CHAPTER EIGHT

Silence spread thick across the hours. It felt like Mallow and I were separated by some otherworldly jelly. The frustration with the Avalon's had one good side effect; Mallow foot was no longer injured. The steady thudding of her steps was even and healthy. Despite this unforeseen blessing, her lips were pressed tight in a bitter refusal to speak to me. I fished for conversation, but she was at such an age that attempting to do so was making her continue to snub me out of spite.

I gave up trying to discuss what had happened and stared ahead, more alert than I had been earlier. I wasn't particularly worried about being attacked again, but it was hard to doze off with the shooting pain jolting me. For the first hour, every trot the horses took felt like I was being skinned with a sharp, fine blade, opening up a shallow but stinging wound. As time wore on, I became dulled to it, and it was more like a finger tip-tapping. The blazing hot sun soaked up the remaining dregs of last night's rain, lifting it into the air. The air was humid, sagging into my clothes and slicking down my skin. Without our usual idle mockery of all those we encountered, I was left with nothing to do but fixate on the miserable state of my own sore and sweating body. Whenever the bitterness would threaten me to inaction, I would reach down and touch the edges of my sash, feeling the coin purse. Then, I would have the strength to keep on for another twenty minutes or so.

I silently rejoiced when the sun began its gradual crawl toward the horizon. Heat and light are gifts and yet often it was too much. Perhaps if I could draw the heat from my own body and cast it out into magic, like the sorcerers did, I would appreciate the excess more. Red faded into deep purple, the heat shifting into a series of mild breezes. We continued to ride through the dusky evening, and the moon soon rose above the landscape. Mallow's glow became more pronounced, mirroring it. Her body language softened as the stars blinked to life.

She mumbled something, and I couldn't quite make it out over the rolling of the wheels on the uneven road.

"What was that?"

Mallow huffed as if I had started the conversation.

"You're injured. Let's make camp so I can bleed and heal you," she said. She somehow managed to make it sound as if I had been nagging her despite the fact that she had offered. This annoyed me.

"I'm fine," I said. "It's skin level stuff. You know I hate it when you cut yourself."

"But it's for your own good half the time." Mallow scoffed. "I heal everyday. You're the one without even one tiny enchantment."

If she was going to be like that, I didn't want her help.

"No. In fact, I forbid you from healing me."

"You'd rather suffer then let me get my way?" It sounded like she was biting back a smirk. Hex it, she knew me too well sometimes.

"Yes."

"You need to be healed... come on, Dad," she said, and the annoyed edge fled her final word. Her body language was different from earlier. Instead of striding, she was shuffling, despite the fact that her foot was no longer injured. Her shoulders were hunched. What I had mistaken for hostility was actually insecurity.

I slowed the gait of the horses with a tug at the reins.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. She yanked a lock of hair down so that it slipped across the side of her face in one white, knotted curtain.

"You can tell me. It's obviously something."

"No, not really..." She averted her orange eyes. Then she released a heavy sigh.

Oh no. Not this. It had been too long of a day for this old routine again. I inhaled, gathering my strength. I knew I'd have to ask - but not directly - to get her to share what was bothering her. She wouldn't improve her mood until she had let it out. Sure, she wasn't angry at me anymore, but that hardly did any good if she was now shifting all that seething rage inwards.

"All right." I said. My mental armor had been equipped.

She walked quietly, her hair now wrapped around her fingers.

"Though, if something's wrong, you know you can tell me." I continued.

"I said, it's nothing."

"Okay."

I let a minute or two pass. "Beautiful night out tonight, compared to yesterday." The grassy meadows that lined either side of the road tonight were fresh from being soaked with rain the day before. The oppressive mugginess and dampness had gone from the air overnight. "People like how it smells after a rain, but I like how it smells the day after it's rained. I guess that'd make it an after after-rain smell?" I blathered, intentionally inane. It wouldn't have mattered what I said though, because it worked. Once I tried to change the subject, she'd inevitably draw it back to herself.

"I acted like a monster," she said, her burly voice cracking.

"Oh, Mallow." I said. It was true. Lately, when she snapped, she kept fighting long after the opponent had lost. She hadn't murdered anyone yet, but she'd come close. Today, closer than ever. "I don't think so."

"I... " She sighed.

"That bandit... Timmy Tombs or whatever... He hurt me. He hurt you. Lots of people snap with rage; it doesn't make them monsters."

