Alluvium

Chapter 8

I kept a grim vigil, waiting in the small, round room at the top of the tower, the soft light of the stone-lamps little able to keep the encroaching dark at bay. The night drew down, heavy and still, and the tall windows showed nothing but blackness beyond. It was hard not to picture a different kind of darkness, one wrought in endless ranks of silent trees and gnarled branches. My mind conjured shadows woven through whispering leaves and a presence looming between them, all its malice bearing down on her: on a small figure, alone in the dark.

Such thoughts served no purpose. I took the spellbook into my hands and flicked through it, my hands finding familiar work. I focused on reading, carving every syllable of the workings carefully into my mind. It was easy to find a kind of peace in this work: to think of the words, the shape of the spell, the exact inflection of légzenta – and not think of why I was reading it, or even to think of the deadly magic these words wrought. It worked for a while – until I imagined the look on Agnieszka’s face as I pressed my hand over her mouth and dragged the last of her life out of her lungs.

After that, I set the book on the floor and waited, my fingers steepled in front of my mouth.

By the time a feeble dawn started to creep in at my back, I was numb and bone-weary. My vision blurred at the edges, my shoulders were hunched and aching. She hasn’t come back. I wouldn’t quite let that thought reach me, too stubborn by far to look at the truth staring me directly in the face. She isn’t coming back.

It was just like Agnieszka to appear exactly at the moment I was ready to give up, always testing me to the very limit of my resolve. One moment I was alone and the next she was there on the floor, bent over and grey with exhaustion, a girl sprawled impossibly at her side. My heart shuddered in my chest, and it took all my strength to crush the flare of hope that kindled at the sight of her; I did not yet know what had arrived at my tower, whatever my eyes wanted to believe.

I grabbed her by the chin and tipped her face up towards mine. I didn’t look at her: I looked through her, searching her eyes for even a trace of corruption. She didn’t resist, didn’t try to squirm away, or smile, or convince me it was her. As I studied her, her face came gradually back into focus: the streaks of mud, the washed-out pallor of her skin. She was so depleted, she barely seemed to see me. For a moment, I let myself believe that there was a chance this truly was Agnieszka.

I unstoppered the bottle in my hand and pushed it towards her. ‘Drink,’ I ordered, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice. ‘The whole thing.’

She took it from me, but when I moved to deal with the girl, Agnieszka whimpered and scrabbled towards her, no notion in her head of the incredible danger she was in.

‘Now,’ I barked at her. ‘Unless you want to force me to incinerate her at once, so I can deal with you.’ I meant every word of it.

To my great relief, she began to drink, and I turned my attention back to the girl, Kasia, still lying unconscious at my feet. The girl who belonged to the Wood. The girl Agnieszka had stubbornly, impossibly retrieved from its grasp. I had far less hope for her. There were no outward signs of corruption: there often weren’t, in the beginning. She lay as if sleeping, her golden hair plastered against her cheeks, matted and sticky with what looked like sap. As I passed my hands above her, I felt a familiar tug – a wrongness – something lurking just below her parchment-white skin.

I took the paper packet from my pocket, tore it between my thumb and forefinger and sprinkled the powder over the length of her body. I spoke three words, and thin golden bars grew and knotted together, locking her safely in place – for now. I tried not to imagine a different circumstance under which I might have used this, one where something else entirely had crawled out onto my floor.

Behind me, I heard Agnieszka splutter and cough. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped.

I turned, forced at last to face her and what I needed to do to her. ‘All of it.’ I stepped forwards, my body looming over hers. ‘And then a second one, if I think it necessary. Drink.’

I can’t fully describe the extent of my relief when she obeyed, screwing up her face as she forced down the last of it. I wasted no time and none of my resolve, grabbing her wrists even as she set the bottle down on the floor. ‘Ulozishtus sovjenta, megiot kozhor, ulozishtus megiot.’

She screamed. I only tightened my fingers around her small wrists and leaned closer as the fire of the spell burned through her skin. The light grew within her, turning her skin amber-gold and translucent, and casting the shadows I knew would be there: slithering like deformed tadpoles, trailing beneath her skin.

