“I would love to fix it, I assure you,” said Rodrigo earnestly. “I don’t want to be marooned in the Breath any more than the rest of you. The problem is-the magical constructs are in such a tangle I can’t figure out where one begins and another leaves off. It’s the odd way the constructs are interwoven that allowed the chain reaction failure in the first place.”
He turned to Miri. “Who laid these constructs on the boat for you? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Miri said uneasily. “The boat belonged to my parents…”
“Whoever laid the constructs is highly skilled in magic. Highly skilled,” Rodrigo emphasized. “I’m impressed. But the crafter was an amateur, untrained. No idea what he or she was doing. If you like, I can draw you a diagram.”
“Oh, God!” Stephano groaned. “If he’s reduced to drawing diagrams, we’re really in trouble.”
Miri glanced around for Gythe and couldn’t find her. She thought for a moment her sister had gone below, then she saw Gythe huddled underneath a table. She sat hunched there, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms around her legs.
Stephano followed Miri’s gaze. “Oh, no,” he said softly. “Not again.”
Gythe was pale, her face strained. She stared fearfully into the swirling mists.
“She’s always like this out of sight of land,” said Miri, regarding her sister with concern. “Leave her there. She feels safe.”
“Why does she do this?” Stephano asked, as he’d asked before when this happened.
Miri looked into the mists closing thickly around the houseboat and shook her head and frowned. “Now’s not the time to talk about it.”
Doctor Ellington jumped from Dag’s shoulder onto the table and then from the table to the deck. The cat rubbed his head underneath Gythe’s arm. She picked him up and buried her face in his striped fur.
Rodrigo had gone below for pen and ink. Returning, he spread the paper on the brass helm and began to draw. Miri left her sister in the care of the Doctor and joined the others to look curiously over Rodrigo’s shoulder.
“Let us say I am a crafter wanting to imbue this paper with magic. I lay down sigil A.” Rodrigo drew an A on the paper and drew a circle around it. “I next lay down sigil B.” He drew another sigil across from A and labeled it B. “In order to cause the magic to work, I draw a line from A to B. I now have a construct. Magic flows from A to B.
“But let us say that I drop water in the middle of the line. Like this. The ink smears, leaving a large blot on the paper. The construct is broken. No more magic. Ordinarily, a crafter would repair the break by redrawing the line, or a channeler would bridge the line. With the magic on board the Cloud Hopper, the crafter did not repair the break. The crafter bypassed the break altogether by adding more lines and sigils. So that now we have not only A and B, but also C, D, E, and F.”
Rodrigo drew sigils all over the page and lines that ran every which-way. “All very original. I’ve never seen these types of sigils before. Some of them actually elevate the magic to the level of genius,” said Rodrigo in admiring tones. “But the crafter who laid down the magic was not trained in the art, and now our boat is burdened with such a mishmash of magical sigils and constructs that I have no idea how to untangle them. If the crafter who did this was on board, I might possibly-”
“The crafter is on board,” said Miri flatly.
They all stared at her.
“Not me,” she said, raising her hands. “Heaven forefend! I’m a fair channeler. I can channel the magic through my hands from one construct to another. But I cannot create a sigil.”
She glanced at Gythe, crouched beneath table. “My sister is a crafter and she has a rare gift for the magic, or so I’ve been told.”
“But she’s never been trained,” said Rodrigo.
“She was trained,” said Miri. “By our parents. By my uncle.”
“Drop it,” said Stephano beneath his breath.
Rodrigo ignored him. “Trundler magic…”
Miri rounded on him angrily, her fist clenched. “And what do you mean by that remark, sir?”
“Told you to drop it,” said Stephano.
Rodrigo tried to reason with her. “All I meant was that Gythe never went to school-”
“And who needs bloody schooling!” Miri cried, seething.
“Judging by the confused mess I’ve found on board this boat…”
Miri seized a belaying pin.
Stephano grabbed hold of Rodrigo. “Apologize!”
“What? Why?”
“Before she cracks open your skull! Apologize!”
“Ah, yes, well, I apologize, Miri,” said Rodrigo. He gave her his best charming smile. “I meant no offense. Truly. Tell me about Gythe and the Trundler magic. I need to understand so that I can fix this.”
Miri grew calmer. She lowered the belaying pin, much to Rodrigo’s relief, and glanced anxiously at her sister, who was still hiding beneath the table.
“Gythe loves to work the magic. Nothing makes her happier, except maybe playing the harp. She sings to herself while she works. She has such few pleasures. I encourage her. The magic soothes her, like the music.”
“Do you know what she is doing with the magic?” Rodrigo asked.
Miri shrugged. “I assumed she repairs broken constructs. I couldn’t see that she was doing any harm. Like I said, I’m no crafter.”
The mists of the Breath were gray, shifting and whirling around them. The damp clung to their clothes, made them feel cold and clammy.
Rodrigo wiped his face.
“She was not doing any harm,” said Rodrigo. “Far from it. These magical constructs are meant for protection. Over and over, she laid down constructs designed to protect this boat and those in it. From stem to stern and back and again, the Cloud Hopper is festooned with webs of magical protection constructs.”
Miri’s eyes shimmered with tears. Her lips trembled. “My poor sister.”
“But protection magic is good, isn’t it?” Stephano argued.
“Yes and no,” said Rodrigo. “Yes, because the protection magic is what kept the propeller from being shot to bits. No, because there are so many layers of spells I can’t figure out how to unravel them in order to repair the damage. Our situation is this: we have no way to operate the sails or the rudder or energize the gas that keeps the balloons inflated and the lift tanks working. Soon the gas will start to cool and lose its magical energy. The balloon will deflate and the lift tanks will fail and we will sink into the Breath. The mists of the Breath grow thicker as one descends, the temperature drops. It is theorized that eventually the Breath at the lowest altitudes turns to a liquid form, which means we will all drown. Though by that time it won’t matter, since we will have already frozen to death.”
Stephano regarded his friend grimly. “There must be some way you can get this boat up and running!”
“I might be able to repair the constructs enough to get us as far as Westfirth, but only if Gythe helps me,” said Rodrigo. “A lot of these sigils are new to me and, trust me, I know my sigils. This is Trundler magic”-he glanced apprehensively at Miri-“no offense, Miri.”
She shook her head, too alarmed at the terrible prospect they were facing to angry.
“We have always kept our magic a secret,” she said.
Stephano glanced over at Gythe. “This goes back to what happened to her, doesn’t it? The reason she won’t speak. Miri, you need to tell us what happened. Maybe we could help her. I know you don’t like to talk about it-”
“I vowed I would never talk of it,” said Miri fiercely. She stood with her arms folded across her chest, staring stubbornly down at the deck. “My uncle made me take an oath. He said if we talked about it, it would only make things worse for us. People call us thieves and swindlers. If they knew that something out there in the Breath was killing our kind, they’d say the horror came because of us and they’d set fire to our boats and drive us out…”
Miri began to cry. She tried to stop, but she couldn’t help it. Stephano put his arm around her and drew her close.