Forest Born

  “Hmm . . . ,” said Dasha.

  “In the shins. Hard.”

  “Just don’t you let go of that lofty dream, Enna,” said Isi. “Four or five days to Kel, where we just might have time for some shin kicking.”

  They set off in silence, Isi in the lead, and Rin could see the worry in Isi’s face, thick as a rainy sky.

  “Something troubling you?”

  “What isn’t?” Isi rubbed her head as if to get at an ache. “I can’t shake the coincidence that we’re dealing with fire-speakers again.”

  “I’ve been musing that over too,” said Enna. “Before me, there were only those fire worshippers in Yasid, and they kept to themselves. Then I learn it and suddenly . . .”

  “Fire-speakers in Tira,” said Dasha. “And now in Bayern, leading us to Kel.”

  “Fire wants to spread,” said Enna.

  “You have a point,” Isi said. “It seems to be the easiest of all the speaking gifts to learn.”

  “But not to master.”

  “No, you’re right—easiest gift to learn, hardest to master. Except maybe people-speaking.”

  “Blegh,” Enna said, as if trying to rid her mouth of a sour taste. “Don’t call it a gift. Curse, maybe.”

  Isi nodded. “All the people-speakers I’ve known were—”

  “Evil,” said Enna. “Dark-souled, likely to chew their own grandmother’s eyeballs—”

  “I was going to say, corrupted by their gift.” Isi blew hair out of her eyes, her gaze rising from the deer track they walked to the shifting trees. “It’s sad really. You’d think people-speaking would bring the speaker closer to people, as wind-speaking does with wind. But instead it dooms people-speakers to separation and self-destruction. I think people-speaking is the most dangerous gift to have alone, with nothing to balance it.”

  “Even more than fire?” asked Dasha.

  “I think so anyway. I’ve known three people-speakers, and two died young. I wonder if a person can exist long with such a burden. My mother—she must have something else balancing her, maybe without knowing it. Because she was difficult, but not as bad as some.”

  “Sileph,” said Enna. “Selia.”

  “People-speakers?” asked Dasha.

  “Yes,” Isi said. “They’re both dead.”

  There was a smile in Enna’s voice. “Nice to have something out there more dangerous than fire. Makes me feel like a tame kitten.”

  “Watch out!” Rin said.

  The three girls stopped short as a snake startled across their path. Rin was carrying a forked stick for just such an event, and she jammed it against the neck, pinning the creature. Dasha gasped.

  All three girls were staring at her in horror. Rin winced, and her face flushed.

  “It’s . . . for dinner, you know. Snake meat. So we don’t run out of food.”

  Still, she did not move to pick it up, staying as far away as the stick would allow. Isi and Dasha took several steps back, gaping at the green squirmy body in pale silence before Enna sighed.

  “Fine, I’ll skin it.” She grabbed it by the neck and with a quick twist the squirming ceased. Dasha emitted a trembling little moan, which made Enna grin.

  They roasted the meat that evening, along with a rabbit Rin had downed with her sling. Rin had eaten snake before—she’d also eaten boiled ants, roasted slugs, snails baked in their shells, and grasshoppers relieved of their spiny legs and warmed on a stick over a fire. Often in the thin of winter, she’d munched pine bark, and one memorable spring, a handful of maggots. But she did not think it necessary to turn over logs for dinner just yet. It was late summer, so fallen nuts and bright berries were tangled in the brush. She showed the girls how to spot edible mushrooms and stew a broth of grass and pine needles, chewing on the tangy needles to boost their spirits between meals.

  Rin had been sure that a few days without silver flatware and servants would turn Dasha into a blubbering baby. But Dasha sang as she tromped through thickets and bragged about the collection of burrs she sported on her leggings.

  The first time Rin gave her a cattail root for dinner, Dasha took a bite and exclaimed, “It is food!”

  Enna was staring. “What did you think?”

  “Well, I know you said it was, but who knew that food can just grow from the ground like that outside a crop field?”

  Enna was still staring. “You make it really easy, Dasha. I don’t even have to say anything.”

  Dasha took another bite and giggled. “Rin, you’re amazing. It’s all so amazing. I love the wild.”

  Enna leaned to Isi and whispered loudly, “I know I promised you I’d be better, but I just have to—”

  “No,” said Isi.

  “But she’s practically begging me to mock her, and I just thought of—”

  “Shush, Enna.”

  “But—”

  “Eat your root, fire girl.”

  “Fine. But it was going to be funny.”

