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best potions always taste the worst."
"Is it working?"
"Give it a minute." Heat filled her belly and spread outward, tingling. "I think I'm
feeling& oh yeah, I'm feeling it." She clenched and flexed her hands, breathing harder. It
was as if someone had injected liquid lightning into her veins. A bright, sizzling energy
filled her body, down to the tips of her fingers and toes. Her very cells seemed to swell to
the bursting point with life. She stood. "I think I can do this. But I'll have to maintain my
focus for a long time. I'll need total silence. If you distract me at the wrong moment, I
could lose control of the spell, and then we'll never get the broom back."
"Understood."
"You may as well sit down. This could take awhile." She closed her eyes, pressed
two fingers to her forehead, and focused her mind. She conjured a mental image of her
broom, seeing every detail: the pattern of the wood-grain, the length and color of the
bristles, the small crack near the end of the handle. Next, she summoned an image of the
storage room at the inn in Jacob's Hill. She'd only gotten a brief look at the room, but she
did her best to reconstruct the layout in her head. She saw the broom in one corner,
leaning against the wall, and visualized it rising slowly into the air. It hung suspended a
few feet above the ground, wobbling.
There was no way she'd be able to get it through the locked door, so she focused
instead on the small, grimy window and turned the broom toward it. She was going to
have to break the glass. No helping that. With her Gift, she rammed the broom through
the windowpane. The glass shattered, and the broom sped down the street. A woman
shrieked. A dog barked. The broom rounded a corner, then soared into the air, over the
town wall, over the forest. It raced higher still, until the trees were no more than a
rumpled green blanket on the earth below. The mountains loomed in the distance, hazy
gray shapes. They drew closer, closer, as the broom sped through the damp, fleecy
patches of cloud, over the dark, snaky shape of the river, over the foothills, to the place
where Wendy and Zander waited. For an instant, she saw both of them from above:
Zander sitting on a boulder, hands on his knees, and herself standing, two fingers still
resting against her brow, her eyes shut tight.
She opened her eyes, and the broom fell into her hands. She stared, open-mouthed.
"Impressive," he said.
"I didn't really expect that to work," she murmured. "How is this even possible? I
only closed my eyes for a few minutes."
He shook his head. "You were like that for over an hour. I was afraid to disturb you."
"An hour? Really?" She ran her hands along the smooth, well-worn handle. "It didn't
seem like that long." Her own voice seemed to be coming from faraway. She felt spacey,
detached, as if a part of her were still flying over the forest.
"That potion is strong stuff," he said.
She nodded, though a part of her wondered if it was all the potion's doing. Her power
had been growing in such strange and unpredictable ways. "We only have one broom, so
you'll have to ride with me."
He regarded the broom with a small frown. "Will that thing carry us both?"
"It'll be a tight fit, but we can do it." She straddled the broom. "Mind you, I still plan
to make a stop at Jacob's Hill. I know you're eager to go after that creep, and I don't
blame you, but we need to replenish our supplies. Even by broom, it'll take us a good day
and a half to reach the Kanti Desert."
He straddled the broom. With both of them on, there was scarcely an inch of room to
spare. "Where do I grip it?"
"You'll, um& " Heat crept into her cheeks. "You'll have to put your arms around my
waist."
He slipped his arms around her, and his broad chest pressed to her back. "Like this?"
"Yeah." She took a deep breath. Having his lean, hard body flush against hers was a
bit distracting, to say the least, but she'd just have to deal with it. "Okay. Hold on tight."
The broom rose a few feet into the air.
She heard a soft, pained grunt. "These brooms really aren't designed for men, are
they?"
"They make protective cups for that kind of thing. Do you think you can hold out
until we reach Jacob's Hill?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Not really." She tilted her head back and stared at a patch of blue sky visible
through the treetops. Her feet left the ground as the broom floated up. His arms tightened
around her. "I'll go slowly," she said. The broom drifted through the gap in the treetops.
A flock of startled sparrows burst from the trees in a rush of wings as they soared into the
clear, blue sky. "You're not afraid of heights, are you?"
"I'll be fine." His voice was calm, but she felt his heart beating quickly against her
back.
They sailed through the air. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the Edge
Mountains looming behind them, the naked gray peaks like the backs of huge
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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