“Huh,” he said, but didn’t say anything else as he came free. He was just in time to catch the witch as she stumbled forward. He gently lowered her to the floor.
“Stubborn thing,” Kyra said, and dabbed the witch one more time with the swab to buy them a few extra minutes. Then she shooed the animals and Fred out the door.
“SO, ANYTHING ELSE I should know about?” Fred asked.
They’d run for half the day, until the trees had thinned and the land turned to pasture, and toward late afternoon they’d come upon a run-down farmhouse.
There was no sign of the farmer who owned the place—the horse stable was empty and there was no carriage next to the stalls. Kyra guessed that he might be off to sell his goods at market. They were both relieved when Fred spotted an abandoned barn filled with hay on the outskirts of the farm, where they would be safely hidden should the farmer show up.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kyra adjusted herself in the hay of the barn loft.
“Well, there’s the fact that you’re a witch.” Fred dug around in his pack.
“Only a spark,” Kyra said.
“Then there’s that great trick you have up your sleeve that even a powerful witch is helpless against.”
“A gift from a friend!” Kyra reminded him.
“I’m starting to think there might be more to this dairymaid than meets the eye.”
Kyra could only smile and shrug nervously. Little did he know.
“And what’s up with this obeeka thing?” Fred asked.
Kyra hesitated, recalling the first time she’d met Ariana, and the stories a witch had told her of curses and monsters and evil creatures from far-off lands. Make-believe, Ariana had said.
“It was probably just something the witch made up to scare us,” Kyra said at last.
Fred moved around to sit beside her in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight streaking in through a crack in the wall, then patted a spot on the other side of him for Langley to settle down into. The dog had been pacing uneasily since he’d been brought up the ladder steps. Rosie hadn’t been doing much better. On the other side of Kyra, she was curled into a tight little ball.
Fred leaned back and propped himself on one elbow to face Kyra.
“What?” Kyra brushed the hair back from her face.
He didn’t say anything, just kept watching her.
“I’m not a witch.” Kyra nestled into the pile of hay beside him. “I just have the spark, so I could be a witch. But I choose not to.”
Fred put a bag of shaggy carrots he’d liberated from the farmer’s garden between them. Kyra picked one out.
“I should have guessed you were a witch,” Fred said, “from the evil eye you’re always giving me.”
Kyra ignored him. Rosie moved close and put her head in Kyra’s lap.
“I’ve heard of Seers,” Fred went on, pulling a carrot out and taking a big bite. “But I’ve never actually met one. It sounds pretty cool. Do you see the future?”
“It’s not cool, and it only happened once.” Thank the Goddess of Secrets she’d lied about that. “If you don’t work to develop it, it goes away.” Or so she’d been told. Or maybe she just hoped. She was beginning to have some doubts.
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s like you can see things beneath the surface. It could be things that might happen or did happen. Believe me, it’s horrible. You can’t make sense of what you see, and you just drive yourself crazy trying to understand the images that come to you.”
“That sounds like more than once. You’re using the plural.”
“I was speaking in general.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was.”
“Does your family know? I mean, I’ve heard there’s prejudice here against witches, but I think they’d want you to be who you are. Train yourself so you know how to handle your gift. That’s what they do where I’m from—if you’re born with the witch’s spark you get training. If you don’t want to work as a witch, you don’t have to, but at least you know what you can do. Didn’t your family encourage you at all?”
“They did.” Kyra’s whole body tightened.
“And?”
“I ran away.”
Fred looked stunned. “You what?”
“It was a long time ago. Can we talk about something else?”
Fred still had a shocked expression on his face, but then he recovered and gave her a wicked smile. “Only if I can call you Little Witchy.”
“Ha-ha.” Kyra threw the frond end of the carrot she’d been eating at him.
How could Happy-Go-Lucky Fred ever understand what it was like to be born into a role you didn’t want to play? A role people feared and despised? A role you weren’t allowed to walk away from? Kyra’d had no choice but to run away. The Potioners’ Society had been more than happy to take on an enthusiastic ten-year-old apprentice. Her parents weren’t happy about it at all.
Fred lay back in the hay, arms behind his head.
Kyra tried to entice Rosie with a biscuit, but the pig just sighed and closed her eyes. “This is why I hate animals.”
“Because they love you unconditionally and keep you warm at night?”
“No.” Kyra rubbed the soft bristles right above the pig’s snout. She hoped Rosie’s nose would start working again tomorrow. “Because they can’t tell you what’s wrong with them, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“And you hate them for that?”
Kyra scrunched up her face. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I honestly don’t.” Fred turned toward her. “Why do you have such a hard time letting anyone in?”
“That’s not fair. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
“You didn’t want to have anything to do with me when you met me, and you’ve continually tried to ditch me, even though you couldn’t ask for a better traveling companion—”
“Except maybe someone who bathes—”
“You’re giving Rosie away to some distant relative when she obviously loves you, and you change the subject whenever it gets personal. And just because I don’t throw myself into every river I encounter doesn’t mean I don’t bathe.”
