The branches above me were waving wildly as if in alarm, the whispering of the leaves becoming a muted roaring. I straightened up on my knees. “Let her out!” I screamed at the tree: I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. “Let her out, or I’ll bring you down! Fulmia!” I cried out in rage, and threw myself back down at the ground, and where my fists hit, the ground rose and swelled like a river rising with the rain. Magic was pouring out of me, a torrent: every warning the Dragon had ever given me forgotten and ignored. I would have spent every drop of myself and died there, just to bring that horrible tree down: I couldn’t imagine a world where I lived, where I left this behind me, Kasia’s life and heart feeding this corrupt monstrous thing. I would rather have died, crushed in my own earthquake, and brought it down with me. I tore at the ground ready to break open a pit to swallow us all.
And then with a sound like ice breaking in the spring, the bark cracked open, running up and down the length of Kasia’s body. I lunged up from the dirt at once and dug my fingers into the crack, prying the sides wide and reaching in for her. I caught her wrist, her arm limp and heavy, and pulled. She fell out of the horrible dark gap bending at the waist like a rag doll, and I backed away dragging her deadweight free into the snow, both my hands wrapped around her wrist. Her skin was fish-pale, sickly, like all the sun had been drunk out of her. Sap smelling like spring rain ran over her in thin green rivulets, and she didn’t move.
I fell to my knees beside her. “Kasia,” I said, sobbing. “Kasia.” The bark had already closed itself up like a seam around the hole where she had been. I caught Kasia’s hands in my wet dirty ones and pressed them to my cheeks, to my lips. They were cold, but not as cold as my own: there was a trace of life in them. I bent down and heaved her onto my shoulders.
Chapter 8
I came staggering out of the Wood at dawn, with Kasia slung across my shoulders like a bundle of firewood. The Wood had drawn back from me as I went, as if it feared driving me back to the spell. Fulmia rang in my head like a deep bell sounding with every heavy step I took, Kasia’s weight on top of mine, dirt still covering my hands on her pale arm and leg. Finally I floundered out of the trees into the deep snow at the border and fell. I crawled out from under Kasia and pushed her over. Her eyes were still closed. Her hair was matted and sticky around her face where sap had soaked it. I heaved her head up against my shoulder and closed my eyes, and spoke the spell.
The Dragon was waiting for us in the high tower room. His face was hard and grim as ever I had seen it, and he gripped me by the chin and jerked my head up. I looked back at him, exhausted and empty, while he studied my face and searched my eyes. He was holding a bottle of some cordial in his hands; after he’d looked at me a long while he jerked out the stopper and thrust it at me. “Drink it,” he said. “The whole thing.”
He went over to where Kasia sprawled on the floor, still unmoving: he held his hands out over her and glared down at me when I made a note of protest and reached out. “Now,” he snapped, “unless you want to force me to incinerate her at once, so I can deal with you.” He waited until I began drinking, then murmured a quick spell, sprinkling some crushed dust over her body: a shining amber-golden net sprang out over her, like a birdcage, and he turned to watch me drink.
The first taste was inexpressibly good: like a swallow of warm honey with lemon down a sore throat. But as I kept drinking, my stomach began to turn from too much sweetness. I had to halt halfway through. “I can’t,” I said, choking.
“All of it,” he said. “And then a second one, if I think it necessary. Drink,” and I forced down another swallow, and another, and another, until I drained the glass. Then he seized me by the wrists and said, “Ulozishtus sovjenta, megiot kozhor, ulozishtus megiot,” and I screamed: it felt like he’d set fire to me from the inside. I could see light shining through my own skin, making a blazing lantern of my body, and when I held up my hands, I saw to my horror faint shadows moving there beneath the surface. Forgetting the feverish pain, I caught at my dress and dragged it off over my head. He knelt down on the floor with me. I was shining like a sun, the thin shadows moving through me like fish swimming beneath the ice in winter.
“Get them out,” I said. Now that I saw them, I suddenly felt them, also, leaving a trail inside me like slime. I’d thought, stupidly, that I was safe because I hadn’t been scratched, or cut, or bitten. I’d thought he was only taking precautions. Now I understood: I’d breathed in corruption with the very air, under the boughs of the Wood, and I hadn’t noticed the creeping feeling of them because they’d slipped in, small and subtle. “Get them out—”
“Yes, I’m trying,” he bit out, gripping me by the wrists. He shut his eyes and began to speak again, a long slow chanting that went on and on, feeding the fire. I fixed my eyes on the window, on the sunlight coming in, and tried to breathe while I burned. Tears ran down my face in rivulets, scorching hot against my cheeks. His grip on my arms felt cool by comparison, for once.
The shadows beneath my skin were growing smaller, their edges burning away in the light, sand wearing away in water. They darted around, trying to find places to hide, but he didn’t let the light fade anywhere. I could see my bones and my organs as glowing shapes inside me, one of them my very heart thumping in my breast. It was slowing, each beat heavier. I understood dimly that the question was whether he could burn the corruption out of me quicker than my body could bear. I swayed in his hands. He shook me abruptly and I opened my eyes to find him glaring at me: he didn’t break the course of his spell even for a moment, but he didn’t need to say a word: Don’t you dare waste my time, you outrageous idiot, his furious eyes said, and I set my teeth in my lip and held on a little longer.
The last few shadow-fish were being worn away to wriggling threads, and then they vanished, grown so thin they couldn’t be seen. He slowed the chant, and paused it. The fire banked a little, an inexpressible relief. He demanded, grimly, “Enough?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, to say please. “No,” I whispered, horribly afraid now. I could feel the faint quicksilver trace of the shadows still inside me. If we stopped now, they would curl up deep, hiding in my veins and my belly. They would take root and grow and grow and grow, until they strangled all the rest of me.
He nodded once. He held out his hand, murmured a word, and another flask appeared. I shuddered; he had to help me tip a swallow into my open mouth. I choked it down, and he took up the chant again. The fire rose in me again, endless, blinding, burning.