I never thought I’d pine for the days where I couldn’t understand anyone around me, but here I am. Twelve hours in the sleeper carriage of a train with just Kit for company has led to just that.
We’ve already spent five days on the road together. Five days of being bounced around on coaches and trains, and now our final leg of the journey has us traveling through the night. For some reason, neither of us can sleep and so Kit has taken it upon himself to describe each and every piece from his collection of oddities.
I don’t know how, but the collection seems to be growing by the hour. Whenever I think he might be done, he plucks something else from his bag. And each one seems to have a more and more elaborate story attached to it.
“Now, this one is a real corker,” he says with a fond grin, thrusting a candlestick under my nose. “I found it as part of a box that I came across in a haunted house.”
I glance out the window and then at the clock on the wall before taking a deep breath. After all this time travelling together, we’re only a few hours from our destination.
Home.
Or… the place that used to be my home, anyway. The place where I grew up.
The train judders along, our carriage swaying from side to side, and my stomach lurches once again. It’s difficult to tell whether it’s from the movement of the train or from my nerves as I consider what’ll greet us when we stop moving. I’ve felt unsettled for days now, with this lingering anxiety and unease tugging me down.
“This set of spoons is all solid gold,” Kit continues blithely while I gulp down my third ginger tea of the night, glancing with aching eyes at the dark window as the country flies by. “I was given them by a gentleman who worked as a gravedigger. All of them had a particularly interesting curse on them that meant the next holder would end up in an early grave.”
I peer mournfully at the beds on one side of the carriage, wondering if I might just be able to sleep away this last portion of the journey. It’s been a long day and an even longer night, but recently, sleep hasn’t come easily to either of us. Most of my nights are haunted by nightmares or interrupted by random spurts of feeling via the mate bond in our chests.
There must be a way of switching it off, considering that’s what Jack did almost as soon as it formed. But I don’t think either of us wants to. Not when it’s our only link to Reva. A connection that tugs painfully at the space between my ribs the further we travel away from her.
It feels unnatural to be separated like this. But it’s necessary. For all of us.
“And of course, there’s this engraved spoon. This one had a jewel embedded in it that unfortunately turned to dust as soon as I could lift the curse.”
Thankfully, Kit doesn’t seem to require a response other than a nod here and there. He eyes me as I take another swig of cooling tea, squeezing my eyes shut as I swallow it down.
“Feeling any better?”
I shrug, resting my head in my hands.
“Worried about what you’ll come across when we get there?”
I pop my head up to peer at him through my aching eyes. That’s the thing about Kit—he might be going off on one about his collection of spoons—but he’s observant.
Kind, too.
It strikes me that he doesn’t usually blabber on like he has been all day. He’s usually more interested in trying to pick my brain, even though it takes me forever to formulate a response in the right language.
Ah. He’s distracting me; he has to be.
“I’m terrified,” I admit with a little laugh. I don’t know what I’m more scared of: that my family has sorely missed me, or that they’ll barely have noticed my absence.
“Well, whatever happens, I’ll be there,” he says, leaning forward with a warm look in his eyes. “And we can stay as long as you like. Hours. Days. Weeks. Whatever you want.”
I nod, letting out a heavy sigh. “Thank you.”
“I’ve got nothing but time,” he says.
Neither of us do.
Another rogue surge of concern hits us both simultaneously and Kit rubs his chest with a grimace.
“Can’t say I’m going to get used to that in a hurry,” he says. “Is she worrying about Torin again, do you think?”
I nod. “I can’t blame her.”
It’s been a couple of weeks since Torin disappeared from the bond. He was only gone for a little over a minute, but that was plenty long enough. We all felt it equally, like a string got cut loose or like Torin had… faded from existence, or at least gone somewhere that none of us could reach him.
And no one felt it worse than Reva.
When I focus on the tangle of bonds in my chest, I find the link to her singing with energy despite the late hour. She seems to notice my attention, sending back a zing of sheer joy to connect with me, chased by curiosity and another dose of concern that seems just for me. I send her reassurance right back.
“They’re in the city,” Kit murmurs, and I nod again. It certainly feels that way. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exact locations now that we’re miles from each other, the sensation in Reva’s bonds with Jack, Finch, and Torin changed over the past day, as though they’re all quivering with proximity. In contrast, ours are duller, strained by physical distance.
We all felt the moment that Jack interfered with Torin’s bond and dragged him back from wherever he’d drifted. And ever since Torin returned to the land of the living, Reva has been convinced that she needed to track Jack down and discover exactly what he did, just in case the same thing happens again.
We quickly worked out that Jack had travelled to Mistlemarch, the city filled with sorcerers where he and Torin both grew up. And the thought of heading into that city, where we could bump into the sorceress or Jack’s family, was too much for both me and Kit to handle.
So we separated. The rest of them headed into the city, while we travelled in the opposite direction, going north to my family’s farm.
