In a Weary World

Chapter XXI: Follow That Parasite!

It never ceases to amaze me... the way people always manage to worry about the wrong things. -- Diana Wynne Jones, Witch Week

The next two days were as rainy and miserable as could be. Solvej spent the time in using the cape to turn into a swan. It was a strange sensation, turning into a swan when she put on the cape and becoming a ghost again when she took it off. She had spent a good part of the first day trying to work out if she really became a swan, or if the spell merely tricked her mind into believing she did. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming, so she decided to give up before wondering drove her mad.

Hjalmar was very poor company during this time.

"She's a holy terror!" he complained when Solvej asked where he had been. "She keeps nagging me about remembering all these ridiculous etiquette rules and speaking with an upper-class accent. You'd think that when her niece is cursed, she'd have better things to do than snap at me all day long!"

Solvej carefully did not smile. She suspected that the Grand Duchess had found a somewhat-productive outlet for her concern for Rigmor. She also suspected that Hjalmar would not appreciate her pointing this out.

"Could you time how long it takes me to fly around the tower?" she asked, changing the subject.

Hjalmar looked at her as if she'd grown a second head. "Fly?"

"With the cloak," she explained.

This still didn't seem to reassure him, for reasons she couldn't fathom. "But why do you want me to time you?"

"So I'll know how fast I can fly."

He still looked dubious about this idea. She couldn't understand why. But then, her ideas always seemed to provoke this sort of reaction from him. They made perfect sense to her, but other people's minds worked in different ways.

~~~~

"Ready... set... go!"

Solvej-in-swan-form took off from the windowsill. Hjalmar was too busy watching the clock to see her go.

"Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven..." He recited the numbers under his breath as the second hand moved around the clock. "One minute. One, two, three..."

Three minutes and forty-eight seconds had passed before Solvej landed on the windowsill. She removed the cape, turning from a swan to a ghost. She looked disappointed when he told her how long she'd been gone.

"I was hoping I'd be faster," she said with a sigh of discontent. "Oh, well. I'll just have to practice. Would you mind timing me again?"

Hjalmar had nothing better to do, and the Grand Duchess was unlikely to look for him in a sitting room at the bottom of the north tower, so he had no objections.

~~~~

By the time the bell rang for dinner, Solvej had managed to circle the tower in one minute and twenty seconds. She reluctantly accepted this as the best she was likely to get.

"What if I'm not fast enough?" she wondered aloud as they made their way down to dinner. "What if the Magician gets away before I'm anywhere near him?"

Hjalmar raised an eyebrow. "Are you afraid? I thought you were sure you could defeat him."

"I'm not afraid!" she denied, too quickly for sincerity. Hjalmar raised the other eyebrow. "...All right. I'm ever so slightly afraid."

"What are you afraid of?" he asked. His voice wavered despite his best attempts to keep it steady.

It hit Solvej like a tonne of bricks that if she lost her nerve, he would be dead and so would a good many other people. She could not panic. Not now. Not when so much was at stake.