My head ached with a sharp pain that came rippling through the darkness. I groaned and rolled over onto my side. A pale light seeped in at the edges of my vision, growing wider and vaster until I realized it was just sunlight bouncing off the ocean.
I rolled over again and hit up against something hard and flat—a wall. No, not a wall. The side of a boat. I blinked, trying to force things into focus. It didn’t look like the side of the Penelope II. It was too short, for one, and for another it was covered in slick red paint.
Fear jolted through me. I sat straight up. The haze of waking up was gone, and every one of my actions was propelled by fear.
I was in a boat. A small, narrow one, big enough for only two or three people. Isolfr was with me, thank the ancestors, sprawled out on his stomach. The bow and stern curled up into fancy, decorative spirals, and we didn’t have sails or oars or any way to direct the boat away from this one spot, which was in the middle of the ocean.
Sea and sky. For the first time I really became aware of the enormity of the water. It was a dark glassy green and so calm it was like sitting on the surface of a mirror.
Another jolt of fear, this one sharper and more pure than the last.
“Isolfr!” I scrambled over to him. The boat tilted back and forth. “Wake up! Isolfr!”
I shook him by the shoulder, praying to every god I knew that he wasn’t dead. He didn’t move. I shook him harder, then rolled him onto his back. This elicited a groan of protest from him, and I slumped back, relieved that he was at least alive.
His eyes fluttered open, but then he squinted against the brightness and flopped back over onto his stomach. He moaned into the painted wood of the boat.
“You’ve got to get up,” I said to him. “Something’s happened.”
He lifted his head and blinked at me. For a moment Pjetur flickered through his features before disappearing permanently. He was only Isolfr now.
“What happened?” he said.
“I was hoping you would know!” I felt a pang of dread. Maybe it was expecting too much from him, but Isolfr had always seemed to know more than he let on. Surely he could tell me where we were.
Isolfr gripped the side of the boat and heaved himself up to sitting. The boat rocked. Isolfr cried out, then tightened his grip on the boat, his knuckles whitening.
“Yeah, it’s not the Penelope II,” I said.
“I see that.” Isolfr looked around, his eyes wide. He tilted his head back at the sky and gave a little yelp.
“What? What is it?”
He pointed up at the sky, and I followed the path of his finger. Nothing but pure, empty blue.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly.”
I glared at him. “Stop talking in riddles! What the hell’s going on?”
“There’s nothing there! No sun.”
Fear shot through me. Immediately I craned my head back. He was right. The sky was empty and full of light but there was no sun, no burning disc of fire.
“I don’t understand.” I stared at him. “What does that mean?” A horrible thought struck me. “Sea and sky, are we dead? Is this the ocean of ghosts?”
Isolfr stared at me. “I can’t die,” he said. “Not the way you can.”
I looked over the edge of the boat, down at the glassy, unnatural water. Of course. He was a spirit of the north wind. He couldn’t come to the ocean of ghosts.
“Then where are we?” I looked over at him again. “You know, don’t you? Just say it.” I had my own suspicions, but I wanted desperately to be proven wrong. “Please. Isolfr. Where are we?”
Isolfr’s eyes clouded. He looked away.
“Tell me!”
“The Mists,” he whispered.
I couldn’t breathe. The air seemed tainted, thick, poisonous—of course it did, it was Mists air, laced with unnatural magic.
“How?” I finally said.
Isolfr shook his head. “I don’t know. If Lord Foxfollow meant to do it on purpose, we wouldn’t be here.” He swept his arm across the vista of the sea. “We’d be imprisoned. Or—or dead.”
I looked out at the expanse of ocean. We were alone, a tiny boat floating amid saltwater, no provisions, no protection from the cold.
“We’re basically imprisoned right now,” I said. “And we’ll be dead soon enough.”
Isolfr shook his head. “This isn’t Lord Foxfollow’s doing. It’s not his style.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You know so much about his style?”
