The back wall of the barn came apart like wet bread. Two kicks, and the planks split outward, showering the grass with splinters. We crawled through the gap and into the evening air, and I had never been happier to smell dirt and chickens.
The farmhouse loomed ahead of us. There were two windows on the backside, one dark, one lit with a dim yellow glow. A plume of smoke rose from the chimney. The front entrance was around the other side, facing the road.
I hid behind a trough, and Sióg hid behind me.
"Okay," I said. "We need to find a way in."
"Do you know what people like this do to elves?" Sióg whispered.
“Sióg, not now."
"They make soup."
"What?"
"Soup. Elf soup. It's a thing in the rural provinces. They think it cures ailments. Joint pain, balding, impotence... they boil us and drink the broth." His voice was becoming higher.
"Nobody is making you into soup, okay, man?”
"You don't know that. You saw them. They're not intelligent enough to know it doesn't work.”
"Sióg."
"Did you see the size of their pots? They could fit me in there twice. I'm thin. I'm broth ready. I am exactly the —"
"Sióg. Shut up and follow me."
I crawled along the side of the barn toward the house. The grass was wet. A creature scurried in the shadows, most likely a chicken, and Sióg trailed behind me, his breath audible.
I pressed against the side of the house and edged toward the back. The first window was dark. I glanced inside. An empty room. I could hardly see anything. The second window had a soft light. I could hear muffled voices.
I kept moving. Around the corner. There was a third, very small, cracked window on the far side of the house, propped open with a stick. It might be some kind of storage room. I caught a glimpse of the ledge, adorned with jars and bags of grain.
The window was so narrow that it was just slightly wider than my shoulders. I wasn't getting through that.
I glanced at Sióg.
"Hey. I'll boost you up. You crawl through, find the front door, unlock it, and let me in.”
"No. No way."
“C’mon dude. I can't fit through that window."
"And what if they catch me? What if I'm halfway through and one of them walks in and sees a pair of elf legs dangling from their pantry window? What then? What is the plan for the legs portion of this scenario?"
"Don't get caught."
"Don't get—oh, wonderful. Spectacular strategy. Have you considered military leadership?" He shook his head vigorously at me.
“You're fast, you're quiet, you're —"
"A coward. The word you're looking for is coward. I am a coward—.”
I hit him. Open palm, side of the head. "Snap out of it!"
He stopped talking. He touched his head where I'd smacked him.
"That helped, actually," he said. "I don't know why, but it did."
"Hands on the wall. Foot on my hands. Up and through. Don't make a sound. Unlock the door.”
He nodded, swallowed, and nodded again. He put his hands on the wall beneath the window. I laced my fingers together. He put his foot in, and I pushed. He went up. He was light. His fingers caught the window ledge. He pulled himself through.
His legs disappeared.
I sneaked around to the front. I pressed myself against the wall by the door. I waited, keeping count in my head. I reached thirty. I made it to forty. I got to fifty, and I began thinking about soup.
At sixty-two, the latch clicked.
The door creaked open and Sióg's face appeared in the crack. His eyes were wide but his smile was broad.
"I did it," he whispered. “I actually did it!”
"Yes, very brave, you're a hero, move." I pushed past him and went into the house.
The front room was dark. With its low ceiling and dirt floor, it looked like a dungeon. A table was shoved against the wall with dirty plates stacked on it. The hallway led to a brightly lit room, where loud, cheerful voices could be heard, and someone was even singing. Terribly.
"This way," I whispered.
We slunk through the corridor, the creaky, warped planks protesting beneath my feet. I accidentally stepped on one, and it let out a shriek. We both froze. The voices didn't stop.
We kept moving. We passed a door on the left, revealing a dimly lit room with a bed, a chair, and a heap of clothes. Beyond that, we came to a second door, leading into a kitchen. The large pot was sitting on the table. Sióg caught sight of it. He immediately grabbed the back of my shirt.
The sound of footsteps was getting closer. Heavy ones. I grabbed Sióg and pulled him to the side. We hid underneath the kitchen table. The footfalls faded, leaving behind a muffled mutter. The man walked past the doorway and into the dark room. I heard him rummaging around.
I looked around the table. It was clear. I tapped Sióg and we moved.
The hallway opened into what I think was supposed to be the main room. Cruit was in a chair.
She wasn't sitting in a chair. She was tied to it. Rope around her wrists and ankles. A strip of cloth gagged her mouth. Her braid had come loose, and her hair was now a tangle around her face. Her eyes were wide and full of fire.