"It's not that I... it's that..." Another exhalation of endurance. "I... it's different for me, I know it."

"Why?" I asked. Everyone who is her age thinks it's different for them. I did, even though my plight happened to thousands of luckless saps across the Arcanacracy. My situation of being homeless, hungry, and desperate wasn't special that year. To be fair, Mallow was different, though. She was a Moon Giant, the only one I'd ever seen in civilization.

"I... liked hurting him," she whispered. If she wasn't so large, I wouldn't have been able to hear it. She had trouble confiding it to even herself. I waved a hand.

"He liked hurting you," I said. "And I think that lady Avalon liked it when she landed that arrow in you. He was your enemy. It's natural. Nothing particularly monstrous about it."

"Hmm..." She closed up.

"Mallow?"

"You're right." She mumbled in such a way I knew she thought I was completely wrong. Her demeanor had somehow gotten even more withdrawn than before. I had no idea what the right thing was, but at least I had tried my best. If I tried to pry more from her now, it would be violent and unpleasant. Best to leave her to mope as she walked.

About an hour later, when the moon hung halfway in the sky, she lifted her chin.

"I hate Avalons." Mallow finally said.

"Me too." I knew that was the signal that she was finally tired enough to set up camp. You sort of know these things when you spend years with someone. So we set up camp, ate, and went to sleep. I dreamed of gold and flashing knives, and slept uneasily.

One of the times I woke, escaping a nightmare, I heard snotty, damp crying from outside the carriage. I was alarmed for a second, before I realized it was just Mallow. She was not fighting it because she thought I was asleep and couldn't hear her. Deciding to honor her wishes of self-loathing in peace, I rolled over and closed my eyes. By focusing on the crackling of the fire outside, I was able to drift back into sleep.

This time, half a memory, half a dream: I saw visions of a young Mallow playing on the rocks by the ocean. She tripped and scraped her knee. My memory of sopping up the blood from her knees was so vivid I felt that blood on my hand. When she was smaller than me, all she'd needed was a kiss and handful of sweet berries to stop crying. I didn't think something like that would help anymore.

I awoke the next morning, and before my vision had even cleared I stared at my hand. It was clean, the thousand tiny wounds from the glass bottle shattering gone. As I sat up, the furs slid off. The irritation that flared up every time I touched anything the previous night did not come. I had slept naked except for my undershorts, so I only had to look down to see my chest. The cut had healed, leaving only a soft, pink ribbon of flesh where there once was an angry, filthy gash. I gasped. I knew it had bled. I snagged up my undershirt off a nearby hook. Yes, there it was, skipping strands of red stain from where my skin had rubbed against it on yesterday's journey. I crumpled the shirt. I tossed it and stirred up dust motes to float in the air that were illuminated by the sunlight sneaking in through cracks in the wood of the carriage.

Sleepy confusion rolled into anger as I noticed a significant number of those motes were glinting silver instead of white. I brushed my hand against my chest. I held it up to the light. Silver sparkled in dirty splotches on my skin.

The shutters banged as I opened the side window on the carriage. I jammed my head out.

"Mallow!"

Mallow jumped and lost her balance. She was crouched near the fire, one of our iron cooking pans held in her hand, tiny-seeming. The appealing smell of the bubbling eggs in its center snaked its way over to my nose, and for a second I was distracted. My stomach gurgled. I shook my head and pulled through the window more.

"Hexes and ice, Dad, why are you shouting?" she asked as she stabilized herself with one set of fingers pressing against the dirt. The eggs slid close to the edge of the pan, but she resumed cooking them. Their broken brown egg shells were sitting in a pile by her feet. We hadn't had any eggs yesterday... Mustn't get distracted...

"Did you do this?" I pointed at my chest.

"Uh, no? I didn't make you, Dad, you got to blame your parents for that." She played like an icicle and poked at her food. She scanned around her, as if she misplaced something.

"Haha. No, I meant the wound. It's gone."

"And you're angry about that? You didn't even have to get hit with arrows like I did before I was healed. You should be happy," Mallow said. She slid the eggs onto a carved wooden plate and then set it off to the side. Steam billowed from them as she reached for a pot. I saw whole eggs still safe in their shells bobbing on the waves inside the pot as she positioned it. Just how many had she acquired?

"How did you get those? You didn't steal them, did you?"

