Sylvester continued on his path without turning, and so it was left to Cornelius and me to deal with this new arrival.
The carriage slowed as it neared us and drew abreast. There was no one else on the road, whether because of the earliness of the hour or some other, more sinister reason, and so there was no danger of it blocking the thoroughfare.
I opened the window, and the driver leaned to peer in the window at Cornelius and me, clearly nonplussed at seeing a very ordinary peasant girl and a fairly ordinary cat inside what was clearly a magic-worker’s carriage. I suppose he hadn’t spotted Sylvester, who was pacing back and forth a few hundred yards away.
“You all right?” the man asked, his brow furrowed. “Trouble with the carriage?”
One of the magical horses snorted through its dinner plate-sized nostrils, and the man started. He seemed jumpy.
“No, thanks,” I said. “Just stopping a while.”
“Right you are.” He squinted toward the horizon. “Weather looks a bit grim up ahead.”
That was an understatement. “Yes, it does,” I said. I couldn’t help but be curious, and so I went ahead and asked, “Where are you headed?”
“Me? Well, I’m off to ...” he started confidently and then trailed off.
“Off to ... ?” I prompted.
He frowned and scratched at his beard. “Right, as I said, I’m off to ... because ...”
I waited for a few beats. He reminded me of the few travelers I had met in the village, who always seemed so lost and uncertain about their destinations. This was starting to make a terrible sort of sense.
“You all right, then?” he said again. “Don’t need any help?”
Cornelius and I exchanged glances. “No, thanks,” I repeated. “We’re just stopping a while.”
“Right you are,” he said. “Well, I’m off home.”
He twitched the reins to turn the horse’s heads.
“Wait,” I stopped him. “You’re off home? Back that way?” I pointed behind us.
He looked mazed, like a man who has worked too long in the hot sun and can’t quite see straight. “Yes, off home,” he said. “I just came out this way to ...” He laughed a little. “Sorry, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Thanks for stopping.”
“You take care now,” he said. He blinked at the ornate carriage, as if trying to focus on it, and then abruptly rattled his reins and steered his carriage round to face the other way. The whole conversation had reminded me of talking to a drunk outside the village tavern.
“He’s really leaving,” said Cornelius, putting his paws up on the windowsill.
“It’s like something made him forget where he was planning to go,” I said.
“It’s the magic,” said Cornelius. “I can smell it.”
Sylvester returned, letting in another breath of cold air as he settled himself back in the carriage. His coat smelled of ice and pine trees.
“I don’t think this mist has been sent for us,” said Sylvester, “although my father may yet send something to pursue us when he wakes up.”
That was the opposite of reassuring. “So, what is it, then?”
“Ghosts, of a sort,” he said, almost casually, as if he came across such things every day. Maybe he did. “They are very ancient. Almost fossilized. There are ways to tell the age of spells. You have heard how a tree’s age can be determined by cutting it open and counting the rings inside? It is something like that. One can take a slice of the spell, as it were—”
“Yes, yes, all right,” I interrupted. “You don’t need to tell me the whole mess of it.”
He pinked a little. I could see he had been a tad impressed with his own cleverness in analyzing the spell and was miffed to be hurried along. “I would be surprised if anyone but a magic-worker could sense them,” he continued. “There are so many, and they are so close together, that they create a barrier. But it spreads to either side, as far as I can measure. There is no way around it.”
“It’s like a moat, then?” I clarified. “Around the kingdom?”
