She decides to be blunt.
“I want you to do a spell,” she says lightly, then laughs. Lesser people are always more frightened when threats come with laughter. “Your magic, your best magic.”
The stranger hesitates. She looks from Thyrla to Peder, the wastrel boy lounging on his mother’s bed. Thyrla expects her to lie and say she has no magic, can’t do a single trick; the red-rose miracle was an accident. But that is not what she says.
She says, “I’ll do magic, on purpose, if you do some first.” A half breath, and then she adds, “Please.”
It has all gone so wrong, so fast!
Maybe I can forgive myself for being careless with the magic that lingered in my blood (I had no way of knowing about that, and I’ll guard against it in future), but how did I let myself be caught — caught, as we say in the sea, meaning the worst possible fate — by this woman? I, who have eluded sharks and squid and fishermen’s nets since the day I was born, who have sung sailors to their death lest they violate me or a girl of my people: I failed to plan for a danger. A beautiful danger, for the woman and her son are very beautiful; and in the ocean, we learn early that the prettiest and most tempting creatures carry the most lethal poison.
This Baroness Thyrla, as she calls herself, is clearly —
“What kind of witch are you?” I ask her. I’m blunt. “What kind of magic do you have?”
As soon as I say the word — magic — there comes a hissing sound, a howl, and a series of knocks, though Thyrla doesn’t move so much as an eyelash. Then a silence as heavy as stone.
Silver and gold, shining in the half dark, Thyrla glares at me. From all the noises, including the not-noise of her silence, I conclude that she is a witch of the air, as I’m one of water. Which is why she’s taken me somewhere so high and windy that the traces of my own element have evaporated.
The boy, Peder, is also staring, though the weight of his gaze feels quite different. Could he be a witch, too, perhaps of a different sort?
Sjældent and Father and all of the aunties told me that in this place, men are superior to women, and women must do as men say, even boys. I wonder if they are mistaken, or if the Baroness is simply an exception. She with her castle and her feast and her rose vine, ordering this boy about — she’s no more docile than Sjældent or Addra.
But then, too, there’s the strange way Peder looks at me: as if he owns me, the way someone might own a necklace or ring. I think I feel him already deep in my bones, owning me . . . and smiling.
“Careful, Mother,” he says in a slow, drawling voice. “Our visitor could be planning a trick.”
Thyrla doesn’t look away from me. She doesn’t even blink.
I don’t think Peder means what he says, or else he’s decided never to appear sincere for some reason. When I look at him, he winks at me as if we’re sharing a joke — or as if he’s imitating the silken eye his mother is wearing over her real one.
“Like that trick with the roses,” he adds. “It could be no more than any sailor would pick up in a port to the east.”
I wouldn’t have known a rose to nod at, if I hadn’t fallen into them. Now I can’t get their scent out of my nose; it’s a bright-dark smell of air and sap, as far from salt depths as can be. Completely unexpected.
A test of magic wasn’t in my plans, either — and now I’ve turned it into a contest, in which Thyrla and I will battle each other. This is surely not what Sjældent intended when she said I’d find a woman on these shores to help me. No one could possibly know of this Baroness and still expect help, let alone help finding a mother. It’s hard enough to believe she’s a mother herself, the way she orders Peder around so harshly.
Except now. Now she’s guarding her silence and letting him speak.
“Mother,” he says, “I think you should go first. Sanna wants to find your weakness.”
“Then I’ll have to show her my strength.” The Baroness, finally speaking, is a little less frightening. Just a little. Her tongue is very sharp, and when she talks I feel that tingle of magic, even without a touch.
She says, “I have just the thing.” She goes to the table, picks up a silver jar, and spills sand over the surface. She does this till the table is covered, and then she smooths the sand out; and when that is done, she begins to make marks in it. Her finger draws a series of lines that form sixteen squares:
Peder laughs — that sound of landish bells borne through the air — and says, “Oh, Mother.”
He says Mother, but I get the impression he’s speaking to me. Showing off: He knows something that I do not; he knows this magic, too.
“Name a number,” Thyrla says to me. “Any number. I will find it for you among others I write in this sand, beginning with one through twelve and conjuring the rest.”
My flok hasn’t much use for written numbers — there is no point in writing on water. But we know about them, as they are often found on things we keep because they’re pretty. And of course, we know how to count; we count fish, waves, ships, each other.
“Thirty-seven,” I say.
She seems pleased; her eye is bright. “Ah. For the Thirty-Seven Dark Isles. A very nice gesture from a guest. Well, remember your number, and my son will be our witness.”
Thyrla bends to the tablet and, pushing her right sleeve up at the elbow, begins moving the sand around with her smallest finger, making numbers within the squares.
It doesn’t look like magic to me so far, but I watch. I know the looks of numbers up to a dozen or so; anything beyond that might be pure puzzle.
Thyrla pushes the sand around some more, dotting the squares with more numbers.
I think I hear laughter, or something more like teeth rattling against each other. I realize I’m frowning, and I tell my brow to unwrinkle. I wish my landish clothes didn’t scratch so much. And that I could guess what Thyrla is doing before she finishes.
“It’s very simple,” says the Baroness. “These are all the numbers to a dozen, yes? And now we’ll find your thirty-seven in every direction.”
She fills the other squares with numbers bigger than I’m used to seeing. I think, Sjældent never told me about number-witches. I know only of elemental witches: sea, land, air, fire, time.
My early self-assurance, whatever there was of it, has entirely vanished. But that’s no magic feat.
“And there we are!” Thyrla steps aside to let me see even better.
The figure is now complete, with a number for each square in a seemingly haphazard pattern:
No number 37, though. I gaze down and let my face scowl if it wants to.
The Baroness knows I’m nonplussed. “Now try this,” she says, with an air of command more than invitation: “Add them in any direction, up, down, or sideways, and you’ll have thirty-seven each way.”
“Diagonally, too,” says Peder. He sounds excited. “Start in any corner and work toward its opposite, and you’ll have . . .”
“Thirty-seven,” they say together.
They are very pleased with themselves, mother and son. I check their sums and see that they are right; the number adds up in each place they say it will.