I can’t breathe. My lungs are full of pond water and I’m drowning and behind it all, I hear the harsh cackle of witches.

  I struggle with my own drowsiness for a moment, like I’m trying to escape from a heavy blanket, and then it’s gone, and I can breathe again. I’m awake.

  It was magic. Something in the blindfold that turned me sleepy. I feel uneasy, violated. They used magic on me, took away my free will.

  This is why magic was once banned in Anglyon. Magic users had so much power over ordinary folk. It created an imbalance. Then the witches revolted at the Battle of Goose Spring, and the government came up with a compromise—the hundred covenant spells, licenses for practicing witches. Regulation for corporations, so magic became something safe and predictable. Available at supermarkets and malls. For everyone, not just those who happened to be born with the ability.

  But what the Toadmen are doing isn’t covenant magic.

  How do they get away with it? Why is this place not swarming with auditors, hauling Mr. Gray and his friends off to recovery centers along with all the witches?

  I know the answer, of course.

  There are three big magic corporations in Anglyon—Ilium, Moracle and Welch. Ilium is the biggest—it makes most of the glamour patches and enchanted food products you find at the supermarket. Like the junk food I can still taste at the back of my throat. The people of Candlecott may not do magic, but we all use Ilium products. You can’t live in Anglyon and not use them. And Ilium’s magic isn’t dangerous, like witch magic. It’s made in laboratories and factories and, yes, Caraway, recovery centers. Half the witch recovery centers in Anglyon are owned by Ilium. They give the rebel witches an opportunity to give back to society. To be useful.

  And Caraway’s dad works for Ilium. Director of thaumaturgy, whatever that means. Who knows how many other Toads work there?

  I guess magic restrictions don’t apply to them.

  All that power, that money, that magic. All in the hands of a bunch of rich men who don’t have to play the same game as everyone else.

  I hear an echo of Caraway’s voice in my head. Think of the money the big magic corporations would lose if people could just whip up their own glamours and potions and enchanted cleaning products.

  It’s all just energy, is what Sol said.

  I feel suddenly outraged that I’m here at all. That I’m following ridiculous Toad rules like a good little girl.

  I’m going to take the blindfold off.

  Or at least shift it a bit so I can peek out from underneath.

  I’m going to do it.

  Right now.

  Now.

  Now.

  My hands aren’t obeying my brain. My body feels relaxed and comfortable, but I can’t move it. A frisson of panic ripples through me, but is quickly dulled by the enchantment in the blindfold.

  Of course, I don’t entirely need my regular eyes to see.

  I look threadwise, and silvery mettle threads appear all around me. I still can’t see the fen, or the boat, or Caraway. But I can see Caraway’s mettle. The swirls and braids and knots that make up his life-force, all coalesced into the vague shape of a sitting human. Some of those threads are reaching out to me, and some of mine are reaching back out to him, entwining together at the tips. Probably left over from the huge mistake we made last night.

  Caraway’s mettle is still shot through with shadowy brown Toad mettle, and I remember the taste of pond water, and the wetness in my lungs.

  I widen my awareness, and the thrumming of unease grows stronger.

  There’s someone else in the boat with us.

  Or something.

  It’s another swirling knot of mettle in the vague shape of a human, standing at the prow of the boat.

  I’ve never seen anything like this mettle before. It’s intricate and dense and busy, in the same way that a swarm of bees is. But it’s all Toad mettle. It’s…organic, somehow. Rootlike and slimy and pulsing with power.

  Somehow there is actually pond water in my mouth now, and the cold grit of it overpowers the lavender-scented enchantment of the blindfold. Suddenly my hands are my own again, and I rip the blindfold from my face as I spit out the water.

  The figure in the boat wears a long black hooded robe. It’s shaped like a man, but I’ve seen its mettle and I know it isn’t human. It’s facing away from me, looking out over the water. It holds a long pole that it’s using to propel the boat forward. I glance around. We are in a narrow channel of water. There’s no sign of the barge. No sign of the Deepdene dock. Around us are just brown muddy water and floating clumps of peaty vegetation. Straggling, hunched trees grow straight out of the water, reaching twiggy branches up to the sky, dripping with pale lichens. Vines and epiphytic plants cling to every surface, and the air smells strongly of mud and decomposing plant matter and sulfur.