I saw the fear light in her eyes and, finally, understanding. She broke free from my grasp and wrenched her dress over her head, staring at her body as if she wanted to claw herself out of it.

‘Get them out,’ she said, frantic even as I knelt beside her. ‘Get them out—’

‘Yes, I’m trying,’ I snapped, grabbing at her wrists before she could do injury to either me or herself.

Closing my eyes, I began the spell which would save or destroy her. I felt it build, the strength of my magic turning her blood to fire beneath my fingers. There was nothing else in my mind but the heat and the light. Too much and I could burn all of her away; too little and Wood’s poison would hide in the deep recesses of her body, and I would lose her to a different kind of ruin. I felt her tense beneath my grip, heard her breathing stutter; I shut it out. I clenched my teeth and closed every door Agnieszka had ever opened. I needed to be the Dragon, the wizard who held the Wood back from Polnya, not some soft-hearted fool.

I felt her sway in my grip. When I opened my eyes, she was sagging to one side, her eyelids fluttering closed, the red shadow of her heart beating slower and slower and slower…

I shook her. Hard.

She started up as if I had woken her, her bleary eyes focusing on mine. I glared at her, never stopping in my onslaught, never giving her a moment of respite.

Don’t you dare, I imagined myself yelling at her. Where was all her fury, now? Where was the belligerent creature who had fought with her century-old lord over even the mildest inconvenience? Don’t even think of giving up now.

The minutes dragged on and I finally felt the last of the slithering shadows burn away. I ended the chant, brought it to a slow ebb, but I kept the magic at my fingertips and any hope locked firmly away.

‘Enough?’

‘No,’ she answered. It was little more than a whisper and I could hear the fear cracking through her voice, and it was all I could do to keep an echo of her fear from my own face. I nodded once and produced another bottle for her to drink.

Three more times she choked the sweet, thick liquid down. Three more times I sent waves of cleansing, deadly fire through her veins.

‘Enough,’ she cried and crumpled forwards. ‘It’s enough.’

And then it was time, and I couldn’t look away from it anymore. I forced another mouthful down her throat, clamped my hand over her mouth and crushed down every flicker of a feeling I’d ever had for her. ‘Feloldia alliot légzenta. Megiot kohzor légzenta.’

The spell closed off her airways, collapsed her lungs. Her eyes went huge, round and betrayed. She clawed at my hand with her nails, punched out at my chest. I searched her face, watching for that last sliver of corruption, watching for the moment I stole the very last of her life. Even as her eyes fluttered and her hands weakened on my mine, I knew we had done it. She was free from the corruption. She was safe.

I released my hand from her mouth.

I didn’t have time to feel even a sliver of relief before she broke free from my grasp and shoved me halfway across the floor. I barely managed to twist my arms to keep the precious cordial upright – the one which had, moments before, saved her life. The doors I had been holding closed on myself flew open, all my relief and fear and anger spilling out of them, all of it roiled up together.

‘Of all the extraordinary stupidities I have ever seen you perform,’ I hissed at her, the anger by far the easiest of them to contend with.

‘You could have told me!’ she shouted back, as if I were yelling at her for fighting for her life and not for disappearing alone into the Wood. ‘I stood all the rest, I could have stood that, too—’

‘Not if you were corrupted,’ I interrupted; despite my best efforts, I could feel my anger draining away. ‘If you were taken deep, you would have tried to evade it, if I’d told you.’

‘Then you would have known, anyway!’

I swallowed and looked away, closing my eyes against that thought. ‘Yes. I would have known.’

For a while, she said nothing, her breathing slow and deep, as if she were measuring every breath, savouring it.

I felt strangely empty.

‘And am I— am I clean?’ she asked at last.

‘Yes,’ I said, wondering if she heard the relief in my voice. ‘No corruption could have hidden from that last spell. If we’d done it sooner, it would have killed you. The shadows would have had to steal the breath from your blood to live.’

