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“Where did she go?” Hawthorne swung around in the middle of the pavement, almost knocking into a pair of parents with their toddler swinging between them. “Sorry! Sorry!”
Cadence pulled him to the side, apologising to them. “Watch it,” she said to him. “Where did who- huh. Where did she go?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “When did we last know she was with us?”
She scratched her forehead, “Let’s walk back until we find her. Maybe she just… got lost?”
“I’ve never known Morrigan to get lost in Nevermoor,” he said. “Have you?”
“No,” she agreed, blinking and turning back to him.
“It’s like she stuck the whole Living Map inside her head.”
“I think she just memorised it,” Cadence said. “We got coffee.” Hawthorne took the opportunity to throw his cup, which had had hot chocolate in it, actually, into a street bin. “And then we went through the park.”
“Yeah,” he said. “She said that thing about one of the Ghostly Hours being about-”
“Listening to trees,” she cut across him. “And you asked her how to do that, and she asked-”
“If I was mad, yeah,” he said. “She’s nice like that.”
“She’s right,” she muttered. They crossed the street, and went down the terrace lane, wherein Cadence rolled her ankle on one of the less than perfectly laid cobbles, and skinned her knee.
“You good?” Hawthorne asked, helping her back up.
“Fine,” she grunted. “Bloody city council. Forget the Tricksy Lanes, why don’t they spend anything on the normal ones?”
“You sound like my dad,” he said. “How’s your ankle?”
She rotated it, “It’s fine.”
“Watch your step.”
“Thanks, Hawthorne,” she rolled her eyes. “I might have guessed that, Hawthorne.”
“I’m only saying,” he put his hands up in surrender. “How about, you should try falling on your face forever?”
“Bitch.”
“Why does she keep doing it though,” he complained as they walked down the path. “Ever since… you know, the hollowpox, she’s been…”
“Really weird? Yeah, I noticed. Didn’t you see Miss Cheery asking her to stay behind in Hometrain last week?”
He turned around to look at her, “No? Why?”
“She’s been skipping class too much, apparently. I mean, she did it a bit last year, when she was getting really obsessed with the Ghostly Hours, but I overhead it,” she shrugged like she wasn’t admitting to eavesdropping on an obviously private conversation. “And she’s not even been down there apparently.”
“You don’t think…” he paused, his stomach twisting. “It’s got anything to do with Squall, do you?”
She scowled, turning away from him and walking to the mouth of the lane. That told him all he needed to know about what she thought. He rubbed his sweating palms on his trousers and dashed after her, trying to ignore the dread growing in him.
“What do you think are the chances?” she grimaced, pointing at the Red Alert Tricksy Lane sign on the wall.
“Sixty-forty,” he said. “For anyone else. For Morrigan?”
“A hundred per cent,” she said, then swore. “Do we have to go down it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Obviously. Want to take bets?”
“On what? The trick?”
“I think it’s a dangler,” he mused. “Like the one we did in class.”
“That one was a pink alert, moron,” she said. “It’s a tsunami one.”
“How do you reckon?”
“Just a feeling. As long as it’s not suffocation again.”
He winced, “Don’t fancy that one, to be honest.”
It was not the tsunami. It was not a suffocation. It wasn’t even an ankle dangler.
“Is it me or is it getting hot?” Cadence peered through the mist.
Hawthorne peeled his collar away from his neck, flapping it to force air between himself and his clothes, “It’s bloody roasting. How long do you think until we push through?”
“When it gets unbearable, that’s when the trick breaks,” she said.
“Do you think that happens for the tricks that turn people inside out or-?”
She made a face at him, “Don’t even.”
The heat increased from a hot summer’s day to the hottest day in Nevermoor, to the way the hot springs at the volcano had felt when she had stood as close to the steam as she had dared. It scorched her skin. Hawthorne looked red and bleeding. She didn’t think she looked much better, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Hawthorne stumbled, falling forward, and she leaned to catch him, tripping on a loose piece of cobble as she did, and they both tumbled onto the ground, burning hot, and it snapped. The trick broke. They had made it through.
“Another square?” Cadence asked, more to the air than to Hawthorne.
“Seems like it,” he said, biting his lip. “You mean like Devilish Court? D’ you see her?”
She looked around, taking it in. It was dark. Not a single window in the surrounding buildings was lit up. But she didn’t think they were alone. Her eyes took time to adapt, making out greys and shapes in the square. Making out the space of a person.
“Morrigan!” she called, her heart climbing into her throat. She wasn’t sure. Not in this level of light. She could barely make out Hawthorne and she had walked with him this whole time. “Is that you?”
“Morrigan!” Hawthorne shouted, cupping his hands over his house. “Get over here.”
The figure didn’t move. It stood there, staring down.
“Maybe we should go?” Hawthorne whispered. “What if it’s dangerous?” He was standing close enough to her that she could feel him shaking.
“No,” she said. “I can… mesmerise them, if it’s not her.” She took a step forward, but her legs froze after that.
“Come on,” Hawthorne pushed her shoulder and whatever had gripped her - fear - came loose and she moved. Slowly at first, but she broke into a run, forcing her head forward. She was vaguely aware of Hawthorne next to her, but her fear had overtaken her, and she couldn’t be stopped now.
The square wasn’t very big, barely larger than Devilish Court had been, but the tricksy lane had exhausted her, and she was out of breath by the time they were in front of the figure.
“Morrigan?” she asked, reaching forward. They were the same height and size has her, and the more she squinted, the more she was sure that it was her. But what was she doing.
“Morrigan!” Hawthorne tapped her on the shoulder, then shook her lightly.
The figure lifted their head, their long hair falling away from their face, and all light rose in the square, rising white and blinding, cutting out her vision.
