Page 108 of Minor Works of Meda

“What now?” Oraik craned his arm to peer at the gash by his elbow.

I smiled faintly and drew a phrase. The wound sealed shut. I felt the air around me cool ever so slightly before the warmth spread to fill the gap.

So the power wasn’t limitless. It just wasn’t barren like the Protectorate. I couldn’t even tell where any of the heat was coming from, because there was so much.

“Now we find Kalcedon,” I told him. “Or… I do. You could go back, where it’s safer.”

“Enough. It’s decided. So, how do we find him?”

I pulled out the lock of hair Kalcedon had given me, then the mirror from the tower's workroom. It felt wrong to wipe away Eudoria's spell, but this was more important. I cleaned the surface, curled my hands, and scryed for Kalcedon.

The hair burnt up, causing Oraik to wrinkle his nose and cough politely.

Gray nothing. But we were on the fae side of the Ward. Was he not? If I’d brought it down for nothing… I drew a shaky breath and crouched closer to the mirror I’d laid on the ground, peering into the fog that covered my reflection.

I dropped the spell. The fog cleared as I frowned into my own eyes, thinking. If the fog meant Kalcedon was still in the Protectorate, I’d see the same thing if I scryed for something else there. The Temple was easy to find, no matter my current confused feelings; we’d called it up often enough with Eudoria. I drew the familiar phrasings, but though my reflection blurred, nothing came to take its place. The spell was useless.

There was no gray fog obscuring my view. So Kalcedon wasn’t in the Protectorate; the fog meant something else, something different. A concealment? I cursed and knuckled my chin.

I stared up at the sky and tried to think. Kalcedon. How was I supposed to find Kalcedon if he was being hidden by magic?

I didn’t have any more of Kalcedon’s hair. But I did have something else of his. I knelt and dug through my bag. My hands closed around the clunky wooden bird he’d carved for Eudoria. Would that work? The bloodstains looked faded. It was old, but it was, as far as I knew, Kalcedon’s. And the bird itself was of his hands, carved by him; it had felt his fingers well.

Although. If the vision of him were obscured by fog, perhaps the same fog that had sank into his skin when the faeries captured him, he might not answer me. And even if he did, he might not know where he was. Speaking would be of no use in either circumstance.

But if the location phrasing worked—if the focus was great enough—I could get a hold of where he was. I squeezed the little bird in my fingers, frowning at its misshapen form. I knelt and slowly set it on the ground in front of me, then took a deep breath.

“Meda… what are you doing?” Oraik wanted to know.

“Experimenting. Pray I get it right,” I muttered.

The locator phrase. The spell to transform into a bird, the one I’d read in Odson a year ago and which Kalcedon had mostly mastered. The spell I’d created to transform from statue back to breathing, living flesh. What would happen if I combined the three?

Of course, the wooden bird had never been alive. There were no bones or blood or organs to unlock. No breath to restore; rather, breath to grant. But the idea had gripped me, and I felt it like truth in my bones. I began to sketch sigils in the air, piecing the spell together and gathering speed as I became familiar with its shape.

It took all the power the air had to spare. By the time I finished the surroundings were chilled. Sweat beaded my face, and no warmth came flooding back in to fill the field. I could see drooping, withered flowers spread among the grasses, some faerie variety destroyed by the loss of heat.

I released the final sigil and watched the spider lines in front of me brighten and flick together.

A feather shifted on the wooden pattern. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. The bird was all over warm brown like the wood. It bore wavering stripes on its features that matched the grain of the holm oak Kalcedon had carved it from. Stiffly, the bird turned its neck to look at me. It spread its wings slowly, one longer than the other.

“Sorry,” I told it. “It’s not my fault Kalcedon is a bad carver. Can you find him?”

The bird chirped, its sound like a wooden whistle.

“Amazing,” Oraik breathed. “Look at you. Meda, I want one.”

The bird fluttered its wings and hopped a step. It chirped again and flapped faster, stirring the dirt and at last rising at an uncomfortable angle to take to the air. It spun unevenly. The small wing struggled and failed to keep up with the large.

It twisted and crashed down into the tall grasses, vanishing from view.

“Horns,” I snapped, and ran after it. Oraik followed. We moved slowly when we were near, one careful step at a time as we followed the thin whistle of its cries.

“Here,” Oraik said. He stooped to offer the bird the palm of his hand. I heard a low whistle, and then the prince straightened to hand it over to me. I took it carefully in my hands as the bird rustled its wings and peered up at me. I must have imagined the abashed look in its eye.

“Can you still guide us there? If we take the wrong turn, you could whistle.”

It bobbed its head twice and stopped.

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