Kit didn’t need to accompany me. He could easily have gone anywhere, just like many of Finch’s crew have now that the warrants for their arrest have been lifted. I understand his reticence to head into the sorcerers’ city after their kind spent weeks messing with his head, leaving him a confused mess. But he definitely doesn’t need to be here with me on this seemingly endless journey home.
“Reva asked you to look after me, didn’t she?” I say, instantly knowing I’m right. It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to put the pieces together and come to this conclusion.
“Hmm?” His look of innocence has me choking on a laugh. He quickly gives in, though, his shoulders slumping as he gives a little sigh. “Fine. She didn’t ask me to come with you. That was all me.” He gives a little shudder. “It’ll be a long while before I’m ready to come face to face with another sorcerer, Jack or his new fiancée, especially.”
“And this?” I ask, gesturing to the wild collection of items in front of us, which he starts to carefully return to his bag.
“She asked me to distract you,” he admits with more than a little reluctance. “Especially as we got closer.”
“Well, it worked,” I tell him, earning myself a bright grin.
“Good. I don’t know how many more hours I had left in me,” he says. I raise an eyebrow, and he snorts. “Fair enough. I probably had a few more hours left in the tank.”
*
It’s in the early hours of the morning when we eventually reach my family’s farm in a taxi that we catch from the nearest town. My heart is pounding as we turn the corner onto the long driveway and I catch the first glimpse of the place. I’m expecting more jostling from all the usual set of potholes, but the driveway is smoother than I remember. Then we turn another corner and the entire farm opens up in front of us, cracking my chest wide open.
Sheer longing fills me, for all the memories of this place and all the others I’ve missed over the years I’ve been away.
As the taxi halts in front of the house, the sheep in the nearest field all turn their heads to peer at us in unison.
“Well, that’s more than a little unsettling.” Kit whistles under his breath as he takes a long look around before paying off the taxi driver. “I didn’t picture it to be like this when you said you were a farm boy.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t like this when I left.”
Everything looks different, and I can’t tell if my memory is playing tricks on me or if the farmhouse really is taller than it used to be. It’s now painted a gleaming, perfect white, instead of the odd yellow it used to be. The fields are filled with grazing animals instead of the handful of ragged sheep I left behind.
“Really? No fields or barns or sheep?” he replies drolly.
“We had all of those things,” I say slowly. “They just didn’t look like this. I know I’ve been gone for a while, but—”
“When you’re young, you don’t have perspective on the size of things. Maybe you’re just seeing it with adult eyes.”
“I wasn’t six when I left and telling people my dad’s bigger and tougher than their dad,” I tell him, slipping back into Valmorian and earning myself a bemused look. “I wasn’t a child when I left,” I repeat slowly in Kit’s own language. “And the house definitely didn’t have three stories,” I continue. “Or a porch either.”
It sounds crazy to point out, but it looks almost like the entire farmhouse has been rebuilt.
“This is the right place, though? We’ve not stopped at the wrong farm, have we?”
I shake my head slowly, the rest of my body having frozen at the sight of a familiar figure passing by the downstairs window of the farmhouse. “That’s my mother.”
From here, she looks the same as she always did. The same slightly ruddy cheeks and dark hair haphazardly piled on top of her head. The same vaguely distracted look about her, like there’s always a million and one things on her mind.
My palms are sweating as we step up to the porch. I can’t say exactly how many years have passed since I was last here. All the years trapped with the sorceress kind of blurred into one terrible, never-ending stream of darkness in my memory. Whether it’s been two years or ten, I feel positively ancient and like entire lifetimes have gone by since I last laid my eyes on my mother.
“Ready?” Kit squeezes my arm as I feel a surge of reassurance from three different directions, all landing directly into the bond in my chest. It sends an almost dizzying wave of sensation through me, and I rub my chest, trying to disperse the overwhelming feeling while Kit chuckles.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “We’re all a little overeager for this to go well.”
Their support might be a little excessive, but it helps calm my racing heart. It’s another reminder that I’m not alone here.
I give two sharp raps on the door, followed by a pause, and then add a third lighter tap. My usual knock.
Kit turns to me with a raised eyebrow. “That’s odd, right? I might not know much about animals, but they’re giving me the willies.”
I glance in the direction he’s looking, back at the field of sheep that all seem to be watching us still. Before I can reply, the door is flung open behind us.
And there she is.
My mother.
The shriek she lets out leaves my ears ringing and my bones rattling, as I’m dragged into a crushing hug.
“Aster, my boy. You’re home, finally.” Her voice comes out muffled against my chest. “Come in, come in. I’ve so much to show you. And of course, I’ll have to let her know you’ve returned immediately. She’ll be dying to see you.”
I have so many questions but two rise to the front of my mind ahead of the others: Why is the farm in such good shape?
And exactly who is this ‘she’ that’s apparently dying to see me?
