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light, dancing across the wizard’s palm. Jester draws in a gasp. She has cast magic before, has blown open far away windows and scabbed over a cut in seconds and turned her face into that of a stranger’s, but she has never done this. The fire in Caleb’s hand was air a moment ago, and now it is flame, it is heat — a mini version of the sun that she has come to learn makes her sweaty when she is in it for too long. It is pure, wonderful magic.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the wizard look at her, and frown.
“Light ‘er up,” says Beau, reclined back against her pack of blankets and pillows and beef jerky, and without a word Caleb lowers his hand to the kindling in the middle of their fire pit, and everything catches with a fwoom — though Caleb’s hand lingers for an extra moment, engulfed in the flames. As if the bright light weren’t any different from the space around it. As if there was no heat. No pain.
Then their little campsite is illuminated — Beau’s boots and Nott’s flask and Caleb’s legs, tucked in tight, the sprawling length of Molly’s coat in all its excruciating embroidery. Yasha’s humming. Fjord’s nodding off. Jester pulls the last pastry out of her bag, and chews, still thinking about how that flame wasn’t and then was. It was so cool. She’ll have to ask the Traveler to teach her how to do that. Or maybe even Caleb.
Then she laughs. Ha. Caleb wouldn’t teach her for the world. He won’t even let her read one sentence of one of his books. And yeah, sure, after she reads them she’s gonna make a little doodle in them, and yeah, that doodle will probably be something profane, but what’s the big deal? He needs some fun in his life. And she knows from the way the corners of his mouth dimple after he frowns that he’s never mad at her, not really.
“What’s funny?” Molly asks, turning to her with that sly grin always on his face. She shakes her head. Holds a finger to her lips. Molly winks. “Well, your secret is safe with me.”
That only makes her laugh more. Now everyone is looking. Now everyone is trying to say something that will make someone laugh. Everyone, that is, except for Caleb. He is looking at the fire, at the flames slowly dying, hands turned to fists and stuffed in his lap. The orange light flickers across his face, the shadow of his stubble darker and then lighter, and then darker again. It is suddenly apparent to her how threadbare his jacket is, how the firelight catches the folds of his fabric so unevenly, for all their wear. And when he held that flame there were bandages all over his hand, and deep, deep circles under his eyes, and — he looks at Jester. She blushes, at being caught staring. Her mother made sure she knew how rude that was, and look at her, first time out on her own, immediately forgetting everything. She throws him a smile and looks away, but for a moment they are looking at each other, and in that moment that their gaze is held his eyes are barely, barely blue, and filled with —
candlelight, burning near the wick’s end. The Brightqueen’s household gave them ten boxes of the things to light their house, but Jester’s not sure they’ll even last them the month. Every hallway, every room, every stairwell, requires a handful of the things just to see, and they must always be kept burning. They’ve already spent the past two hours lighting up the whole place. They’re already burning out.
Jester leans forward, purses her lips, and blows.
The candle smoke curls in the air, that smell that’s almost familiar, but sweeter, overwhelming the senses. Jester picks out a new candle from the basket at her hip, lights it on its already burning partner, and jams it into the soft wax. Wiggles it until its sturdy. Her job, for the time being.
The stone is cold under her feet as she strolls down the hallways of the first floor, but she likes it that way. At least she has darkvision, she thinks, rounding the corner of the front parlor. At least she’s not —
Thud. “Schiesse!”
That.
The shadow, Jester realizes, half bent over and holding its head in Caleb’s study, is, in fact, Caleb. She doesn’t know why he chose this room, all isolated and distant from the rest of them. Or, well, on that thought, she does. But what if there’s an attack? What if someone breaks in through the front door, and he’s all alone? They won’t be there to save him. He won’t, as it is, be able to actually see anything, because there’s no light in here. No candles. Good thing she’s equipped for just this.
Weight on balls of feet, balls of feet on cold threshold, she peers into the dim, and says, “Are you okay, Caleb?”
There are certain universal truths to the world: she is blue. Batshit and a whisper on the lips equals a spell. Jester is near, so when Caleb turns around it is with a start, nearly nocking his head again. It is with face very well flushed.
“Ja, sorry.” He’s squinting in the light of the doorway, which really is barely any light at all. The bookworm. Practically vampiric. “I just bonked my head.”
