Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (27 page)

Rune looked pained. “
Now, Pearl
. We
weren’t
really
trying to—“

“Don’t you ‘now Pearl’ me, Rune Donovan,” the old lady said tartly. “
You
may have had one thing in mind, but Amber had something different.
Some of the Council backed her, too—and I can’t say I blame them.
Would’a
been simpler. Wears a body out, pinning
her
down with spells like this
.
And for what?” She looked disgusted. “It’ll probably go Amber’s way in the end.”

“Good morning,” I said. Because they were talking about me as if I weren’t there, which made me feel powerless and insignificant. Which I was,
of course, but that didn’t mean I had to act like it.

The woman’s expression sharpened into interest. “Good morning, child,” she said. “You look cold.”

“I am cold.”

Pearl and Rune exchanged glances.
“See?” said Rune. “
She doesn’t know what she is.”

They
were looking at me a
gain, Pearl with her head cocked
, birdlike. “Perhaps she can’t do it.”

“Oh, she can do it.” Rune snorted. “You’re looking at the girl who managed to spellbind Lance—and without even knowing what that was, o
r that such a power existed.”

Spellbind? Confused, I thought for a moment that they meant I had fascinated him
, or that he was in love with me or something
. That’s what most people mean when they use that word. And then it hit me like a thunderclap that when a
spellspinner
says ‘spellbind,’ they mean something quite different. Quite
literal.

Rune and Pearl were talking about the banishment trick I pulled.

And more:
spellbound
was what I was. Right here, right now. I had been bound and imprisoned by a spell.

I must have had a peculiar look on my face as I processed this, because Pearl’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Well, now you’ve done it,” she told Rune. “You’re putting ideas in the child’s head.”

“I see no reason why she has to suffer,” said Rune. “As long as she doesn’t do anything big. We’re not trying to punish her. We’re trying to educate her.”

I heard Pearl’s thought, as clear as a bell:
And if that doesn’t work?

Rune’s thought answered her.
Even then, she doesn’t need to suffer. We’re not savages.

They obviously didn’t know I could hear their thoughts. And, come to think of it, I shouldn’t have been able to.
Unlike speaking aloud,
a th
ought directed at one person is normally not detectable by anyone else
.
Were their minds accessible to me on some level because they were part of the binding spell?

There was no time to think it through. Pearl had turned her attention back to me.
“Very well,”
she said
. “
I’m told you can do things without being taught, so let’s see if you can figure this one out.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. And then I remembered. She and Rune had been surprised that I was cold. So they must think I could fix that somehow.

I frowned in puzzlement. I knew—from all the experiments I had done with Meg—that I couldn’t conjure things out of thin air. I couldn’t make a
fur coat
materialize, for example, or
, better yet,
a space heater that magically worked without electricity. So how—?

“I suppose I could set the forest on fire,” I said. “If I really put my mind to it.”

Neither one laughed, so I probably could.

“
That isn’t
necessary,” said Pearl.
“Which is rule number one for
spellspinners
, child. Aim for the minimum.”

Okay. Aim for the minimum. I reached out just a tiny bit, to see what power
might be accessible to me in my
present,
spellbound
,
state.
I could not conjure, but I could
change things
…I thought about the problem, turning it this way and that in my mind. And, to my intense pleasure and relief, I picked up a faint pulse of power from the
redwood tree at my back and was able to
pull
it along my skin, creating a thin film of warmth that immediately doused the chill and damp of
Spellhaven
on a September morning.
All I needed was about a quarter of an inch
, I realized
. Maybe an eighth of an inch. Just a cushion of warm air, not discernible to anyone other than myself…

I was so happy, concentrating on this newfound ability and playing with it, raising and
lowering the temperature of the air
that touched me, that it took me several seconds to remember I was being watched. I looked over at Rune and Pearl—a bit nervously—and saw their reaction. Rune
seemed
worried
. Pearl, however, was rubbing her hands together with enthusiasm.

“Remarkable!”
she exclaimed.

Dangerous,
Rune thought.

Pearl reached over and gave him a playful shove. “Party pooper.”

Rune looked indignant, but Pearl stumped through the bracken to get a closer look at me.
“Zara, you’re a natural,” she said. “My name’s Pearl
Doyle
. If you’d been born here in the proper way, I might have been your teacher.”

“How do you do?” I said—hoping to sound polite. Because it seemed to me that
her telling me her name was a positive development. I
ntroductions
are
not, you know, normal between jailors and prisoners. “
I’m Zara
Norland
, but I think you know that.
I’d shake your hand if I could.”

Pear
l
’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re a cool customer, I’ll give you that. Don’t you know you should be
quaking
in your boots?”

I tried to smile. “I only wish I had boots to
quake
in.”
I pointed my silver-spangled toe. “These aren’t very practical.”

