The wheel was obnoxiously still in the wheelhouse. Hope glared at it. There should be no magics that could resist her training and intellect. She took a spoke in hand and pushed gently. Nothing. She yanked hard. Still nothing. She leaned her whole body against the wheel, but still it would not turn.

She closed her eyes and listened to the hum of magic throughout the ship. It was a very old barge. The enchantments laid upon it had worked for thousands of years, settling down into a comfortable groove of behaviours. No wonder it was so stubborn, it had got used to slipping from ancient sight to ancient sight, pampering guests and delivering them to their idle curiosities. It didn’t want to be captained at all.

Then why had it answered to that uneducated brute Brunhilde? Her eyes flared open and she grabbed the wheel with both hands.

“I am heir to the Seven Armies of the Aurora, a Princess descended from the stars themselves,” she growled at the craft. “You. Will. Obey. My. Touch.”

There was a sweet moment of resistance as the wheel moved slightly. It felt like a new sapling bending under pressure. Then a painful crack sounded and the wheel spun wildly, flinging Hope’s hands away. She grasped at it again and stopped its spin. But now it rotated loosely, as if it were connected to nothing at all.

The barge swayed longways, as if it were cresting huge waves on the river. Brunhilde thundered up into the wheelhouse.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I made it obey,” Hope said. She turned with a smug smile, but the wheel spun lazily behind her.

“You’ve cursed us, or worse,” Brunhilde said. She gestured outside. The river was churning, the waters twisting together like coiling ropes. The barge seemed to be spinning slowly, rather than coursing towards a set direction.

“Serves it right for not obeying me,” Hope said.

Brunhilde barged past her and tried the wheel. It spun limply.

“Giantshit, this is bad. You gold-haired fox, you’ve stranded us on a lost ship.”

“It will find a place to dock, I’m sure.”

“You’re as stubborn as a log, I hope you float like one,” Brunhilde said. Outside the river was still twisting. Strange colours reflected from its surface. A large fish with sharp teeth leapt from the waters. The distant banks faded into and out of sight. “Could we even swim to shore?”

Hope swatted the wheel in frustration, it rattled as it spun. Brunhilde left her to peer at the waters from the edge of the barge. They stank of magic. One moment they were dark and placid, the next they writhed like a living thing in pain.

“There’s Valentia!” Hope cried.

It was true, they could see the great city up on the bank of the river. Mist rose and fell like water over it, hiding and revealing the city. The city was just as alive as the river, buildings disappeared and appeared, faint shadows of ships glittered in the harbour. They saw the city slowly recede before their eyes. Like a raindrop under the sun it retracted and became more compact. The palace shrunk until it was only a large fort atop the hill. The gardens of the hills sprouted trees and the docks shed their warehouses and auction halls like scales falling from a snake.

Some moments lingered in their sight. They saw a merchant arguing with a captain on the dock. A festival of bright colours swept across the marketplace. When Valentia had shrunk to nothing but a village, they saw a boy in a coracle, fishing with a spear. He was in a loincloth and stood with his spear held high, ready to thrust at his prey.

When even the huts winked out of sight, the river banks became home to animals. Deer paused to drink from the river. Great lizards sunned themselves at the edge of the forested hills. A group of shaggy men stood and stared at the water. Brunhilde felt them staring at her, as if they could see the craft. One of them raised his spear, merely a sharpened branch, and shook it with a threat. Then they were lost in the mist.

“Where are we going?” Brunhilde said. The air around her was so cold now that it made her shiver.

Trees grew suddenly immense, they towered above the river. The hills grew too, becoming craggy and thrusting up higher. The earth shook. Fire streaked across the heavens. The barge was lit with flickering colours of white-hot rock, blue stars burning in the sky and shimmering green curtains of light in the sky. There was nothing familiar in these sights, even the earth fell away and they were coursing through a landscape of pure colour and twisting shape.

“You’ve sent us into a cursed place,” Brunhilde said.

But Hope was ignoring her companion. She stared out, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

“We should come to a stop, it must just take us back to where we started,” Hope said. But even her usual smug certainty faltered as she spoke.

Then blackness. Smudges of faint pearly grey light in the distance. But apart from that, pure darkness. No sight of a river or banks. The air cooled even more, it hurt to breath. Brunhilde ducked into the lounge and Hope followed her. Outside the blackness stayed.

“Now what?” Brunhilde said. She threw herself down into cushions. “Take us home barge! Back to where we boarded you.” There was no sign of the craft responding.

Ominous creaking came from the hull. Like window-frames in cooling night the wood flexed and moaned. A booming wet slap came from a window as something pushed against it. A white phlegmy mass slid across the glass.

Brunhilde leapt to the doorway and thrust it closed. She grabbed cushions and pushed them against the door.

“What is that?” Hope cried.

“You tell me, Princess of all things magical. Curse this dainty ship,” Brunhilde shouted as she looked for a weapon. There was nothing hefty apart from a candlestick holder. She wrenched the metal stand from its fastening and hefted it in her hands.

