Page 13 of Thornlight

Noro’s expression gave away nothing. “What does thathave to do with the lightning attacking Brier?”

“Because if the storms are fading, if the harvests are growing smaller, if lightning canattackus, then maybe...”

Thorn fell silent. It was such a stupid thought.

You’re not stupid, Thorn, no matter what everyone says. So stop acting like it.So Brier had said. But what if Thornwasstupid? It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Their parents had explained to them long ago: twins start out life as one tiny little baby inside the mother’s womb, until eventually it splits apart and becomes two.

When Thorn had first learned this, the world had suddenly become clear to her. When she and Brier had split apart, Brier had taken all the good with her—the strength, the smile, the grace, the confidence. Her veins carried away the talent for lightning, leaving Thorn’s with a talent for... what? Sweeping?

It wasn’t fair, but it was how the world had worked out for Thorn:

A strong twin, and a weak twin.

A good twin, and a... well, not abadtwin, but certainly not an impressive one.

A sure and sunny twin, and a twin who preferred to sit alone and make art out of trash.

“Go on,” Noro said gently.

Thorn swallowed hard. She scratched her left arm. Another shadow-twin thing: when Thorn got nervous or scared or felt bad about herself, she felt itchy, and first rubbed and then scratched and then clawed at her skin until Mazby or Noro or Brier stopped her.

“Maybe,” Thorn said, “the lightning has tapped into the Old Wild. And is using it to turn against us.”

An unbearable stretch of silence followed.

A firefly bumped against a window.

Noro stood. His voice was strange and rough. He sounded less like Noro and more like the crash of storms. “I’ll thank you not to speak of the Old Wild again, not until Brier is well. Even a unicorn’s heart can only bear so much at one time.”

Then Noro left. In his wake trailed a pulsing, frigid sensation. A vein of magic, maybe? Had Noro’s sadness made it stir? The shadows in the room deepened. Or was it simply the fading lantern light?

Thorn sat very still, breathing thin and slow, cradling Mazby in her palms, until the feeling passed.

.5.

The Shivering Cub

Once, when the world was young and savage, shadows had souls.

The light of the two moons cascaded to the ground in tiny crystalline flurries. Trees sang to one another in rumbling voices about the patterns of sunlight in their leaves.

Before humans and witches, before dogs and horses and mistbirds—even before the unicorns—there lived mammoth beasts with earth and wind in their veins instead of blood.

They breathed through lungs spilling over with yellow-flowered clover, and saw the world with limpid eyes that glimmered of dark seawater.

They inhaled rain and exhaled snow, inhaled fire and exhaled ashes.

They tore down mountains and rebuilt them with the hides of their own dead.

They moved slowly, trailing cliffs and valleys and forests in their wake.

The horizon between ocean and sky, between meadow and stars, was a shifting, blurry divide.

It moved—often.

Sometimes the beasts would awaken to a ground frosted with stars and a sky churning with waves.

Sometimes there would be no stars at all. Long days of darkness stretched out for an age until, without warning, the skies would burst awake again, spilling shimmering falls of lily-colored light to announce a new dawn.

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