deeper forest, but it was she who was answered first.
Not a night-sylph, but three of the smaller, shyer creatures she knew as “wisps.” Not the more dangerous sort, that lured the unwary into marshes to drown, but the ones that could only be seen faintly, at night, at a distance, and vanished if they sensed they were being watched.
Up close, they were tiny, thin, sexless creatures floating in the middle of barely visible orbs of light. They approached her cautiously, and hovered just in front of her face.
?
Not an actual sentence or even a thought, just a general sense of inquiry.
“My friend, the Earth Master, fears there may be dangerous things sleeping in the human ruins,” she breathed, being very careful not to startle them.
Again, the reply she got was not in words. It was more the feeling of, “Of course there are dangerous things. And?”
“Would you stand watch and wake us if one of our humans is in danger from them?” she asked. “I can offer this—” and she spun up a ball of Air Magic for them.
!
They gathered around it, yearning for it, not daring to touch it, glancing from it to her and back again.
And the feeling she got from them was, “Is that all you want? In return for this?”
“Yes, this is all I want. Watch the night through. If any of the humans here are endangered by anything in the ruins, wake me.”
The three little things turned toward her and nodded emphatically. She released the ball of Air Magic to them, and they gathered around it, for all the world like three little moths drinking from a drop of nectar. The ball contracted, then vanished, and all three of them were glowing visibly brighter. They hovered in front of her again, all three bowed at the waist, and then flitted to the top of the vardo, where they took up a posture of watchfulness.
When she turned to look at Rosamund, she found her friend surrounded by at least twenty odd little creatures that looked as if they were made of bits of forest detritus. Very peculiar little things they were too, no two alike, covered in odd garments of moss and leaves, spiderwebs and pine needles, flowers and woven grasses. She was apportioning bread and sugar cubes out to them with all the gravity of a paymaster giving out wages. When the last of them had taken up his or her burden and vanished into the long grasses, she straightened. “Well, my lot is a little braver than yours. Then again, Earth Elementals are very difficult to hurt, and I very much doubt that a ghost will even take notice of them. I think we can go to bed. But . . .”
“But?” Giselle asked.
“Sleep in your clothing,” Rosamund replied. “And sleep lightly.”
10
GISELLE was certain she would never be able to sleep, but the moment she put her head down on the pillow, it was as if sleep suddenly smothered her. Just like that, instantly, she was asleep and aware of absolutely nothing. She lay utterly insensible until the moment a sharp pain lanced her nose.
It hurt! And it jolted her from her nose to her toes.
She came awake at once, only to hear a snap, see a spark arc from one of the wisps to her nose, and feel the same sharp, jagged pain again, although this time it was confined to her face. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any the less! “Ow!” she cried, sitting up and clapping both hands to the offended appendage. “Why!” Then it dawned on her. This must have been the only way the wisps could wake her up! I have never, ever, been that thoroughly asleep. “Oh! Thank you!”
She scrambled out of her bed, glad she had followed Rosamund’s instructions to lie down fully clothed. Her feet hit the floor with a thud—she’d worn her boots as well—and she called up a glow on her own hand, making it shine as the wisps did. It was far safer to do that than to fumble for matches and a lantern in her half-befuddled state. She felt almost as if she had been drugged as she shook her head to clear it, but she knew that the only things she had had to eat and drink were those that Rosamund shared. Rosamund would not have drugged her. There was no reason for anyone else to drug her.
Therefore, that left magic. Magic which, by the utter silence of the entire