Mallow groaned. The flames licked the bottom of the heavy pan, dancing. Some hard boiled eggs sounded good too, actually. My mind wandered off to whether we had any salt left or not. Since we couldn't resupply in that last town and the one before was too small to even have salt for sale. I was pretty sure we were out. My musing were interrupted by Mallow's answer.

"No, I moved some heavy stuff for a family around here. Some trees had fallen into their paths with the storm; the rain was a lot worse over here than where we were. Anyway, I was taking a walk and I moved some stuff for them, so they gave me eggs," she said. "When did you graduate from Avalon Academy? Investigating the truth? What, if I stole them you weren't going to eat them?"

"Of course I'd eat them." I folded my arms. "I wanted to make sure that you were only guilty of one deception today."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You bled on me." I brushed at the silver on my chest. "Without waking me up," I said. "Did you have to cut yourself?"

"What's it matter? My wounds heal in the moonlight. I offered to heal you yesterday while you were awake, but we never got around to it, and I had to grab something out of the carriage and saw you were still injured, so I did, sure, a little."

"So you admit to doing it," I said, somehow more irritated even though I had known she was guilty all along.

"You're welcome," she snapped. She plunged her hand into the boiling water and snatched out one of the eggs. She tossed it at me. I grabbed for it, but it burnt my fingertips. I dropped it into the furs pulled around my waist. She then reached into the boiling liquid again, ignoring my surprised yelps, and took another egg. She popped it into her mouth, shell and all. She crunched down.

Mallow was in a sour temper the rest of the day. So was I, although the hours of unremarkable riding were less painful because of her healing.

I only spoke to Mallow to let her know I was going to check the map, so that she should keep an eye out for dangers. For a man that travels as often as I do, a map is the key to not ending up on a road that trailed out to nowhere. It also helped me mark down where I'd already been, so as to not make a repeat visit where unsatisfied customers might still be looming. My map was a good decade old now and covered in my personal markings. It had been wrong more and more lately. We had made plans to resupply at villages that had disappeared in fires. We had traveled thin, mucky dirt roads when the Arcanacracy had installed an expedient stone one not even a mile to the east. I should invest in updating my old map but finding reliable cartographers was pricy and using unreliable ones was suicidal.

The map said that from here we should be able to see the towering walls of a great city named Elsithac. The drawing on my map showed tiny towers and the rolling fields of the farm lands that supported the population of the city. Reading the key on the side of the map, the marks indicated that it was ruled by a powerful Arcanacrat of the Demi Thaucult rank, although it didn't name him. That meant a big army, a castle, magical amenities, and perfect weather for perfect crops. And lots and lots of people to sell our goods to.

And yet, when I lowered the map, nothing but forest.

"It must be a few more miles off still," I said.

"What?"

"The city of Elsithac, our next spot." I folded the map and set Flatchert and Gourd trotting. "It's ruled by a Demi Thaucult, so you know it's massive. Definitely be able to resupply there."

"And get my shoes."

"And get your shoes." I smirked.

"I don't know, Dad. Maybe he just has a tiny village on a magical tree top or something," she said, grasping for something to complain about. "Remember last time that happened? You kept telling me the next town was ruled by an Arcanacrat and it was going to great for resting... and then, nothing. Not a single shop, and they wouldn't lower the rope ladder for us to climb up and eat." She rubbed her stomach.

"Yeah, but that guy was only a Whimsight. They're sometimes less powerful than Avalons. This one is going to be huge, I promise."

About two hours later, we did emerge from the forest, and we did find the road interrupted. But instead of by a bustling population outside the city walls, it was by pure nothingness. As we stepped away from the forest and into the grassy plains, the sound disappeared. The afternoon buzzing of bugs fell away. The chirping of the birds went dead. The vague, anonymous shuffling of various rodents unseen ceased. It was like the ocean, wind over waves of grass. But there was a hole, a void; the sound was incomplete. Mallow tensed beside me. We gazed upon the featureless blue sky that pressed against the green, untamed fields. Too featureless. No trees or animals or even shrubs immediately ahead of us or fanning out in either direction. We rode forward, and I cringed as the void of sound was filled by an overpowering stench..

It was... like Mallow's blood, but multiplied by a thousand. Magic. It tickled the top of my mouth, and I coughed and sneezed at the same time, trying to expel it. It was a flavor and a smell, and it drenched the air. Mallow thundered ahead. I was too busy spluttering to stop her.