She blinked a few times, rubbing her eyes until she could see again. The square was properly lit now, the lamps all burning and the blue sky was visible again from the top of the square, “Morrigan? What happened?”
“Are you alright?” Hawthorne asked, still blinking up.
“I-” she opened her mouth, looking about. “I was looking.”
“Come on,” Hawthorne said, looking around now, his voice gruff. “We should go.”
“Morrigan,” Cadence said, trying to keep cool, trying to remain calm. She kept her hands to her side, so no one could see them shake. “What were you doing? What were you looking at?”
“Nevermoor,” she said, her voice faint. “The heart of the city. I could see it all, laid out in front of me, like the living map, but better. The soul. I could see the soul.”
Cadence caught one of her arms, and Hawthorne caught the other, right before her legs gave up underneath her, and she passed out.
“Should we tell someone?” Hawthorne asked, picking hairs off the nasty Teaching Hospital waiting room chairs.
“Maybe,” she said. “Who?”
“Jupiter?” he said. “I could tell Nan, I reckon, but-”
“I haven’t had a conversation with Baz in seven months,” she shrugged. “Where is he?”
“Baz?”
“Jupiter,” she said. “Dunno. Won’t the hospital tell him? We could ask Nurse Tim when he comes back out.”
Cadence looked at the door and closed her eyes, trying to sit back in the chair.
Hawthorne ground his teeth, “What did she mean by that? When she said she could see the soul, I mean. Do you think it was the tricksy lane doing something to her head?” She could hear by his tone of voice that he didn’t believe what he was saying.
“I don’t think so,” Cadence said. “Didn’t you see her eyes?” They had been black. Not reflective, but absorbing all that bright light that had blinded the two of them. She had never seen it before but she remembered the stories they had had whispered to them from childhood about empty eyes and blackened mouth. The rest of her face had looked like… well, Morrigan. But her eyes were absolutely that of the wundersmith.
“We’ll tell Jupiter,” she said, trying to reassure herself with the idea. “All of it. He’ll know what to do.”
But they waited. And Jupiter never appeared. Nurse Tim came out of the room, saying she needed to rest, and Miss Cheery showed up to take them home, and they were herded to home train, despite it being the weekend, given no option, or opportunity, to do otherwise.
She was on the platform on Monday though, a little paler, and maybe more gaunt than usual, but her eyes were normal, tracking her, and Hawthorne, as they walked over to join her.
“You feeling alright now?” Hawthorne asked, lowering his voice.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry for- yeah. Wandering off.”
“What’s- why did you?” he asked.
Cadence kept her mouth shut, watching her closely, her hands fidgeting. She would have been happy to stand and ask for as long as it took, but the rest of 919 were filling up the platform, and she could hear hometrain on its way, chug-chugging its way closer to them.
Morrigan bit her lip and turned away from them.
“Lunch?” Cadence raised her eyebrows at him.
“Don’t suppose you can mesmerise her?” he asked, only half joking, his mouth set in a hard line.
Morrigan looked back at them, just about to board, and frowned. Cadence’s stomach sank.
“You don’t need to mesmerise me,” she said when they cornered her at the edge of the dining room, at a good distance from everyone else, all tucking into food and chatting loudly, or reading the paper.
“We weren’t-” he began, at the same time as Cadence said, “Tell us what you’ve been doing. What did you mean the soul?”
“I meant-” she closed her eyes. “Sorry, it’s hard to explain.”
Hawthorne nudged her in the ribs. Hard. “Eyes,” he mouthed.
Cadence coughed, making her look up at her again. “Morrigan,” she said. “When we were in the square, did you notice that… your eyes changed. They went black.”
She frowned, touching her cheek with one hand, “My eyes already are black.”
“I didn’t mean like that,” she said carefully. “Not like they are now. Like the wundersmith. Like the stories.”
She opened her mouth. And closed it again. “Like the whole thing? Like the whites?” Her voice cracked a little and Hawthorne winced in sympathy.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Cadence said, forcing her voice to be like iron. Forcing it to stay like she wanted it to. “You need to tell someone. As in, tell Jupiter. Or we will.”
Hawthorne nodded, “Sorry. But we will. What if we hadn’t found you?”
“If you hadn’t interrupted then I could have finished,” she burst. “Then I could have fixed it all. Fixed everything. You just had to stick your noses in, didn’t you? You don’t know anything about what it’s like to be a wundersmith, do you? You don’t get that I can’t just ignore what’s been happening around me, what I can see, and feel. It’s calling to me. All of the time. Ever since I learned to listen to it, it’s all I can hear. I just wanted it to be quieter, alright?” She jumped up, almost knocking her chair onto the ground, fleeing the room before they could stop.
It was then that she realised that the talking had stopped. Quite a long time ago. And that everyone was looking at them. She didn’t look back. Chances were, most of them would forget that she was here the second they looked away, so she just finished shovelling her soup into her mouth, and grabbed Hawthorne’s arm.
He didn’t even complain, just picked up the remains of his sandwich, and his bag, and followed her out of the hall.
“I’m sorry,” she said, when they found her in the Whingeing Woods. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to make it stop. He said it was like a monster. It’s so much worse than that.”
Cadence faintly remembered their first lesson in the Map Room, where Mildmay had told them what he thought of Nevermoor, snatching up the weak and gullible, eating them alive. He had snatched her up, along with Lam, but he had been the one who had been eaten alive.
“Who said that, Morrigan?” he asked, pressing his hands to her own. Cadence stepped closer to the two of them. Heat was coming off Morrigan in waves, not like a fever, but like a fire.
She was so quiet that Cadence almost missed it.
“Squall.”