Ela turned her back on him, perversely left him prey to the dream—but she stopped, then, and turned back and looked at him in such a way he knew she was not deserting him, he knew that she was angry at the ghost and not at him, and he could not remember if he or she had just said a word aloud—god, he prayed it was not a permanent condition, this listening, this—rawness of the soul that felt Ela's shadow, balanced dread of the ghost and fear of her own anger and her own impulses toward him, forbidden things, forbidden closeness—a witch did not care, a witch did not this, and did not that, mistress had always told her, and most of all a witch did not harbor such longings to be touched, or held, or to rest safe, with just someone, anyone, once in her life to hold her.
He would hold her—he would do anything she asked, anything but feel that lonely—he had never been alone, he had had brothers, he had had parents, he had had Karoly, he had never known such a feeling, except in the troll's den—but she turned abruptly away, and gave him her profile, pale as starlight. She stared into the night and her loneliness welcomed the shadows, the way mistress had taught her. Her presence cooled to ice.
"You didn't know," the child-woman said at last, the merest whisper. "Magic always had to be in you: the mirror knew. I know you didn't lie to me, but something's happened, somebody's made it happen—you're—hearing—me, aren't you?"
"I don't know what you mean," he said in frustration, but he already knew she meant the magic, and knew he knew— but he had no idea whether it was something that had broken out in him, or something someone had done to him, or it was good or it was bad, or whether it was the ghost's doing, some shameful mark of his near debauch and rescue—he was beyond his own understanding, utterly, afflicted with ghosts and with thoughts and feelings that were so certain and so utterly unproven to reason that he could not draw a line between what he had dreamed or what he had done. "I don't know what I'm hearing, I don't know what's going on in me."
His fear leapt to her like fire, and died, starved of substance, chilled to death while she gazed into the goblin-haunted dark—no, she did not want to be touched, now, to need that was weakness, and she was not weak—while he-he had meant no affection in laying hands on her or in kissing her lips, he had not come here to court some girl while his home was at risk, he was not so shallow as that, please the god, he was not such a fool, if only he knew whether it was his thought or hers that chilled his impulse to go to her and hold her. If he should touch her now, she would become more dangerous to the world than the ghost in the Wood; if he should want the things she wanted, he would never know his own thoughts again; if he should fly away to the ends of the earth this instant, it would make no difference: she would go on hearing him forever.
"Don't," Ela said faintly, still without looking at him—if she had looked at him just then her glance would have burned him like fire—Then the world jolted, thump! back to earth and rock, and Ela standing distant from him. After a moment more she did look at him, came back and sat down by him. Then he looked away, himself, not to start it all again. He felt precariously balanced, and he only wanted to lie down and sleep and wake out of the dream that had so many discordant parts in it—perhaps he was still sleeping, perhaps he was still in the troll's den, perhaps it would come back soon and he would not have to concern himself with solutions or escapes.
No, not asleep, yet. He caught himself from falling with a jerk of his head, which proved the case, and did the same thing again, thinking quite calmly that it was most unusual to fall asleep terrified, and that he was quite close to falling and adding another lump to his head, if that first one was real.
He simply could not open his eyes this time. He slid down sideways, with the whole night spinning, and tried to open his eyes, for fear of the ghost, but he felt the warmth of a cloak cast over him, and a living body next to him, and a weight on his arm. It seemed Ela was making a pillow of him, and hurting his bruises, but they were mostly numb: it was not that which he wanted to object to her—it was that it was no place and no time to rest, and that there was a ghost trying to find him in his dreams. She should magic them both awake. . .
But sleep was a weight he could not move this time, not even to lift his hand to wake her.
11
SUPPER SEEMED TO HELP. YURI THOUGHT TO HIMSELF THAT master Karoly must have been ail day without food, and small wonder, then, he looked so vastly overcome: it was not all the ghosts, Yuri tried to convince himself. Fear was not the reason master Karoly's hands shook and rattled the knife against the pan. But Nikolai did not look cheerful in Karoly's arrival, and Zadny butted his head in Yuri's lap and tramped him with his huge paws, unwilling to be separated from him by so much as an arm's length—nor had the trolls come back, since the wind and the ghostly presence, and Yuri did not blame them: if he had not known Karoly, and known Nikolai, he might have run off, too.
"So what do we do!" Nikolai asked when Karoly set the plate aside. Yuri was very glad Nikolai asked questions like that. He had sat ever so long in his life waiting for grown-ups to ask questions like that.
"We see if we can get her back again," Karoly said.
"Who, your sister?" Nikolai asked.
"No telling. No telling what we'll get now. Ytresse was here. Ylysse was." Master Karoly took a stick and began stirring the fire around, sending up sparks in streams into the dark. "Ytresse was before Ylysse, Ylysse was the first of our time—Ysabel knew her. But Pavel—Pavel—he has to be one of the ones in the mix."
"What mix?" Yuri asked faintly, figuring everyone would tell him to shut up, they always did.
"The ghost," master Karoly muttered absently. "Ysa-bel's in pieces. Bits of her, bits of Pavel ... Ytresse held this place after it fell, while Tajny Straz was building. And Ylysse. And Ylena. I wouldn't except any of them."
"Who are they?" Yuri wanted to know, but Nikolai got up from the fireside and stood behind him, his hands on his shoulders. "The castelan. Dead witches," Nikolai said under his breath, not interrupting Karoly, whose meddling with the fire had not ceased.
"Attract her into a whole," Karoiy muttered. "Ysabel's— diffuse right now. That's why you can't find ghosts." Sparks flew up. An ember snapped. "It takes passion to make a haunt. Murder, violent death, tragic death ... that, oh, yes, yes, she had." More sparks. "Ysabel? Ysabel? Do you hear me, sister? It's Karoly calling you."
The sparks from the fire seemed to hang too long in the wind, to dance and swirl and come together like a congregation of fireflies.
"Then the obsessed ones," Karoly said, still stirring, still sending up stars, "the ones that can't turn loose of the world—that's Ysabel, too, that's certainly Pavel. I think that's Ylena."
Nikolai's fingers bit painfully into Yuri's shoulders and Yuri held his breath, unable to look away from that aggregation of sparks. He heard Zadny whining and growling, he felt the hair on the nape of his neck lifting and he wanted to run, except master Nikolai's fingers were bruising his shoulders.