Brightly Woven(23)

It went on this way for some time, until every piece of glass had been ground into a fine dust and mixed with the fallen petals. When the last man had finally passed, a group of women came along and began to brush the dust into bins.

“What’s happening?” I asked the woman next to me. Her little girl chewed on the end of her braid and pressed her face into her mother’s skirt.

“It’s tradition,” the woman said, patting her daughter’s head. “You’ll have to excuse her. She’s never been without her papa for long.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking down at the girl again.

“The glass and petals,” the woman continued. “They’re refired into new shapes and forms. It’s meant to show that even if the city is set forth into ruin, it can always be built back up. We’re a city of re-creators, you know. It’s in our blood to start again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but it seemed somehow appropriate to me that we were standing on Restoration Road.

With the deliveries finished and my money collected, I ran back to Mrs. Pemberly’s inn. The woman caught my eye as I ducked back inside and shook her head. The wrinkles on her face deepened with her frown.

“They’re still not here?” I asked, my fingers fiddling with my necklace.

She shook her head. “I’ll send them up as soon as they get back.”

The hours went by, and there was still no sign of either North or Owain. A dragon isn’t an easy job, I reminded myself. But it was half-past six, and I was ready to start traveling again. We had wasted too much time already.

Half sprawled across Owain’s creaky bed, I wrote a letter to Henry. I told him about the wizards, about the fight and earthquake in Dellark, the rover beetle, and Fairwell’s destroyed bridge, but there was no way to explain the strange headache I had, or the hollow feeling at the pit of my stomach. Examining the letter, I saw that my words were disjointed and angled; none of my o’s were fully rounded, and I hadn’t dotted any of my i’s.

I don’t know what to do, I wrote. I want to look for them, but I’m too scared to go outside. Does that make me a terrible person? One of them—or both—could be terribly hurt, and would anyone know? I’m not sure when I’ll have time to write again, or if this letter will even find you at all. Write to me if you can, please, at this address! I miss you very, very much.

I crossed it out hastily, guilt welling up inside me. I didn’t want Henry to know any of it, but every word of the letter had been true, and seeing my heart splayed out in words made me feel only worse.

Several hours later, I found myself by the lonely window in Owain’s room with my reassembled loom and ten rows of blue. Mrs. Pemberly had brought me dinner and even cookies, though they weren’t nearly as delicious as the ones that emerged from my mother’s oven. At that point I would have given anything—a finger, my best dress, my loom—just for a taste of her cooking. I would have devoured it, even if it had been coated with dust.

The room had darkened abruptly, and all I had to light my work were three candle stubs that were melting quickly. Still, once my hands began their usual routine, it felt like coming home again. When the rain finally started to fall, I opened the windows and listened to the droplets as they hit the roof and windowpane. For the first time in days, I felt like myself.

But just as quickly, a different storm blew in, one of hearty laughter and heavy stomping.

“I think I know which room is mine, boy!”

“Didn’t know you could read!”

“How ’bout you read my…my…”

“Ha! Still a quick wit, I see!”

I dropped the thread without a second thought.

Thank you, Astraea, I thought, releasing a heavy sigh.

The door to the room banged open, and two figures stumbled in, laughing and wheezing. I turned to greet them, but the words died on my lips. They stopped midchuckle, their eyes wide. They had forgotten about me.

“Hullo, Syd!” North said brightly. He was leaning heavily on Owain, who looked only a little steadier on his feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked. “When you didn’t come back I thought that—Did you get the dragon?”

North tried to draw me into a hug, but I knew the warning signs now. Flushed cheeks, glazed eyes…and the smell. I took a step back, and he landed face-first on the bed.

I looked to Owain in disbelief, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“He’s drunk—you’re both drunk!” I said. “All this time, were you just drinking yourself to rot?”

“We did the job, lass!” Owain said quickly. “Job done, dragon slayed, all merry!”

“So tell me how the job entailed drinking yourselves into stupidity?” I demanded. “You should never have left me behind! I wanted to go!”

“But it was a dragon—too dangerous,” Owain said, almost whining.

“I’ll decide what’s too dangerous for me from now on, thank you,” I snapped.

Owain shook his head, and the rain clinging to his thick hair went flying. “Took us hours to ride out there on Vesta. North gave that dragon hell—never seen so much magic in my life. Whirls of ice, fire of his own! I thought he might be burned to a crisp, but he brought the red cloak down and there wasn’t a burn on him. Then I climbed on the dragon’s back and took my sword and—” He took a deep breath. “And then the villagers made us stay and feast, because that dragon had been around for a year and no wizard had been able to kill the bloody thing until him and me!”