A figure I had never met before appeared before her. He could only be Sully, a man who was shorter than his siblings. His hair was thinning and slicked back on one side, while his collar was neatly fastened all the way to the neck.
He carried a cluster of them, roots still attached, dirt clumps hanging off the stems. He held the flowers toward Cruit as an offering, while Cruit glared daggers at him. If he noticed she was angry, he didn't show it.
Rowan stood to the side, with crossed arms and a tight jaw. A fresh scratch appeared on his cheek, which hadn't been there before. Colm stood near him, closer to the chair, watching Cruit with the same dazed expression he'd had since the cart.
Between them, an old woman. She was wearing a tight shawl, and was holding a candle in one hand and a book in the other. Her eyes—when they caught the light—were flat and black. Her stare made the skin on the back of my neck crawl. She didn't look confused. She looked like someone who had seen a great deal of ugly and had stopped minding it a long time ago.
"—and do you, Sullivan, son of Berrach, take this woman to be your wedded wife, to hold in comfort and keep in the warmth of your hearth—"
Sully blinked, then looked at Rowan. Rowan nodded. Sully then looked back at the old woman.
"Do I what?"
"Say I do, boy."
"Oh. I do."
"And do you —." She turned to Cruit. Squinted. The candlelight caught her attention, and its rays shimmered like objects at the bottom of a well. "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband, to serve and keep and bear his children and tend his hearth till death do sever the bond?"
Cruit screamed into the gag. It came out muffled, but the intent was clear.
The old woman stared at her for a long moment, then turned the page. "Close enough," she said.
"She didn't say nothin'," Dale called out from behind us, causing me to almost have a heart attack because he was RIGHT THERE, standing in the hallway, carrying a jug of something. He hadn't seen us. He passed the kitchen doorway, inches from where Sióg and I were pressed against the wall, and entered the main room. His nose was still red and swollen. He scowled at Cruit.
"Don't need her to say nothin'," Gran said. "The bride don't speak. The husband claims, the wife is claimed. That's how it was for me. That's how it was for me mother."
"That ain't right," Colm said quietly. Everyone looked at him. He was staring at the floor. "She oughta want it. That's how it's s'posed to be. A weddin' ought to be proper."
"She'll warm to him," The old woman asserted.
"She ain't warmin' to nobody. She nearly took me eye out with her elbow an hour back." Rowan ran his fingers across the mark on his cheek. "She's been nothin' but trouble since we brought her in. If she weren't meant for him I'd have put her back on the road meself."
“Don't talk about her like that,” Colm said, still quiet. Still looking down. "She's scared is all. That's why she's fightin'. She don't know us yet."
Dale put the jug down with a clang. "Can we just finish this? Me dose is killin' me and I want to go to bed."
"Gran," Rowan spoke. "The bindin'."
Gran closed the book, set it down and picked up a length of cord from the table. It was rough, knotted and stained with something dark. She began to tie it into a pattern. Her old fingers worked quickly, as if she had done this before. The flame of the candle danced. Her shadow on the wall appeared larger than herself.
Sully stepped forward and tried to lay the flowers in Cruit's lap. She headbutted him, and he staggered back, clutching his forehead. The flowers were scattered everywhere.
He picked them up, dirt and all. He held them at arm's length this time, leaning back. He placed them on her knees. She looked down at them, then up at him.
"We should untie her hands for the ring," Colm suggested. "Let her hold the flowers at least."
"Are you out of your bloody mind?" Rowan said. "You seen what she done with two hands? She stuck Dale with a knife."
"She ain't got a knife now."
From the chair, Cruit screamed into the gag once more.
Colm was watching her. He was not watching her like his brothers, who watched her with annoyance, impatience or fear.
I looked at Sióg. He looked so pale, he was almost translucent.
"Follow me," I whispered.
We pulled back into the kitchen. I hid behind the table, while Sióg did the same, curling up and hugging his knees.
"Okay," I said. "Here's what we do. We need a distraction. Something that gets them out of the room or at least gets their attention somewhere else. While they're looking that way, I go in, cut the ropes, and free Cricket."
Sióg nodded. "Yes. Good. A distraction. That's smart. Something loud, maybe. Something outside. They go look, you slip in, you cut her loose. So what's the distraction?"
"You."
The nodding stopped.
"Me. Me?! I'm the distraction??"
"You want me to run out in front of three men who want to turn me into soup and just... what? Wave? Do a dance?"
"Make noise. Lead them outside. Get them to chase you."
"Get them to CHASE me?"