“It can’t be anything but a vision. This is just a-” Another slap interrupted her as the thing crashed against the porthole again. It quivered and strained against the glass. Hope fancied she heard cracking sounds of the glass giving way. Light formed into a dagger in her hand.

The thing at the window twisted and the glass shrieked. Then it was gone. The two listened for some sign of it, but all they heard was the creaking of wood.

The door thudded. Brunhilde threw herself against it. The door shuddered under the wet thuds of the thing trying to push in. There was silence for a moment and then the door flung open. Brunhilde was thrown back with the cushions. The mass slithered in. It was creamy like an egg-white about to set as it cooked, but its edges quivered and shifted constantly. Lines of light glowed deep inside it.

Hope lunged with her light-dagger to slice it. Suddenly the creature was back at the doorway and she was standing by the window again. It had dodged her blow, not by moving through space, but by leaping through time. She tried to intercept it, but again it moved through time and retreated to the doorway, only to launch itself across the ceiling of the room in a new pathway.

Brunhilde had wrestled herself to her feet and brandished her candlestick. She thrust it at the creature on the ceiling. Then she was sprawled out amongst the cushions again.

“What sorcery is this?”

“It’s jumping through time,” Hope called out.

Brunhilde ran forward with a roar and launched a heavy blow at the creature. But this time she returned to the start of her run, causing her to slam her weapon down into the thick carpet of the lounge. Again, she ran forward and again she was confusingly struck back through time, swinging her candlestick through empty air.

“This thing is bewitching my senses!” she shouted.

“Stand back, let me think,” Hope said.

But Brunhilde kept up her attack. She shifted her strategy, using feints and trying to predict the weird thing’s path, but there was no way of her blow connecting. They jumped and danced through time as Hope tried to calculate a magical solution to this problem.

“Stop moving!” Hope called out.

Brunhilde paused for a moment. The jellied creature was at the doorway again, pulsing across the carpet towards them.

“I can’t strike the thing,” Brunhilde said.

“Stop rushing into things with no thought. Let me make a trap for it,” Hope said. She drew magic from her tattoos into a fine spiderweb of sharp light across the lounge. Only Brunhilde and the hungry creature had been jumping through time, the barge and its contents remained the same. If she was right then it would soon find itself caught in her trap. “Make a blow to it.”

“You ask me to leave it be, but now attack?”

“Just trust me,” Hope said.

Brunhilde lunged forward and again found herself in the confusing position of not having moved at all. She gasped and felt heaviness in her limbs. She had tried to strike it perhaps a hundred times, and though she had never connected she felt the weariness in her arms from the effort. This creature was a stalker, it sought to exhaust her mind and body, and then devour her when she was too tired to continue.

The white mass was at the doorway again, but a puckered wound showed across it. Hope chuckled with glee. It had caught itself in her trap as it leapt through time.

“Again, again!” she cried.

Brunhilde lifted the heavy candlestick in her hands and made another attack. This time the thing at the doorway had another cut across it. It quivered with anger or hunger and leapt across the ceiling. Brunhilde struck at it again and again, she lost all sense of how long she had been fighting it. All she knew was the mind-numbing pattern of attacking, resetting, attacking.

She stumbled and fell onto her knees. She put her hands down to catch herself and the thing latched onto her outstretched arm. She felt hundreds of tiny mouths lashing at her skin. She roared and punched it. It leapt back again and she was standing once more. But she had no fight left in her.

The rubbery mass squeezed towards her, slowly now as it bore dozens of scars from Hope’s magic. Brunhilde dropped her weapon. Her eyes lost focus. She knew it was close now, but she could hardly breathe or fight back. She saw Hope moving from the corner of her eyes. The creature leapt back, but without her concentration Hope’s magic web was no longer in its way. It leapt again towards Brunhilde and Hope was unable to stop it.

The barge bucked as it hit something. The boat disintegrated, not like a craft smashed onto rocks, but like a woven doll being teased apart. Textures and colours separated out into abstract flows. The lush carpet softened until it offered no support at all. Hope sunk into it. She was surrounded by thick threads of luxury, which then drifted away from her. Above her, the rest of the boat was disintegrating in a slow psychedelic dance. She saw Brunhilde twisting amongst the colours and shapes. She held out her hand, but even as her fingertips brushed Brunhilde’s outstretched arm, the barbarian seemed to be further and further away. Space was becoming as meaningless as time. The strange creature was there amongst the debris, floating as if stunned.

Heaving waters slammed into her and rush of sound assaulted her ears. She was dragged away into the flow of time. The edges of her body and mind frayed like ice melting under spring waters. She dissolved.

Motes of dust in sunlight ride invisible currents of air, hovering and twisting along invisible arcs. Hope was one of those motes, lurching through time that existed before time. She felt more of the white-smudge creatures around her, crowding in to devour her. But she had become too small for them, she floated by city-sized blobs, slipping between them. What she saw and what she felt were all the same. All of her senses condensed into one. She felt the light around her, she heard the shapes and colours weaving around her.

Then blackness and stillness. Everything condensed down into a single point.

