Page 116 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

But it rose.

It pointed north.

“Right, you beautiful witchlet,” I said. “North it is.”

And so I wheeled the ship to the right and stayed with the strong current keeping us aloft. When I saw that my hands weren’t needed to keep us on course, I let myself lie back. And, of course, exhausted and lacking a night’s sleep, my eyelids grew heavy and closed like gates as I surrendered to the kingdom of sleep.

I was walking through the Snowless Wood, that great, cold forest on the border of Holt and Norholt where the witch Deadlegs has her Downward Tower, and where I first met Norrigal. The squashman was there, a sort of dogsbody who I knew would turn to gourds when the spell holding him together gave out, and he was pushing the cart I had once seen him bearing a hanged man in. The cart was empty now, and he waved for me to lie down in it. My fatigue in the waking world having followed me into sleep, I was only too glad to settle in. He trundled me along on a crooked road lined with trees. In front of each tree was a sword, stuck in the ground point-first—I had seen these trees as well. But what I hadn’t seen in the Snowless Wood was Norrigal upside down, hanging from a tree in full leaf so that only her top half was visible. Her eyes were closed, her hair in twin braids that made her look young and girlish, though some gray hairs had started coming in.

Her arms hung down over her head, and I saw that one hand was made into a fist. She opened this fist, and dust came out, along with a fine chain.

It was the rock, the one that was twinned in the necklace I wore.

Had she crushed it? Why? I felt sad.

A wolf pelt hung next to her, and it had been a big bastard, too.

Or perhaps a bitch? Was it the one I had seen in the tower?

Had the trees hunted one for her with their stabbing branches and passed it along their leafy crowns to her?

Have you noticed that dreams with witches in them make more questions than answers?

The squashman stopped his cart quite near to Norrigal, and she opened her eyes, looking straight into mine. We stayed like that for some time, eyes locked, her rocking slightly and then more, and then thrashing violently.

“Shyte, witchlet, what are you doing?”

“Taking some of the wind for you, you slackwit.”

“What wind?”

“Would you rather I use my strength talking or saving you?”

“What wind, though?” I said, for the leaves of the tree were calm around her save for the ones she whipped into, throwing leaves and twigs.

She put her finger to her lips, closed her eyes, then laughed harder and harder, and let her body be tossed.

And then her laughter became terrible thunder.

I woke in a storm.

The cloud-ship shuddered and bucked, and the cloud-stuff all around us—for you won’t believe me, but we were in a cloud—lit with lightning.

“Ha!” I said, and then in case I hadn’t been understood, I said it louder. The ship went up and then came down in a dizzying rush, turning my stones to ice. “I think we’re about to die, Spanth,” I said to Galva, but she just lay there, of course. I went next to her and grabbed her cool hand, which was stiff now, but I didn’t care. Here was a fine companion to crash to earth with, if it was to be so.

It had gotten cold of a sudden, fierce cold.

The air had the smell it only gets after lightning cleaves a tree, and I wondered if the ship had been struck while I slept.

I now put my hand down on something furry and dry.

The wolf pelt from the dream.

“Gods gathered, witchlet. You’re too good to me.”

I picked it up, and on the tanned side, illuminated by a flash of lightning, I saw the words I AM written in what might have been blood.

That’s when I heard it.