The sun was high in the sky by the time Cricket woke the next morning. He rolled over, swatting at the blankets beside him.
"Iggy. Iggy we overslept. Iggy. Why didn't you—" He stopped, body going rigid when his hand was met with nothing but blankets. There was no warm shoulder, no long hair. Just blankets, blankets, and more blankets. He sat up, panic seizing hold of his insides to look down at the place where Ignacia had fallen asleep the night before. She was gone. There was no sign of her there.
He scooted to the edge of his bedroll, pulling on his boots and heading for the flap to the tent. She'd just gone to get breakfast started, he told himself. She was being the responsible one of the two them. She hadn't disappeared. He could see Tochtli through the opening, it was still there. And if it was still there, then Ignacia also still had to be there. He was just... he was getting worried for nothing.
It wasn't nothing, he realized all too quickly as he looked around their small camp. There was no sign of Ignacia. The fire from the night before had completely burned out. She'd left no note. Her horse was still there. Everything was as it had been the night before, only with the absence of his best friend.
"But we fixed it," he protested to no one in particular. His horse huffed at him. "No, we fixed it, Buttercup. We did. Look, Tochtli is still there. We fixed it. There's no reason for her to have disappeared again."
Buttercup pressed her face into his shoulder, nudging him. He patted her muzzle, carefully ignoring how his hands shook. Panic. He did not have time for panic. Nor did he have time for the strangled manic laugh working its way up his throat. He swallowed it down, along with the burning in his eyes.
"Maybe she just went into town to grab some scones," he said. It sounded reasonable, after all. Ignacia was a grown woman; she could go into town and get them breakfast. She didn't have to check in with Cricket every minute of the day. But... but she would have left a note. She would have let him know she was going. She would have woken him up and told him, even if he was grumpy about it. Especially after everything. She'd know he'd be worried. She would have mitigated that. She hadn't.
Buttercup snorted against his hair, moving in to nibble at one pointed ear.
"Yeah, that's it. She's gone into town to grab some scones. I'll just go and find her, shall I?" He didn't know who he was trying to convince, certainly not himself because the words didn't make the hysteria clawing at his throat go away. And definitely not Buttercup and Saber (really, who named their horse Saber? Ignacia, apparently) who were looking at him like he'd finally lost his mind, and it had been a long time coming.
"I'll just go find her." He nodded to himself, and started down the hill towards Tochtli. His steps felt forced, and unsure, but he kept taking them. One after the other. Ava, the smithy was tidying up her shop, getting ready for the day's work when he reached the edge of town. "Good morning, Ava!"
Ava cocked her head at him, a waterfall of dark hair falling over her shoulder where she had yet to pin it back. "Prince Cricket?"
"Ha! Yes. We met yesterday, remember? Iggy and I spoke to you about the strangeness in the town?" Cricket stood up taller, trying to look official, but still, he couldn't hide the uncertain tone in his voice.
"Iggy?"
"Yes. About yay high." He gestured to about shoulder height. "Dark red braids, very angry looking. Iggy. Or Ignacia rather."
Ava shook her head. "No. I don't remember any Ignacia. Your Highness, you haven't been by here at all. And I'm afraid if you're looking for something, I don't have the materials to make anything half as fine as what you're used to."
"No. No. That's all right." Cricket shifted his weight back onto his heels, readying to run any moment. He needed to find Ignacia and get to the bottom of this. He needed to understand what in the name of Styx was going on here. He couldn't lose Ignacia again. "You really don't remember talking to me and my handmaiden yesterday?"
"I think I'd remember talking to the prince." Ava huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Look if this is some kind of—"
"Where is the bakery located at?" Cutting people off was rude, or so he'd been told on more than one occasion by Uncle Sunil. But Cricket was in a hurry. Judging by the sun it was 10:00 or 11:00 by now. That meant he had a grand total of possibly seven hours to figure out what was going on in Tochtli before he lost Ignacia again. And that was if the pattern held, and he didn't do something to change it involuntarily as he clearly had the previous day.
