The Thickety A Path Begins by J. A. White

Author:J. A. White
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

For a few hours, as she patched Taff’s costume together from various odds and ends, Kara was able to push the grimoire from her mind. It helped that Father stayed in the room with them. Ever since their encounter with the fen’de, he had been acting a bit more like his old self. Yes, there were still the long silences and lapses of memory, but as Kara watched Taff and Father shooting marbles across the wooden floor, she couldn’t help but smile. He’s getting better. In time he will tell me the truth of that night. She would ask him when the moment was right, but not this afternoon. Kara did not want to do anything to disturb a scene so tranquil—so normal—that she could almost imagine Mother walking through the door.

She did not feel the pull of the grimoire until later that night, when she lay in bed listening to Taff’s worrisome cough and wondering if leaving his window open a crack had been the right decision. The need to touch the book started in the pit of her stomach and spread to the tips of her toes. It wasn’t as bad as before, not yet. But it was rising.

She thought of the three-leaved weed the Clearers called tagen. “It may not seem it,” Lucas had told her, “but it’s the most dangerous thing in the Fringe. Just a bit of it under your fingernails, and you won’t be able to stop smiling for two days. You won’t feel any pain either. But by then the tagen has started growing inside your body, and it creeps into your heart and makes you want more, and you will want it even after it begins squeezing you from the inside out and your teeth have rotted away and the skin has begun to melt from your bones. With your last, strangled breath, you’ll beg for it.”

Kara wondered how long it would be before she reached that point. To where she’d rather die than not use magic.

Maybe you’re there already.

There came a steady tapping at her window.

Kara flipped over in bed. Grace was standing outside, fingertips splayed against the glass.

“Were you thinking about me, Kara?” she asked. “I was thinking about you. That’s why I came.”

She continued to gently tap the window with the pads of her fingers.

“Why don’t you let me in, Kara?” she asked. Her eyes were silver lakes in the moonlight. “Do you have it there? Can I see it?”

“It’s not here,” Kara said.

“Yes, it is. I already checked the farmhouse. Your secret spot. Father mentioned it to me. He might not have known what it was for, but I did. So clever of you to move it before the graycloaks came. Your mother’s treasure.” Grace paused, considering. “Do you think that when she touched my mother’s stomach and made me like this . . . that she also made me like you?”

Grace continued to tap against the glass. The rhythm was completely out of sync to her words, as though her hand had a mind of its own.

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