Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 39 of 66

Ninka finished the bread and wiped her mouth. The chamber was quiet now. People were sleeping against the crystal walls, or drinking slowly, or holding children who had started to whimper again, which was better than silence. Rebecka crouched in front of her daughter. "Tell me," Rebecka said. "She saw me." Ninka's eyes were wet. "When I was looking for the others. I looked at her by mistake and she looked back. She knows my face now. She's coming." "Where is she?" "South. Riding. Fast." Ninka pressed her hands to her temples. "She's in my head. Right now. She's holding on." Rebecka felt the cold move under her ribs. The bow at her back hummed once and went still. A target too far to read. She looked at Katia. "We hide her," Rebecka said. "Her mind. Before this woman rides another mile." Katia was already moving. She went to the cabinet the ancestor had left and pulled out a wooden box banded in iron. She set it on the stone floor and opened the lid. Inside sat rows of small bottles, corked, glowing faint colors under a haze of runes. A note lay across the top row in her grandmother's hand: for the day the child is seen. "One for her," Katia said. "The rest for the others in this cave. It hides magic from anyone hunting it. Even a scrier looking straight at her won't find the shape of her." Aiyana knelt beside the dark pot they'd used to burn the dolls. She wiped it clean with her sleeve. "We seat the working here. The pot turns the seeing back on the sender for a breath. Long enough to break the thread." Rebecka lifted the small bottle marked with a child's rune. Ninka took it in both hands. "It will hurt her," Ninka whispered. "The woman." "Good," Rebecka said. A grey cat in a patched cape padded out from behind Katia's skirts, wizard hat crooked on his head. He set one paw on the pot's iron foot. The runes on the cauldron flickered green. Aiyana glanced at Rebecka. "He knows the work," Katia said. "Let him." Ninka drank. Aiyana stirred the pot with the wand. The cat pressed both paws to the metal now, ears flat. The air in the chamber thickened, then released with a small hard sound like a snapped string. Ninka gasped. Her hand went to her nose. Blood ran over her lip. "She's gone," Ninka said. "Out of my head. She fell off her horse. I felt it." A tiny black-and-white kitten climbed into her lap and pressed its forehead under her chin. The bleeding slowed. Ninka closed her eyes. Rebecka stood. The bow hummed again, low and steady. The woman was still alive. Still south. But no longer inside her daughter. "Pass the bottles out," Rebecka told Katia. "Every mouth in this cave. Then I ride."