“Because you don’t have any candles in here,” she says, frowning, and walks in, finding the first sconce and beginning to wedge in one candle, and then another. “How are you supposed to see, Caleb?”
“Those things are fire hazards,” he mutters.
“You are a fire hazard, Caleb,” she teases. First candles set in their place, she searches for the matchbox in her basket, fumbles it open, strikes a match, and lights the wicks. She likes teasing Caleb. He’s easy to tease. He smiles when he’s teased. In the tight walls of a basement of a ransacked house in Felderwin, on day three of a week spent in a tunnel in the ground, the tight bunch of his shoulders drops down a little. Then she turns around with a smirk on her face to find him not smirking. Quite blanched, in the new light of the candles. She thinks back on that last joke. Oh. Oh.
If she could kick herself, she would do it. Hard.
“Let me see your head,” she says, rushing forward, because it’s easier to change the subject. Because lately, when she barrels on through the prickly things like she always has, there’s no amusement to be found in the way that Caleb’s frame freezes up, in the way his eyes darken. Just guilt. “I don’t believe you.”
Caleb steps back. “Ach, nein, Jester, I am fine.”
“You are still holding it.”
“That’s because you surprised me.”
“That’s because you were trying to arrange books in the dark.” She pulls his hand off of his head by the wrist, playing up the role of the doctor, playing down the feeling of his bare, unbandaged skin against hers — how warm it is, how fragile it feels once it’s in her palm. She was the first to see it. The first, probably, to be so careless with it. “Let me see here…” She squints at the top of his head, unhurt, at his hair in need of a wash. “Yes,” she sighs, “Just as I thought. It took a chunk out of you.”
Caleb crooks one eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yup.” Jester nods solemnly. “Just a whole big piece of your head. Gone.”
“Is there anything you can do for me, doctor?”
“Nope. You are just the half-head man, now.”
“Half-head man,” he says, drawing the words out in a low, unamused Zemnian gravel. Jester can’t help giggling at it. Can’t move, can’t give up, keeps standing there, because if she just waits, she knows — ah. There it is. Caleb’s frown softens, his eyes crinkle, and his lips break out into the smallest of smiles. In the soft light of two candles burning, is all copper hair and sharp jaw beneath two days worth of stubble, is all gentle, blue eyes focused on her in a way that makes her stomach clench. And so, she can forget about the mistakes she’s made with him. She can hand him a fistfull of candles with a smirk on her face and swing out through the door and hope that there’s —
possibility. That’s what waits at the top of Caleb’s tower. After a home and a shrine to memory and a knife held to his own chest, the eye to the ninth floor of his tower opens up and they enter into endless, endless possibility. Him, all that time ago, curled up beneath a tavern in Zadash, haversack held tight to his chest. Them, hands held tight, her looking at him looking away, blush high on his face. So much has changed — in him, in her, in them all. So much has stayed the same.
The lights dance, and they all turn into children again.
Stars. Comets. Meteorites spiraling through the dark. Jester runs ahead, after Fjord, after Beau, after the lights, trying to reach out and touch them. Then, as she runs, the lights take shape, take form — her shape, her form, and she is running after herself. They split. Two versions of herself. Four versions of herself, one running, one skipping, one dancing, and on, and on. She skids to a halt, electricity thumping through her veins. There’s no up, no down in here, and while she feels like a child she knows she is not one, knows that she will get dizzy if she keeps going on like this.
“Caleb!” She calls, to the dim figure standing back near the opening. It looks as if he turns his head, though he’s quite far away. “This is amazing!”
“Danke!” He calls back, and Jester wishes she was closer. Wishes she could see the look on his face. See if he was smiling.
Why shouldn’t she? She starts running again, until he’s within her reach, and this world without dimensions seems to ground itself around his wiry shape as she comes up to him.
So, he is smiling. Good.
She fiddles with her fingers behind her back. So much is uncertain these days, and when she’s around Caleb — he is watching her with those eyes all indigo in the dark, and his smile is sweet, even after all that she now knows has happened to him — something comes loose in her chest. Bangs around in there, unchecked. “I can’t believe you made all this.”
He smirks. “You really doubt me that much, Lavorre?”
