swerved up into the air, soaring until it scraped the clouds. I clung to the edge, staring at the hundreds of tiny islands dotting Lake Paduan below, lit up like stars in the misty sunlight.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed.
“Don’t let its beauty mesmerize you,” Edan warned. “This land is full of dark magic.”
It was hard to imagine that. The islands appeared lush with vibrant green trees and golden beaches. But I’d come to trust Edan’s warnings since our brutal days in the Halakmarat; I still had nightmares about baking in the sun and finding my canteen full of sand.
I followed his gaze to a group of islands covered in mist. I could barely see them, for the sky there was dark and the water murky. We dipped down, and I grabbed a tassel, glad I had taken the time to add them to the carpet. My excitement quickly turned to fear as the wind picked up strength.
“I made this too thin, didn’t I?” I cried. “We’re losing control!”
“It’ll pass—just hold on!” Edan shouted back, but something in the carpet ripped.
I let out a shriek as we plunged through low-hanging clouds.
“I’ve got you!” Edan yelled, hooking his arm around me. Reaching for a corner of the carpet, he twisted it as the wind hurled us across the sky and steered us toward a dark pocket of land. The mist was so thick there I could hardly see.
Violent gusts of wind tore at us until I couldn’t tell if we were flying up or down. Then the carpet lurched, and we plummeted. My gut was sinking and being crushed all at the same time. Cloth whipped behind me—Edan’s cloak or mine, I couldn’t tell. I could see the water beneath us, its hungry, bottomless depths roaring toward us, drowning out my screams.
I grabbed Edan’s hand. He started shouting, the same words over and over until his voice was hoarse. The carpet careened toward a shadowy stretch of land, but the wind thwarted it. Whether we crashed on land or on the sea made no difference. The speed at which we were falling guaranteed death either way.
Edan flung his arms up, and the carpet folded around us, tight as a cocoon, surging for the island. Once we were over land, the carpet hung back, fighting the wind. We hovered in midair, barely long enough for me to catch my breath.
Then we fell again, this time into a crooked tree whose branches pierced the fog. Down the trunk we slid, the coarse bark shredding the edges of the carpet.
We hit the ground with a thump, and fireflies fled into the misty fog above us.
After a long pause, Edan stirred. “Maia?” he whispered, rolling to his side to face me. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” My neck tingled, but I could move my head and my limbs. “Are you?”
“Nothing’s broken.”
I peeled myself off the moist, cold ground. The carpet lay at my feet, beaten and battered, its yarn half unraveled. I wove my arm through Edan’s and pulled him up. Using magic had drained him, and he was breathing hard. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No more close encounters with death, please,” he joked feebly. “I don’t have it in me to save you anymore.”
“Save me?” I retorted. “Vachir’s arrows would have made a pincushion out of you if not for me and my scissors. And don’t forget you were on that carpet too.”
“True, true.” He chuckled. “Save us, then.”
I hid a smile and shook the dirt from my sleeves. “Is this the right place?”
He looked around, his sharp eyes discerning things that lay beyond my field of vision. “It is.”
Through mist and shadow, the island revealed itself. A graveyard of dead trees, their arms gnarled and crooked, raked across the sky. Aside from fireflies, the only signs of life were vultures, ravens, and crows. How odd that their shrieks comforted me in this eerie silence.
Even the water, which had slapped against the shores from which we departed, had become oddly still. Only if I listened closely could I hear the waves whispering restlessly from afar.
A lone gust of wind hissed, rippling through my sleeves and bristling against the back of my neck. The fog was thick, but the stars above shone so brightly their light cut through. They seemed so close, hanging in the sky even though dawn had broken just a short while ago. It disoriented me, how dark it already was on the island.