“I do, actually.” Isolfr hesitated. “This—this was probably the spell that Frida and Kolur cast.” He shivered at the word “spell.” “It must have combined with Lord Foxfollow’s magic somehow.” Isolfr turned his attention toward the horizon. It was a dark line in the distance, a seam between the green ocean and the pale sky.
“That’s it?” I said. “It combined with Foxfollow’s magic somehow?” Anger rose up inside me, trying to smother my fear. It wasn’t working. “This isn’t the time to start keeping secrets again,” I said.
“I’m not keeping secrets.” Isolfr turned toward me. He looked paler than usual in the odd, fractured light, and even more impossibly beautiful. That made me angry too. This was not the time for Isolfr to be beautiful. “I told you everything that I know.” He paused. “That I think I know. I’m only guessing about the magic mixing. But it seems the most likely answer.”
I slumped down against the side of the boat. We rocked gently over the water. “We’re trapped here.” I looked up at him. “And we’re going to die. Just admit it.”
“No.” Isolfr shook his head. “Frida and Kolur’s spell”—another shiver—“for all its darkness, it was a protection spell. It’s likely still protecting us.”
“It put us in a pleasure boat.”
“A gondola,” Isolfr said. “A favorite of the Mists nobility. I’m sure there’s a reason for it.”
I rubbed my head. “Well, what are we supposed to do while we wait for the magic to start helping us?” I glowered. “So what do you think we’ll die of first? Thirst? Or the cold?”
Isolfr looked over at me, his eyes glittering, silver and pale blue. “I don’t need to worry about either of those things.”
“Congratulations. I do.” I sighed and ran my hands over my hair. “I’m not just going to sit here and hope the protection spell protects us. Can we try calling the winds?”
Isolfr hesitated. “I don’t know if it will work.”
“Well, can we at least try?”
Another pause. I could tell from his expression that he thought this was a stupid idea, and I knew, when he nodded, that he was just humoring me. But I didn’t care. I wanted to prove him wrong.
I steadied myself and lifted my hands. The air was so still that even that small movement seemed a massive disruption. I’d never felt this kind of stillness before.
“Together,” Isolfr said. “One, two, three—”
I reached deep into myself, deep into the memories of my father’s ancestors, and then my mother’s too, because I always thought my magic worked the best when I pulled from both sides of my family. The air stayed still. I tried to feel for the magic, for the whisper of spice and warmth, for anything, but there was only that stone-dead stillness.
I looked at Isolfr. His eyes were closed and his face was scrunched up in concentration. But I didn’t even feel the brush of a north breeze.
This was not good. He was a spirit of the north wind, and he shouldn’t have to concentrate the way I did.
“Fine. You’re right. It’s not working.”
Isolfr’s eyes flew open. “I’m sorry, Hanna,” he said, and he seemed genuine.
“I’m going to freeze to death,” I said. “And I can’t even call the winds, which, you know, is the one thing I can do to protect myself—”
“It’s a different world,” Isolfr said quietly, “with different winds.”
“Wonderful.”
“Jandanvari magic will likely work here,” he said.
“I don’t know a single useful Jandanvari spell.” I drew my coat tight across my chest. The Jandanvari magic Frida had taught me was fisherman’s magic, simple stuff to let you know where to cast a net or how to hold a spell. Nothing that would help us. I shivered. The still air felt like shards of broken glass. Soon, the cold would be too much.
But then Isolfr knelt down on the bottom of the boat with his palms up and his eyes closed. He began to hum, a low, throaty melody that rose and fell like the wind. As he hummed, a glow brightened inside of him, and he was illuminated like a magic-cast lantern, pale blue light competing with the Mists brightness. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was beautiful, casting that eerie blue light, but I was also afraid. The magic crackling across my skin was unfamiliar. Not at all like the spells Frida had taught me.
I expected the winds to blow in from the north, for the gondola to rise up on the waves and rush toward shore. Instead, a heat-sphere materialized in the middle of the boat.
“All that for a heat-sphere?” I muttered.
