Chapter 18
One afternoon, someone knocked at the door. It was the second Tuesday, normally the day when wizened, wiry Miss Santofair came for our laundry. She was quite late, but as I came downstairs I realized the knock was at the front door and not the kitchen door.
Celestina was heading for it, cursing. “That better be Miss Santofair. My dress is in the laundry bundle. I don’t care that she sees me looking so frightful, she’s a crazy old loon herself, but if it’s anyone else-”
Celestina’s younger brother stood on the other side of the door, flushed, panting and scowling.
“Ander? What is it?” Celestina cried.
“There’s a bunch of people coming after you.” He glanced backward, but the woods were still. “I just ran all the way from town, but I don’t want anybody to see me. I’m not about to lose my skin just because you had to mess around with sorcerers.”
“Wait. Calm down. Who’s after me?” She stepped back to let him in, because he looked like he’d go into a complete panic if he had to keep standing outside.
“This man came into town this morning-a weird man with funny clothes and gold. A jinn, they said. I don’t know what happened. I heard one thing from Louis and another thing from Riley.”
“Well, try and piece it together as best you can.”
“People have been talking about you all winter, you know,” Ander said. “Saying you’re hosting a house full of witches.” He wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. “Like I said, this funny-looking man, he came along and said he’s a jinn and he’s coming for the guy who lives here with you. Said he’s the fairy prince. And some girl named Violet. Said she’s Valdana’s daughter, but everybody knows his daughter’s dead. Anyway, the people in town were saying they’d be better off without Valdana or any of you, and the jinn said anyone who wanted to take down Valdana was welcome to join him. They were all supposed to get their torches and guns and things and meet in the town square.”
Celestina had a mixture of confusion and alarm on her face that I likely shared. “Are-are you sure about this?”
“Sure as the sunset.”
“What do they mean to do?”
Ander suddenly looked very distressed, close to tears. “Celestina, I don’t know! I think they could hurt you! Bad! You should really just get out of this town because people say all kinds of nasty things about you, and I know they aren’t true, but you don’t want to be here. And I need to go because I don’t want them to know I warned you.”
Celestina’s mouth folded up into itself. Ander moved to the door.
“What about Mama and Daddy?”
“They’re at home. They’re not going to come after you, but they’re not going to stand in anybody’s way, either. You know we can’t. You could’ve gone to St. Simona’s.”
She didn’t say anything else. Ander opened the door and ran out into the snow, steering away from the paths.
“St. Simona’s?” I said.
Celestina started walking back to the kitchen. “The convent,” she said. “They said it was the only way a girl who’d been marked by magic could ever be respectable.” She grabbed her coat and thrust her arms through the sleeves. She was crying. It was late afternoon and she’d just started dinner-the kitchen table was covered in potato peelings, a pot of beans was simmering, a jar of tomatoes awaited use.
I knew we wouldn’t be eating that dinner.
“Should I find the others?” I asked, trying to sound soothing. Because she was crying, I was focused on staying very collected. Someone had to be collected.
“Yes. Yes. I’ll pack some food. Tell Violet to bundle up.”
“I will.” Now that Violet had recovered to a large degree, she had a tendency to traipse outside without a hat or gloves and come in half-frozen. Erris was teaching her in the house lately-something about growing plants without light or soil. One of the useless little side rooms was slowly turning into a greenhouse, and I found them there now. Annalie was in her bedroom writing letters-I was dying to know if they were to Hollin, but of course I didn’t ask. I told them all, as quickly as I could, what had happened and ran to my room.
I was terrified the jinn would burn down the house to get to Erris. I put the dancing shoes my mother had embroidered, all my letters, and the elephant bracelet in my pockets. I briefly considered bundling up all my lovely dresses and stashing them in the shed, but we didn’t have time for that.
I met Erris on the stairs. I had started not to notice his limp, but now I realized anew how painfully slow he was. He was clutching Ordorio’s journals and a wooden box.
“Mel’s jewelry,” he said. “It’s locked but I remember the box. She’d want Violet to have these things, I’m sure.”
Violet gathered all the family photos, in three big leather-bound albums, and a battered copy of
“I’m not running away without my photos of Mama!” Violet said. “And Papa gave me this book when I was seven and it’s my favorite! Anyway, the jinn isn’t going to hurt us!”
“That’s very contradictory,” Celestina said. “Well, let’s just hurry and go. I sent Lean Joe off to stay with his daughter. And I’ve got food packed.” She took a pail from the kitchen table.
We rushed out into the snow, stopping to listen, but I couldn’t hear any voices or footsteps, just the vague creak and rustle of the forest. It was already dusk. The forest had an ominous look, dark and foreboding, the ice glistening, the evergreens whispering, as if a sorceress had come along and frozen it to keep it silent. Erris took the lead, motioning us forward with a little restless wave.
“There are people coming,” he said. “On horses. We’ve got a little time, but we need to…” He paused. “This way. There’s a ravine about a mile north. We should be able to cross it, but the horses can’t.”
We started walking.
“A mile,” Celestina whispered. I knew she was thinking of Violet, whose health was never ideal, and Erris’s foot, and knowing it was quite unlikely we could make it there before the horses caught up to us. “How far away are the horses?”
“The forest will do what it can to slow them down,” Erris said.
We fell silent. Erris was moving faster than I’d thought possible, but his gait was unsteady. The snow appeared blue in the fading light, and it slowed us all down with patches of unexpected depth, forcing us to tread carefully and pick up our feet. Violet was soon breathing audibly, a scarf pulled across her face, but no one stopped and no one looked over their shoulders.
My heart nearly stopped when Erris stepped in a depression in the ground, hidden by the snow. He flailed briefly with his walking stick before crashing forward.
I flew to his side. “Are you all right?” I helped him roll onto his back.
He flexed his limbs. “Fine. I’m fine. I just feel stupid.” He groaned and got to his feet.
“Well, slow down a bit. You were being reckless.”
He looked furtive. “I don’t have time to slow down.”
Violet was shivering. “The jinn doesn’t really want to hurt us. I know he doesn’t. And now Uncle Erris is going to break himself, and we’re all going to freeze to death.”
“Violet, the jinn doesn’t have a choice,” I said. “He has to grant wishes. If he has an order to kill you, he’ll have to do it.”
I started walking again. We couldn’t stop and talk, but there was an increasing tension-something creeping and quiet, rather like the cold seeping slowly into our bones. No one really knew where we were going, what the jinn planned, what the townspeople wanted. Celestina had been especially quiet, a pained look on her scarred face.
I tried to summon my inner heat, to warm my cold fingers and nose. I had trouble finding the core of my magic. Panic blurred my vision. What if I was too cold and too scared to do any magic at all? I rubbed my gloved hands together and took a deep breath, sharp in my lungs. Breathe. I had to remember to breathe.