“I don’t need a pet and I don’t need company.”
“You’re lying.” His eyes never left her face.
“I am not.” Kyra looked down at the pig in her lap.
She felt his eyes on her, but when she glanced up, he turned away.
“Whatever,” he said. “Rosie’s just scared. Hold her tonight and I’m sure she’ll be fine in the morning. I’m going to go get us some water from the well.”
Fred reached into his pocket and pulled out a small white flower. “They were growing next to the carrot bed.” He tossed it into Kyra’s lap.
The ladder creaked as Fred made his way down, and there was a muffled thump when he jumped off the last step.
Kyra picked up the flower. It was a perfect white crocus with petals arching to almost meet at the top.
As she stared at the flower, her vision darkened and she heard a rushing in her ears as the world around her receded. The flower withered, blackened, and collapsed into dust.
As quickly as it had come, the image receded, and Kyra was once again staring at a beautiful white flower. She swallowed the nausea in her throat and stroked a silky petal with one finger.
Why wouldn’t the visions go away?
Since her second full vision earlier that year, she’d been having little flashes like this, short disturbing visions she couldn’t control. And every one of them, large and small, was about the same thing: the death of everyone and everything around her—nothing was spared. She tried so hard to keep her Sight all boxed up inside, but a tiny flicker had gotten through, and now she couldn’t seem to contain it. At least she’d been spared another full vision—for now, anyway.
Kyra decided to spy on Fred, and peeked through a crack in the barn wall. He made his slow way to the farmer’s roadside well, a spring i
n his step. She didn’t know how anyone could look happy from overhead, but he did.
And she thought she understood why. The countryside stretched in every direction—rolling hills edged by forest to the left, neatly planted rows of crops just beginning to sprout to the right, the farmer’s house and animal barn distant small squares in between. As Kyra watched, the sun dipped below the trees, and warm yellow light spilled through the spaces between them. A trio of apple trees was in full bloom below, and the smell of lilacs rose up to her on a puff of wind. When she opened herself to it, the beauty of the Kingdom of Mohr never failed to take her breath away. It was a good place. And only she could save it.
She would do whatever it took to save the kingdom.
Even if it meant killing her best friend.
A splotch of green, brighter than the trees surrounding it, came into Kyra’s line of sight—a person on horseback approaching the farm from the direction of the forest.
The crocus fell from Kyra’s fingers as the rider drew closer. It was the Duchess Genria.
Making good time on her glossy horse, she reached the well and dismounted, approaching Fred with a friendly wave. He waved back happily, the fool.
Kyra watched as he and the duchess talked together.
It was strange watching the duchess, in her perfectly tailored velvet riding outfit, standing in the dirt talking with Fred. The sight of her made Kyra feel twelve years old again—like she was about to get a lecture about scrubbing before her lessons with the princess. Kyra was aware of every speck of dust she’d accumulated on the road, the knots in her hair, the bits of hay sticking to her clothes.
Kyra clenched her hands. If only she could keep him from saying anything stupid. If he mentioned Kitty.…
The thought sent spiders of tension crawling over her skin.
Fred was doing a lot of head-shaking and “no”-ing. That was good. The duchess wouldn’t know him and certainly wouldn’t know that he had anything to do with Kyra. If he was denying he was with anyone, it might be okay.
But waiting to find out was killing her.
When the duchess turned her head up sharply toward the barn, Kyra’s heart stopped cold.
The noblewoman seemed to be looking right at her. It was impossible—there was no way she could see anything through a crack in a barn wall a hundred yards away and two stories up. Just as abruptly as the duchess looked up, she looked away again.
The duchess didn’t seem satisfied with Fred, but she mounted her horse, wheeled it away, and galloped out of sight.
Kyra slumped down into the hay.
Below, the barn door scraped open, and Kyra heard Fred’s footsteps on the ladder.
His face appeared above the edge of the loft. “Do you have any idea who I just talked to?” He didn’t wait for Kyra to answer. “The queen’s sister! Who, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous. She’s in the area looking for a fugitive—not really what you’d expect from the queen’s sister, but Mohr is a pretty strange kingdom. And a friend of hers told her about us. A witch friend. Can you believe it?” Fred plopped himself down. “She asked where my wife was, and I told her she must have the wrong person. It didn’t really look like she believed me, but she did believe I was a complete idiot and not worth her time.”
“Imagine that.”
“Ha-ha.” Fred slung the waterskins off his shoulder.
“Wait,” Kyra said, sitting up in alarm. “How did she find us? We’re miles away from the witch.”
“No idea.”
“Fred,” Kyra said tentatively, “you didn’t remove anything from the witch’s house, did you?”
“What do you take me for?”
Kyra cocked her head.
“She did give me some warm socks before she went and got you.”
“Fred!”
“What? My feet were cold. You should have seen the holes in my other socks!”
“She put a trace on you in case you escaped. Damn.” Witch’s traces were much like potions tags, except that if you got rid of the object, you got rid of the trace. Nothing got rid of a potions tag.