Isolfr opened one eye. It was nothing but light. “Test the ocean water,” he said, his voice echoing and thrumming. “It should be fresh.”
I hesitated for a moment, thinking of the cold.
“Please,” Isolfr said. “I’m trying to keep you alive.” He shut his eye, a light going out.
My cheeks warmed, and I felt the way I did whenever Mama chastised me for dawdling on my way home and making her worry. He was right. This magic, he didn’t have to do it.
I pulled off my gloves and leaned over the side of the boat and dipped my hands into the water. I cried out at the shock of the cold, but I managed to scoop up a handful of water and splash it on my tongue.
Fresh.
“It worked!” I cried, and I held my stinging hands up to the heat-sphere. The warmth spread over them like a blanket.
Isolfr let out a sigh that sounded like a gust of wind. The light faded out of him and he dropped forward, his face pressed down into the boat’s bottom.
“Isolfr!” I pushed over beside him, still keeping my hands held up to the heat-sphere. “Are you all right?”
He groaned in response, and I felt a rush of relief.
“You better not have hurt yourself,” I told him.
“I’m fine.” He lifted his face and blinked at me. His eyes seemed too big, wide and guileless. “That should hold you over until the protection spell directs us to help.”
“We still don’t know for sure that it will.” I dropped my gaze down to my hands, still warming by the heat-sphere. “I mean, thank you. For the fresh water.”
In response, Isolfr sat up and leaned against the gondola’s edge. The light bounced off the water, sending sparkles into the air. There was no warmth anywhere except for Isolfr’s heat-sphere and in the panicked drumming of my heart.
• • •
I’m not sure how much time passed. The boat floated in the glassy sea, not moving forward, only side to side, rocking us like a cradle. I sat close to the heat-sphere, my knees drawn up to my chest. When I felt thirsty, I’d scoop up water from the side of the boat. I’ll give Isolfr credit: it was as sweet and sparkling as water from a spring, even if it did my freeze my hands to drink it.
We didn’t talk much. There just wasn’t anything to say. Casting the spells to get me warmth and fresh water seemed to have exhausted Isolfr anyway, and he curled up at the bow of the gondola, his head resting on the railing, his eyes closed. I did ask him if he was all right, early on; he fluttered his eyes and said, “I’m fine,” and that was that.
We sat.
We waited.
My stomach grumbled. I sighed and dropped my head back to look at the broad expanse of blue sky. My stomach grumbled again.
“I don’t suppose there are fish in these waters.” I looked over at Isolfr. He stirred, opened his eyes. His expression was sleepy.
“Probably not,” he said.
I sighed. “What sort of ocean doesn’t have fish?”
“An ocean in the Mists.”
Those words chilled me more than the frigid air. For the first time, I was struck by exactly how dire our situation was. Because it wasn’t just a matter of being stranded on the open sea—that would be bad enough, as it’s nearly impossible for a man to come back from the emptiness of the ocean—but being stranded in the Mists. The Mists. The land that I’d been taught my whole life to fear. Ever since I was a little girl, my parents had whispered to me the signs of the Mists, in case its people ever came trailing through our village. Mist on the water, unnatural gray eyes. And here I was. Trapped.
Not that anything in this place looked like what I’d been taught to fear. The sky was bright, the water sparkling. I tilted my head back again. Not a single cloud drifted overhead. I wondered why they called it the Mists when there wasn’t a wisp of mist in sight.
My stomach grumbled more loudly, and this time the grumble was accompanied by a sharp pang of hunger. Isolfr was staring down at his feet, not looking at me. Lucky him, not having to eat.
I leaned over the side of the boat and brought water up to my lips to drink. It was so cold that it set my whole body to chattering, but I thought that if my stomach was full of water, maybe I wouldn’t feel the hunger as much. And part of me hoped I’d see a fish flickering through the water.
I didn’t.
I kept drinking, even as my fingers turned blue. My hunger hadn’t subsided. I wasn’t sure it was going to, but drinking water gave me something to do. I tried not to think about what would happen when I needed to relieve myself. There wasn’t exactly much privacy on the gondola.
