The man stared into it.
Nell looked around. The wood ringed three sides of the clearing in which they sat. The trees, dark against the rising light, seemed to nudge them toward the clouds below. And yet even as the outline of branch and mountaintop sharpened in the sunrise, the valley remained hazy, like something out of a dream.
It drew her eyes, but she couldn’t seem to focus them. Light scattered in the mist; the sun rose overhead in an orange sky only to bounce away in a thousand directions below. The clouded valley glinted and twinkled, dazzling and deflecting her vision.
She dragged her eyes from it and sought the Master Watcher, but he seemed in no hurry. He just sat, gazing down into the blankness of the mist.
The weight in the air rubbed at her, and she fidgeted. She didn’t like it. Suddenly everything irritated her: the strange fog, and the quiet, and most of all the man. She hated the way he sat, expecting their silence, not answering their questions, expecting their patience. Did he know how long they’d waited?
Nell was tired of waiting. She stood suddenly and marched down the slope toward the foggy, shrouded space. The others would follow, she decided. It was time to go.
In a moment, she faced the line of mist. She stepped through and blinked. If the air had felt strange while she sat in the grass, here it was worse. Heavier than before, and not damp as she would have expected, but charged and vibrating with suppressed energy like the moment before a crack of thunder. Images swam before her eyes, half reflections she couldn’t quite look straight at. And there was something else. She closed her eyes and tried to hear it. Nothing. Nothing at all. Sound had drained from the world. She could hear no birds, no wind, not even the faint comfort of her own breath.
Her eyes flew open and her stomach lurched. Nothing! White everywhere, a blank, terrible emptiness, pouring in on her. She’d fallen down a well and been lost, forgotten, swallowed. She was gone, nameless.
The emptiness reached inside her and erased her, bit by bit, until she felt as if she would scatter into shredded pieces, scraps of something that once had been. She stumbled, clutching at her own arms, her voice lost in the awful, hungry silence.
A reed of sound pushed its way through and brushed at her. Something familiar.
Her name.
“Nell? Nell!”
She steadied herself, tried to locate it.
“Nell!”
She took a step, trying to fix on it. As she did, it grew stronger.
“This way!”
In a few paces, she was out, and the world burst back into focus — colors, light, shapes, sounds, and the faces of Susan, Max, Kate, Jean. They were on their feet, frightened, calling. The man was standing, too, something like triumph on his face.
She turned back and saw the mist simmering behind her.
“It’s not a regular cloud,” she said breathlessly. “Not anything like — I couldn’t find my way.”
Susan was standing closest. Her face had lost its color; sweat stood in drops at her hairline.
“I went in after you,” she said. Nell had to strain to hear her. A sudden tremor shook Susan, and she caught her breath. “I lost myself. I couldn’t think.”
“The quiet was terrible,” Nell agreed. “Made me sick.” She shuddered.
“Quiet?” Susan said. “No, it was the noise. All those voices, pounding at me. The sound could grind you into dust!” She shook her head with a motion like she had water in her ears. “If I’d stayed another second, I wouldn’t have had anything left, wouldn’t have remembered my own name. That’s when I ran, and called you. I was afraid you wouldn’t hear.”
“I heard,” Nell said. “Just barely.”
Still the Master Watcher stood, silent, wearing that curious expression.
Max turned to him. “What is it?” he asked. “What makes it that way?”
The man smiled. “It’s the sanctuary, protecting itself.”
Nell would have thought Susan couldn’t get any paler, but at that, she seemed to go white. “That’s something you did?” she whispered.
“Not me,” he said. “The sanctuary elders set it that way. It’s to keep out the unwelcome. I was working on opening it. It takes patience.” Nell saw his glance flicker in her direction.
Susan’s eyes widened. “But it’s not just a barrier. You — you lose yourself in that thing.”
The man merely smiled. “Yes,” he said. “It acts as a deterrent that way, for those who would try to come without being invited.”
Nell felt the heat rise in her face, but even as she did, she watched Susan grow angry. Few people knew her sister well enough to know when she was furious. Nell was one of them. In anger, Susan grew very quiet — too quiet — before the explosion came. Then she would swoop down on you like a storm. Nell knew enough to get out of the way when she saw Susan’s brows rise, her cheeks whiten.
The Master Watcher didn’t.
And so he was startled when Susan turned from him to the mist, narrowed her eyes, then closed them.
He was stunned when a crack opened in it, and widened.
“Who’s doing that?” he asked, breathless. “You?”
He was looking at Max, but Max shook his head.
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s Susan.”
Anyone could tell it was. She stood, shoulders squared, facing the mist as if it were a living enemy, an opponent she had to wrestle to the ground. It shivered and fought, thickening at the edges and pushing out toward her in wispy
