I did not expect the water to be really, really wet.

“Little Tai,” Anshal said, trying to refrain from a laugh as I spluttered, coughing up my lungs. Their bony jaws clacked, blue will-o’-wisps flickering here and there in their eye sockets. “It’s water. Wet is a given unless its state has changed.”

Dizzy, I spun to look at them. The water splashed with me, sinking the chill up my spine. The cold sinking into my bare skin made me shiver, but my heart never trembled, and the markings on my hands never changed from their stretch up to my body when I looked. Their power still curled around my heart, steady as ever. That was the thing with dreams as a warlock. You could always tell when you were dreamwalking again. “I’m just saying,” I said, voice small, more desperate. “But what else was I saying?”

“Again, you always are interesting.” Anshal gestured me closer, eyes alight as I did. They pulled a loose bit of kelp from an antler—long, strong, and tree-like just like the rest of them—and draped it around my shoulders. I felt the wetness cling to my skin, the chill soaking deeper before it grew numb. “But that is not why you come here, yes? That is not why the magic,” here, Anshal poked a long skeletal finger at my sternum, dragging it slowly to the skin above my heart, “has pulled you here.”

Dreamwalking within Anshal’s void always involved water. Always involved reflections and deeper meaning than I wanted to ever think about. “I didn’t want to come here.” I must have actually fallen asleep in the jeep again. Rafe would have known I was trying to feign it, but he hadn’t said anything when he’d climbed back into the driver’s seat. So I’d kept sleeping, and somehow or another I was here. “I want to wake up, Anshal.”

“But you are here after all.” Anshal tilted their long face slowly to the side. The sheer fabric that hung from the other antler swooped around their neck too. Golden embroidered symbols, beautiful as the day I had made them, glimmered in the blue moonlight. “It is not because I willed it. You come because I am losing you.”

I stumbled back, each step slow and haggard. “It was just a mistake,” I managed, weakly, as Anshal approached. I fell to my knees before them, grasping onto the long fabric of their garb. “It’s not me losing touch.” It wasn’t. Just a mistake. Just a small mistake with a small error for an extraction I knew by heart. “I’m still as capable as ever. You can’t let me go. You can’t.”

I had nothing and I was nothing without magic.

I would always have nothing and be nothing without magic.

“My one, my heart,” Anshal soothed, tones steady. They stroked my face but once before they swept me up, holding me in the crook of an arm. The trees around us that darkened the horizon stood quiet outside the creatures that lived beyond. “I am not ignoring our covenant. Do I not still wear your gift, allow you my marks? I chose you out of your cohort.”

“It could be an illusion,” I said. I leaned my head against Anshal’s skull, shutting my eyes.

“This place is,” Anshal agreed. “But it does not mean it is real. You cannot see the value of your soul, but it is still a gift I await with pleasure.” They began to move, each step cascading, streamlining with the stillness of the waters.

Magic was easy. The first way was the easiest one, even if getting there was difficult: Summon a spirit and make a contract. They became your familiar, or your overseer.

The second one was being loaned the magic. In history, vassals of high-ranking gods would choose mortals and bestow them with powers.

The third one—what I’d done—was find a patron who would guide me.

“I don’t know what to do with Rafe,” I told him. From this height, I could not even envision how small I had looked. “He…we—” How would I even start? How would I even go about asking relationship advice from my patron of all things? “I just wanted to go alone in the end. Figure things out.”

“Is your promised the source of all this?”

My stomach churned. “We’re not promised.”

“You have told me in the past he would hold your heart above all others. Quite proudly. ” Anshal’s voice was lulling, comforting. The words not so much. “Is this not promised?”

I found it difficult to speak, to explain. Each word gummed up in my throat. We trespassed deeper into the fog. “You live such a long life. How can you believe in things like that?” When I even couldn’t?

“You live such a short life. How could you not?”

The fog was getting thicker. “Where are we going?”

“Ghana waits for you. She told me to bring you when you came by.”

Of course she had foreseen this. Ghana had disapproved when Anshal had chosen me, the only one out of my teachers to find me incapable and insufficient. Unprepared. Erratic. “Can I not go see her?”

Anshal stopped. Even holding me to their eye level, they seemed to still loomed over me with their height, shadows cast by the moon outlining every scratch and bite made on their skull. They pressed their finger to my heart, and the weight of it dug in, oppressive.

“Steady your heart,” Anshal advised me.

I nodded, grateful. “I will.”

“Do so. For if it bears the fruit of your regrets, it will bleed you out.”

The world around me began to fade, save for the remaining whisper of their words. The coldness began to drench back into the warmth of the real world, the feeling of the seats under my body, the warm, familiar hand stroking the side of my cheek with rough knuckles.

I woke up, groggy, and Rafe had his hands on the wheel. “Where are we?” We were at a gas station. Only a few other cars were parked, and the sun was yet to rise.

“We’re stopped for gas,” he told me. “I was going to get us some breakfast.” His voice was a murmur to mirror mine. “Do you want anything?”

You, I wanted to say.

“I’m not sure,” I said instead. “But I’ll go inside with you and see what they have.”

If it surprised him, I didn’t know. I had my door open and shut behind me before Rafe could respond.