I scooped my hands in the water one more time, my arms raised with goose bumps and my body shivering with the cold. When I lifted my hands up, the surface of the water rippled and an image formed. It looked like a reflection.
The water drained through my fingers. The reflection was of a boat, a sailing ship.
“Isolfr,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Isolfr, get over here.” I didn’t tear my eyes away from the image of the ship in the water, not even to look up to see where the reflection came from. It was a grand-looking ship, with wide golden sails and a carving of a woman at the prow, her hair falling all the way down the length of her body in curls and waves.
“What is it?” His voice was right next to my ear. I pointed at the water.
“There! Look! Please tell me you see it!”
There was a pause, and for a moment I was afraid I was going mad. But then Isolfr shouted, “We’re saved!”
I looked over at him. He was leaning over the side, a huge smile plastered on his face. He reached down and touched the reflection, and it shimmered over the water.
“It’s real,” he said, looking over at me. “It’s real!”
“What is? The reflection?” I looked from him to the boat in the water. The horizon was still empty. “I don’t see an actual boat anywhere.”
“Because it’s underwater.” Isolfr hopped to his feet and then dove over the side of the gondola. He hardly made a splash.
“What in the name of the ancestors are you doing?”
“Moving us. That ship’ll be surfacing soon, and we don’t want to be in its way.”
“Surfacing?” I looked over the railing again. The reflection was still there. Isolfr positioned himself beside me and began pushing the gondola through the water. It clearly wasn’t easy for him. He pressed his shoulder against the boat and heaved, his legs kicking up a froth under the water. The boat inched forward.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Isolfr grunted and shook his head. “The water’s too cold for you.”
We lurched forward. I reached down and paddled with one hand, trying my best to ignore the numbness working through my fingers. The gondola broke the stillness of the water with a faint ripple, and the water licked against the side of the boat, keeping time to Isolfr’s occasional grunts of exertion.
The reflection of the sailing ship still floated in the water.
“How do you know it’s going to help us?” I said. I drew my hands up and knotted them in my coat; the water had gone too cold for me to stand. “The ship?”
Isolfr gave one last push and the gondola launched forward on his momentum and then stopped dead in the water.
“Well?” He climbed over the side of the boat, and the water evaporated off him immediately. To my eyes, he was completely dry.
“It’s a fishing boat,” he said. “There’s no guarantee that they’ll help us—”
“But you said!”
Isolfr shook his head. “I know what I said! I was thrilled that it wasn’t a warship, that it’s not something of Lord Foxfollow’s—”
The name sounded different in this place. It seemed to echo in upon itself.
“We’ll have to talk our way aboard,” Isolfr said. “But we have a chance.” He slumped down against the boat’s side and wrapped his arms around his chest. He’d said it was impossible for him to feel the cold, but looking at him drawn together like that, I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Would you like my coat?” I said.
He looked over at me and frowned. “You know I don’t need—”
And then the ocean ripped in two. An enormous, glassy wave crested and lifted up the gondola. I tumbled forward, slamming against Isolfr, who shrieked in surprise. I flipped around, flailing about to grab onto the railing, certain that we were going to capsize.
Isolfr went paler than usual. “Let me speak,” he said.
“To who!” I shouted, my voice nearly drowned out by the rush of water showering around us.
The top of a mast appeared against the sky, drawing up and up and up. Next were pale gold sails, masses and masses of them like clouds, and then the woman at the prow, her hair shimmering.
The sailing ship of the reflection emerged out of the ocean, water streaming down its sides. The gondola was knocked back on the ship’s wake, and I held tight to the railing as we plummeted backward. Water splashed over the side, soaking through my coat and my boots and extinguishing the heat-sphere.
Sea and sky, I hoped Isolfr would be able to get us aboard. No heat-sphere would be able to dry this out.