"It's... just down the block." She pointed.
"Thank you, Ava!" Cricket said over his shoulder, already running in the direction she'd pointed.
"But they won't be there!" she called after him. "It's Sunday, they'll be at the market!"
His steps stuttered, stumbling. A missed stair in the dark. Sunday. The market. Again. It was the same day. Again. Cricket ducked into an alley, bracing his knees as his lung struggled to draw in air. Again. It was Sunday. Again. It was the same day. Again. He slammed his fist against the wall behind him, and then winced. The pain brought him back to the time limit.
Seven hours, max. That's all he had. He had to hurry!
Ignacia was in the center of town, talking to the apple vendor. Just where he'd found her the previous morning.
"Iggy," he all but sobbed running up to her and tackling her in a tight hug.
Ignacia yelped, her hands scrambling to get a hold of his arms where he'd wrapped himself around her shoulders. "Cricket! Get off!"
"No. Not again. I'm not losing you again!"
"What are you talking about? Stop being ridiculous! I just saw you! You were talking to the vendors, and wandered off! You left, not me!"
Cricket took her wrist, and pulled her with him, ignoring the strange looks the apple vendor gave them. Once they were far enough away from everyone else, he pulled her into another tight hug. Pressing his face into her braids, which if he was being honest wasn't terribly comfortable, but it didn't matter. Because she was here. She was safe. And she was here.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on now?" Ignacia's voice was muffled by the fabric of his scarf and tunic, but she didn't pull back. He was glad of that, because he didn't want her to see the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
"You're stuck."
"Yes. Because you won't let me go." She huffed, giving his chest a gentle shove, but not enough to pull from the hug, just enough to loosen it.
"No. In the town. You're stuck in the town. We got out yesterday, before it disappeared, and then it didn't disappear. And so we thought that we'd broken the curse, but we didn't. We didn't Iggy. I woke up this morning, and you were gone. And then I went to see Ava and she didn't remember me. And then I came here, and here you were. Again. Just like yesterday." The words were leaving him in a mad scramble now. He was sure he wasn't explaining it right, and that he likely wasn't making sense. But he couldn't seem to stop and force his brain to process it any slower. Not when they had seven hours. Just seven hours.
Ignacia snorted. "So, it's repeating?"
"Yes." Oh, thank Selene she understood! He didn't think he'd be able to explain it fully without crying.
"Let's say that I believe you," she said slowly. He pulled back enough to shoot her an offended look. "What? You could be playing a joke! You've done stupider things!"
"This is not a joke Iggy!" He sniffled, scrubbing at his eyes. Traitorous things, who said they could let the tears fall? He'd be having words with them later.
She frowned at the sight of him, and then nodded. "All right. It's not a joke. Then, how does the spell work? What did we figure out yesterday?"
The emotions seeped out of him in a rush, and then all Cricket was left with was a grumbling belly. "Can we get breakfast first?"
Ignacia's lips pursed, and she shook her head. "Really? A time like this and all you can think of is your stomach?"
"Iggy. I ran all the way here. I was very upset. Growing princes must have breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day." Cricket pouted, widening his eyes in that way he had distinctly learned from Anstice (or maybe she'd learned it from him, he couldn't be sure anymore) and looked every bit the helpless damsel that he was.
Ignacia's eyes narrowed. "We'll go to the Inn for breakfast. You will talk on the way."
"Oh! That's a good idea! That's where the knight is." He perked up.
"The knight?"
"Yes, I'll tell you aaaaaaall about him, just follow me." Cricket took her hand, holding tightly as he led her back out onto the street and towards the inn. Along the way he told her about Yoshi, and the witch's apprentice, and the people who had been cursed very likely by Abner. He didn't take a breath, or stop to answer questions. There wasn't time, she needed to get caught up and quick. He finished by the time the inn door opened. "I'm thinking that maybe it's not really a curse on the town at all."
