloom. Slowly the fog thinned. Through the whiteness I saw a gentle yellow glow beckoning me.
My feet found wet grass and rocks. I heard the quiet splashing and the popping of wood burning in the fire. Sharp salty smoke tugged at me.
A few more steps and I stepped onto the shore of a lake. It lay glossy, black, and placid in the moonlight, like the surface of a coin dipped in tar. A small fire burned in a stone fire pit near the water.
Above the fire on a spit was a carcass of some small animal, a rabbit maybe.
I turned. Behind me the forest lay, dark and jagged. The mist crawled away to the trees, as if sucked into the woods.
The attack came so suddenly, I reacted on instinct. Bran lunged at me from the right, and I stepped aside, redirecting his momentum and tripping him without thinking. I had practiced this maneuver so many times, I didn’t realize I had done it until I saw him fly past me and land with a splash into the lake.
He whirled in the water and grinned at me. Damn, he was a handsome bastard. I realized he was