"You said yourself you're fast." I placed my hand on his shoulder. He was shaking. I could feel it through his shirt, a fine tremor. "Sióg. Look at me."
He shook his head.
"Those guys are huge but they're slow. You saw them. You don't have to outrun them forever. You just have to get them outside and keep them busy for like two minutes."
"Two minutes."
"Maybe three."
"Oh, maybe three. Maybe three minutes of being chased by men who eat elves. Wonderful. Let me just adjust my will." He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them once more. "What do I do if they catch me?"
"Scream. I'll come find you."
"And do what? You don't even have a weapon."
As I scanned the kitchen, my eyes landed on the dining table. There, nestled next to the enormous soup pot, was a well-worn knife with a short blade. I grabbed it. Held it up.
"Do you want to keep arguing or do you want to get the hell out of here?"
"I just want to say," Sióg whispered, "that I am about to risk my life for a woman I have known for less than a day. A woman who, in the time I have known her, has bitten multiple people and I am doing this for no reward. No payment. No promise of safety."
"That's the spirit! Go around the back. That room we passed with the shelves. Knock something over. Something loud. When they go look, I go in."
He stared at me. Then he crawled down the hall, pressing against the wall, moving quietly despite everything. He was good at being small. A lifetime's worth of practice.
I waited, I counted.
A crash. A ceramic object. Something large.
"What the bloody hell was that?" Rowan's voice.
"Somethin' in the back room." Dale.
I heard heavy footsteps moving away from the main room. I heard Rowan mutter “this goddamned night” and Dale breathing through his mouth, and their boots on the floorboards got fainter.
Colm's voice, softly: "Should I—"
“Stay with the bride,” Rowan shouted.
I moved.
The main room was illuminated by the candle that Gran had left on the table. Sully was rooted to the wall, his jaw agape as he stared up at a mark on the ceiling, as if he had temporarily forgotten his surroundings. He made his way outside, following his brothers.
The absence of Gran filled me with dread; that woman gave me the creeps. This uncertainty surpassed my fear of Rowan, but there was no time for such thoughts. Colm stood near Cruit's chair, his hand resting on its back, maintaining a respectful distance from her.
Cruit spotted me first. Her eyes grew wide, then narrowed. I couldn't tell if she was relieved or angry.
I moved fast, came up behind Colm and grabbed a jug from the table, then cracked him on the head with it.
I lowered myself to my knees behind Cruit's seat and began untying the ropes.
"Hey, Cricket. Miss me?"
She screamed into the gag.
"Aw, that's sweet. I missed you too." The knots were tight. I sawed at them with the knife. "So this is fun, right? Second time I've saved you. Not that I'm keeping score. But if I were, it'd be two nothing. My favor. If it happens a third time I might start expecting some kind of thank you note.”
She was making sounds behind the gag. Violent sounds. Specific sounds. Sounds that had punctuation.
The blade parted the rope in three good passes.
“Also congrats on the engagement. He seemed nice. Bit dumb. But hey, you could do a lot worse. He picked flowers. That’s more effort than most guys put in. And if you clean up the house, plant some flowers could be a real fixer-upper.”
More muffled screaming.
"Is this what you expected? When you imagined your wedding day? Is this up to par for a princess?"
Her right hand came free. Without hesitation, she reached up and tore the gag from her own mouth, taking a deep breath.
“YOU,” she snapped, “are the most insufferable —”
“Aw, missed you too.”
"I had it under control!"
"Oh yeah?" I raised an eyebrow. "You were tied to a chair."
"I was biding my time. I had counted their movements. I knew their patterns. You do not understand strategy, Cassian. You charge in and you shout and you make noise and —"
From afar, Sióg let out a scream.
"THE ELF WENT LEFT!" Rowan's voice, distant, booming.
"CIRCLE ROUND! CIRCLE ROUND THE BARN!"
"I'LL GUT HIM MESELF! BRING ME THE SKINNING KNIFE!"
That was Gran.
Cruit and I looked at each other.
"We need to go," I said. "Now."
"They took our things." Cruit was working the rope on her left ankle, fast, fingers pulling at the knot. "The packs. The map. The coin Mags gave us. We cannot leave without them."
"Are you insane? Who cares about the bags? We need to get Sióg before that old woman skins him alive."
"Without the map we are lost. Without the coin we cannot pay for lodging. We will be wandering blind and penniless through —"
"We'll figure it out!"
"We will starve on the road because you were too impatient to —"
Another cry from outside. Closer. Then further. Then what sounded like a fence breaking.
