Brightly Woven

directly above us and I was on my third cloak, North sat up suddenly.
    “Syd!” he said, on his feet in a moment.
    I glanced up from the green cloak. I had liked him much better asleep, tucked away in his silent dreams.
    “My name is Sydelle,” I said, snipping off an excess bit of thread. His lips parted slightly, as if surprised to find me sitting nearby. “Syd reminds me of some fat, lazy old man—I knew a Sid, and all he ever did was sit on his mother’s porch and complain about the heat!”
    “Was that the one who tried to give me his chicken?” North asked. “Had a perpetually dazed look about him? Too much time in the sun, maybe?”
    I gave him a pointed look, which he returned with an annoying grin. Finished with the green cloak, I folded it neatly beside me.
    “You—” he began, looking down. His hand came up and touched the red cloak, still hanging around his shoulders. “What are you doing?”
    “I think it’s fairly obvious,” I said. “If you’re done sleeping away the day, I was hoping we could move on before nightfall. If we take Wickerby Road, we should be able to find Prima, the road that will take us directly to Provincia.”
    The road that was one day supposed to take me into a new life far from home. Henry had said it would take me less than a day to find the road from Dellark, and if I stayed on its straight path, it would take only a month to arrive in Provincia, Palmarta’s capital city.
    “Why didn’t you wake me?” North asked, dropping down next to me. “And wait—why are we over here?”
    I thrust the yellow, black, and green cloaks at him. “I heard something last night, and I thought we’d be safer where I could see someone approach.”
    “And you didn’t think to wake me?” he asked, suddenly angry. “What if it had been a wizard? What would you have done then?”
    “A wizard like the one that attacked us last night?” I asked. The blue cloak in my hand was icy to the touch. “You knew him—not Genet, the other one.”
    North rubbed the back of his neck. “His name is ReuelDorwan. He’s been tracking me for a while now—if I had noticed him earlier, I would have tried to find a way to end it once and for all.”
    For the first time in years, I pricked my finger on the needle.
    “You want to kill him?” I asked slowly.
    North turned his face away and took the blue cloak from me.
    “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
    “Of course not,” I said in a low voice. “I’m just a stupid little girl who’s incapable of understanding anything.”
    North bristled. “There isn’t much to say about him except that he’s the vilest rot ever to have walked this world. That trick he did was pure dark magic, magic that’s forbidden by wizarding society. Not that he cares, of course. He never did.”
    “His trick—was that what caused you to act like that last night?” I asked. “I tried everything to wake you up, and you still slept like the dead.”
    North shook his head and turned away from me. I drew in a sharp, angry breath at the silence that followed. He would have walked away if my voice had not caught him and held him there.
    “I hope you realize that nothing will ever be right between us until you tell me—until you just tell me why you took me,” I said, frustrated. “You keep everything to yourself, and I’m just supposed to accept the fact that you can create a gust of wind and stop the world from shaking and that you’re surprised I can fix your rotting cloaks—”
    “It’s because most humans can’t,” he cut in, turning back to me. “What would you like me to say, Syd? It takes some degree of magic inside a person to repair a talisman and not have it lose its ability. That is why I was surprised.”
    He reattached the rest of his cloaks in a whirl of color.
    “Are…you saying I have magical ability?” I asked carefully.
    “Magic is inherited through families,” he said. “You may have had a wizard in your family, but it was a long time ago. What power you have in you is weak and useless.”
    “Not useless,” I said, giving him a hard look. “Not entirely.”
    “No,” North agreed with a small smile, and for the first time I thought I finally had an answer to one of the hundreds of questions that poured through my mind. I bent to pick up my loom.
    “Are you positive you didn’t see anything last night?” North asked after a moment. “It’s not like him to just…give up….”
    “I thought there might have