I had no idea what time it was when we got back, but I fell onto my bed without even removing my clothes. For one blissful hour I slept like the dead, only to be woken by a stabbing pain in my left eye, accompanied by horrific visions that made me reach for my powders. Fortunately Reichis bit me before I got to them. ‘Wake up, Kellen!’ he chittered. ‘You’re sleep— What do you call it when someone tries to perform a spell in their sleep? Sleepcasting?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, pressing the heel of my hand into my left eye. Ancestors, but it hurt. Suddenly I felt another pain, this time on my other hand, which now sported the marks of squirrel cat teeth. ‘What the hell?’
Reichis looked up at me. ‘I thought maybe if I bit you it would take your mind off the pain in your eye. Did it work?’
I shook my head and got up from the bed, stumbling towards the door of the room. Everywhere I looked I saw blood, and the woodgrain of the walls seemed to twist and contort itself as if something were trying to claw its way through.
‘Where are you going?’ Reichis asked.
‘Outside …’ I said, barely able to speak. ‘Got to get outside.’
I heard him jump down from the bed to follow me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Stay here.’
I think he might have been a bit hurt by that.
By the time I made my way out to the back garden, the pain had started to ease and the visions began to subside. The trees looked like trees rather than twisting, grinding monsters struggling to free themselves of the bonds at their feet. The sky was black rather than red, and the smooth pebbles beneath my feet felt soft and welcoming instead of like a field of razor blades. I was so relieved that it took me a moment to realise I wasn’t alone.
‘You too, huh?’ Seneira asked.
She was crouching down next to a patch of blue and yellow flowers, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth.
‘Bad?’ she asked.
I nodded. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, pretty bad.’
I sat down beside her and leaned back on my elbows, looking up at the sky to make sure the stars were still stars and not thousands of angry bees coming to sting me. I felt exhausted – one more gift the shadowblack brought with it.
‘You know the worst part?’ Seneira asked. ‘It’s not even the pain, or the voices – though those make me want to scream until I can drown them out. But the worst part is that, when it’s all over, I can’t feel anything any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
She gave a small shrug and shook her head. ‘I feel nothing. I’m not happy. I’m not sad. When I think about my friends or my father, or even Tyne, it’s like … it’s like they’re strangers, like I don’t even have a family.’ She turned to looked at me. ‘Does that happen to you?’
I didn’t answer, mostly because I couldn’t. I never felt like I had a family any more, so how could I could tell if the shadowblack made it any worse?
‘I pinched myself,’ Seneira went on, showing me her wrist. It was too dark for me to see if there was a bruise there or not. ‘Really hard, just to see if I felt it.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. I mean, I felt the pain, but it just didn’t seem to matter.’
‘How long does it last?’ I asked. ‘The not feeling anything, I mean.’
She lay back beside me. ‘An hour maybe. Sometimes more. Even then I don’t … Life just seems … dulled somehow, like I can’t see colours the way I used to. Food tastes … okay, I guess.’ She took my hand and made my fingers brush against her palm. ‘Even this. I feel it, but it’s like it’s happening to someone else.’
The sound of squirrel-cat paws padding against the floor from inside the house reached my ears just before Reichis’s fuzzy face appeared at the back door. ‘Kiss her,’ he said.
‘Forget it.’
‘Forget what?’ Seneira asked.
‘Nothing.’
She glanced over to where Reichis sat on his haunches on the back step. ‘Oh, your … business partner.’
‘Kiss her, Kellen,’ the squirrel cat chittered, sniffing at the air. ‘I’m not kidding this time. Some part of her wants you to.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing, he just …’ A thought occurred to me.
I got back to my feet and extended a hand down towards her. She took it and I pulled her up. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
I took her right hand in my left, and put my other hand around to the small of her back. ‘Dancing.’
‘Dancing?’
I nodded, then realised I should probably have asked before grabbing at her. ‘Do you …?’
She shrugged. ‘Can’t hurt, I suppose.’
We had no music, and I’m pretty sure I am, by any standard, a terrible dancer – a fact Reichis seemed exceedingly comfortable pointing out repeatedly, despite his own preposterous-looking attempts. Somehow, though, as Seneira and I spun and stepped across the back garden over the next few minutes, I felt something change in her. At first I thought she was stiffening, becoming uncomfortable, but when I went to stop, she shook her head and started pulling me along. I realised then that I’d only thought she’d been tensing up because, for the first few minutes, she’d been almost lifeless. Now she seemed alive again, moving with a kind of purpose and determination as if the two of us were going into battle together. It wasn’t happiness, but rather a kind of staunch resolve to feel happy.
After a while she changed again, seeming lighter, freer. Sometimes we’d lose the rhythm and either she’d stumble or I’d step on her feet, and when it happened she’d laugh and we’d start again. I’m not sure how long we danced for, but the first blush of dawn was appearing on the horizon when she stopped, and abruptly pulled me into a hug that she held for a long time. ‘Thank you, Kellen,’ she said, then let go of me and ran back into the house.
I stood there by myself, until Reichis came over to me and asked, ‘Walking the path of the wild daisy, are we?’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘A step or two, anyway.’