  Suddenly it doesn’t seem entirely out of the question that Caraway has brought me here to kill me. Am I going to be sacrificed to some kind of arcane Toad god?

  He didn’t kiss like someone who was planning to kill me, though.

  But perhaps it was all an act. Designed to put me at ease.

  I glance back at the hooded figure, at the hands holding the pole, and my heart judders in my chest. They aren’t human hands. The skin is greenish brown and lumpen, covered in warts.

  My breath hitches as I gulp in fear, and slowly, the figure’s head turns toward me. I can’t make out its face beneath the hood, but I see the glinting of eyes.

  Hundreds of eyes.

  Without thinking, I let out a scream.

  The sound reverberates around the twisted marsh willows and spongy mounds of sedge and cattails.

  The robed figure shudders.

  Then it collapses in on itself, the dark cloak falling heavily to the bottom of the boat with a thump, as the robed figure disintegrates into hundreds of small, scuttling creatures.

  Toads.

  Everywhere. All over the boat, scrambling over the sides and plopping into the water. Brown and warty with slitted, staring yellow eyes.

  They’re on my lap, on my hands. One gets tangled in my hair and I shudder and fling it away.

  Caraway tears off his own blindfold and glances around, sweeping toads from his own lap before turning to me in horror.

  “What did you do?” he demands.

  “What did I do?” I retort, hurling another toad from my leg into the fen. “What did I do?”

  “I told you there’d be consequences for taking off the blindfold. How did you even do it?”

  I stare at him, dumbfounded. How I got the blindfold off is hardly the most pressing topic of conversation right now.

  “Someone was steering the boat,” I tell him. “Someone who just exploded into a thousand toads.”

  “Yeah,” Caraway retorts. “And now they’re not steering the boat anymore. Now nobody is steering the boat, and I am stuck in this cursed bog with you, of all people.”

  I want to smack the sneer right off his face, but I’m afraid if I tried, I’d just start kissing him again. My heart is going a million miles per hour, my breath coming fast. I want to grab ahold of him and drive this terrible place out of my mind.

  “Get me out of here,” I say from between clenched teeth. “Now.”

  Caraway folds his arms over his chest. “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  Something in my gut starts to sink. “Tell me you know where we are.”

  “Morgan. Deeping Fen stretches for hundreds of miles. I have been here precisely twice before, and both times I was a good boy and kept my thrice-cursed blindfold on like I was told. I have absolutely no idea where we are, or how to get out of here.”

  I’m about to reply, when something bumps the bottom of the boat.

  Caraway and I immediately go still and silent.

  “Did we hit a rock?” I whisper.

  Caraway shakes his head, a barely perceptible movement.

  All the toads have vanished, slipped away into the fen.

  The water beside the boat ripples, and something long and thin breaks the surface, like an eel’s fin.

  A really, really big eel.

  My eyes meet Caraway’s and he raises a finger to his lips. He warned me about dangerous creatures before we left Deepdene. I assumed he was being dramatic.

  Everything goes silent. Even the birds have stopped their strange, wailing calls. I hold my breath. The water is as smooth and still as glass. Caraway’s eyes bore into mine, his body as tense as a bowstring.

  The creature bursts from beneath us in an eruption of mud and fen water, which splatters everywhere as it rises into the air. Its body is as thick as a hundred-year-old tree trunk, skin like shining wet leather, the color of dried blood. A single fin, as sharp as a razor, runs the length of its body. It rears up and crashes back down again, before rising once more.

  The boat rocks alarmingly in the water, and I see loops and coils of rubbery skin rising around us. For a moment I think there are more of the creatures—a lot more—but then I realize it’s only the one. One very, very long, very thick nightmare eel worm. Its enormous body curves round, and I see where its head should be, but there’s just a blunt featureless stump. Somehow this—the lack of any eyes or ears or mouth—fills me with even more horror. Its body smashes against the boat, and I am upended into the water.

