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It gets easier after I stop listening to Susan. Grace seems worried but willing enough to help, even when I insist on ignoring our chores and training far away from Susan’s house every day. It’s bad enough living with the enemy—I don’t have to let her ruin my chances entirely.
Away from Susan’s corrupting influence, Grace is more willing to show me what I need to know. Drills to improve dexterity, free from the limitations of slippery strands and tangling threads. Stances for defensive and offensive attacks. Strike patterns—even I can tell she’s not great at them, but the clumsy moves she shows me are bound to be more useful than learning how to thin carrots and train vines.
After two days, I’m no longer tripping over my feet every time I move. Maybe I can pull this off.
But by a week in, and with only a week to go until the challenge, I’m stuck. Grace doesn’t have anything new for me to learn. I’ve even snuck over to watch some training sessions, memorizing and trying to copy the way the students move on my own later, striking against the side of a building or pulling the blows with Grace as a moving target.
The process frustrates both of us, creating little more than bruises. Cadence occasionally comes up with something helpful. More often, she sulks and interjects snarky commentary on my inadequacies.
And then Grace does something truly terrible.
“This is Steph. Say hi to Cady and Cole, Steph.”
Grace’s sister is a little taller than her, with the same round face, but darker of skin, eye, and expression. She’s stocky, but her sleeveless tunic and scraped-back hair show none of Grace’s softness.
“Freak,” says Steph. It’s not clear which of us she’s addressing until my feet leave the ground.
By the time I coax air back into my lungs and blink most of the stars away, she’s looming over me with a curious expression. I’m completely unable to work out how that a solid-looking girl went from standing a few feet away, to having her foot planted in my midsection, to me going airborne in a single whirling second.
She rolls back onto her heels.
“Huh. You really are broken.”
I swat her outstretched hand and scuttle backwards on my hands and heels. “Go away.”
The girl laughs. “Cool. Monster-bait talks.”
“Steph!” Grace cries.
“Chill. I’ll stay. Seems fun.” She bares her teeth at me. It’s not a friendly expression. “Heard what you said, ’bout beating the best of us by the end of next week. That’ll be me. You’re welcome to try today if you’d like a head start.”
I curl tighter. Then uncurl into one of Grace’s defensive postures, feet braced, elbows out. Steph whistles.
“Wow, you’re all mouth, arent’cha. That’s the worst stance I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something with Gracie here.”
She jerks a thumb at her red-faced little sister. I take advantage of the momentary distraction to try a surprise attack. Only, I’m the one who goes sailing through the air. Again.
“Nice try. Crappy form. Go again.”
I could roll in the dirt in a ball of pain. Instead, I dive at Grace’s stupid sister again, and again, until she works up a sweat and my head’s spinning too hard for me to stay on my feet.
“Not too bad,” my new tormenter says. “If you were, like, six. Maybe. No talent, of course, but you’re persistent. You might make it into the babies’ class now. Same time tomorrow?”
I spit in the dirt at her feet. She laughs. I glare.
Then I nod. “Tomorrow.”
Steph swaggers off.
I flop back down, sweat plastering my hair and clothes to my skin. “Seriously?”
“I didn’t have anything more to teach you,” Grace says. “It was either get beat down by Steph on your own time and maybe learn something, or in front of the whole class, with Auntie Rocky gloating from the sidelines.”
“I don’t like your family.”
Grace nods understandingly and helps me up. “Follow me.”
She trots off, braids bouncing. I limp after her, too sore to protest.
She leads me to the wall and unlocks the small side gate we used last time.
I make a point of looking back over my shoulder. I’d been thinking more along the lines of a bath and something to eat, maybe even going over some of those moves Steph showed off and trying to figure out how they’d worked if I had the energy after dinner . . . But Grace steps over the threshold, tosses the key at my feet, and sets off into the forest.
I could lock the door behind her and head home. Except there are monsters out there, and even my rudimentary fighting skills have to be better than hers. Or, about the same, apparently. But still, two incompetents wandering in the forest are better than one, right?
Cursing with a selection of the interesting new words I’ve picked up watching the trainees, I stagger through the gate, lock it behind me, and jog after Grace. I snag one of her braids and give it a tug.
“Ouch?” She cuts her eyes at me but keeps up her pace. “Don’t be mad. I want to show you something.”
“I want to sleep.”
“No, you don’t.”
Since she’s right, I keep my mouth shut and focus on cataloguing bruises as we make our way through the woods.
It’s not the least pleasant thing I’ve done all day. If I didn’t have to be on alert for monsters, or creatures, or whatever, it might even be kind of nice. There are bright wildflowers scattered around, and a whole lot of shades of green that I’m starting to be able to tell apart, and if there’s quite a lot of suspicious rustling, I can chalk that up to wind in the trees and harmless little forest creatures.
The rustling gets louder. I snatch at Grace’s sleeve, but she just tugs it out of my grip and keeps going. And then we break through the trees.
It’s a stream, complete with a small cascade rippling down from higher ground. It’s strangely peaceful—and apparently, free of monsters.
Grace gives me this crazy huge grin and walks backward until her heels are teetering over the bank. Then she drops, folding into a serene puddle at the very edge of the stream. Her pale eyes, the exact soft green and brown hues of the burbling water reflected between dark lashes, flutter closed. She seems to breathe in the breeze, and the rushing water, and the fresh, clean scent of this place, and grow larger with it. Brighter.
Mist creeps across her skin, paling its surface with a faint silver cast.
“Hi Cady.” It’s barely a whisper, too quiet to hear over the small waterfall if I hadn’t seen her lips move.
“Hi Gracie,” Cadence says.
Grace just tapped into the dreamscape.
I have the sudden urge to shove her into the stream.
“Cole’s annoyed,” Cadence says.
If Grace answers, I don’t hear it. Her face is still, under its faint silver covering.
“Yeah, she’ll wait . . . I know, right?” Cadence laughs. “Okay, but if you’d seen . . . hmm. Uh huh. Seriously? Wish I’d been . . . Okay, yeah. Yeah, I hear everything she does, so . . . Cool, go for it. I’ll be here.”
Grace’s eyes open. The mist fades back under her skin. She grins. “She’s really there!”
I dive back into the forest.
“Wait,” she crashes after me. “Don’t be like that. I can be friends with both of you like this.”
I turn on her, and she almost falls over trying to reverse direction. “You said you couldn’t do that stuff. I thought you were locked out, like—”
Like me.
“I can’t. Usually. Except for in that one spot. Even there, the connection’s weak. I couldn’t do what you did, Cole. I can’t fight. I can barely communicate. If Cady weren’t so strong to begin with, she probably couldn’t even hear me. But if even I can cross over to the dreamscape like this, maybe there’s something, or somewhere, that’d boost your connection too.”
“A magical forest stream is hardly going to help me fight the Mara.”
“But something else might,” Grace says. “Like a certain type of wood, or a rock, or—”
“So, what? I should wander the forest touching everything to see if it can unlock my powers?”
I slap the nearest tree in frustration. And, if I’m honest, hope.
I’d be happy to tuck a few twigs in my pocket if that’s all it takes to get back everything I’ve lost.