I chewed on my lip, peering out into the never-ending light. It danced in my vision, sang in my ears, whispered like dew on my skin.
“Once, I had something precious. I should have held it tight, should have guarded it with my last breath, but instead I let it go. I will regret that until the end.”
He let out a long breath, and I tore my gaze from the stars to look at him. Sorrow weighed heavier on him than I’d ever realized.
A little wind rushed past us. It was warm and smelled of lilies. I closed my eyes and drank it in. “You said you were going to tell me a story,” I murmured.
He did. “The North Wind was despised by his brothers. He was the favorite of their mother the Moon, and his powers were stronger than theirs. He commanded death, and time, and could bend others’ wills to his own.”
I thought of the dark, angry force beneath the mountain. “What happened to him?”
“He traded his power for the oldest of magics.”
“What is the oldest magic?”
“Love. That is what created the universe, and that is what will destroy it, in the end. Threads of old magic, binding the world together.”
I watched him in the shifting light, his eyes fixed on some faraway point I couldn’t see.
“The North Wind gave away his power to be with a human. That is how it began.”
“How what began?”
A low growl came from the wolf’s throat. “All of this,” he said heavily.
I blinked back out into hurtling stars. “Then it’s his fault.”
“Fault? No. He held on to the thing he loved. It is more than I ever did.”
“Wolf.” I stretched out a hand to touch the scruff of fur on his neck, and he didn’t pull away. I tugged the ribbon on the hat, thinking he hadn’t quite answered my question. “What did you lose? Who did you love?”
“Nothing. No one.”
But his eyes said Everything. Someone.
He sighed, a long huff of air.
“I wish you would let me help you.”
He buried his muzzle in the crook of my arm. “My lady, you cannot help me.”
But I didn’t believe him.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT the old magic?” I asked Mokosh.
We stood in a castle’s high tower that was open to the air, while dwarves sailed above us in ships that somehow flew, painting the sky with swathes of swirling light. That book world had no moon or stars; without the dwarves’ brushes, the darkness would be complete.
In the castle below, a centaur-king was having a party, and the whisper and rush of cymbals and strings drifted up to us.
“Magic is in everything,” said Mokosh matter-of-factly. She finished the painting she’d been working on with one last flourish of her brush—it was a view from the tower, dwarves and flying ships and all. I stood before an easel as well, but I wasn’t a painter, and had given up after only a few brushstrokes, alternating watching Mokosh and the sky instead. She glowered at her canvas. “My mother would hate this.”
“I think it’s beautiful.”
Mokosh waved my comment away. “Shall we go down and join the party?”
“I’m not much of a dancer,” I confessed, trying not to think about my father and Donia’s wedding, or the various village holidays I spent lurking in the background, because no one wanted to dance with a girl marked by the Devil.
“Oh, then I’ll teach you! It’s the easiest thing in the world. Here.” She grabbed my arms and moved me to the center of the tower, just as the white underbelly of a dwarf ship sailed overhead. It gleamed like it was made out of pearls. “All you have to do is listen to the music and move your feet, you see?”
She steered me around while I tripped over her spectacularly, until I began to learn, little by little, what to do.
“Step back,” she said. “To the side, then forward. That’s it! You’re not entirely hopeless, you see?”
I let the music sink into me, and after a while the movements became more natural. High up in the tower, it seemed like everything was dancing, the flying ships and the dwarves’ paintbrushes and Mokosh and I, all part of the same intricate pattern.
“Is there magic where you come from?” I asked Mokosh, when we’d grown tired of dancing and sank to the floor opposite each other. The stones beneath us hummed with music.
“Certainly there is. My mother couldn’t rule without it.”
“And the old magic,” I pressed. “The magic that governs the world—do you have that kind?”
Mokosh frowned. “My mother has the most magic of anyone. Of course she has the old magic, too.”
I shrugged, uncertain why that had offended her. In my mind I saw the bauble room, the spidery clock and the spinning crystals, the blood on the wolf’s white fur. I knew there were answers to be found there, but I was still too afraid to seek them out. “What about enchantments?”
“Echo, why are you asking me so many questions?”
Above us, the dwarves had finished painting the sky, and their white ships were drifting slowly away into the night. “I’m trying to help a friend.”
“And you think your friend might be enchanted?”
The wolf’s words spun round in my head: I do not belong to your world, or your time. I am just another piece of … her … collection.
“I do.”
Mokosh stretched out, leaning backward on the palms of her hands. Her forehead creased in concentration. “Every enchantment is as unique as a snowflake—but none are impenetrable. I’m sure there is a way to break it, if that is what you wish.”
Break the enchantment, free the wolf, and then—what? Would I just stay with him in the house under the mountain forever?
In the curved wall of the tower, a mirror shimmered into being—the library calling me back. I had no idea it had grown so late. I scrambled to my feet.
Mokosh grinned at me. “What’s your rush? Now that you can dance, we’ve a party to get to.” She stood, too, and brushed the dust from her skirt.
“I’m late for dinner,” I told her apologetically.
“Can’t dinner wait?”
I thought about the wolf, alone in the dining room, staring mournfully at a mountain of food he didn’t want to eat. “I’m afraid not. But I’ll be back again soon.”
Mokosh smiled. “More partners for me, then. Goodbye, Echo!”
She disappeared down the tower’s spiral stair, while I stretched my hand out to the glimmering mirror.
Magic curled through me, and the dark tower melted away into the bright light of the library.
I’m sure there is a way to break it, echoed Mokosh’s voice in my mind.
I’m sure there is a way.
But how was I supposed to find it?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I DO NOT BELONG TO YOUR world, or your time. I am just another piece of … her … collection.
I’m sure there is a way to break it.
I’m sure there is a way.
I paced through the rain room, where rain grew like plants in various pots, some of the water-plants tiny and hanging from arches in the ceiling, some nearly as big as the living room in my father’s cottage. I stopped at each plant and poured out a little light from my bucket, which I’d collected earlier in the sunroom. The rain plants didn’t make any logical sense, but they were beautiful, and I always looked forward to my visits each morning.
I paused at my favorite plant, a huge vine-y thing that twisted and moved in some invisible wind. Blossoms grew all along the vine; they were made of dewdrops and chimed like tiny cymbals when I fed them their light.
I touched one of the flowers; it was damp and cool against my finger.
I am just another piece of … her … collection.
But what was he? What had the wolf been before the mysterious force in the wood had brought him here, bound him here? I tapped my finger absently against the compass-watch, hanging as always about my neck, ticking down the seconds.
The first time I’d met Mokosh, she’d told me that readers project their preferred versions of themselves in the world of the books, whether they were aware of it or not. I wondered what version of himself the wolf would project, and if it would give me any hint of his secrets.
I wondered if that was why he didn’t want to come reading with me.
I left the rain room, a plan unfolding in my mind that would keep me from having to return to the room behind the black door.