“Really? I thought she was just worried about my feet.” Fred touched one of his socks.
“Go back to the river—”
“That was a mile back!”
“—and throw the socks in. We can’t have a trace on us. We don’t want the duchess to come looking for us again. Next time, she’ll bring the guard with her.”
“Why should we be afraid of her?”
“You aren’t from around here, so you might not know about the duchess. But I’m telling you, do NOT mess with her. She’s powerful in the kingdom, and even though we aren’t who she’s looking for”—Kyra tried to make this sound as though she really believed it—“she could have us imprisoned for a long time before things got cleared up. There wouldn’t need to be a reason, either—people can be thrown in prison here for irritating the wrong person.”
“Hmmm…” Fred mused. “She is like a beautiful but poisonous flower.”
“She isn’t just beautiful.” Kyra hesitated, but she needed to make sure Fred realized the danger they were in. “The duchess,” she whispered, “is a witch.”
“No way! Like Miss I’m-going-to-eat-you-in-my-stew back there?”
“No! Not like her. The duchess’s gift is persuasion and attraction. It’s very difficult to say no to her if she turns her gift on you. You’re lucky she only put an attraction spell on you and didn’t turn on the persuasion, or you would’ve spilled every little secret you’ve got.”
Fred looked sincerely disturbed. He rubbed his hand over his head, rumpling his brown hair. “I didn’t know.”
“Please, just go down to the river, toss the socks, and avoid falling in love with any dangerous people, okay?”
“Fine.” Fred’s smile turned back on. “But I want you to know that I will then be completely sockless and cold.”
Kyra glared at him.
“Okay. Just promise me you’ll be here when I get back. I don’t think we should separate the animals right now.”
Kyra sighed. “I promise.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Fred reached into his pocket and tossed something over to Kyra.
On reflex, Kyra caught the object. The necklace the witch had stolen from her. “How did you…?”
He put his fingers together in the two-fingered sign of a thief. “Just a small talent I picked up in my travels.” He winked at her and disappeared over the side of the loft.
THE NEXT DAY, Kyra cursed herself for not having slipped away the night before. She was tired, dirty, and completely unnerved by the appearance of the duchess.
Plus, it was raining.
That wasn’t Fred’s fault, but somehow it seemed everything would be easier to bear if she didn’t have to share her misery with anyone.
When Fred had come back without the witch socks the night before, she’d pretended to be sleeping. She felt him lie down beside her and could have sworn he was watching her in the dark of the hayloft. Kyra hadn’t dared risk opening her eyes to see. His breath fluttered against her face, and she felt the lightest touch on her cheek—something soft and warm resting there for the briefest second.
Fred had kissed her.
She heard him settle back into the hay.
She listened until she was sure he was asleep, then peeked at him. She hadn’t gotten used to how beautiful he was. It still sent a jolt through her. She wanted to reach out and touch the curve of his lips.
But she didn’t. Instead she’d nestled in beside him and, despite everything that had happened, fell into an easy sleep, a warm feeling inside.
Then this morning she’d awoken to the sound of rain on the roof and the animals antsy and ready to go.
Fred was unusually quiet, almost somber as they headed out.
The rain alternated between pouring and drizzling. The intense deluge made it difficult to see ahead, and the drizzling, while bearable, made Kyra irritable.
Rosie and Langley
, on the other hand, were fully recovered from the incident with the witch. Rosie’s nose was twitching back and forth, sniffing the ground in front of her. The rain didn’t seem to have an effect on her at all.
Fred’s mood sank even further as they walked.
They were getting close to Wexford. Soon there would be other people on the path. Kyra needed to put on a glamour before they encountered anyone who’d recognize her.
The time had come to lose Fred.
As Kyra debated the possible ways she could slip away, she noticed how quiet the forest had become. The rain fell in a fine mist now, but it wasn’t that. The birds that had optimistically started singing when the rain had let up were now silent.
Then she heard the faintest noise.
Someone following them.
She glanced behind, and just for a moment, there it was—a flash of black in the green behind them.
“Fred,” Kyra whispered, “there’s someone behind us.”
“So?”
“Someone following us.”
“Why would someone be following us?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like someone who’s up to no good. He’s wearing all black.”
“So,” Fred replied, “are you.”
“I’m wearing black because it travels well, but that’s not the point. This person is dodging in and out of the trees.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Have you forgotten about the goblins who attacked you?”
“Do goblins wear black and dodge in and out of the trees?”
“As soon as we get around that bend”—Kyra pointed to a curve in the path in front of them—“let’s step off the trail. Whether he’s a robber or not, he’ll pass us by and we won’t have to worry about it.”
“I think I can protect us against one guy.” Fred crossed his arms across his chest.
“But why go to the trouble? Come on.”
Around the corner, the path widened and straightened out. Upper branches of elm trees arched overhead to create a canopy.
Kyra pushed Fred behind the wide trunk of a cedar with Rosie and Langley.