She crumpled forward, small and exhausted, her face in her hands. I made myself stand and move – I wasn’t the one who’d been fighting for my life, after all. From somewhere deep inside, I found the magic to cast Vanastalem, passing my hand over my arm until a thick, heavy cloak lay over it, green silk – of course it was – edged in gold. It was only now, after all the fear and desperation had passed, that I realised that her dress still lay where she’d thrown it on the floor.

She stared at the cloak as if clothing had become a foreign concept to her, and I looked away, feeling myself blush like an idiot child. She did eventually realise, but of course none of that mattered as soon as she remembered the reason we were both here.

‘Kasia,’ she said, her voice desperate. She turned to stare at me, expectant, as I might offer up some incredible answer, when impossibility was entirely the purview of her magic and not mine.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I’d felt for a moment that this was over, that we were done and had survived it, but of course to Agnieszka this was only beginning. She couldn’t see that her friend was gone. She stood in front of me, naked but for that ridiculous cloak clutched to her chest, unwavering even in the face of her own exhaustion. I knew even now that no word from me would convince her that we couldn’t save the girl.

‘Go and dress,’ I said. ‘There’s no urgency.’

The meaning of that did not escape her. After all, I hadn’t waited even a moment with her.

‘There must be a way,’ she said, still standing there, endlessly stubborn. ‘There has to be a way. They’d only just taken her— she couldn’t have been in that tree for long.’

‘What?’ I snapped. A tree? She couldn’t possibly mean…

But, of course, she did.

Bit by bit, the confused truth came tumbling out of her. She described her journey into the Wood: not skirting the edges of it, as I had imagined – Agnieszka had walked boldly and directly into its cursed heart. I listened in stunned silence as she described the oppressive quiet, the dark sentinel trees, even the Wood itself as it turned slowly toward her. She’d felt the weight of its gaze and heard the whispering of its voice, and yet she’d marched stubbornly onwards.

She reached the part where she found the girl trapped beneath the bark of a tree: a giant tree with strange silver bark and a trunk so thick she could not have stretched her arms around it; a tree with high, concentric branches and dripping with fruit which smelled of sweet death and earthy decay: a heart-tree. Even then, the impossible idiot had not realised the danger. She’d dug her bare feet and hands into that rotten earth and demanded that the Wood set her friend free, while calling upon one of Jaga’s greatest workings: even the word – fulmia – sent a hot prickle of power down my spine.

As her voice tailed off, I could see from her expression that I had failed to keep the horror from my face. After all this, I had still underestimated her – her and her monstrous stupidity.

‘You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,’ I managed to say. ‘And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing. No one has gone into the Wood as deep as you and come out whole: not since—’ I stopped abruptly: the name would only encourage her lunacy.

Unfortunately, she knew immediately who I’d meant, and at the mention of Jaga, she made the same ridiculous expression she always did.

‘And at that time, she was a hundred years old,’ I snapped at her, before she could get any more fool-brained notions. ‘And so steeped in magic that black toadstools would spring up where she walked. And even she wasn’t stupid enough to start a great working in the middle of the place, although I will grant that in this case, it’s the only thing that saved you.’ I shook my head in despair. ‘I should have chained you to the wall as soon as that peasant woman came here to weep on your shoulder, I suppose.’ Would that I had, for her sake more than mine.

‘Wensa,’ was all she had to say to that, her face like a startled rabbit’s. ‘I have to go tell Wensa.’

‘Tell her what?’

‘That Kasia’s alive,’ the fool said, even starting towards the landing. ‘That she’s out of the Wood—’

‘And that she will surely have to die?’ I bit out the words, faster and crueller than I’d intended.

The response was immediate: she straightened up and backed towards her friend, angling herself between us with her hands raised and palms facing out towards me. She was still dressed in nothing but the cloak, which she’d only thrown over one shoulder, and she was almost trembling from the effort of standing, let alone fighting me off. I suppose she thought I meant to kill her precious friend there and then on the cold stone floor; the look on her face made something twist painfully in my chest.