She stopped running and then took steps forward, cautious, nervous steps. I saw air muss her hair, but not in the right direction; it was coming from somewhere below her. Falling to her knees, she crawled.

"What are you doing?"

"Dad, leave the horses. Come here." She crawled forward more and leaned. Her elbows were quaking as she inched forward and peered at the ground. I slid off the carriage's bench, treated the horses to keep them complacent, and then strode over to where she was. The silence grew without the horses yanking the carriage along, with all the sounds of breathing and bustling that accompanied it. Now it was just me, my breath, my soft footsteps on the dirty road. I felt like I was in a dream where my senses kept fading in and out.

I managed to keep my balance, although just barely, when I reached the edge where Mallow was crouched. I sat down. I then remembered to breathe. The city of Elsithac had been here, once. Unlike other towns, it hadn't been burned to the ground, or emptied by disease. It hadn't even been gutted by war, with skeletons of buildings caked over with odd combinations of enchantments that made them forever haunted.

In its place was nothing but a massive hole. The ground was slick and even, unnaturally perfect, and a black that both consumed and repelled my attention. It wasn't a straight drop, rather, more like the inside of an egg shell. This darkness extended as far as I could see. It sloped down, more and more steeply, and then began to sweep back up. What was it made out of?

If it were a dark stone, it should shimmer in the sun with a dull luster. If it were a dye, it should have fluctuations in the tint that indicated use and wear. If it were the night sky, it should have stars or dim fluffs of gray clouds. It was nothing. Whatever had come and scooped Elsithac out of the ground had taken all of it, leaving nary a brick nor a board to indicate people had once lived here.

"What is it?" Mallow whispered, fascinated. She reached down to touch the indescribable dark surface that led up to the ridge we sat on. I reached out and grabbed her arm, yanking it back. She allowed me to; I never would have been strong enough to stop her if she resisted.

"It's magic, don't touch it."

"Why?" she asked.

"Observe, the light doesn't affect it. Whether it should be in shadow or is in direct light, it's all the same. That's magic right there. I may not have seen a lot, but I've seen enough to know it breaks the rules."

"Hmm." She leaned back. Her hands began to pluck up the dry and brittle grass around the road.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing bad, just watch." She leaned over the edge again and dropped the grass toward the void straight below. The blades were light. They didn't fall, but instead swooped down toward the surface in slow, rhythmic arcs. I heard nothing but my own heartbeat as the first blade hit the blackness. It didn't settle. It kept on going, straight through. Less resistance than even water. The rest followed suit, slipping out of existence in front of our eyes.

"Well, now I want to stick my hand in worse than ever," Mallow complained. "Dad, don't you want to know what's on the other side?"

"You're assuming there is another side," I said. "Which is an assumption I'm not willing to stake my life, or even one finger, on. Come on, we'll go around." I must have sounded more scared than I was trying to let show, because Mallow didn't argue with me again. Her distinct loping footsteps followed.

"You seem to know what this is... So what is it, Dad?" she asked.

"The Arcanacrat who lived here must have upset the Sublime Cosmotic Incanteror. He's the only one who can order an entire city to vanish like this."

"Where did they move it to?"

"Nowhere," I said. "Let's go."

"Dad, what happened? I mean, it had to go somewhere, there's all that dirt and grass missing, even if there was never a city."

"If you or I did this, yes Mallow, it'd have to go somewhere. But it was the Sublime Cosmotic Incanteror. He's the most powerful sorcerer in the world. He may have cast that spell and the entire city fell into it, disappearing like that grass." I climbed onto the carriage. It took a few tries; my legs were shaking and my boots kept slipping off the narrow steps.

"But the spell would need to originate underground. Sorcerers can't cast on what they can't see, can they? Avalons can't."

This distraction let me focus enough to climb onto my carriage. Mallow checked on Flatchert and Gourd's restraints, something I'd forgotten to do. Then we walked, moving onto the grass, which was dead and stiff and flat around the perimeter of the hole. The road led straight into the hole and the last fork was well over four hours ago. I had to hope that the road continued on the other side of what was once the city. The grass was trampled on recently, and by a lot of people, which gave me hope.

I mulled Mallow's last question over. It was a problem that let me think about the hole, that awful depth we now rode along the rim of. It hurt to think about the darkness, but if I could think instead of the height, that was something I could visualize, I could understand.