  It’s colder than I expected, and deeper. My jeans and sneakers drag me under for a moment, and I taste brackish, muddy water. I’m back at Miss Prinny’s again, Mr. Gray holding me pinned in place, his left eye milky and pale.

  I kick out and manage to break the surface, taking in a great lungful of air. I strike out for the nearest floating hillock, while the monster thrashes and roils around me. I can’t see Caraway anywhere.

  Scrambling onto semi-solid ground, I slide and drag my way up to the top of the hillock, where a scraggly gray alder sprouts inelegantly. I grip it with one hand to keep myself upright and search the water for the monster, trying to catch my breath.

  Nothing.

  All I see is swamp, stretching in every direction. Marshy, sodden earth. Brown water. Twisted ancient trees looped with choking vines and other epiphytes. I let out an involuntary sob.

  How am I going to get out of here?

  The water boils for a moment, and then I see Caraway’s head break the surface. He takes a great gasp and then is dragged back under again. I dither on the edge of my peat hill for a moment, then spot the pole that the toad-boatman held, floating maybe five feet away. The worm-eel thing has disappeared under the surface once more, so I take a deep breath and charge back into the water up to my hips. I reach out and snag the pole, trying not to think about what else might be hiding beneath the water. Then I scramble back to solidish ground and lean out, holding the pole at one end.

  I wait. For longer than any person should be able to hold their breath. But just when I’m sure that Caraway will not be coming up, ever again, his face bursts free from the water and he takes a gasping sob of a breath.

  “Grab hold!” I yell, and thrust the pole toward him.

  I’m not fast enough, though. A rust-colored coil encircles him and pulls him under. I shove the pole at the worm, trying to make it let him go, but I can’t see beneath the surface of the water and am afraid I’ll inadvertently hurt Caraway.

  The water grows calm again, but I keep the pole dangling in the water, like the Garreg-nuu fishermen do, wrapping catgut around the end of a stick and flipping eels out of the water.

  I can hear sobbing, and am surprised to discover that it’s coming from me. I don’t want Caraway to die. He may be the most annoying human on the planet, but he doesn’t deserve to die.

  Finally, a hand emerges, pale fingers wrapping around the pole. I haul. The water turns white and foamy as Caraway struggles against the creature. I plant my heels into the peaty mud and pull. Inch by inch, Caraway moves closer, until he’s within my reach.

  I drop the pole and grab him by the arm, hauling him onto the bank. I slip and we end up tangled together and covered in mud.

  “Thanks,” he pants, his voice thick and strained.

  But it isn’t over yet.

  The creature rears up out of the water before us, towering over our little hillock, then thrusting down toward us. The tip of its blunt head spirals open to reveal a gaping mouth surrounded by row upon row of sharp yellow teeth.

  It is without a doubt the most terrifying and disgusting thing I have ever seen.

  Caraway’s hands are spread out before him, a look of intense concentration on his face. Instinctively, I flick threadwise for a moment, and see him weaving another of his Toad-mettle nets, trying to snag the creature and stop it from plunging its gaping, toothed head toward us. The flesh-petals contract and expand, making the teeth ripple. Caraway has slowed its dive to us, but it’s descending closer and closer. It’s only a matter of time.

  Viscous slime drops from the creature’s maw and lands, burning, on my arms. I can smell rotting flesh and sludge. Caraway grunts with effort.

  “I can’t hold it much longer,” he says between gritted teeth. “Do something.”

  Do something. But what can I do? I’m no witch. And I’m hardly a fighter. All I have is a wooden pole.

  Ah.

  I bend and snatch up the pole, then brace myself. “Let go,” I tell Caraway.

  “What?”

  “Do it. Now.”