The ship rose majestically, glittering in the sunless light of the sky. It was so bright that it hurt my eyes, and I had to turn my head away, blinking against the dots of light. Beside me, Isolfr stood up, despite the unsteady rocking of the gondola.
“Fishermen of the undersea!” he shouted. “May I speak to your captain?”
There was no answer but silence. I wondered how Isolfr knew to address the ship. He was a spirit, yes, but I knew he was of my world and not the Mists.
Isolfr took a hesitant step forward. The gondola rocked. “Fishermen of the undersea!” he shouted again.
This time a voice drifted down from the ship’s deck.
“Who’s out there? Identify yourself!”
Isolfr glanced over at me. He looked scared, which was no surprise, although I couldn’t do much but chatter at him, I was so cold. If he thought I could give him answers, he ought to know better.
Isolfr turned back to the boat. “We’re from the Sun Realms,” he called back.
The Sun Realms. He must mean our world. I’d never thought it had its own name.
“The Sun Realms?” A face appeared over the ship’s railing, small and pale and fringed with a shaggy mane of thick dark hair. “You here to steal from us?”
“Of course not!” Isolfr shouted. “We just want passage back to dry land.”
The fisherman scowled down at us for a moment longer, then disappeared. I slumped back.
“Where’d he go?” Isolfr asked.
“Leaving us here to die,” I muttered.
But then another man appeared at the railing. He had the look of someone important—golden skin, long black hair pulled into a ponytail, a rather ostentatious blue hat. He leaned over the railing like he was examining us. Neither Isolfr nor I moved.
“How did a pair of sunners wind up with such a fine gondola?” he finally called out.
Isolfr and I glanced at each other. He took a deep breath—trying to rally his courage, no doubt. He squinted up at the man in the blue hat.
“Magic gone wrong,” he called back.
The man snorted. “I doubt that. You aren’t really sunners, are you? No need to be lying, mind. That’s a Boluda-style gondola there, and the Shira is friends of the Boluda family. You’re welcome aboard, no questions asked.” He gave a shallow bow. “Wait a moment and I’ll send some of my men to fetch you.”
And with that, he vanished from the railing, leaving Isolfr and me alone again.
“I told you the protection spell was still working,” Isolfr said.
“Coincidence,” I told him, although I didn’t believe that myself.
We waited for a few moments, and I heard a splash in the water. A rowboat, as golden as the ship’s sails. Two men rowed over to us.
“Now keep in mind it’s the gondola that’s getting you on board.” The man speaking was a different one from the man in the blue hat, although he wore a uniform of the same color, tassels hanging from his shoulders. “The captain doesn’t want to risk angering the Boluda family. But any sign of trouble, we’re tossing you overboard.”
“That sounds fair,” Isolfr said.
I wasn’t so sure about that—after all, they might start the trouble and lay the blame at our feet—but I was so cold by that point I didn’t see much reward in trying to speak.
The rowboat made its way toward us, the oars rising and falling like the beat of a drum. The man in the blue coat stood with a booted foot propped up on the boat’s edge, his big arms crossed over his chest. He was dry. The ship had just burst out of the ocean, and he was dry.
“You stay where you are,” he barked as the boat approached. “I need to check you out, make sure you’re decent.”
I held up both of my hands. “We’re decent,” I said, teeth chattering.
The man glanced at me and laughed. “You look like you’re no danger, then. Not safe, getting your clothes wet in these waters.”
The two rowers drew in their oars and the man sprang off his boat and landed in ours, a leap too wide for a human to make. The gondola barely dipped into the water. “I’ll need to check you for weapons,” the man said. “Hold up your arms.”
Isolfr did. The man patted Isolfr through his clothes. When he didn’t find anything, he made a disappointed grunt and turned to me. I unwrapped my arms from around my chest and held them up, shivering in the cold air. The man must have taken pity on me, because he didn’t search me as thoroughly as he had Isolfr.
“All right then,” he said. “Into the boat with you.”
The rowboat was still too far away for me to climb into it. I looked at the water and my stomach quaked at the thought of jumping into that icy bath. It would probably kill me.