"I heard from Ava that the prince was here!" The innkeeper rushed over to them, bowing deeply. "Please come. Come. I'll show you to our best table."
"No. Please. We'd rather sit out in the main dining room today, Madam Shen." Cricket bowed back, offering the confused woman a grin as he led Ignacia to a back corner where they wouldn't be overheard, but they could see the entire room.
Madam Shen bustled after them, recovering quickly from her confusion to grace Cricket with a wide smile once he'd sat. "I will have the kitchen bring out our inn's finest dishes."
"That won't be necessary, Madam Shen. If you could just bring us a menu? We'd like to order like your regular guests, please?" Cricket did not want to get stuck with the exorbitant amount of food they'd been stuck with the previous day. It was probably that meal that had caused the multiple stitches in his side the night before (even if it wasn't, he was going to blame that anyway), and he needed to be nimble on his feet today.
"Yes. Of course, Your Highness." Madam Shen bowed, and turned away with a perplexed look on her face like she was adding one plus one and somehow getting five.
"You don't think it's a curse on the town?" Ignacia asked once Madam Shen was out of hearing range.
"No. I don't think it's just one curse, either." He drummed his fingers on the table, pulling the journal from his satchel.
"That's my—"
"I know. I'll buy you a new one. I just needed a place to keep everything together."
"You have a sketchbook," Ignacia said blandly. But she didn't reach to take it from him. "It's not just one curse?"
"Well. It is and it isn't." Cricket tapped his pencil on the notebook, his tongue poking out as he doodled in the corner. Deep in thought.
Ignacia huffed.
"What?"
"It is and it isn't? You sound like an oracle. No riddles. What does it mean?" She stood up and moved to sit beside him so she could stare down at the journal with him. Her eyes squinted, trying to make sense of his handwriting. "I see your calligraphy classes are paying off."
Cricket opted not to dignify that last comment with an answer. "It is and it isn't because it's the same spell, but it's being cast over and over."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It does when you're thirteen."
"Abner is doing it," Ignacia said, frowning. "But he's not powerful enough for that."
"I know, last night we concluded he must have some kind of amplifier." Cricket nodded, turning the journal to a fresh page to write that down along with everything he'd gathered about Abner the previous day. "What I think is happening, is that he keeps casting the same spell, to try to get a do over."
Ignacia's brows rose. "Because something is going wrong, and he's trying to fix it. But... why isn't it working?"
"Whatever spell he's using is keeping him from remembering he's doing it. He gets to start the day again, at 6:30 in the morning every day, but he doesn't remember he did it. So everything just happens over again, exactly as it did before."
"So he doesn't know what he needs to change." Ignacia nodded. "That's an amateur mistake."
"Yeah. Well. He's thirteen."
"Fair."
"We just need to figure out what the triggering event is. We did something yesterday that pushed it off, whatever it was. It was someone we talked to." He started writing names on the page opposite of his list of facts about Abner. "There were the mothers, Abner himself, the messenger, the scholar..."
"The white knight." Ignacia added, tapping the paper. "You had lots of notes about him. It looked like he was important."
"I don't think... I mean... I think I was mistaken." Cricket cleared his throat to hide the blush that crept up his neck. "Oh look! Menus! Thank you, Madam Shen!"
Ignacia eyed him closely, but didn't say anymore on the subject until they had ordered, and their tea had arrived. Small mercies.
"Maybe we should follow the white knight, see where he goes," she suggested a knowing look in her eyes as she watched Cricket from over her teacup.
"Or... and hear me out on this because it's crazy..." Cricket leaned forward, and waited for Ignacia to give him her full attention. "We ignore the white knight and go and wait outside the witch's shop to see what happens."
Ignacia huffed, sitting back in her chair. "I'm going to see him eventually."
"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," he muttered.
"What?"
"What?"
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