She saunters away, forcing Marley and I to bolt after her. Marley is looking at me, trying to catch my eye. I know he’s nervous about this new arrangement.
“Where are you taking us?” he asks, a little accusingly.
“You want to see more Hidden Folk for that book?” she calls back to him. “Then you need to go to the hidden places!”
I catch up to her, dragging Marley along with me. “Cool!”
“Hidden places?” Marley objects, pointedly looking around at the vast loch, the barren woods, and the long and lonely road. “Nothing is hidden around here!”
“You’re not very imaginative, are you?” Alona replies, chirpily.
“He’s Gifted and Talented,” I tell her, using air quotes and drawing out the second word for as long as my breath allows. I grin at Marley, who pretends to chase me for a few seconds. “He’s logic and good marks and a teacher’s pet. Plays the bagpipes –
worst musical instrument to ever exist. So, no. Not
very imaginative.”
“I’ve told you to stop being rude about the bagpipes.”
“The day I stop being rude about your bagpipes is the day they lower me into the ground.”
I laugh but it dies quite quickly. School, fun, and musical instruments all seem like a million years
ago now.
“But seriously,” Marley perseveres. “Where are you taking us?”
We seem to be heading deeper into the woods, but they aren’t too deep. We can still see both the loch on the left and the road on the right. The long sliver of water is always in our sights as we move into the night.
“Here!” Alona finally declares, triumphantly.
I can see, secreted beneath fallen branches and a lot of foliage, a crumbling stone well. An ancient thing that must have been here for centuries. I approach it slowly, noting how dry it looks.
“What is it?”
Marley speaks from behind my left shoulder. His voice is resigned, a quiet and stoic tone that always alerts me to the presence of Glamour. I can tell, by that tone alone, that Marley cannot see this well. It has been Glamoured with magic, hiding it from humans.
Most humans. Not a witch who has the Sight,
like me.
“It’s an old well,” I explain softly. I lean over and peer down, into its seemingly bottomless entrance. “It’s dry but I can’t see how deep it goes.”
“Pretty deep,” Alona says, hoisting herself onto the stony edge of the well. “So, you coming?”
“As if!” snaps Marley, his directness making me start. “You’ve led me into some weird places, Ramya, but I’m not jumping into a potentially mile-deep well that I cannot see!”
Alona smiles sweetly at him “You stay here then.”
I frown at her. “Not going to happen. Where I go,
he goes.”
“And vice versa,” Marley adds.
Alona looks puzzled for a moment, glancing between the two of us. Then her face softens sheepishly, and she nods. “Well, it’s not too bad a fall. It shouldn’t hurt.”
“The word ‘shouldn’t’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there,” I say.
I turn to tell Marley that I’ll go first, but I stop. He looks different. Strange. He’s staring at the ground and is unimaginably still.
“You all right?” I ask.
He is breathing deeply and still staring at the ground. We stand in silence for a good while before he finally nods. “Fine.”
I don’t really believe him, but I don’t want to push. Not at this moment with a mysterious well behind
us both.
I mount the thing, swinging my legs over the opening. “Marley. If this breaks my ankles, I’ll scream. Then you smack her for leading us here.”
Alona snorts and Marley smiles reluctantly. I take a deep breath. I have had a few sprained ankles in my thirteen years. As a dyspraxic, I fall pretty often. Injuries are part of the package.
“If you can’t do it unafraid, just do it afraid,” I mutter, closing my eyes.
I let go and drop.
Chapter Seven
