A Wilder Magic by Juliana Brandt

Author:Juliana Brandt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2021-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Nettle slept. And slept…and slept, exhaustion seeming to not allow her to wake. Her fingers and toes fidgeted in her sleep.

Sybaline sat crisscross with her back pressed to Nettle, who lay on her side facing the fireplace. Golden coals gleamed amid the ash, streaks of light pushing delicate arms against the shadows inside the hearth. Sybaline turned away from this view and stared out the window opposite the fireplace. Her body told her it was time to be awake, despite the fact that no bands of sunlight filtered through the glass.

Curling up her legs, she shivered. All of her felt terribly cold, except for her feet that were too numb to feel much of anything at all. She pressed her thumb to patchy skin that ringed her ankles. There, she scratched at the dryness.

Nettle rolled over. Jumping, Sybaline pulled her socks up and turned to face her cousin.

“It got colder,” Nettle said.

“The sun is officially gone.” The windowpane showed black, a slick covering of paint that dripped over the outside world.

Nettle rubbed her eyes, rustling the blanket that covered her. “I think Momma left some things in our house that couldn’t be used anymore. Hopefully there are spare clothes. Otherwise, we’re about to be wintry cold without the sun and without anything extra to wear. We’re going to have to burn so much wood to keep the house warm.”

Sybaline struck flint to set alight one of their lanterns. Light bloomed inside.

Nettle pushed to her feet, grabbing up the blanket and slinging it over her shoulders like a cape. “It’s time to save my sisters.”

* * *

They made a plan: they would head back to the creek and from there would retrace their steps, following the path Nettle had opened. This time as Nettle led, Sybaline opened herself to the magic, carving a path through the woods that the wheelbarrow could trudge along.

She’d never walked into so many trees in her life, and that was taking into account the time she, Nettle, Marlys, and Tevi played blindfolded tag in the woods. Even with the lanterns, she and Nettle kept getting turned around and confused and found themselves backtracking, having little idea in what direction they actually walked. Directions weren’t so easy when their internal compass had nothing to give them assistance—no mountains, no sun, no outside world to tell them north from south.

The entire forest had become a backward place with Sybaline feeling as if she walked on the night sky but also somewhere far below, in some dark, unknown Neverland.

The valley had always breathed. It had murmured with wildlife: flowers stretching toward the sun, moonlight dimming as it filtered through the treetops, animals rustling through underbrush and calling to their families. The silence of the woods now was broken only by the sounds she and Nettle made. The only breathing that happened was caused by them, and it didn’t feel so much like breathing as it felt like invading a place caught in a pause.

“I can’t tell where we

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