Frost twins's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

We slept on the floor beside the bed, not in it. In the morning the older fairy set two bowls of hot broth on the table and watched us drink. The winged hound sat at the door. The portrait of the boy and girl still hung above the empty pillows, and we did not look at it. She said, "I told you I would send you to the lake tribe. I have changed my mind about how." She laid the twin snowflake knives on the table between our bowls. "These belonged to them. Two blades, one pair. If you can throw them together and hit one mark, I will point you onward to a fairy at the lake who knows a path around the spell you want. If you miss, or if you argue, the hound carries you back to the tree line and you walk home." She tapped a knot in the far wall. A small circle, no bigger than a coin. "One throw. Each of you takes a knife. Both blades in the circle, or neither counts." We picked up the knives. The left hand took the girl's blade. The right hand took the boy's. He wanted to throw on a count of three. She wanted to breathe first and throw on the exhale. Our arms lifted and stopped. The old argument started under our skin, quick and familiar. Then I looked at the empty bed. She looked at the empty bed. The two children in the portrait had shared a spell and it had killed one of them because they had not truly agreed. They had only decided to try. "Breathe first," I said. "Then three." "Breathe first," she said. "Then three." We breathed. We counted. On three our arms moved as one arm. Both knives left our hands at the same instant and struck the wall a finger apart, inside the coin-sized ring. The handles hummed. The hound stood up and shook out its wings. The older fairy walked to the wall, pulled the blades free, and set them back in our palms. "Keep them," she said. "You earned the pair." She did not smile. "Follow the hound to the lake. Ask for Glacienne Frostwhisper. Tell her I sent you, and tell her what you learned in this house. She may know a way to cast the spell that does not require a witness. She may also refuse you. That will be her choice, not mine." We stepped out into the snow with a knife at each hip. The hound walked ahead, wings half open against the wind. Below the ridge, past a stand of black pines, a pale structure rose from the shore of a frozen lake, its spires clear as glass. She and I did not speak. We had thrown as one hand. It was a small thing, and we both knew it. The spell waiting for us at the lake was not a knife and a wall.