“Is he all right?" Releana asked J'role.
He shook his head.
She weighed a thought, then said, “I really didn't know if I was going to come here. I've been alone down here for some time, and maybe I've started to like it. I'd given up hope of getting out, actually. And you know what they say about magicians: 'Where they are is where they stay.' But. . but if you have a plan to get out, and I can help, I certainly will.
I don't know if you do, but maybe we could come up with something together. I don't know." When she had finished, Releana took in a big gulp of air, and J'role realized that she had raced through her words, almost without breathing, as if afraid he would interrupt her. He almost laughed.
J'role pointed to her, then shrugged his shoulders.
Her lips pressed tightly as she tried to puzzle out what he meant. "I don't. .," she began to say.
J'role then raised his hands and waved them about in a broad imitation of casting a spell.
Then he pointed at her again.
"Oh. Right. What can I do? You have thief talents. I have magic. We have to take stock of our resources. Yes. Well, I'm an elementalist."
They began to communicate. Faltering at first. But Releana was the most patient person J'role had ever met. She did not become frustrated with the gestures he used to communicate. If anything, she seemed completely captivated by the complexity of the problem of "talking" with someone who did not speak.
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and many more times that day the beautiful smile he had seen the night before revealed itself. J role suddenly thought that being trapped wasn't so bad as long as you rose to the challenge of getting free.
Together they built a plan.
16
He is silent. His mother extends one arm the glint of the blade hidden behind her back in her other hand. Months have gone by since the thing entered his head. His mother asked him to speak to her. He thought it was dangerous, but she asked him to do it, and he did.
Over the many weeks a strange look entered her eyes. She became nervous. Often she stared at the walls, her attention frozen by the sight of something only she could see.
Nothing could bring her out of these spells. His father sometimes asked J'role if he knew what was bothering his mother but he only shrugged He knew it was his voice that had altered her mind; he felt miserable about it. He was driving her mad.
Night.
Above, the shadows of leaves. The last songs of birds. Thousands of insects chirping as one. The Blood Wood a single, giant animal breathing in and out.
The shadows of night and loneliness passed over him, seeping into his flesh. J'role felt the magic that bound the world arcing through his body and out into the dirt of the pit. The magic spun outward, into the dirt beneath the whole of Blood Wood, and beyond that, in all directions, out into the world. Where he stood at that moment connected to the kaer where he had grown up, to the room where he had slept as a boy, to the burial pit that held his mother. The world itself formed a tapestry showing his life frozen at that moment.
Releana stepped up to him. She had a spell, she said, that would help him climb better.
Though he was only a beginning thief, such a spell would augment his thief adept talents and perhaps give him the skill he needed to get out of the pit.
She took his hands in hers and very softly spoke the words of a spell. The words were in a language J'role did not understand, but in their sounds he heard deep age. She was tapping into the magic of the world, but in a different way than he could. He could only use magic to be a thief, and use it in a way the world allowed. Releana could take the magic and shape it to her own desires. As she spoke, her face became intent and thoughtful.
A tingle passed up through his fingertips, along his wrists, and through his arms. The strange sensation-like being air, J’role thought-spread through his body. Leaving him giddy. He smiled. Releana saw this and smiled back. Her pudgy hands felt warm and reassuring in his his chest suddenly felt empty, as if ready to be filled with a new life. He swallowed. Releana wasn't at all the kind of girl he'd ever thought attractive. She had neither the slender beauty of the elf queen nor the thorns that had somehow drawn him to the elf's touch.
Releana was plain by comparison. But good.
Was that enough? To be drawn to someone who was good?
She let go of his hands.
He looked up at the pit opening, sensed all the parts that made it; the connections between the grains of the dirt, the grains that made up the clumps of dirt, the clumps that made up sections of the wall, the sections that made up the pit. All pulsed in its walls like veins filled with blood.
He pressed his hand to the wall. The thief magic helped him know exactly where to put his fingers now; he sensed which part of the wall would give way and which would not.
Releana's magic made him more nimble and light; he could feel it in his muscles and bones.
He poked the toes of his right foot into the dirt then reached high above his head with his left hand, finding a spot to brace the weight of his body. A gasp came from Releana as he hoisted himself up and began to climb the wall. He moved like a light breeze.
His long limbs, once so ugly to him, thin, like a spider's, he now saw as good. The muscles strong, thanks to Releana's magic. His flesh taut, thanks to his hunger, with no excess weight to hinder his progress up the wall. A new way of seeing himself, a climber of walls. Successful. His body helped him.
Good.
He glanced up. A few feet above were roots growing from the wall of the pit. Already he saw them shift slightly; snakes ready to strike, awaiting their prey. Their slight shifts of preparation sank through the dirt of the pit walls and up through J’role’s fingertips. Their tiny tremors pierced his sense of touch as sharply as shimmering starlight reflected off the stones of a stream. He stopped for a moment, taking it all in-it being the world, the sensations, his own body. The world of his youth now seemed so far away. Once, a long time ago, so much longer than the few days that had actually passed, he had been alone, trapped forever, in the village outside his kaer. Now…
Now what?
He wasn't.
Now he was a thief using magic to escape the elf queen's pit in Blood Wood.
He looked up, mapped out a path along the pit wall. He could see it all so clearly now. It would be hard. But now he could see the best path-how to avoid most of the roots, which portions of the wall would hold strongest. He might not make it. But then again he might.
A slightly longer intake of breath, just before he began. He'd have to move fast. .
In some far corner of his thoughts he barely remembered his father. And the girl-what was her name? What could either one give J'role that he wanted?
Up.
His fingers dug deep into the dirt, so cold and damp. The dirt began to give way, his hand slipping out of the wall. But it was all right. He threw his other hand up and then dug his feet into the wall. Even as his new position began to crumble, his hands and feet scrambled for new holds in the wall.
The roots came at him, sending tremors up his muscles like an earthquake. Thwap! The tip of a root slammed at the side of his head. Bits of dirt smacked his face. More roots came for him. The cacophony of sounds and the tumble of motion from the roots-all augmented by the magic- confused him, nearly sending him falling away from the wall and back down into the pit.
But the thief magic came to him, a friend, draping its shadow arm over his shoulder and pointing to the wall. Focus, it seemed to say, but speaking through his muscles and not through his thoughts.