  With a last gasp of effort, Caraway lets his mettle net disintegrate. The force holding the monster away from us is gone, and it plunges toward us blindly, at lightning speed. I grip the pole in my hands and squeeze my eyes shut as the creature drives straight down onto it, impaling itself on the smooth wood, the fleshy toothed petals of its mouth just inches away from my face. With a raw, animal scream, it rears back again, the pole still embedded in its throat. It whips in the air, still screaming, its body crashing into trees, which splinter under its bulk. It thwacks onto the surface of the water, bucking and writhing, then burrows down headfirst into the muck, slipping deeper and deeper until the thin barbed whip of its tail is swallowed and vanishes.

  We stand there, shoulder to shoulder, filthy with mud and soaking wet. But the creature doesn’t return.

  “Is it gone?” I ask in a whisper.

  Caraway nods. “For now,” he says, then takes a few staggering steps away from me and vomits into a watery channel, sending the fen water back where it came from.

  It must be a really expensive glamour, because he manages to look handsome and elegant even when vomiting. And maybe it’s just the glamour, but all smeared with muck, his hair caked with it, he looks…almost heroic. Something squirms inside me, which I put down to lingering adrenaline from our near-death experience.

  Caraway wipes his mouth with a wet sleeve, then turns to me.

  “I told you to stay quiet.”

  And just like that, I’m back to wanting to kill him again.

  “What now?” I say, looking around at the fen and shivering. There are no landmarks. No indications of where we could go. What I can see of the sky overhead is heavy with cloud, so I have no idea where the sun is, or even what time it might be.

  “We should find some solid ground,” Caraway replies, looking around. “Somewhere we can wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  But of course he doesn’t respond, just wades into the narrowest channel between us and the next bit of solidish ground. I want to tell him I think he’s a conceited prat, but I guess we did just save each other’s lives, so I’ll save it for later. I bite back a shudder when I think of what could still be lurking beneath the water, and step after him.

  * * *

  —

  I HATE EVERY SECOND of our journey through the fen. The water is cold, but the air above it is humid—not warm, but wet. I cannot get dry. Cannot warm up. I’m sodden and filthy and clammy, my clothes chafing against my skin. Midges buzz in my ears and sink their tiny mouthparts into my flesh, feasting on my blood, leaving behind itchy swollen welts.

  Caraway and I do not talk. I’ve learned my lesson and don’t want to draw attention to any other horrific monsters that might be lurking beneath the surface of the water. At one point, a shellycoat wraps clammy fingers around my ankle and I manage to swallow my scream, kicking and scrambling out of the water, my whole body shaking with fear. The shellycoat doesn’t attempt to follow, just watches me with lamplike yellow eyes, its scaled forehead peeking just above the water.

  I’ve seen shellycoats before, in the Mira back home. They’re harmless, remnants of a time when monsters roamed Anglyon. They use those glowing eyes to try to lure fishermen into their depths, and on an ash moon they might succeed, if the fisherman has had a few too many nips from his hip flask.

  This one looks different. Hungrier. Cleverer. Its fingernail-like scales are grayish brown and spotted with mildew, eyes burning with an intensity it’s hard to look away from. Caraway looks over his shoulder at me and at the shellycoat, making a twisting gesture with his left hand. The shellycoat opens a gaping, fishlike mouth to bare tiny black teeth at him, before sinking silently back into the swamp. I’m exhausted, my empty stomach churning with fear and hunger. Every clump of vegetation we pass is spongy and insubstantial, some of them floating between channels of brown water. There are plenty of trees, but they seem to be rooted in the mucky soil at the bottom of each channel, protruding upward through the water like skeleton fingers.

  It’s getting harder to see, so I assume we must be approaching nightfall. Finally, Caraway pauses and looks over his shoulder at me.

  “Up there,” he says in a low voice, pointing.

  There’s a larger hillock than usual in front of us, with gray stones clustered on the top.

  Stones.

  Stones mean solid ground.

  With a little sob of relief, I scramble up the hill after Caraway, to what looks like a ruined building. Little remains of it other than crumbling stone walls that reach no higher than my waist. Everything is overgrown and thick with moss. A broken pillar stands on one side of what must once have been the doorway, and another is lying horizontal, crumbled and half buried in trumpet creeper and supplejack. Although they’re worn, I can see that the pillars were once intricately carved.

 

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