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I stepped up to the shack's door and nudged it with my foot. Inside, the stone floor was coated with sand and old ashes and the thin, glassy sheen of sea salt. There was a tiny hearth in the back, where Naji had started a fire, and a pile of stone jars and a rotted bed in the corner.
The warmth spread over me, welcoming as an embrace, but I just looked on it with suspicion
"It's some island trick," I said, turning toward Naji. "It'll be like the lean-to. We'll go fetch water and come back to find it turned into a big pile of stones." I thought about the stones on the beach and shivered.
"It's not. I cast a history spell, remember?" Naji leaned up against the doorway. "It's been here for almost seventy-five years. And the first spell cast on it was one of protection."
"And it's still working?"
"It was very strong magic. Very old magic."
I glowered at him. He stepped inside and the fire flickered against his rotting clothes. "Would I do anything to put you in danger?"
He'd done plenty to put me in danger. He'd dragged me across the desert in the white hot heat. He'd gotten me stranded on the Isles of the Sky. But I'd let him. I'd done it all cause I wanted to break the curse as much as he did.
I shrugged and didn't look him in the eye.
"You should sit by the fire. It's a work of magic in and of itself that you haven't gotten sick yet."
"I'm fine."
"Let's not risk it."
I had to admit, the firelight looked awfully inviting.
And Naji looked healthy, not in any pain at all. I took one step cautiously through the doorway, and then strode across the shack to the hearth. The heat soaked into my skin, and I sat down, drawing my knees up to my chin. Naji sat down beside me.
"Why'd you do this?" I asked.
"Do what?"
"Find a shack."
"Because we need it," he said. "I don't know how long it will be until I'm fully healed, and it isn't helping that we have to sleep out in the cold every night."
I didn't say nothing, just leaned closer to the fire. Naji got up and paced around the room liked a caged jungle cat.
"I hope the wizard can break your curse," I said, speaking into the fire.
Naji stopped pacing. I looked over at him, and he stared back at me from across the room, the firelight flickering across his scars. But he didn't say a word, not about the curse, and not about anything else, neither.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The shack looked halfway destroyed, but I was grateful for it when a storm blew through later that week, cold driving rain and dark misting winds. There was a hole about the size of my fist up in the roof, and water sluiced across the far wall, opposite the hearth, but me and Naji huddled up next to the fire and stayed dry. Naji kept rubbing his head, though, and I think it might've had something to do with the whispering on the wind. This time I could make out what it was saying: a voice speaking a language I didn't understand.
The next morning, the sun broke through the clouds, sending down pale beams of light that dotted across the beach. It was hard to imagine the storm from the night before and harder still to remember the voice, which seemed more like a dream as the day wore on. I thatched the roof with fern fronds and pine needles, and Naji swept out the inside with a broom I made for him from more pine needles. When we finished, we sat down to eat berries and some pale creamy tuber Naji dug out of the ground. Neither were very satisfying.
"I might be able to catch some fish," Naji said after we'd finished. "I think that may be the reason I'm not healing as quickly as I expected. I don't have enough strength just eating berries."
"We'll need a line. I guess I could make one out of that net Marjani gave us–"
"That won't be necessary." He paused, and the wind blustered in off the beach and knocked the pine trees around. "The island casts enough of a shadow over the sea that I can move through the water that way. I've done it before, in the Qilari swamps."
"How long you been well enough to do that?" I didn't have my usual strength, neither, although I'd thought it was cause of the island, or that I was spending energy on glowing.
"A few days."
"What! Then why haven't you done it already?"
"I don't like leaving you alone."
"You've done it before."
He frowned out at the ocean line. "Things were different."
I thought about the whispers on the wind.
"I got my charm," I said.
"I know you do."
"If I don't get us some fish we'll probably both starve to death and then it won't matter if the Mists show up. That's what you're worried about, isn't it? The Mists?"
He didn't answer.
"Hell and sea salt! Naji, you promised me that you'd start telling me things."
"I'm telling you now." He unfolded himself and the wind pushed his hair away from his face. It was cloudy and a bit of his glow peeked through his skin, his scar shining a pale soft white. "While I'm gone, you must promise to stay in the shack."
"Fine. I just hope it won't turn into a tree."
"It won't." Naji frowned, and then glanced over his shoulder at the woods. "Come."
"Into the woods? Why?"
"I need to gather up something." He plodded over to the treeline and then ran his fingers over the greenery spilling onto the sand. He plucked three narrow, shiny fern leaves, twisted them together, and muttered in his language. His glow dimmed for a few seconds, and then he handed me the bundle of ferns.
"Hang this above the door," he said.
I turned the ferns over and over in my hand. They were much heavier than three twisted-up leaves should be.
"Go on," he said. "You have to do it."