"Ah, but he was casting it on the city, which is above ground. We can't see the other half of that sphere, Mallow, but I'm guessing it went up to the top of the tallest tower."

"Wow..." Mallow stared off to the side, fascinated rather than terrified. The nothingness didn't threaten Mallow. She was magical, though not enchanted, and so breaking the rules was somewhat natural. Blood healing wounds in moonlight was magic. The faint luminance of her skin was magic. Being so tall and narrow that she should collapse under her own weight but never did was magic as well. The potions, our potions, if they worked, would be magic. Of course, they weren't magic so they didn't do much. But I wasn't magic. And the void unsettled me.

Many people had used this route from the way that the grass was pressed flat around the perimeter of the hole. After a while, the initial shock wore off, and I saw some more signs that people had been here. The remains of food waste were scattered here and there, not the way animals would leave it, but cooked and still with clinging bits of precious meat. Not even the way peasants would leave it, too wasteful. Merchants, or maybe even Sorcerer Assistants had come this way. Not Avalons. Avalons didn't litter.

We encountered an extinguished fire pit halfway around the circle. Other signs were scattered around, and I wondered what cause so many would have to walk past such an unsettling area. Certainly the merchants that regularly rode this route would find an alternate way, if only to avoid the feeling of wintery slush in their stomachs. All this led me to believe that it was some sort of other influx of traffic we were trailing behind - people using outdated maps like mine.

It took only an hour to ride around the outside of the circle and reunite with the road. I knew this by tracking the sun. And yet, it had felt like at least a day, maybe two. I was completely drained, sagging in my seat. Mallow had not been so affected and chatted at me about a boy she saw that was cute in the last town. Usually I would tease her or remind her of her predetermined lonely future, but today I said nothing of substance. I agreed and affirmed. The chatter was like a bitter medicine. It hit my ears and although not pleasant, washed away the chill that had settled in my gut. I didn't want her to stop talking, not until we had ridden far enough past the hole that I could no longer hear the vacant vacuum it created. The wound that magic punched in the aria of the wind was haunting.

As the distance grew, the noise of life rushing back in full force. Birdsong, grass swaying, bugs buzzing and more, a welcome cacophony. Once we were deep into it and the chill had faded completely, I silenced Mallow under the pretext of focusing on navigation. I unfurled the map and listened, appreciating the sound of the land breathing.

The next area on the map was different than the other markings. Instead of being drawn in dark, rich ink by a skilled craftsman, it was etched in with charcoal. It had been worn into nothing but a blackish smudge by repeated folding and unfolding. When I squinted I could tell there were definitely once words there. And... a question mark?

The map was cast into shadow as Mallow hovered above me. As her hair trailed off her shoulder and fell onto the map, the faint glow it emitted showed more detail.

"What is that word?" I asked. "Burnt? You think that city got burned down?"

"I think your map got dirty."

"No, I definitely wrote words there." I squinted. The blotch must have been added by me, but I couldn't remember what it said. The sense of loss annoyed me, especially since we had nowhere else to go. "See, those are the impression of letters, where the charcoal is in deeper than the rest of it."

"Dad, you probably kicked up some of the camp fire dust one day while the map was sitting out. You're lucky it wasn't an ember and the whole thing didn't go up in flames." Mallow stood, taking her illuminating strands of hair with her. The carriage shuddered as she stomped the ground in irritation. "Ugh, it's going to be forever until we reach civilization!"

"That's not too far off."

"It's a smudge. The next closest actual city is Yules, which is, like, a week away."

"Well, then, let's go toward the smudge; there's a chance it's a town. Why would I mark it if it's not important?" I asked.

"Do you even remember marking it?"

"No, but I've had this map for years, so..."

"Frigid misery, Dad, this is going to a be a total waste of time."

"Don't talk to me like that," I said. "Sure, I don't know what it says, and yeah, it wasn't on the map when I bought it so it won't be a metropolis, but it's the only thing within a today's journey, and I am not getting devoured by mosquitoes again."

"You're going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes even more because there's not going to be anything there." Mallow jeered. "But whatever, it's your blood. I'll be fine. Lead on."

(( A/N: Enjoying the story? Can't wait for the next part? Consider purchasing the paperback edition at my CreateSpace website: https://www.createspace.com/5621397 I'll be uploading the entire story here too, one chapter a week, so you'll get the tale if you're patient. Also please spread the word if you enjoyed the story! Your feedback means the world to me! ))