feel her looking, as if she were turning a key in a door.
The marshes smelled salty and rich, like a bowl of broth. Tolcet’s horse ambled along, its hooves sinking into the path. Behind them, water welled up and filled the depressions. Fat jeweled flies clung, vibrating, to the rushes, and once, in a clear pool of water, Onion saw a snake curling like a green ribbon through water weeds soft as a cloud of hair.
“Wait here and watch Bonti and Mik for me,” Onion’s aunt said. “I’ll go to the train station. Onion? Are you all right?”
Onion nodded dreamily.
Tolcet and Halsa rode farther into the marsh, away from the road and the Perfil market and Onion. It was very different from the journey to Perfil, which had been hurried and dusty and dry and on foot. Whenever Onion or one of the twins stumbled or lagged behind, Halsa had rounded them up like a dog chasing sheep, pinching and slapping. It was hard to imagine cruel, greedy, unhappy Halsa being able to pick things out of other people’s minds, although she had always seemed to know when Mik or Bonti had found something edible; where there might be a soft piece of ground to sleep; when they should duck off the road because soldiers were coming.
Halsa was thinking of her mother and her brothers. She was thinking about the look on her father’s face when the soldiers had shot him behind the barn; the earrings shaped like snakes; how the train to Qual would be blown up by saboteurs. She meant to be on that train, she knew it. She was furious at Tolcet for taking her away; at Onion, because Tolcet had changed his mind about Onion.
Every now and then, while he waited in the market for his aunt to come back, Onion could see the pointy roofs of the wizards’ towers leaning against the sky as if they were waiting for him, just beyond the Perfil market, and then the towers would recede, and he would go with them, and find himself again with Tolcet and Halsa. Their path ran up along a canal of tarry water, angled off into thickets of bushes bent down with bright yellow berries, and then returned. It cut across other paths, these narrower and crookeder, overgrown and secret looking. At last they rode through a stand of sweet-smelling trees and came out into a grassy meadow that seemed not much larger than the Perfil market. Up close, the towers were not particularly splendid. They were tumbledown and so close together one might have strung a line for laundry from tower to tower, if wizards had been concerned with such things as laundry. Efforts had been made to buttress the towers; some had long, eccentrically curving fins of strategically piled rocks. There were twelve standing towers that looked as if they might be occupied. Others were half in ruins or were only piles of lichen-encrusted rocks that had already been scavenged for useful building materials.
Around the meadow were more paths: worn, dirt paths and canals that sank into branchy, briary tangles, some so low that a boat would never have passed without catching. Even a swimmer would have to duck her head. Children sat on the ruined walls of toppled towers and watched Tolcet and Halsa ride up. There was a fire with a thin man stirring something in a pot. Two women were winding up a ball of rough-looking twine. They were dressed like Tolcet. More wizards’ servants, Halsa and Onion thought. Clearly wizards were very lazy.
“Down you go,” Tolcet said, and Halsa gladly slid off the horse’s back. Then Tolcet got down and lifted off the harness and the horse suddenly became a naked, brown girl of about fourteen years. She straightened her back and wiped her muddy hands on her legs. She didn’t seem to care that she was naked. Halsa gaped at her.
The girl frowned. She said, “You be good, now, or they’ll turn you into something even worse.”
“Who?” Halsa said.
“The wizards of Perfil,” the girl said, and laughed. It was a neighing, horsey laugh. All of the other children began to giggle.
“Oooh, Essa gave Tolcet a ride.”
“Essa, did you bring me back a present?”
“Essa makes a prettier horse than she does a girl.”
“Oh, shut up,” Essa said. She picked up a rock and threw it. Halsa admired her economy of motion, and her accuracy.
“Oi!” her target said, putting her hand up to her ear. “That hurt, Essa.”
“Thank you, Essa,” Tolcet said. She made a remarkably graceful curtsy, considering that until a moment ago she had had four legs and no waist to speak of. There was a shirt and a pair of leggings folded and lying on a rock. Essa put them on. “This is Halsa,” Tolcet said to the others. “I bought her in the market.”
There was silence. Halsa’s face was bright red. For once she was speechless. She looked at the ground and then up at the towers, and Onion looked, too, trying to catch a glimpse of a wizard. All the windows of the towers were empty, but he could feel the wizards of Perfil, feel the weight of their watching. The boggy ground under his feet was full of wizards’ magic and the towers threw magic out like waves of heat from a stove. Magic clung even to the children and servants of the wizards of Perfil, as if they had been marinated in it.
“Come get something to eat,” Tolcet said, and Halsa stumbled after him. There was a flat bread, and onions and fish. Halsa drank water that had the faint, slightly metallic taste of magic. Onion could taste it in his own mouth.
“Onion,” someone said. “Bonti, Mik.” Onion looked up. He was back in the market and his aunt stood there. “There’s a church nearby where they’ll let us sleep. The train leaves early tomorrow morning.”
After she had eaten, Tolcet took Halsa into one of the towers, where there was a small cubby under the stairs. There was a pallet of reeds and a mothy wool blanket. The sun was still in the sky. Onion and his aunt and his cousins went to the church, where there was a yard where refugees might curl up and sleep a few hours. Halsa lay awake, thinking of the wizard in the room above the stairs where she was sleeping. The tower was so full of wizards’ magic that she could hardly breathe. She imagined a wizard of Perfil creeping, creeping down the stairs above her cubby, and although the pallet was soft, she pinched her arms to stay awake. But Onion fell asleep immediately, as if drugged. He dreamed of wizards flying above the marshes like white lonely birds.
In the morning, Tolcet came and shook Halsa awake. “Go and fetch water for the wizard,” he said. He was holding an empty bucket.
Halsa would have liked to say go and fetch it yourself, but she was not a stupid girl. She was a slave now. Onion was in her head again, telling her to be careful. “Oh, go away,” Halsa said. She realized she had said this aloud, and flinched. But Tolcet only laughed.
Halsa rubbed her eyes and took the bucket and followed him. Outside, the air was full of biting bugs too small to see. They seemed to like the taste of Halsa. That seemed funny to Onion, for no reason that she could understand.
The other children were standing around the fire pit and eating porridge. “Are you hungry?” Tolcet said. Halsa nodded. “Bring the water up and then get yourself something to eat. It’s not a good idea to keep a wizard waiting.”
He led her along a well-trodden path that quickly sloped down into a small pool and disappeared. “The water is sweet here,” he said. “Fill your bucket and bring it up to the top of the wizard’s tower. I have an errand to run. I’ll return before nightfall. Don’t be afraid, Halsa.”
“I’m not afraid,” Halsa said. She knelt down and filled the bucket. She was almost back to the tower before she realized that the bucket was half empty again. There was a split in the wooden bottom. The other children were watching her and she straightened her back. So
