Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(43)
And yet Heath finds his way through it every single day.
She pulls out his scrawled pages of maps and charts. But try as she might, she can’t interpret them. Restless, she refolds them and resigns herself to inching along the wall, using her hands to feel for variations. Once again she feels the essence of the stones, but their story has no beginning, middle, and end. It’s more like a song, a sequence of dark, swirling emotions on a continuous loop. It scares her, this vastness, this trappedness.
She pulls her hands away, tempted to turn around and race back to Blackthorn. But then she thinks of the disappointment in Heath’s eyes during their argument, and she knows she can’t. Someone needs to solve the mystery of this place. What if she really is the only one who can piece it together?
Besides, she can’t risk never returning home to see her sister or to meet the prince of Aubin or to unify the kingdoms against Malfleur. Her whole life is back in Deluce, and she needs to be where her life is.
She begins to sing to herself, surprised by how soothing it is to hear her own voice echoed back to her as she runs her fingers over bumps and cracks and sections of stone so smooth they seem to whisper of peace. The rose lullaby comes to her as she walks.
One night reviled,
Before break of morn,
Amid the roses wild,
All tangled in thorns,
The shadow and the child
Together were born.
The bright sun did spin,
The moon swallowed day,
When one her dear twin
Forever did slay.
As the lyrics leave her lips, something changes beneath her hands. The wall begins to soften, to give. Could she have found the rift so soon? She stops singing, and the wall is once again impenetrable. She backtracks but can’t find the spot again. She stares at the stones for a second, and then something occurs to her. She tries singing the lullaby again. And the wall bends inward, rippling like a body of water.
She sings louder, and as she does she steps forward, and forward . . . and through.
At first, the Borderlands do not appear threatening, and she wonders if Heath has overstated their dangers. The sun breaks open, lighting up a thousand shades of green in the canopy above her. Birds dart between branches, chirruping. Fresh pinecones crunch beneath her shoes.
After several steps, Aurora turns quickly—but the wall is still visible. She breathes out in relief, then gets an idea. She pulls the necklace of rubies and pearls out of her cloak pocket. One by one, she removes the jewels. She bends down and leaves one at the base of a tree. Then she moves deeper into the forest. Every ten feet or so, she lays down another, leaving a glimmering trail. As long as there’s enough light to see by, she’ll be able to trace her way back to the wall.
But by the time she comes to the end of the necklace, she has seen no variation in the woods, and no sign of the location of the cottage. She once again unfolds Heath’s maps, and stares at them in confusion. Should she go back or continue on without a trail to retrace?
She turns in a circle, surveying the area. The idea of moving in the wrong direction makes her pulse spike with nervousness. She walks a few more paces, thinking there might be a clearing ahead. Yes—just there, through the thicket . . . she picks up her pace, trying to outrace the fear that lurks just behind her, threatening to break like a wave over her head. But panic begins to seize her chest, and she’s reminded of losing her way in Deluce and stumbling upon the cottage, and then the spinning wheel that transported her here to Sommeil in the first place. She’s suddenly dizzy with the idea that it could happen again, that she may be doomed to fall through one strange version of the world into another and another and another, like a series of marred reflections, until there’s no longer any hope of finding herself.
There is no clearing; it had been a trick of the light.
The worry is a whorl of wind in her ears, a stir of leaves overhead, a shivering. She is a child again—so very afraid of the many things she cannot understand. Of the things she’ll never be able to say.
Aurora grabs on to the bark of a tree, the fear making it hard to breathe. She wants to cry. She wants to be held. She wants to be saved.
But no one is here to save her.
She takes a heaving breath. Isbe, she taps into the side of the tree, in their old language, in her truest language. I can’t do this alone.
Another wind snakes through the branches, rustling the leaves. A twig snaps.
And Aurora knows: she’s not alone.
She blinks into the brush, which stirs again.
A set of eyes emerges, several carriage lengths away. And pointed white-gray ears.
Wolf.
Her heart lurches into her throat. She can’t move. It’s not common, she knows, for wolves to stalk in broad daylight. Then again, if there’s little game, perhaps they too are starving, drawn out of their natural habits by the smell of flesh.
Aurora trembles and backs up slightly. In response, the wolf makes a jerky movement, as though about to leap from the underbrush. She freezes again, trying to recall what to do in the presence of wild predators. But all she can think of is the romance of Ulrica, abandoned as a baby in a wolf’s den, where she was raised for sixteen years before the valiant and dashing Prince Bertram discovered her and made her his wife. Ulrica could never sleep in the luxury of the palace; she would lope into the mountains, howling. One night, the prince followed his love and watched her transform into a wolf in the pale glow of the moon. He cried out in shock; then his love turned on him and sank her fangs into his neck.