She scoffs, narrows her eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”
Caleb, teasing her. When did that happen? When did the hard edges around him soften? When did he stop hiding his smiles at her, start letting the tender words go spoken? Sometime, she supposes, between when he was all angles and fear in the back of a cart in Felderwin, and when they set foot on this ice, started giving it things they can never get back. His shirt shifts as he clasps his hands. Somewhere beneath that shirt are eyes, red, watching, infecting. Somewhere beneath her skin her bones have shifted, the fat of her youth has given ever so slightly way. It’s as though, she sometimes feels, the’ve traded places. Her the older one, all locked up in a stiff position she thinks will protect herself, him making selfless, impulsive sacrifices. She wants to go back. Oh, she wants —
“Come on,” he says, before reaching out and grabbing her hands, before pulling her forward into a run at his side. She yelps. Before them, their friends are reaching out, as if this were all a dream. Before them, possibility stretches, daunting and endless. Beside them, the lights dance. Beside them — the lights twist, and twirl, and take the shape of them, tiefling girl, human boy, running through the dark. Jester laughs. Then they’ve doubled. Then they’ve doubled again, and the pairs are splitting off, left, right, up, down, on and on and on — possibility, endless. Jester throws her hands in the air, giddy in the wind of Caleb’s making, and each of the simulacrums follow. Except for one.
One keeps holding on. One version of her keeps holding a version of Caleb’s hand, doesn’t let go, won’t give up. Something blisters painfully in her chest, and she wonders — but no, this isn’t real, can’t be followed, is just a facsimile, just — is he watching too?
But they’re just lights, in the end. They disperse. Spiral away into the night, into the dark, into whatever ink they float in. Stars again. Comets again. Meteorites again. They’ve reached everyone else, out of breath, smile on her face thawing. Back to reality. Silly to get attached to anything but reality, anything but the —
inescapable. She should be used to it by now, or at least have expected it from her first time at sea — the way that you cannot escape the sun out here on the ocean. And sure there’s the clouds and the large opaque sheets of the sails and the rooms below decks, one for big boxes of cargo and one for her and Fjord to sleep in and one that used to be a closet but that Fjord made up into a study, just for her. But it’s rare that the sun isn’t out, or they’re in the right direction at the right time of day for the sails to cast any shade, or that she goes below decks and stares at that big bed, blankets rustled from sleep, petticoat falling off the side, and feel — sick, a little. Surely a little sea-nausea from being without air. So she spends her time topside, where sunlight reflects off the waves, and the waves are everywhere, as far as the eye can see. So: inescapable.
It’s starting to get on her nerves.
“Dammit,” she mumbles. Another thing to be angry at: her paintings out here never turn out quite right. At first it was exciting, if different, the way the sea refused to be captured by the familiar ways of moving her brush, the way the slightest shift in blue could make the biggest difference. But now it’s been six months, and she’s tired of ultramarines on cyans that look just one hue out of place. This painting is no different.
“Problem with your painting, darling?” Comes the sound of Fjord’s voice, loud over the wind. They’re well on their course, with clear waters and skies, everything the way it should be, and so he must have a moment to talk to her. When she turns to look at him he has his hands on his hips and a smile at the edge of his bearded face. Ah, yes, the ship is good and so Fjord is good, he is happy.
He places his hand on the small of her back, and peers at the painting.
“It’s not turning out right,” she says, half wishing that he would stop touching her when she’s so antsy, and the sun is so hot. “You see that stretch right there? I can’t get the blue of the shadow to look different from the one next to it.”
Fjord peers at the canvas, leaning in close. She wants to whip her hand out and push his face away from the wet paint — though there’s no need, and she knows that, so she doesn’t. He leans back again, puffing up his cheeks. “Well in my opinion, though you know I’m not the best fine arts connoisseur,” he says, and jokingly twizzles one end of his mustache. She smiles. It’s the type of little joke he makes because it’s the type she used to always giggle at. “I can’t see a single thing wrong with it. It looks absolutely gorgeous. Anyone would be happy to have it in their house, I’m sure.”