‘Stop mantling at me like a rooster.’ I shook my head, weariness settling like a physical weight around my shoulders. ‘The last thing we need is any further demonstrations that you’ll go to fool’s lengths for her sake. You can keep her alive as long as we can keep her restrained. But you’ll find it a mercy in the end.’

I made Agnieszka leave, so that I could deal with the girl alone. I wouldn’t tell her where I was taking her, determined that I would keep them apart as much as I was able. I set a spell of protection over myself, though I knew my strength was all but spent. The powder – willowbane and valerian root – kept the girl and whatever else lurked within her in a deep and silent sleep; without it, I doubt very much I could have kept the corruption contained. I struggled to carry her down into the catacombs beneath the tower, my feet slipping on the stairs, and my sight blurred as I conjured the pallet for her to sleep on and the iron manacles I clicked around her ankles. I left before the willowbane could wear off, unprepared and unwilling to look into the face of the Wood that day.

As I hauled myself back up the stairs to the tower, I heard distant murmuring of voices from above me. Agnieszka and this Wensa. Agnieszka had gone straight to tell her. Of course: she hadn’t heeded my warnings about anything before – there was no reason to expect that she would do so now. It only filled me with relief that I had hidden Kasia away; the last thing we needed was for this interfering peasant to break into the tomb and share in the corruption of her daughter.

I paused before the landing, my hand resting on the column around which the stairs spiralled downwards. There was sharpness to the voices I hadn’t expected.

‘—you always hated her, always. You wanted her to be taken! You and Galinda, you knew he’d take her.’ My hand tightened on the stone. ‘You knew and you were glad, and now you hate her because he took you instead—’

I saw Agnieszka burst from the room, sobbing desperately, her whole body trembling as if there was nothing left inside her to contain her grief. She looked sick and pale, dark shadows smeared under her eyes. I made to step towards her but to my shame, I hesitated, no idea of what I would say or how I would comfort her. Before I could move, that odious woman came shuffling out of the room, arms outstretched, weeping her own bitter tears. I watched her wrap her hateful arms around Agnieszka, while Agnieszka remained stiff and rigid against the wall. ‘Nieshka, forgive me. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.’

I watched Agnieszka untangle herself, graciously kiss the woman on the forehead and pull herself away.

I waited until she was gone before I stepped quietly into the woman’s room.

‘You have taken everything she can possibly give you.’ I kept myself still and my voice even, but the woman quailed before the look on my face. ‘Your daughter is gone: the Wood took her. Whatever she was before, it is dead. You knew this before you set foot in this tower, yet you came here with your false hope and your poisonous expectations. I have tolerated your presence out of respect for Agnieszka, but I will not allow you to harm her any further. You will leave here at once. I will send for a cart from Olshanka, which is far more than you deserve.’

And if you ever come near her again, you will wish that the walkers had come to take you instead, I might have added, though any fool could see that she already wished that. Her greatest crime was her grief for her daughter, though that thought did nothing to appease the anger seething within me, as hot and consuming as purifying magic. I did not regret sending her away.

Neither did Agnieszka, to my surprise. I had returned to my library to wait for her, quite certain that she would not be through with torturing herself yet. She appeared in my doorway, her eyes puffy and red, her head stooped beneath exhaustion as much as grief. She had one hand against the stone doorframe, and I was quite certain that was all that was keeping her on her feet. Even as she swayed in the doorway, she demanded that I teach her the protective magic which would allow her to see her friend. A part of me wanted desperately to reach out to her, to let her lean on me while I helped her back to her room; I did not need to ask to know she would permit no such assistance.

‘Try not to be more of a fool than you can help,’ I said, gently. ‘You need rest, and if you don’t, I certainly do before facing the undoubtedly torturous process of drumming the necessary protections into your head. There’s no need for haste. Nothing is going to change.’

‘But if Kasia’s infested as I was,’ she started.

