31
Dimhollow
Eloise
Disguised again as a peasant girl, I navigate the streets of Aendor toward Wickham Wood. Tempest wasn’t exaggerating. The port city is lousy with silver coats. Too many. Most of them look bored, as if they’ve been asked to guard a single square foot of sand and now don’t know what to do with themselves. I slip past them easily, the raven and its cage concealed in my rucksack.
When I’m far from the crowded streets, I cloak myself in invisibility and run for the border. Phantom meets me halfway, and I climb aboard their back, securing the cage to the saddle. The message that I’m coming is already attached to the raven’s leg. We rise into the night, and I release the bird, then follow it toward Dimhollow.
When I last left the village, the witches were at a lower altitude, although the bitter cold told a different story. Mount Perilon is enchanted to always be winter, adetermined frigidity that is the same at every elevation. As I close in on the new location of the village, snow stings my skin like a million needles, and I shiver violently in Phantom’s saddle.
Even we are cold, they say into my head.And we are dead.
Do we have a warming spell to counteract the chill? I ask.
Won’t work against this magic.
I drop our invisibility and pray to the goddess that Catarina received our message. She must have, because I see her run from her thatched-roof house and wave her arms frantically at me, holding out her hands in the universal stop signal. I pull back on Phantom and circle in place.
“What do you think she’s trying to tell us?” I scream into the icy wind.
Phantom rumbles their discomfort.I don’t know, darling, but I’d prefer a warm fire to whatever this is we’re doing.
Catarina appears to be doing an interpretive dance, flapping her arms and spinning while her mouth moves in a rhythm as if she’s singing a song I can’t hear. Then she pulls back a hand and throws an invisible ball toward me. A violet ripple casts across the sky, and I gasp. Thousands of icicles point in an arch above the village, daggers promising to shred anything that attacks from the sky.
“How do I get in?” I cry, although there is no way Catarina can hear me over the roar of the wind. Still, she gestures to my left. A break in the icicles forms a perfect, unguarded circle.
Can we fit?I ask Phantom.
Lie flat against me, darling. One way or another, we’re going in.
Phantom circles, tucks in their wings, and we dive. “Ahh!” I howl when an icicle clips their wing, a bloody slash appearing on my arm a second before the front of my calf slices open. Phantom roars. I can feel the witch’s death magic squirming through my body like icy worms. We careen toward the space between the cottages, Phantom’s injured wing refusing to properly hold their weight.
Until Catarina extends a hand and we slow to a stop, dropping the last foot or so to the frozen earth.
“All the gods and souls in the Darklands, what do you think you’re doing, Eloise Hymir? You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself killed!”
“Need to talk to you,” I whimper.
“So I gather!” Catarina yells. “I was attempting to tell you to wait until I could make the entry point bigger. What did you think I was doing down here?”
“Interpretive dance?” I give a pained smile, and my teeth chatter.
She gives me a confused and pointed look. “What?And when did you find the dragon? Oh, never mind. It can wait. If we don’t get the antidote into you, I’ll be feeding you by spoon for the next three days. Come to my cottage. Bring your—” she circles her hand toward Phantom, whose injured wing now appears skinless and skeletal “—familiar. I’ll fix them too.”
I limp after her toward the cottage that is quite obviously all hers, designed of twisted wood and tangled ivy, windows cloudy as baked sugar and perfumed by the scent of herbal tea that wafts from beneath the front door. Phantom disappears as I cross the threshold, still with me, but in their incorporeal state, and I rush to flop onto the sofa.
Catarina comes to me with a pot of tea and an herbal compress. “Next time, send the raven in advance! I barely had time to keep you from shredding yourself.”
My brow furrows. I love Catarina, but hot, violent anger boils up in me, and I need to release some steam. “Why didn’t you know I was coming? Why didn’t you suspect we’d need your help at some point? Do you even know what’s happening down there?” I point a hand in the direction I think is downhill. “People are dying, Catarina. Children have been drugged into slavery. The resistance is running out of time. Entire villages are being burned to the ground. You sit up here in your bubble of ice, and you think you are playing the role of some neutral good, some benevolent observer. When really, all you are is a community that did nothing, does nothing, but waits until fate catches up with you. And then, whatever happens, however many die and whatever atrocities occur, you’ll blame the stars, even as your own witches burn. Why haven’t you asked what your witches could do to help in this war? Why haven’t you checked in on the health and well-being of people who are supposed to be your friends? Why haven’t you provided us a key to enter your castle of ice when we need you? You offer your hand, Catarina, and then yank it away when we need it most. So don’t chide me for bulldozing through your icicle dome. Take accountability for making it so that I had to!”
Catarina’s eyebrows have lifted into her tangle of dark, graying hair. Her lips twitch, but she does not speak. She threads her fingers together in front of her hips. “This may be a good time to mention that the healing tea I’ve given you has a side effect of irritability and verity. I think we can assume it’s working.”
I glance down at the gash in my arm to find it fully healed, as is the one on my calf. “So it is,” I say flatly.
She pours me another cup, and her voice is soft as she asks, “Should I also treat your dragon?”
I reach down my bond with Phantom and check on them. “No. They’re healed. We are connected. When you healed me, you healed them.”
