Page 65 of Boy of Chaotic Making

“I mean, I’m not secretly an old man.” She grinned. “But one time some English soldiers were coming by and being bastards and stuff. This is when we were in Scotland.”

“I hate Scotland,” Kegan grumbled.

“No, you don’t,” she countered, and he didn’t argue. Continuing on, she said, “They were being weird about who owns what, and my mum put me in this cabinet in the cellar of an old house of a friend we were visiting. Told me not to leave no matter what. She didn’t want me to try and fly away on my own. I was still really little. So I stayed. For two days. Which maybe doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re in a box in a dark cellar without anything to eat, it’s forever.”

Were you okay?Owein asked. Kegan cleared his throat and translated.

“I mean, I’m okay now, aren’t I?” She rubbed her arms as though suddenly aware of the temperature. She shrugged. “Mostly okay. But I get it.” She paused. “I have an idea. I found this place a few days ago, before we found you. Let’s go.”

“Where?” Kegan asked.

“You’ll see!” She jumped to her bare feet. “Faster to fly, but I won’t leave you slowpokes behind. Hurry up, though.” She took off sprinting through the grass.

Owein stood, hesitated. But Kegan followed immediately, so Owein loped behind. They picked their way through the forest for a good half hour—probably farther than Merritt would have wanted him to go—until they reached a cliff. Fallon led the way down to a place where the moss and grass peeled away to stone and earth. Across a gully, there was a small cave.

“Kegan, make us a bridge to there,” Fallon pointed.

“That’s far!” Kegan complained. “I’ll get dizzy.”

“I’ll carry you.”

The boy relented. He held out his hands and furrowed his brow, and Owein barked in excitement as rocks and dirt pulled up and remolded themselves against the cliff edge, making a narrow path to the cave. He’d never seen someone use earth magic before.

Just as it finished, Kegan teetered back onto his rump and held his head in his hands. He seemed to struggle to sit up straight.

Fallon, undaunted, merely put her hands under his arms and picked him up, then bent over and shimmied until Kegan made it onto her back. He had enough wherewithal to put his arms around Fallon’s neck; she looped an arm around each of his legs, carrying him like a knapsack. “Let’s go.”

She led the way. The earthy trail held.

When they approached the cave mouth, Owein’s fur stopped working. That was, nowhefelt the chill of the late-winter day. He peered inside, but couldn’t see anything past three feet in.

“Let’s go in.”

Owein shook his head.

“Darkness isn’t scary.” Fallon bent her knees and shot up quickly, using the momentum to lift Kegan higher on her back. “Nothing is really scary. We just make it that way in our heads. That’s what my mom said.” She glanced into the cave. “She’s dead now, but she wasn’t scared when she died. She was brave. So I’m always going to be brave. And Owein? Life is a lot easier being brave than being scared.”

Owein considered this while he stared into the shadows.

“If you’re saying something, I can’t hear it.”

He hadn’t said anything. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“Hey.” She waited for him to meet her gaze. “I mean, I’m notalwaysbrave. A lot of times I have to pretend. But pretending is kind of like practice. And the more you practice, the easier it gets. Just like those fancy girls and their push-button musical instruments.”

You mean pianofortes?he asked, but she couldn’t hear him, and Kegan, who was coming around, didn’t translate.

“I’ll stay close.” She smiled, and there was something very assuring in her smile. She took the first step, then the second. The fourth took her out of the light, into the shadows where Owein’s eyes couldn’t penetrate.

He scratched at the ground a moment, uneasy. Then, pretending as best he could, he followed his friends into the darkness.

Chapter 23

March 7, 1847, London, England

Outside of an augury lesson, collecting one’s hairs on a tabletop might seem eccentric, if not somewhat unsanitary. But Professor Griffiths’s methods had proven nothing but beneficial, and so she followed this suggestion as well, snipping and scattering several hairs from the back of her head. The more she could learn of her future, the more she could protect hernow. Finally, unfocusing her eyes, she waggled her fingers over the hairs as though she were about to perform a parlor trick.

To her utmost delight, a vision came. Of her exiting the building in the same dress she had on now. A vision just shortly in the future, but there it was!

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