I shook my head before she could finish – surely she was not this much of a fool. ‘A few shadows slipped between your teeth; purging you at once kept them from getting a hold on you. This isn’t anything like that, nor even some thirdhand infestation, like that luckless cowherder you turned to stone for no good reason. Do you understand that the tree you saw is one of the heart-trees of the Wood? Where they take root, its borders spread, the walkers are fed on their fruit. She was as deep in the Wood’s power as any person can be. Go to sleep. A few hours won’t make a difference to her, and it may keep you from committing some new folly.’

I could see her arguments written plainly on her face, her lips twisting in unspoken disagreement, her eyes burning fiercely even through her exhaustion. She said nothing, but she did turn and head towards the stairs, standing as tall and straight-backed as she could manage, her hands bunched into fists at her side. I felt myself sag a little after she’d left; I had not exaggerated my own need to rest.

It was barely even dawn when I was awoken by furious clattering and thumping coming from downstairs. I lay with my eyes closed for a moment longer, trying to imagine that it was only some tormented poltergeist ransacking my library. A poltergeist would surely have treated it with more respect. When I reached the library, I found her balanced on one leg, reaching for the very highest shelf above her – all thought of spellcraft clearly forgotten – with four other tomes dumped unceremoniously at her feet. Around the room were a myriad of other abandoned books which had clearly been deemed unworthy, some of them heaped into piles when she had been gracious enough to do so, and others scattered across the table, covers left open at whatever page had made her storm away in disgust. I felt my jaw flex and my mouth pull down to one side.

She turned and slammed a book down so hard it made three other hefty tomes leap an inch into the air, a fine cloud of dust billowing around them. She froze when she realised she had summoned me, standing with both hands still gripping the offending book. She stared up at me from within a tangled crown of curling hair, her eyes blazing with a fierce, relentless determination, despite the shadows which still bruised the skin beneath them. I felt all my irritation evaporate, replaced instead with a tightening guilt. I should have ended this. I could have: I could have taken the girl’s life instead of locking her away, told Agnieszka that there was no chance of saving her and that I had freed them both from this curse.

She needs to see, I told myself, as I retrieved the key from my desk. If she doesn’t see the corruption herself, she’ll never believe that the girl was beyond our help. And she’d never forgive me.

I unlocked the ebony cabinet with a click, counting my fingers along the racks of preserved parchments, each one pressed carefully between two pieces of hardened glass. I found the one I was looking for: an ancient sheet of vellum describing a long, twisting enchantment which had never yielded anything to my tongue. I lifted it out by the edge of the glass, keeping it out of reach of Agnieszka’s grasping fingers and instead set it down on the table between us. It looked like something out of Jaga’s spellbook: dirty, illegible, surrounded by indecipherable diagrams.

‘I’ve preserved it mostly as a curiosity,’ I explained, ‘but that seems to suit you best.’

She hadn’t looked at it for half a minute when she said, ‘Which one do I use?’

‘What?’

‘Which enchantment?’ She pressed her finger against the glass, leaving smudged fingerprints all over it. ‘Suoltal videl; suoljata akorata… which one of these is the spell of protection?’

Even now, I felt myself stiffen; it had never occurred to me that it was not all one working. ‘I haven’t the least idea. Choose one and try.’

I saw that slight crease in her brow which always appeared when she realised she’d found something of which I was ignorant, but today there were no lofty words or insufferable sermons.

I let her work in her own perplexing way, trying to ignore the way she rattled through my laboratory or left a trail of pine needles wherever she went. Instead I carefully undid all her previous efforts, slotting books back into their rightful places and sidestepping her impatient gestures. I admit, I watched her out of the corner of my eye, unable to look away from the sight of her picking her way through her impenetrable forest.

It could take me weeks of study and preparation before I tried a new working: checking it against more familiar spellwork, testing the limits of its power; sometimes I would spend days pouring over a single page, weighing out each syllable in my mind before I even said a word. This vellum contained a type of magic Agnieszka had never seen, in a dead language she could never have encountered.

She tried one of the enchantments almost immediately.

‘Valloditazh aloito, kes vallofozh,’ the words were sharp and wrong on my tongue, but I felt the sense of her magic immediately, brushing up hotly against my own. My spell sank like claws through her soft defences. One wave of my hand and she jerked up like a marionette, her body entirely under my control; another gesture and her hands snapped together, clapping three times.