He smiles at her, job well done. She smiles at him. He leans down and kisses her cheek, and she realizes after he pulls back that her first instinct was to flinch at it. What is wrong with her? Here is a man who gives her affection, takes her on adventures, gives her compliments, leaves her wanting for nothing…
Fjord walks back away, though not before giving her a wink. She hums a sort of laugh back. It’s a good day for him. The water is calm and the skies are clear and the wind is in their favor, the wind is throwing salt spray in his face, running cold through his hair. And soon the sun will be down and she will go downstairs, where they are running out of damp wall space to hang paintings that she does not like, and where she wakes up in close-holding arms, and where the porthole leaves only a small circle of sky. Suddenly she aches to have her feet on solid ground. To smell familiar smells of fresh bread and starched cotton, her mother’s rose perfume. To feel warm. To rest. To read a book and tell a dirty joke around a campfire. She aches to hear a truth that will hurt her. To bear breaks again. She aches. And —
She lets herself think what she has known, now, for a long time: this place will never be home to her.
She looks back at the painting on her easel. Something off, something unfamiliar, something not quite right about all these blues… And Jester picks up her palette knife, and she digs it into the thick oil paint, and she scrapes it all back down to linen and primer. She picks up a big brush. Rubs bright orange into linseed oil, and across her canvas starts again.
Best to make use of the sun, while it’s still out. Light like this, for an artist like her, is priceless. Light that doesn’t hold back, light that illuminates, light that leaves everything revealed, nothing hidden. When the light hits her canvas, it seems that —
everything glows, here in her mother’s house, where she has escaped from, and flown through in a whirlwind, and cannot leave in the end. Has not been able to leave for weeks, angry at what she’s left behind, terrified of what’s outside, unsure of the next step in front of her. It’s easy to understand why her mother stays within these walls. They’re comfortable. They’re familiar.
And so: she lounges on sofas. She reads her old books. She walks the halls barefoot, tracing the cracks in the wallpaper with her fingertips, just as she did when she was a child.
It will be the anniversary, soon — of the war, of peace, of the beginning of the end. And because her mother is gracious and has the voice of a siren, the party will be held here at the Chateau, as it first was, as it has been since. Yesterday the patisserie chefs brought in the cakes on wide platters and today the maid staff is up on harnesses, polishing every crystal of the chandeliers, and tomorrow the horses will bring the dignitaries in carriages, in carts, in busloads. The roads will draw in her friends. The sea will bring in Fjord.
She is dreading it.
But today is not tomorrow yet, and two days ago the circle in Yussa Errenis’ tower lit up and Caleb walked through, grinning, clearing his throat with the reasoning that these days they barely see each other, ja? But he uses that excuse every time they are all together, takes any chance he can get to visit early, to visit longer. To visit her early, to visit her longer. It is a flimsy excuse, as easy to see through as swiss cheese. His lies always are.
But Jester doesn’t mind. Caleb is here and he is her willing partner for walks on the beach, and cramped escapades through the hidden passages in the Chateau’s walls, and extravagant dinner finally spent not alone. They read awful books aloud. They drop candies on the heads of day drinkers. They trade stories from their time apart, stuck out tongues over lost games of cards, laughter over dirty jokes, finally appreciated. Caleb smiles. Jester likes looking at his smile.
This afternoon, they are trading dreams.
“The other day I had this dream that I have all the time, about Sprinkle,” she offers. They are laying on her old childhood bed — the one she stopped sleeping in a week after she came home because of how strange it was, how awful it felt to be stuck in the same place again, only this time feet hanging off the bedframe — staring up at her old mural of the skyline on display just ten feet away, outside her window. The original, non-magical version. “Where he keeps shedding fur.”
Caleb cringes. He is wearing those silly suspenders she saw him in last time she came to the Academy, all lit up in colorful embroidery, the ones that he won’t admit make him look like an old man. She teases him and likes them anyway. Likes looking at him, so close to her. “Oh, gods, that old sorry thing?”
“Hey!” She smacks his arm. “Sprinkle wasn’t a thing, he was my pet! And the dream is very traumatic.”
“Ja?”
“Yeah! We are always in some strange, awful place — this time I’m talking about we had to go underwater — and I try to feed sprinkle but he won’t eat, right?”
“Doesn’t sound too far from reality,” Caleb mumbles.
