The plane glowed from within like a paper lantern, floated in front of him, then shot toward the sky.
He whispered a plea to his broom as he hopped on. It shivered before obeying his call. The chain of luggage swung below, aided by the charms of Vatii’s feathers. He lolled through the air, guiding the broom into a cautious ascent. He’d only gone for a couple test flights, preferring to give the broom as much time as possible in its healing elixir. It had paid off. Aside from a couple twitches and hiccups, the broom sailed more smoothly than before the break.
They reached the coast to the chorus of gulls and the smell of salt and brine. The sea sprawled, vast and fathomless. Vatii perched on the front of his broom like the proud statue on the stern of a ship, the glowing light of the paper plane leading the way.
Two hours into their journey, a sliver of their destination appeared on the horizon. Slate cliffs plummeted into the sea, lacy foam spraying the rockybottom. The island was hilly and bearded with forest like a sleeping giant. Briar could make out a port where a ferry had docked. Before long, the sea was at their backs, and nothing but green hills below and before them.
Their paper plane banked into a steep dive. Briar had to pull up short, but he’d been flying too fast and overshot. As he prepared to reel around, he struck something non-corporeal. It glided over them like a second skin, thick as whale blubber. Briar’s broom slowed to a crawl. His luggage froze in its ceaseless sway. A sensation like jaws preparing to snap shut scraped against the back of his neck. Then, before he could grow accustomed to the way this strange magic clung to him, it spat him back out.
Briar, Vatii, his broom, and the string of luggage flew backward in an arc. He let out a yell, spinning top over tail, the sky and earth swooping past like on a sickening fairground ride. He had the most ludicrous thought that he didn’t know if his broom could handle another fall rather than appreciating the delicacy of his own bones, but then the magic ensnaring him peeled away like shucked corn. He righted his broom, wobbling and precarious but enough to slow his alarming descent. They fluttered to the ground, Vatii screeching angrily.
“The wards,” Briar gasped. He stepped off his broom with shaky legs. “We must have hit them. Eugh, I can still feel that slimy magic. I think it wanted to eat me, Vatii.”
“Rude!” Vatii grasped the paper plane off the ground in her talons. “Useless thing could have given us some warning!”
“Don’t wreck it, I want to keep it!”
“It nearly killed us.”
“Probably the wards mess with the charm a bit.” He smoothed out the wrinkles and fussed at the holes from Vatii’s claws. “It’s still my first keepsake from my placement.”
“You’re so sentimental. I thought you were dreading coming here.”
“I’m making the best of it.”
They’d landed on a dirt road. Hills dipped and swelled to their right. In the valley between were the shadowy rooftops of a small settlement. Coill Darragh. With the sun low in the sky, detail fell away, but the forest for which the town was named hugged the border like a crescent moon. Or a hungry mouth.
Moss stuffed the cracks of a stone obelisk on the side of the road. The engraving, which might have once been the town’s name, was weathered to illegibility.
“We wait for the alderman.” Briar flipped open his phone to check the time. “We’re on schedule, at least.” He took a seat on the dry stone wall framing the lane.
Vatii landed beside him. “This would be a good place to take up hiking.”
“Absolutely not,” Briar said. “I’m delicate and not too proud to admit it.”
“Coward. These aren’t even mountains, they’re steep hills.”
Though absent of the bright lights and bustling streets of Pentawynn, the countryside exuded its own charms. The air carried an autumnal scent of bonfire, and the tree leaves were gilded with gold. The quiet seemed to sing with growing, breathing things. He might have enjoyed it if Vatii hadn’t pecked some foul insect out from the cracks in the stone wall.
“Ew, Vatii!” Briar shot up and away from the wall, dancing into the road and brushing off his backside.
Vatii cackled. “It’s only a centipede.”
Briar turned away as she tossed back the wriggling thing and ate it, snapping her beak.
The crunch of nearby footsteps drew their attention. A figure came around the bend in the road, tall and broad. His countenance struck a strange resemblance to the dry stone walls and the obelisk and the craggy hillsides. Square-jawed and bearded, he looked carved of rock and softened by moss. The closer he got, the larger he seemed.
“Now that’s a mountain I would climb,” Briar whispered to Vatii.
“And you call me disgusting.”
“Briar?” said the mountain man.
He crossed through the wards, and his aura washed over Briar. It was the taste of hot stew on a rainy night; it was soft like hand-knit mittens. Carved through it was a magical scar with a signature all its own. Like a shadow in a dark room when you couldn’t quite place what made it. From within the collar of his wool cloak, a visible scar—the source of the one that marred his aura—crawled up his throat, over his face, and branched up into his hairline. The hair it touched was threaded with white.
Briar put on his most charming smile. “That’s me. What’s your name?”
“Rowan. Here.” He held something out in his hand. A bracelet of leather cord and copper wire, woven through a wardstone with a rune engraved on it. It would grant Briar passage through the wards.