Cruit freed her other arm. She stood up, kicked the ropes off her ankles, and looked at an unconscious Colm. She started searching the room.
She was opening a cupboard. It was empty, so she moved on to the next one. "We'll split up."
"No. Bad idea. We should stick together."
"That is inefficient. You go help the elf. I will find our things and bring the cart around."
"You don't even know where they put the bags!"
"There is a cellar. Trapdoor behind the hearth." She pointed without looking. "I find the bags, I get to the cart. You get the elf. We meet on the road."
"Cricket, we should stay —"
She was already crossing the room toward the hearth. "The cart is on the side of the house. One horse, already hitched." She knelt by the hearth, fingers finding the edge of something on the floor. A trapdoor. An iron ring, flush-set. She heaved it up, revealing a trapdoor. A dark square opened up in the floorboards, letting up cold air.
"Wait —"
Her gaze locked onto mine, unwavering. It was the same look she had before any fight. Not fearless, but determined.
"Get the elf," she said.
She disappeared through the trapdoor.
Well.
I tightened my hold on the knife, took a deep breath, and made my way toward the back entrance.
Let's do this. Let's go fuck up a granny.
The yard was dark, with the moon hidden behind clouds. I heard them before I saw them: voices, shouting, the thud of kicks to a solid object.
I sneaked along the side of the house, keeping low and pressed against the wall. I rounded the corner.
Sióg was about twenty feet up a sycamore, clinging to a branch with both arms and both legs wrapped around it.
Under him, the entire circus. Rowan stood with his arms crossed, his neck craned back. Dale was circling the trunk, kicking it every few steps, still breathing through his mouth.
Gran had found a long, thick stick like a broom handle. She was thrusting it upward at Sióg's branch with focus and determination that would have been impressive if it wasn't terrifying. Her agility belied her years.
"Come down, boy," Rowan said, not yelling but almost conversing. "Come down and we'll put you back where you were. No harm."
"GIVE HIM A PROD!" Gran struck the stick, which made contact with the rim of Sióg's leg. He let out a yelp.
"Gran, you'll knock him dead."
"Good! Saves us the trouble of feedin' him." She tried again but missed. Jabbed again. "In my day we didn't keep them in barns. Waste of good space."
I crouched behind a fence post and watched.
I had the knife. One knife against the three of them wasn't odds I liked. I needed something different.
As I surveyed the yard, the barn door behind me burst open. To the left, I noticed a shed, followed by the chicken coop. There was also a pile of firewood and a water trough, as well as a large, wooden barrel propped against the shed wall with a loose lid.
"Come on, come on," I muttered, looking for anything useful. A rope. A trap. A weapon other than a dull knife. Something.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I almost screamed. I spun around with the knife up and nearly stabbed the Princess of Tolamn in the face.
"JESUS — What the—SHIT. Don't SNEAK UP on me like that! I could have killed you!"
"With that?" She glanced at the kitchen knife. "Unlikely."
My heart was trying to escape from my body through my ribs. Cruit sat beside me, immobile as a statue, holding the two packs, the leather map container, and the coin purse. She held them up slightly, her face forming the ghost of a smirk.
“Nicely done,” I remarked.
She put the bags between us. "If we can reach the cart, we can be on the road before they —"
"We can't reach it. Not without getting past them." I jerked my head toward the tree.
As we both leaned over the barrier, Rowan remained motionless. Gran continued to stab, while Dale attempted to climb the tree, only to fail.
I shifted behind the barrel. My elbow struck the lid, which slid. A fine white powder spilled over the edge, dusting my arm, my knee and the front of Cruit's cloak.
She looked down at herself and brushed the powder. She scrunched up her nose.
"Ugh, Saltpeter," She scrunched up her nose. She brushed more of it off her cloak, annoyed. "Now I smell like a smokehouse."
Saltpeter.
The word hit a door in my brain and the door swung open, and behind it was Mr. Hendricks's chemistry lab, third period, sophomore year. Lyra in safety goggles that fogged up when she was mad. The oxidation unit.
"Cas, you need to follow the measurements."
"I'm following them, chill."
"You added three times the amount."
"Hey Lyra, watch this—"
The smoke filled the lab in under a minute, thick and white. Suffocating. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. A fire alarm sounded, prompting a complete evacuation of the building. Hundreds of students gathered in the parking lot. Mr. Hendricks gave us both detentions for a week because he was convinced I'd done it on purpose. I thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened. For two days, Lyra didn't speak to me.
"I have an idea," I said.