Her face was a picture of rage, her mouth halfway round one of Jaga’s nastier curses even before I released her from the spell. Though she thought better of that, she still stormed bullheadedly towards me, looking for all the world like she intended to wring my neck with her bare hands.

‘When the Wood does it, you won’t feel the hook,’ I said, managing to meet her gaze without flinching. ‘Try again.’

It only took an hour for her to stumble her way into the right incantation. It would have been infuriating, were I not relieved that she could finally defend herself. The words of each curse sat bitterly on my tongue, and every time I reached out and snatched her body out of her control, I felt an uncomfortable twist in the pit of my stomach. Yet even once she had found the enchantment, I did not allow her to rest – the Wood would certainly afford her no such generosity. I struck out at her with near enough every curse I knew, every spell of mind control and insidious manipulation. I even summoned a black, cold dread, one which clung to your bones and seeped deep into your mind – enough to drive a person to madness; the Wood would do far worse.

She resisted all of it.

It was dark by the time I felt certain she was ready, or as ready as I could hope to make her. She was clearly exhausted, still worn thin from her own ordeal the night before. Yet despite my best efforts, she was still every bit as determined that I take her to Kasia immediately.

She bristled up like an angry cat when I suggested that she should rest. ‘No. No. You said I could see her when I could protect myself.’

‘All right.’ I threw up my hands in defeat; resisting her now would like only lead to her collapsing my tower in an effort to find her. ‘Follow me.’

I led her down to the tombs below the tower, through the cellars and down the hidden stair at the back. I heard her hesitate as we stepped into the cool, still air beneath the tower; heard her intake of breath as she noticed the twisting runes that crossed above our heads.

‘It feels like death,’ she whispered. ‘Like a tomb.’

‘It is a tomb,’ I answered, just as we reached the bottom of the stairs and the corridor opened up into a round room which surrounded the royal grave itself.

Everything seemed quiet. The blue flame cast long, translucent shadows across the floor, painting everything in its cold, flickering light. My own magics seemed unaltered, as well as the wards and protections which guarded this ancient place. For now, the Wood remained contained.

‘Is— is someone still buried here?’ Agnieszka asked, her voice solemn and hushed, as if she feared to wake the dead.

‘Yes. But even kings don’t object to sharing once they’re dead.’ I turned back towards her: her eyes were wide and darting about the room, far too distracted by tombs and kings and nonsense, when the real danger lurked just beyond that wall, wearing the face of her friend. ‘Listen to me now,’ I implored her. ‘I’m not going to teach you the spell to walk through the wall. When you want to see her, I’ll take you through myself. If you try to touch her, if you let her come in arm’s reach of you, I’ll take you out again at once. Now, lay on your protections, if you insist on doing this.’

I had half hoped the severity of my expression might deter her, but she only nodded once and crouched to the floor, scattering a handful of pine needles and setting them alight. The small room filled with the sweet, welcoming scent of burning pine, incongruous to the cold walls and the musty smell of still and ancient air. Watching her, I would never have believed this untidy performance could yield anything resembling magic, and I was relieved I had witnessed its effectiveness first-hand. She stood, nodded again and then slipped her hand into mine. I closed my fingers tightly around hers, resolved that I would drag her away at the first sign of any danger.

When we stepped through into the tomb, we found the thing pressed back into the corner, all crouched down, making itself seem small and pitiable. It had tidied itself up – cleaned its face and plaited its hair – all so it looked more like the girl Agnieszka remembered.

‘Nieshka,’ the moment it saw her, it got gleefully to its feet, extending its grasping hands out towards her. ‘Nieshka, you found me.’

Agnieszka stumbled right towards it, her arms also outstretched, every warning I’d given her falling out of her empty head.

‘No closer,’ I said, resisting the urge to grab her and pull her back through the wall. Instead I said, ‘Valur polzhys,’ and a line of flame sprung up between them. It made my point.

