Page 40 of Earthbound

Alder hadn’t considered the pool of water to be anything other than what it was. But then Lettle gasped.

‘What is it?’ he said, kneeling next to her. He looked into the water but all he could see was his own reflection.

Her expression turned pensive, like it did when she was reading the Fates.

‘Magic, so much magic,’ she leaned forward until both her hands were submerged. She let out a laugh of wonderment. ‘It’s just like the boundary in Mosima.’

‘Human magic?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Alder, touch the water.’

He ran his hands through the icy pool. They sank deeper than Lettle’s.

‘And just like the boundary, you can cross it.’

Alder sat back on his heels, withdrawing his hand as though he touched fire and not ice.

‘I can’t go down there.’

‘You have to, Alder.’

‘What if I drown?’

‘You can swim, right?’ Lettle’s eyes were bright with fevered excitement.

‘Yes, but still, I don’t know what could be beneath the water,’ he said breathlessly.

‘Neither do I, that’s why you have to go.’

He began to back away from the pool. ‘No, Lettle, I have a bad feeling about this.’

Lettle set her jaw and he recognised the look, but he couldn’t predict what she was going to do next.

‘If you don’t go, I will.’ Then she pressed her palms to the water and said, ‘Aiftarri.’

Alder’s heart stuttered and he saw Lettle move as though through the haze of his memories.

Her hands disappeared beneath her and she pitched forward into the pool. Her braids floated on the surface of the water for a few moments before being pulled by her body downwards. The fraedia light in her hand dimmed as she sank deeper and deeper, plunging them back into darkness.

Alder dropped to his knees and thrust his hand into the water as though to grab her.

‘Lettle!’

There was a hiss and a smell of burning oil on cotton as Mortah lit a torch.

Alder blinked into the sudden brightness, his gaze homing in on the pool. But all that was left of Lettle were a few bubbles.

‘What just happened?’ Mortah’s eyes were wide.

‘She said the human word for “open”. The magic will have parted to let her through,’ Alder said in disbelief.

She left me. The thought was so utterly selfish he felt his cheeks heat with shame. But his feeling of abandonment was second to his fear, which traversed the line between the past and present.

If he followed her, nothing would be the same ever again.

Mia was the first one to say it. ‘We have to go after her.’

‘You’re certainly not going to be the one to go,’ Dart said with a nervous laugh.