Cruit looked at me. "Why does that worry me?"
"You're gonna have to trust me."
"I do not trust you."
"Yeah, I know. But unless you've got something better —"
She glanced at the tree, at Rowan, at Gran, still stabbing. At the saltpeter barrel. Back at me.
"What do you need?"
"Sugar. Or like anything sweet. And fire."
She didn't ask why. She looked at the shed and the house, calculating. "The kitchen. There was a sugar jar on the shelf. And a lantern."
"Get it. Fast."
Sneaking away, she darted to the side of the house. Cruit returned in under a minute. A jar of brown sugar. A lit a lamp with a low flame. She set them in front of me.
I took the lid off the barrel. Scooped saltpeter into an empty grain sack—a lot of it, more than Mr. Hendricks would have approved of, which was the point. Poured the sugar in. Mixed it with my hand. The ratio was wrong, probably. I didn't care. More was more. That was the lesson I'd learned in chemistry class: if a little makes smoke, a lot makes chaos.
"When I throw this, run for the cart. Don't wait for me."
"What is it going to do?"
"You'll see."
"I do not like 'you'll see.'"
"You'll like it less if you're standing next to it. Go." She looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up the bags and slung them over her shoulder.
I tied the sack, held the lantern to the bottom, and waited for the heat to catch. After a few moments, the sack began to emit a hissing sound, followed by a puff of smoke.
I got up and hurled it at them.
It landed three feet from the base of the tree. For a second, nothing happened. I thought I'd messed it up: I'd miscalculated the ratio, just like Lyra said. I should have followed the measurements.
Ten. A cloud of white smoke. Thick, dense, and immediately present. It expanded like a living entity, engulfing the tree, devouring Rowan, swallowing Dale, consuming Gran and her stick, and absorbing the ground beneath their feet. In a mere four seconds, the entire yard seemed to vanish, leaving only a sea of white.
Rowan's voice, muffled by his coughing, shouted, "MY EYES—"
I ran in.
The smoke was everywhere. My eyes and lungs burned. I couldn't see anything; I crashed into something that might have been Dale. He grabbed at me, but missed, and I kept running until I hit the tree. I looked up. Couldn't see the branch.
"SIÓG! JUMP!"
"WHAT?"
"JUMP! I'LL CATCH YOU!"
He jumped. He crashed through me, rather than landing on me. We both hit the ground. He was coughing, and so was I. Everything was white and burning, and I grabbed his arm and pulled him up, and we ran from the smoke to the clear air.
The sound of hooves. A cart swung around the house's side, Cruit at the reins, the horse already moving.
"GET ON!" she shouted.
We ran for it. I grabbed the side of the cart and hauled myself up. Sióg raced next to it, reaching for the edge, missing, reaching again. I grabbed his wrist and pulled. He stumbled and fell into a cart, landing on top of a sack of grain.
The smoke was dissipating behind us, revealing forms within it. Rowan's furious voice drew closer.
"They're coming," I warned.
Cruit was silent. She snapped the reins. The horse surged forward. The cart lurched and we were moving quickly down the dirt road in the dark.
Sióg lay on his back in the cart, looking up at the sky and breathing deeply, savoring every breath.
He turned his head toward Cruit. She stood at the front of the cart, braced, reins in both hands, her hair wild behind her.
"Hello," he said. "I'm Sióg. I don't believe we've been properly introduced."
Cruit ignored him.
He lay back down. Stared at the sky again.
Behind us, the smoke was fading. The shouting was getting smaller. The road stretched out ahead of us, dark and open.
I leaned against the side of the cart and let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
After a while, the road smoothed out and the shouting disappeared, leaving only the sound of hooves and wheels and the wind. I slid forward and sat next to Cruit on the driver's bench. She ignored me. She was focused on the road, her hands steady on the reins.
She turned to me.
"Where did you learn alchemy?"
"Alchemy?"
"The smoke. The powder. That was a compound reaction. Where did you study?"
"Oh, you know." I leaned back. "I trained under a master alchemist in the eastern mountains. Three years in a cave. He only spoke in riddles. I had to grind the sulfur with my bare hands. Lost two fingernails. It was a beautiful experience."
She looked at me intently.
"I'm kidding. I blew up the science lab when I was fifteen."
"You are terrible." She returned to the road. But the corner of her mouth twitched, trying not to smile.
Sióg, who had just escaped death, was soundly sleeping on a pile of grains, his deep snores indicating that he was done with being awake for the day.
Thanks, Mr. Hendricks.