“And he’s just becoming skin and bones,” she barges on, louder, ignoring him but not really ignoring him, because he is laughing quietly and it is such a lovely sound. “Like so thin, Caleb, thinner than he ever was when he was with us. But I have no choice, you know? We have to keep going. And so I take Sprinkle with me, but then he just starts shedding fur, like all of his fur, and it gets everywhere. I mean like in my mouth, in my eyes —”
“Okay, I think I get it.”
“In my armpits —”
Caleb turns his head to look at her. “In your armpits? How does it get into your armpits?”
“It’s a dream, Caleb. It’s not supposed to make sense.”
He sighs, looks back up at the painting. “Ja, you are right.”
“Now you tell me one of yours.”
“Ach, well,” he says, running a hand through the scruff on his face, and his voice is such a low gravel, here on the bed, so relaxed, so — and suddenly he is looking at her, eyes piercingly blue, grinning. Her stomach drops. “I had a dream about you the other day, actually.”
“Oh?” She says.
She is aware, in that way that she used to be aware when she was first alone with Fjord, still blinded by the hero she saw on the dusty roads outside of Trostenwald, of that humming space in the air: the distance between her skin and his.
“Ja,” he says, and then chuckles. “We were back in Rexxentrum — or, I was, in the beginning, and I had this long list of things I needed to buy for my classes before the weekend was over. You know, I have a lot of things that I need to have for my students, and for my house. And so I’m running around from this store to that, buying my groceries here and my spell components there, and I am almost done, the last thing on my list is just to get a new jacket, or pants, some piece of clothing or other, I can’t really remember. Well,” and he grins teasingly at her, “I walk into the store and who is there but Jester?”
She flicks her hair. “Of course.”
“The queen of the fabric shops, ja. So I walk up and try to say hello, but you are very busy talking to the store owner, so I get in line behind you. And while I am waiting I listen in and you are listing all of the things you want on your new dress, in so much detail — just like you did when we were getting clothes for up north, remember? And I wait there, I wait for you to finish, but you just go on, and on. You never stop. I just stand there behind you for hours and hours. And then I wake up.”
Jester covers her face and begins to curl up into a ball, filled with hot embarrassment. “Oh gods, Caleb, that sounds awful.” She peeks between her fingers. He is still smiling at her, happy to be the teaser and not the tease-e, for once. “That sounds like a nightmare, for sure. I’m so sorry about dream-me.”
He chuckles. Oh, the cruelty, taking amusement in her suffering. She’ll have to make an evil wizard joke sometime later. “Actually, it was pretty nice.”
“Nice?” Jester stares at him through the latticework of her fingers. “Caleb, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs for your subconscious to be in. Are you so stressed that being stuck in limbo constitutes a nice dream?”
He shrugs. “Maybe my subconscious trying to tell me something.”
Jester lets her hands fall from her face, half-smushed into the blankets just to smile at him, and scoffs. “That you miss not being able to get a word in edgewise with me?”
“Oh, Jester,” Caleb says, so relaxed, so gentle. “I thought I had made it clear by now that I miss every element of your company.”
The humming air sings.
Then Caleb’s eyes go wide, and Jester’s face flushes, and she knows that they have both realized at the same moment what it is that he just said. And that they are realizing, in the same breath, that they are staring at each other. That this air, dulcet between them, is so small, so futile a barrier. Caleb opens his mouth as if to speak. Jester draws in a breath and thinks — to hell with this, she’s spent too much of her time waiting, dancing around the edge of things, settling. And kisses him.
It is not like kissing Fjord. And it is not, Jester thinks, like kissing that boy that was in her head for all those years, with the perfect arms and lips like roses. It is like — Caleb’s breath hitches against her lips, and she reaches out and grabs his arm and he reaches out and grabs her waist and pulls her flush to him, and he smells like an old book, and he kisses her like he never thought he’d get the chance — kissing Caleb. His arms are wiry. His skin is warm. His hair is long, and perfect for her fingers to get lost in. It is not the kiss she imagined, holed up and alone as a girl, or brash and full of fear as a woman, but — with her arms looped around his neck, and his breath being hers, and him looking at her from under those copper lashes — she feels warmed inside, finally. As though the sun has come through the Nicodranas sky just to tumble through her window and land on her and a wizard’s tangled limbs. As though together, they have conjured —