her face.
“Kasia!” I cried. She was crawling now, still coming, her jaw set with determination, leaving a bloody trail on the fallen leaves and dark moss behind her. She grabbed at roots and pulled herself forward, even while the branches lashed her back, but she was still so far away.
And then I looked back up at her body, at the face inhabited by the Wood, and it smiled at me. She couldn’t escape. The Wood was deliberately letting her try, feasting on her very courage, on my own hope. It could drag her back at any moment. It would let her come close enough to see me, maybe even to feel her own body, the air on her face, and then vines would spring up and lash around her, a storm of falling leaves would shroud her, and the Wood would close up around her again. I moaned a protest, and I almost lost the thread of the spell, and then the Dragon said behind me, his voice strange and remote, as though he spoke from far away, “Agnieszka, the purging. Ulozishtus. Try it. I can finish alone.”
I carefully drew my magic back from the Summoning, carefully, carefully, like tipping up a bottle without letting it drip down the neck. The light held, and I whispered, “Ulozishtus.” It was one of the Dragon’s spells, not the kind that came to me easily; I didn’t remember the rest of the words he’d said over me. But I let the word roll over my tongue, shaping it carefully, and remembered the feeling of it—the fire that had burned in my veins, the terrible sweetness of the potion on my tongue. “Ulozishtus,” I said again, drawing it out slowly, “Ulozishtus,” and made each syllable a small spark struck on tinder, a scrap of magic flying out. And inside the Wood, I saw a thin trail of smoke going up from one patch of the undergrowth closing around Kasia; I whispered “Ulozishtus,” to it, and to another thread of smoke that rose ahead of her, and when I did it to a third, a tiny struggling yellow flame bloomed near her grasping arm.
“Ulozishtus,” I said to it again, giving it another bit of magic, like laying scraps of kindling to a new fire in a dead hearth. The flame grew stronger, and where it touched the vines recoiled, pulling back. “Ulozishtus, ulozishtus,” I chanted, feeding it, building it higher, and as it climbed I took burning branches from it and set the rest of the Wood alight.
Kasia staggered up, pulling her arms free of smoking vines, her own flesh marked pink with the heat. But she could move quicker again, and she came towards me through the smoke, through the crackling leaves, running as the trees went up, as scorching branches fell around her. Her hair was burning, and her torn clothing, tears running down her face as her skin reddened and blistered. Her body before me was jerking in the manacles, writhing in a scream of rage, and I wept and shouted, “Ulozishtus!” again. The fire was growing, and I knew that just as the Dragon might have killed me, purging me of the shadows, Kasia might die here now, might burn to death at my hands.
I was grateful now for the long terrible months trying to find something, anything; I was grateful for all the failures, for every minute I had spent here in this tomb with the Wood laughing at me. It gave me the strength to keep the spell going. The Dragon’s voice was steady behind me, an anchor, chanting to the end of the Summoning. Kasia was coming nearer, and all around her the Wood was burning. I could see very little of the trees now—she was close enough that she was looking out of her own eyes, and there were flames licking at her skin, roaring, crackling. Her body arched against the stone, thrashing. Her fingers stiffened, going wide, and suddenly her veins ran brilliant green in her arms.
Drops of sap burst trickling from her eyes and nose in rivulets down her face like tears, the bright fresh sweet smell horribly wrong. Her mouth hung open in a silent round cry, and then tiny white rootlets crept out from beneath her nails, like an oak-tree growing overnight. They climbed with sudden horrible speed all over the manacles, hardening into grey wood even as they went, and with a noise like ice breaking in midsummer, the chains broke.
I did