Page 98 of Crossroads Magic
She drove through the intersection and onward, along the ribbon of untouched snow.
I could hear Ghaliya crying in the back seat, and tried to close down my heart and my hearing. I watched the curves of the road, and the trees pass by. I held myself still.
“Huh,” Olivia said softly.
“What?” I asked, grateful for any distraction at all.
“We’ve just passed the hamlet limits.”
“Okay?”
Olivia pursed her lips. “I honestly didn’t think we’d be allowed to go beyond them.”
“Allowed?” I repeated.
She didn’t look at me. Driving was too hazardous to risk it. But I could see her roll her eyes. “You know the Crossing. Surely you’ve put it together by now, that some of us can’t leave.”
I turned in the big seat to watch her closely. “Broch said that Harper can’t leave. I thought it was because she has a price on her head, anywhere outside the town. You mean she physically can’t leave? Something stops her?” Cold fingers touched my spine. “The will of the town stops you?”
“I think so, yes,” Olivia said. “It’s the strangest sensation. As you approach the settlement limits, your energy drains. You think of all the reasons why leaving is a bad idea. Everyone you’re leaving behind. You reach a state of mind where you simply do not want to leave anymore. And you find yourself turning back.”
“So it’s not a physical barrier….”
“It might as well be,” Olivia said, with a soft sound that might have been a sigh. “Haigton Crossing…you learn to love the place and the people in it, but you also hate it a little, even though it gives you so much in exchange.”
“What does it give?” Ghaliya asked.
Olivia’s gaze flicked toward the mirror and back to the road. “How old do you think I am?”
Her question also warned me. I took in the very old fashioned but stylish outfit she wore, that I had only ever seen in movies. “I think you are a lot older than you look,” I said cautiously.
“If I cared about such things, I would be celebrating my eighty-first birthday, this February.”
“Wow…!” Ghaliya breathed.
I was surprised…but I wasn’t. “My mother was near your age,” I said. “But even in death, she looked a lot younger than she was.”
And then there was Trevalyan, who should by rights be crippled by arthritis now.
“Your mother arrived in the Crossing when she was older than I was when I first came here,” Olivia said. “The Crossing didn’t have the time it had with me to do…whatever it does. But there is a price to pay for living so long.”
“But you can leave the Crossing,” Ghaliya said. “You’re doing it right now.”
“That is because Wim remains in Haigton Crossing,” Olivia replied.
I drew in a breath that shook. It seemed to come together in my mind with a snap and click of parts fitting into each other. This was why Wim had never seen a city. He couldn’t leave the town with Olivia. One of them had to remain behind, and he was a dryad and wouldn’tlikea place that wasn’t mostly earth and gardens and trees.
“Harper can’t leave because there is no one to remain behind, for her,” I said. “Neither can Trevalyan, or Broch. Juda, too. Hirom and Frida. They all like each other, well, except for Harper. But that’s not enough to make them come back to the town when they leave, so the town doesn’t let them leave at all.”
“They stayed too long,” Olivia said. “After that, they couldn’t leave.”
“After what?” Ghaliya said. There was a touch of fear in her voice. “How long is too long?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I thought that, perhaps, your mother had stayed too long. But the Crossing has let both of you leave, despite badly wanting your mother to stay.”
The trees ended and we were driving over the open country. The covering of snow was blinding in the afternoon sunlight. Everywhere I looked, it dazzled me and I could barely make out details. But I wasn’t seeing very well, anyway. My thoughts were running too fast, and there were too many of them, tumbling over each other.
Olivia slowed the car even more, because the road was unplowed and with a blanket of snow across both road and fields, it was nearly impossible to tell where the road was. Just a faint, perfectly flat ribbon, built up a little higher than to either side, allowed Olivia to pick out where to go.
