Perin looked honestly shocked when Nora told him she would not marry him. She had started to feel sorry for him—had been thinking of ways to try to soften the blow—but the perplexity on his face made her angry all over again. As far as he’d been concerned, she saw, their marriage was a settled matter.
“Did Lord Aruendiel not say—”
“Yes, he did,” she snapped. “Why did you have to bring him into it?”
“Well, it’s customary—”
“That’s what
He seemed ready to protest, but then he said: “I’m sorry. The last thing I would want to do is offend you, Lady Nora.”
“You can just call me Nora. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not Lady Nora.” After that she began to feel bad again. “Listen, Perin, I like you. I really do. Somehow you made trudging through the wilderness in the middle of winter with a soul-sucking demon and a soul-sucked would-be murderer seem not so terrible.
“But then you do something as boneheaded as asking Aruendiel if you can marry me. I thought you were different from most men here. I thought you were better than that.”
Perin still looked perplexed. “You still don’t see why this bothers me, do you?” she demanded.
“No, not really,” he said. “But if you want me to ask you to marry me, instead of petitioning Lord Aruendiel, I’ll gladly dispense with etiquette. You did tell me once that you were not a well-behaved young lady. I should have remembered that better.”
“You should have! But it doesn’t matter. I’m leaving, Perin. I’m going home. Back to my own world. There’s a door that’s open right now, and if I leave tonight, I can go through it.”
“What!” Perin was skeptical, as he was about all things magical, and he tried for a while to convince her otherwise. Only when she told him that she had to return to her family did he abandon his protestations.
He even seemed ever so slightly relieved, Nora thought. Whether it was because her impending departure allowed him to save face, or whether he had had second thoughts about marrying her, she was not certain. Perin would be better off with a girl of his own kind, she thought, with a prick of regret. No doubt he would find one soon enough.
He did remark: “I think I prefer the traditional method of arranging marriages. Somehow it is less pleasant to hear you say no than it would have been to hear Lord Aruendiel say it.”
The sleigh was waiting for her at the main gate of Luklren’s castle. Nansis Abora was stroking the nose of one of the four horses, whispering something to it. He smiled at her as she approached. “I hope you don’t mind me, Mistress Nora. I would like to help see you off tonight. It should be an interesting display of magic.”
“Of course!” Nora said heartily. So there would be no chance to continue her earlier conversation with Aruendiel.
He came out a minute later, wrapped in his black cloak. “Finished your farewells?” he asked.
“Yes.” She climbed into the back of the sleigh, followed by Nansis Abora. He helped her spread a sheepskin rug across her legs. Aruendiel took up a place at the front.
“These horses are a bit spirited, so we are not bringing a coachman,” Nansis Abora said. “Aruendiel and I will take turns driving.”
There was definitely some sort of swiftness-and-endurance spell on the horses, she could tell as soon as they started. Trees and huts slipped past like ghosts, dissolving instantly in the darkness. The wind in her face made her squint. Within a few minutes they had left behind Luklren’s castle and the nearby village and were well launched into the wilder countryside. Aruendiel turned the horses east: Their route, Nora gathered, would skirt the southern border of the Ivory Marshes and take them back to the open plain where Dorneng had taken her.
Nora was not in a conversational mood, but Nansis Abora talked gently and persistently about cooking and gardening, asking her how both arts were practiced in her own world, so that eventually she found herself spending a long time trying to explain tomatoes to him. They did not exist in this world, as far as she could tell. Another reason to leave. After some time, Nansis Abora took up the reins, and Aruendiel moved back, next to Nora. They sat in silence. She thought of asking him some question about magic, just to get him talking, but what would be the point.
Now I’ll never be a magician, Nora reflected. Not even a poor one. I’ll never hear the rest of Aruendiel’s story, of how
After a while the moon rose, brightening the snow around them, and Nora saw that they were in the middle of a treeless flatland. Aruendiel leaned forward from time to time to give directions to Nansis Abora. In the intervals, he bowed his head slightly as though he were listening for something.
Suddenly, he shouted: “Careful, Nansis, you’ll drive right into it!”
Nora’s first reaction, as Nansis pulled the horses to a stop, was dismay. She wasn’t ready. This notion of passing between worlds was more daunting now. How many things could go wrong? Aruendiel seemed confident enough, but even he made mistakes. Plenty of mistakes.
The magicians got out of the sleigh and walked a few steps away, talking in low voices. They seemed to be pacing something out. Slowly she unwound herself from the rugs and followed them.
“Here,” Aruendiel was saying. “You can feel it. This coarseness in the air.”
“Ah. It’s not very large, is it?” Nansis Abora said.
Nora had thought of something disturbing. “Where does it come out on the other side?” She had no interest in being dropped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“That’s what you must control,” Aruendiel said. “There will be a half second when you are literally between the two worlds, and you will have to choose where you will come out.”
“How on earth do I do that?”
“The way you did when we worked the observation spell. Pick your path with intent.”
“Oh, this isn’t going to work! What if I can’t get through—if I’m stuck in the middle?”
Aruendiel reached inside his cloak and removed a small coil of rope.
“Here,” he said. “We will hold fast to you until you are through. Have courage, Nora. I would not send you into certain danger.”
Feeling shaky, she tied the rope around her waist, then looked up at Aruendiel. “All right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good-bye, my dear child,” said Nansis Abora, smiling at her. She would have liked to embrace him—he had been so kind to her—but he only held out his palms to her to touch. She did so, then turned to Aruendiel.
He was holding one end of the rope, so he held up only one hand. She held her own palm against his and looked up at his face. In the bright moonlight, his face was full of shadows; his eyes glinted like stars. She saw more clearly now that his grim, desert quiet was a mask.
Nora managed to get out a few words of thanks. “Aruendiel, I—” She hesitated, stalling for time, waiting to hear what would come next out of her own mouth.
“Go!” he said sharply. “Now! Remember, you must move with purpose!” Roughly, he pushed her toward the hole in the air.
With purpose. Obediently, she moved forward, groping her way into something she could not quite understand. There was a moment of pure emptiness in the middle when she almost panicked. It reminded her of her first time on a ten-speed, pumping backward to brake and feeling the pedals spin uselessly.
Solid ground again, sunlight on her face. Ahead of her was her father’s brown split-level, blissfully ordinary. Daffodils glowed under the maple tree. The front door opened, and her youngest sister came out, wearing a purple backpack, ready for school.
Nora stepped forward, but the rope around her waist held her back. She untied it as quickly as she could, then let it slip away into the air as she ran across the yard to her sister.
What to tell them, what they would believe, that was the problem. After the round of incredulous