But then the man looped one arm around my waist and one around Isolfr’s and jumped, bouncing into a high arc through the air, taking us with him. The air froze against my face. I cried out, startled, and then he landed us in the rowboat with all the agility of a cat.
“Onward!” he barked, and the two oarsmen dropped their oars into the water and turned us around.
I sat backward in the rowboat, my shivering more violent. The gondola was grander than I’d realized when we’d been inside it. The hull was painted with images of faces with large green eyes and long billowing hair. It took me a moment to recognize that all the faces were the same, that they belonged to the spirit Kolur and Frida had killed back onboard the Penelope II.
I turned away.
“Where you from?” the man asked Isolfr. “You didn’t get waterlogged like that one.” He jutted his thumb out at me.
Isolfr’s eyes went wide, and his mouth opened and closed. Despite the cold frosting over my thoughts, I spat out, “He’s a great wizard from Tulja, of the Sun Realms. All Tuljans know how to protect themselves from the freezing ocean.”
The fisherman looked at me, his eyes drawn tight and beady. “I’m with the captain,” he said. “I don’t think you’re from the Sun Realms. But hey, Boluda business is Boluda business, as long as it doesn’t mess with our ship.” He held up to hands. “Which reminds me. Keep any spells to yourself onboard the Shira. Doesn’t matter what kind. We’ve got magic enough in the storage holds.” He turned away from us, toward the oarsmen. “Faster!” he barked. “We want to make it back to Llambric by tomorrow, don’t we?”
“Excuse me,” Isolfr said. “Did you say you’re going to Llambric?”
“We are indeed. That gonna be a problem?”
“No.” Isolfr shook his head and sat down beside me. He radiated a faint chill that just made me shiver harder. “No problem at all.”
The boatman turned away from us, and Isolfr leaned over and whispered in my ear. “The protection spell is still working. Of all the places in the Mists, Llambric is where we’d most want to be.”
The name meant nothing to me. I was more interested in what the man had said.
“Why can’t we use magic onboard?” I asked Isolfr.
“They’re magic-miners,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Then why are they on a ship?”
“Ladder coming!” shouted a man from the Shira. “Clear the water!”
“Clear!” the fisherman shouted back. Well, not a fisherman. A miner.
I still didn’t understand what he was doing on a boat.
A rope ladder splashed into the water beside us, flinging more damp across my lap. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get warm.
“Hope you can climb,” the fisherman said. “Otherwise, we’re leaving you here.”
“I can climb.” I stood up, grabbed hold of the rope. It was sturdy and strong, and when I pushed myself up onto it, it stayed in place. I heaved myself up, rung by rung. The exercise didn’t do much to warm me up.
At the top, a stout, muscular man was waiting for me, bearded like the others. He took me by one hand and dragged me over the railing.
“Oh, girl, you’ve caught the dampness.” He clapped twice. “Change of clothes for the lady! Bring her heat!”
I muttered a thank-you and stumbled away from him. The ship’s deck gleamed. It looked more like a ballroom than a sailing ship. The sails threw off rays of light, and the ship itself shimmered gold, the way the figurehead had. Men scurried up the masts and around the deck, chanting together in a language I didn’t understand, their boots and palms clapping out a rhythm.
“This way, girl.” Another man came up beside me. He didn’t have a beard, but he did have long matted hair, and rough sailor’s skin, and gray eyes.
Gray eyes.
He blinked at me, those gray eyes looming. “Come along,” he said. “We’ll get you dry. That dampness, it can kill you.”
I felt dizzy. The brightness of the ship was too much. Isolfr hadn’t climbed over the railing yet. My heart started to race.
“No time to dawdle,” the man said, and then he took my hand, gently, and led me toward the upper cabins. I was too dazed, too cold, too exhausted, to try and resist, but I did look over my shoulder at the place where the ladder attached to the ship’s side. It was empty. Empty—
Isolfr’s head appeared over the edge. His pale golden hair seemed like an extension of the ship itself.