In midnight swims Hope had floated in her palatial swimming pool, watching the stars above in the peaceful black of the night sky. With no care of intrigues or study or her future she let the cooling water lap on her face and just spun slowly in peaceful contemplation of the source of magic, the stars and sky. She floated now in a similar place. The edges of who she was and the universe blurred. She felt at peace in a way she never had before. Behind her was a glowing thread, the pathway of her life that had led her to this point. Ahead was nothing, the pure possibility of creating her own future.

But a voice inside her would not quiet. She had a mission, a revenge to take. She swatted it away. It came back. She tried to frown, but with no body she could not. There was no anger or fear here. In the quiet, the voice became louder.

“Get back, get back,” it said. She cursed but with no mouth she could not.

The voice made light in the dark. She saw herself. She was a complicated sigil of magic, an intricate fractal of light that described every moment of her life, and was slowly growing as time passed and she grew. Other sigils winked into sight. Her mother was a roaring waterfall of light and interweaving patterns. The citizens of her home were all similarly complex and kinked, forever scheming and vying for status and power.

They caught on her like thorns, she remembered insults and duels from her past. Anger rose in her. The more she tried to push them away the more they clung to her like burrs. The sigils were linked into a wall that penned her in. She couldn’t escape their maddening grasp.

Outside the wall of her past, one sigil glowed with a dusky copper light. It was simple with strong lines. A tree of power, with deep roots that connected to other symbols, and branches that stretched out confidently into the darkness. Brunhilde. Unlike the symbols of Hope’s city that grew around each other in a complicated web of loyalty and deception, Brunhilde’s sign dominated the space around it. It was free and clear and strong.

Hope latched onto her mother’s sigil and traced it back to its beginning. She felt a gateway opening. She was adrift in time, but her magic gave her an opportunity. She could slip back into the timestream, before her mother was born.

Brunhilde’s sigil dimmed. Hope reached out to touch it. Brunhilde was lost, with no magic, no way to bring herself back. The fine lines like leaves at the edge of her symbol were slowly coming to a halt. There would be no more of Brunhilde’s story.

Unless Hope acted. She tried to pull Brunhilde with her, bring her back into the past, but the stubborn weave of Brunhilde refused. She had no interest in coming with her. Hope let her go and pulled on the string of her mother’s life. The other sigils of nobles crowded around her. The more she pulled herself into the gateway of her past, the brighter their light and the louder their voices in her head. It was an assault of petty desires and arguments. They wanted her to stop, they wanted her to favour them, they wanted to remove her to please her mother. They all wanted things for themselves, to further their own pattern.

Hope reached out to Brunhilde again. This time not to pull the barbarian into her story, but for the princess to find purchase in Brunhilde’s world. She saw the tight weave of Brunhilde’s roots, connected to her family; the huge cast of characters that she talked about, each with their own shape and story. Unlike the crowded, incestuous noise of Hope’s homelands, Brunhilde’s world was interconnected and filled with space. They all had their own space to grow. They chose how to stay connected to each other, and where to let go.

She didn’t understand what this meant or how it was possible. All she knew was that Brunhilde, even as she was dying, was resolute and firm. The copper light of her was warm and safe, and white hot with strength at its core.

Hope let go of the tangle of her past. She wanted to cut the tree of her other out from its roots, but she had to save Brunhilde. With ease she pulled herself into the cover of Brunhilde’s aura. It felt solid and present, just like the barbarian did in real life.

They touched. Brunhilde felt the tiny but persistent hand of Hope grasping hers. Hope felt the scars and rough skin of Brunhilde’s hand. The princess worked a spell that was single-minded and pointed. Bring them both back out of time. The power around them resisted at first, but with Hope’s power guiding them, they were spat out.

Brunhilde coughed. She remembered air. It was a living thing that she had almost forgotten; the most welcome of guests in the lungs. She remembered lungs, she had them long ago. She turned her head and felt sticky mud on her cheeks. Mud was not a welcome guest on the cheek. She sat up and after a quick inventory of her body she remembered her hands. She wiped the mud from her cheek. Her hand tingled with fatigue, she was truly exhausted from the ordeal, mentally and physically.

Hope sat up and saw Brunhilde sitting dazed on the riverbank. “You’re here,” she said with relief.

“I am here,” Brunhilde said. She rolled the words slowly. “Where is here?”

“We’re back by the river, before the boat came by,” Hope said.

“The boat. The boat.” Brunhilde tried to make sense of what had happened. She gave up and rose to her feet. “I don’t feel like taking any barges right now, we should keep walking south.”

“I agree with you for once,” Hope said. She held out her hand towards Brunhilde.

The barbarian took it and pulled the princess to her feet. “I remember this. Were we holding hands?”

“No. There was no when. And we had no hands. There was just energy,” Hope said. But she kept her hand in Brunhilde’s.

“Well then, gold-hair. I have some energy to walk.” Brunhilde eyed her companion. Usually she would throw off any attempt to help her outside her demands, but still they held on to each other.

Hope wiped wetness from her eyes. She had spent all her magic and desperately wanted to sun herself and recharge her energies. But lying on a muddy riverbank was no way for a princess to recover. “Let’s walk then,” she said.

The two continued their way south, hand-in-hand and taking strength from the connection.