I stood in silence while they exchanged words, watching it for the very first signs of treachery. Oh, it played its part so very well: gracious, obedient – it even nodded to me, as if I would ever forget for a second what it was. It played with the fear of its host, cracked her voice, trembled her lip, pulled on the strings of Agnieszka’s heart; it needed no spell to get Agnieszka to dance to its tune.

I was forced to watch, to play the silent villain in this piece. I could feel the prickle of magic over my skin as those innocent-sounding words brushed up against my own protections. I wondered if Agnieszka could feel the poison woven between them – if she would even let herself feel it. She was playing the part of the fool so beautifully. Only now did I begin to wonder if her magic would be enough; if I might already have led her into a danger from which I could not protect her. For now, I said nothing. I had little choice: to align myself against Kasia would only play into the Wood’s hands.  Agnieszka had to see this for herself.

Still, I felt my nails digging into the palms of my hands.

‘Can I write her a letter?’ the creature asked.

‘No,’ I answered quickly.

Agnieszka turned on me, looking at me like I was the most hateful creature she had ever laid eyes upon. ‘We can give her a stub of pencil and some paper! It’s not too much to ask.’

‘You aren’t this much of a fool,’ I snapped; it was too much. ‘Do you think she was buried in a heart-tree for a night and a day and came out talking to you, ordinarily?’ I searched her face, hoping she could see the sincerity in mine. All I could see was blind, unending devotion.

‘They put her in the tree,’ she said. ‘They saved her for it, and I brought her out before it got a hold—’

‘No.’

The thing had painted its face so hopeful, so noble and magnanimous, I could hardly stand to look at it. I could feel the anger radiating from Agnieszka. She kept stealing glances back to me, her face full of outrage at my cruelty and injustice. I kept my own face still, closed myself off from her and the ever-watching Wood, all the while hating this: hating the way it was twisting her heart and toying with her emotions. I should never have brought her within reach of its noxious influence.

I don’t know what it did, in the end – what way it stepped over the line – but suddenly Agnieszka was visibly trembling and her face had blanched completely white. She backed away from the fire, fear in every line of her body.

The creature tipped its head, all hurt and surprise. ‘Nieshka?’

But Agnieszka didn’t respond. She took another hesitant step back, and then another, and the thing didn’t know what to do about it. It shifted its expression, widened its eyes, like it was trying on a different face, a mask which broke apart and then instantly reformed.

‘Nieshka,’ it said again, sounding less and less like the girl it wore as a costume. ‘It’s all right. I know you’ll help me.’

Agnieszka had backed up to stand at my side, so close that her shoulder brushed up against mine. I almost reached out for her hand.

‘Aishimad,’ she whispered, and I felt the familiar thrum of her magic: a sweet, rotten smell thickened the air around us.

‘Please,’ the thing tried a sob now, then a smile, then a frown: a flickering caricature of human emotion. ‘Nieshka.’

‘Stop it!’ Agnieszka cried out, and I felt the pain in her voice. ‘Stop it.’

It had lost her, and it knew it, but not before it had hurt her. There was almost a smile as the skin on its face slackened and the girl called Kasia emptied out. The Wood rushed in behind it, and I knew now that I could show Agnieszka what it really was.

‘Kulkias vizhkias haishimad,’ I said. I raised my hand and magic poured forth, bathing the creature in a cold, unrelenting light.

The spell of true-sight shone through it, through the mask it wore and right down to the creature underneath. Beneath its skin, thick green shadows shifted, as if we looked up at a canopy high above our heads – but there was no sky beyond those leaves, only darkness.

Agnieszka made a small, wordless sound of distress. I did reach for her then, looping my arm around her waist as she sagged beneath the weight of everything she had seen. The thing took one last look at me, its eyes lit with triumph. For a horrible moment I met its gaze, wondering what on earth had I done. Why had I dragged Agnieszka before this hateful thing? I was the one who had orchestrated this torment. Some part of me knew I had failed her in the worst possible way.

I held Agnieszka close against me, and then I drew us both back through the wall.