Page 81 of Heir of Uncertain Magic

Merritt’s boat was still there—the watchmen had taken him on theirs. Owein pranced by it nervously, staring at the lapping waves, the mainland in the distance. His heart thudded and flipped and thudded. Cold nipped at the pads of his paws.

Baptiste approached. Owein barked at him.We have to help!He dragged his paw across the ground, forming a lopsidedH. Then anE—

“I want to help, too,” Baptiste said, and Owein’s heart flipped again. The chef approached the boat, then paused. “We can get there in this, but we can’t bring them back. Is not big enough.”

Whimpers clawed up Owein’s throat. He turned toward Baptiste, waiting for a solution.

None came.

Owein ran down the shoreline, as if he could find another boat in doing so. He didn’t. A whine turned into a howl, which startled a sleeping whimbrel. Owein darted back to Baptiste’s side.

The chef sighed. “I can try fire, alert those close by with smoke. Ask for help.” He turned, glancing at nearby trees. “Then ... what is the word?Confisquétheir boat.”

Owein looked out across the bay. Remembered standing beneath the strange purple snow with Merritt and his letter paper. He still remembered how to spell it.F-A-M-I-L-Y.

If Owein wanted them to be safe, he had to leave safety. He could do it. He knew he could. But it was scary out there. People had hurt him out there.

But Silas Hogwood was gone, wasn’t he? And Baptiste would protect him.

Turning to the chef, Owein barked. But the chef couldn’t understand him, and his letters were in the house. Spinning around, Owein took in his surroundings. He couldn’t magic Merritt’s boat—he might unintentionally break the spell on it. He spied a piece of bark hanging off a young birch.

Hurrying to it, he tried to get a good hold of it in his mouth, to pull it free, but he kept hitting his sensitive nose. The angle was weird. Still, he kept trying, until Baptiste’s hand touched his neck. He backed away, and Baptiste took his place, grabbed the bark, and pulled it free. It was about the length of his ring finger and three times as wide.

“You want this?” he asked.

Owein took the bark in his mouth and trounced back to the path, where he dropped it. Steeling himself, he focused on it and thought,Big.

The bark shuttered as the alteration spell seized it, widening and lengthening it. Owein could resize and recolor anything, to a certain extent, and he pushed the first into that bark, even as he felt his spine pop from the side effects. His knees started to bend the other way, and he whined from discomfort. Still, he focused on the bark, growing it to the size of a melon, a wheelbarrow, aboat. The edges were curled just enough. When he was done, he panted hard and held still, waiting and praying for his legs to straighten out. Sometimes it happened quickly, sometimes slowly, depending on what he did.

“Wow.” Baptiste touched the oversized piece of bark. “With some binds and grease ... it might sail. We could tie it to the boat.”

Owein shook his head as much as his contorted neck would allow. He could make it go. He could animate things. Only ... he might get confused on the way. He might get scared.

Baptiste crouched beside him, petting his disfigured back. Owein whined, not because the touch hurt, but because he was scared. So scared.

“I will have to find the prison they’re in,” Baptiste murmured. “But I will do it.”

The chef stayed with him until his skeleton rearranged itself.

Then they both went inside to get the rest of what they’d need to make the trip.

Hulda could not think of a worse way to spend the Sabbath than in jail.

It became real the first night sleeping in this terrible place. She was given a threadbare blanket with a few holes in it. While it was stained, it did appear to have been recently washed. Apparently there was no sense of propriety for criminals, because she had to, technically, share a roomwithtwomen. There was no cot or pillow brought in—only that long, hard stone bench or the floor. Given she had not been proven guilty of anything, it seemed extreme. And she had to sleep in her corset! Not that she would have changed into a nightgown if given one. Privacy was only for the free. The only time she got an iota of it was once in the morning and once at night, when she was pulled from the cell to use the privy, and that was still done under heavy guard, with little more than a thin wooden door between them and herself. It was humiliating.

If not for Merritt, she might have devolved on Saturday. Sleep deprived, cold, unsure of her future. She didn’t know what she’d expected—someone to walk in and say it was all a misunderstanding and let her go, or perhaps she’d wake up from this nightmare, realizing it had all been a bad dream. But a cold morning with a cold, meager breakfast drilled the severity of the situation into her bones. Merritt tried to make light of it, and if nothing else, talking to him helped her focus on other things—as much as one can refocus their thoughts when surrounded on all sides by a human cage. Hulda couldn’t tell if Merritt was relaxed about their situation or merely very good at masking his own trepidation. She feared the latter, but again, his mask offered a strange sort of comfort.

She couldn’t even relish the idea that he’d more or less proposed to her. Not now, not here. Not like this.

Their cellmate was taken away Saturday afternoon and not brought back. When Merritt asked one of the guards what had happened to him, he shrugged. When Merritt asked what would happen tothem, the man shrugged again.

Hulda didn’t sleep much better the second night. Sunday morning, a different guard announced their trial date was set for Monday, December 7—fifteen days away. Fifteen days in this cold, awful place.

Before lunch was served, Hulda propped herself in the far corner of the cell, where the cold bench met the cold wall, and worried her hands. Wrongly incarcerated, and she couldn’t say a thing about it for fifteenmore days. Fifteen days without sunlight, without a change of clothing or a proper meal, without contact with anyone else ... she was going to go mad. She was going to retrogress. And what then? What if no one saw through Mr.Baillie’s ruse and he riled jury and judge alike? What if she was found guilty? How many years of prison would be ahead of her? Years of hard labor, no doubt. She’d never find another job. And what of Merritt? He’d likely be sent elsewhere, maybe even deemed dangerous because of his breadth of magic. They might get different sentences, different prison times. That would break her. She’d lose her life’s work, her love, any chance of having a family—

“Hulda.”

She’d worked her hands to redness. Merritt crouched down in front of her and took them in his own, preventing her from causing further damage. He offered her a soft, lopsided smile. “It will be a funny story to tell someday.”

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