Pearl’
s expression was unreadable
. “
Don’t
worry. You’re not going anywhere.”

“We brought you some breakfast,” said Rune. He pulled a little zipped bag out of his jacket pocket and to
ssed
it to me—which indicated
that he and Pearl couldn’t cross the invisible barrier any more than I could.
It must be similar to the shell Lance and I built around
Nonny’s
property. My breakfast sailed through with no problem.

I caught it and opened the bag. It contained an egg sandwich and a juice box.
Bleah
. “Thanks,” I said. “So the plan doesn’t include starving me?”

Pearl chuckled. “It’s no easy feat to starve
a
spellspinner
,” she said. “
Hard to even torture us with it.
W
e don’t feel hunger the way the sticks do. But everyone likes to eat, so—“

“Think of it as a peace offering,” said Rune. “If you like.”

I took a sip from my juice box. “I guess I didn’t realize we were at war.”

Pearl’s smile held no warmth. “Well, that’s the beauty of a pre-emptive strike,” she said. “
You
take your enemy out before they know the war’s begun.”

“You think I’m your enemy?” The weak, sweet liquid seemed to stick in my throat. “I don’t even know you.”

“
We’re
about
to fix that, Zara. You’re going to know us very well.”

Pearl
Doyle
is 88 years old and the youngest member of the Council.
There aren’t many
Doyles
left
among the
spellspinners
—
whose surnames seem to have been deliberately chosen at some point along the line
, since
they all have
spellspinnery
meanings.
Donovan and
Doyle
have to do with
darkness,
dark warriors and dark strangers.
Pearce and Carrick both mean
‘stone.’
Alston means
‘
elf stone.
’
I like that one. A
nd
it’s pretty obvious what
Moon and
Wilde
r
mean
.

I guess I’m the only
Norland
. Not that that’s my real name. But we may never know my real name.

There were once more names—and more
spellspinners
, for that matter. But after their Great War a few centuries ago, the
spellspinners
who hadn’t killed each other off
formed a ruling Council and decreed that henceforth there would only be forty-nine of our kind allowed at a time
. Which mean
t
that bloodlines had to be carefully controlled. And
some of the old names died out.
But at least they weren’t killing each other anymore.

As for me, days passed
slowly
in my tube cell—which is how I came to think of it, even though it wasn’t, strictly speaking, anything of the kind.
It didn’t exist in any corporeal sense, but it sure
felt
like a cell to me.
I
was cold a good bit of the time, because it
’
s tiring to keep a warmth spell holding.
Maybe if I’d had my power stone things would have been different, but the spell kept fading out on me—as usual.
W
henever I fell
asleep it immediately unraveled and I was half frozen in about five minutes.
So even though I would have loved to sleep during the long, dark nights, when they left me alone for hours, I couldn’t.

This wasn’t the same level of torture that it would have been for a stick, since
spellspinners
don’t actually
need
to sleep. But it was a cruelty, definitely. They could have brought me a sleeping bag. A pillow. A change of clothes. A jacket. By day three, my pride had broken to the point where I actually asked for these things—pleaded for them, not to put too fine a face on it.
They brought me an army blanket. That was it
.

I
tried not to wonder what might be different if I had my power stone.
Could I keep warm with
out all this effort
? Could I even break their binding spells? Sometimes I sensed that the spells weren’t really that strong. The ones holding me prisoner, I mean. But I didn’t dare test them. I didn’t dare
think
about testing them.
I
had to guard my thoughts
at all times, because I couldn’t tell what the other
spellspinners
could read and what they couldn’t. I often heard their thoughts perfectly. At other times, I wasn’t
sure what I was hearing and what I might be imagining
. But until I knew for certain
what they could pick up from me
,
I had to keep my mind wide open and guileless, as blank as a newborn babe’s.

That was tiring too.

I could tell they were almost as afraid of me as I was of them.
Nobody ever came alone to see me, for example. They came in pairs. Usually it was Rune and Pearl, who tag-teamed each other to teach me
spellspinner
history and
spellspinner
customs and, to be perfectly frank, all the stuff I
wished Lance had taught me last summer.

I didn’t ask about Lance.

I
tried not to think about Lance.

But he crept into my thoughts all the same, especially during the interminable stretches of time when I was left alone in my tube cell with nothing to do. Sometimes I thought I would go crazy, sitting under that tree on the cold, hard ground, hugging my knees
, trying not to think,
and watching the woodland creatures doing their woodland thing. I sure learned a lot about blue
jays.

The forest was beautiful, b
ut it didn’t take long to get heartily sick of it.
By Day Four I would have crawled across broke
n glass to get to
a cell phone. Or a bathtub.
Or a grilled cheese sandwich
.