The man glanced over to where I was looking. “Don’t worry, lass, we’ll bring him to you soon enough. But that cold—” He shook his head, made a clucking sound. “Not good, not good for you at all.”
I watched him, cautious. In all the right ways he looked like a human. He looked more like a human than Isolfr did. And yet I couldn’t think of him as human at all.
He led me into one of the upper cabins. It shone just like the deck, and the furniture looked as if it were all carved out of stone.
“I want to see Isolfr,” I said, looking over to the door. The man had left it hanging open, and I could see out to the deck and the sailors bustling around. Their chanting drifted into the cabin.
“He’ll be here in just a minute.” The man opened a drawer underneath the bed and pulled out a pile of folded clothes and set them on the bed. “Why don’t you change up, and I’ll bring you something warm to drink.” He gave me a pleasant smile and nodded down at the clothes. “Go on, don’t want you to die out here! It’ll taint the magic.”
I felt dizzy. Taint the magic. The man turned and left the cabin, shutting the door behind him. There was the sound of a key turning in a lock. I ran up to the door, tried to push it open. It didn’t move.
I cursed and choked back a flood of tears. I might have been in the most beautiful ship cabin I’d ever seen, but I was trapped here. Imprisoned.
And shivering violently.
Moving by rote, I stripped off my wet clothes and stepped into the dry ones the sailor had left behind. They were cut for a man, and so a little too big, but the fabric was thick and warm and soft. I sat down on the bed, sinking low into the mattress. Where was Isolfr?
A few moment later, someone knocked on the door.
I looked over at it, my heart pounding.
“Are you decent?”
“Yes.” I dug my fingers into the mattress. I had no weapon, nothing to defend myself.
The lock turned, the door swung open. The man in the blue coat stood in the doorway, Isolfr at his side. He carried a steaming mug in one hand.
“Just as I promised, I brought you a warm drink.” He stepped into the room, and Isolfr followed. For once he didn’t seem that frightened. The man handed me the drink, then turned over to an alcove set into the wall. “You didn’t light the fire?”
“I didn’t—didn’t know how. You said not to do magic.” I glanced over at Isolfr, the steam from the drink billowing around my face. It smelled of honey and spice, and I wondered if the stories were true, the ones that said eating and drinking in the Mists would trap you there. Nothing else about this place had been what I expected. Not so far, anyway.
“Not big magic. You can light a fire.”
Isolfr knelt beside the fireplace. “I can take care of it,” he said. “I’m familiar with this sort of magic.”
“Ah, good, good. Keep her warm.” The man straightened up, smoothed down his clothes. He nodded at me. “If you spoil our haul for today, there’ll be a worse fate in store for you than freezing.”
And with that, he stepped out of the room, locking us in once again.
“What’s he talking about?” I demanded. “Spoil the haul? Magic? How can you gather up magic?”
“We’re in the Mists. Things work differently here.” Isolfr looked over his shoulder at me. “You should drink that.”
“Is it safe?”
Isolfr turned back to the alcove. There was a pause and a tremor on the air, and then flames erupted inside the wall. They were the same golden color as the rest of the ship, and not like any fire I’d ever seen. But they gave off warmth, just as you would expect.
“It won’t trap you here, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s a story.” Isolfr stepped away from the fire. “Here, sit close.”
I slid off the bed and pooled down beside the flames. Their heat was a relief, even if nothing else on this ship was. “How do you know it’s just a story? Everything else has been true, about looking for mists and gray eyes—”
“Those are warnings. Things you see in your world. The idea that if you eat in the Mists, you’ll be trapped—that’s just a myth.” He sat down beside me and offered the mug. The scent of spices floated up around me. “I swear to you.”
I looked up him. He’d never given me a reason not to trust him. That much, at least, was true.
I took the mug and stared down at the surface. The drink was dark and creamy, not like any drink I’d ever seen before. I breathed in the spices one more time, and then I took a sip.
Warmth flooded through me.