  Rin never got tired of hearing Enna talk, and Dasha too—marveling at how they spoke without thinking first, seeming so relaxed, untroubled. Isi was different. Perhaps that was part of being queen? Rin guessed Isi was constantly aware that everything she said and did might affect not just herself but all of Bayern. No wonder she often seemed weary with caution.

  Maybe that’s why I feel best mirroring her, Rin thought, for while Isi took care with words, she also had a confidence, a sense of place that Rin lacked. If Isi’s queenship explained her caution when speaking, Rin did not know where her own came from. Ever since the inn burned, Rin had been dreaming again of the gray worm curled in her middle, stretching.

  Sometimes they traveled through grass-tangled meadows and streams with wide sandy banks. But whenever they were deep in trees again and could not see the sun, Isi would ask Rin the direction, and Rin could point and say, “Northeast.”

  “How do you know?” Dasha asked with an awed smile.

  “Moss grows on the north side of the trees and rocks.”

  “But that rock has spots of moss all over it.”

  Rin did her best not to laugh. “That’s lichen.”

  “Oh. But what if there’s no moss and it’s high noon?”

  “Most trees lean south.”

  Dasha squinted. “I don’t see them leaning anywhere. Huh. You are so smart, Rin.”

  It felt odd to hear that from Dasha—the ambassador of Tira, a noblewoman, a girl who could read books and do numbers. Rin was finding it difficult to keep resenting her. Pretending Dasha was a friend of Isi’s who had nothing to do with Razo made walking beside her and sharing her blanket at night much less trying.

  With the grudge in abeyance, Rin noticed just how spectacular Dasha was with the water-speaking—leading them to drinking water, encouraging stream fish into a trap, and even keeping them all dry in a rainstorm.

  One evening lightning flashed, for a dazzling moment revealing the white skeleton of the world. The image stayed in Rin’s eyes after it all went dark again. She shivered. In the buzz of hot light, everything had seemed made of bone—pale and hard, standing on shadows. She thought of crossbow bolts and queens who burn crowded inns.

  “Rain,” Dasha warned.

  The four girls clustered together, and when the clouds sighed and released the torrent, the rain bent away as if an invisible roof peaked above their heads, sending the drops out and down on either side. Dasha laughed, as pleased with herself as a child learning a new trick.

  Dasha’s water-speaking had proved essential, Isi’s wind-speaking brought word of game to hunt or people to avoid, and the fire-speaking lit their fires at night. Watching the fire sisters work their own talents, Rin felt even sharper regret for losing her communion with trees.

  This wood was different than her own Forest of creaking pines and crackling aspens, where the thick canopy kept the ground tidy. This wood was wild, slashes of sunlight lancing the air, a disarray of brambles and ferns and bushes. And it felt so alive it seemed to be crawling outward,
expanding its roots, lifting into saplings. The trees were constantly pulling themselves down and sprouting anew, keeping the whole wood young, throbbing, hissing with life.

  New trees, vibrant trees. How would she feel inside their thoughts? At home, succumbing to a tree’s green sounds had lifted her anxiety momentarily. Was it possible that these trees could change her, make her a new Rin? The desire was like the constant itch of a bug bite, and she feared scratching would only make it worse.

  The third evening after Hendric, while the fire sisters prepared dinner, Rin crept just out of sight. She approached a slender tree rich with glossy leaves and imagined closing her eyes and falling into that half-sleep where the ground seems to lift and then sink, where Rin became not herself, not the thinker, but a figure seen from a distance, a character in a story someone else was telling. No real thoughts, no worries, just the steady, nearly silent hum of water and sap moving out through the branches, twigs, into the veins of each leaf, the feel of that pulse making her calm and sleepy as a well-fed baby wrapped in blankets.

  Tree-speaking. Ever since Isi had named it, Rin missed her closeness with trees like she missed her own ma. And maybe if she could get it back, she would discover new things, understanding empowering her as fire and wind strengthened Isi.

  Rin’s forehead touched bark, she closed her eyes and opened herself inside to sense, to hear, to feel . . .

  And was blasted with a sensation of loathing, filling her like maggots bursting from an animal corpse.

  She recoiled, her whole body shaking, and hurried away from the tree.

  Never again, she told herself. I’ll never try again.

  The decision felt as final as death.

  Isi glanced up as Rin stumbled into camp. “You all right, Rin?”

  “I’m fine.”

  A lie. Maybe a harmless one, but it stuck in her mouth, tasting bitter, and she could not shake a feeling that she’d forgotten something important.

  I lied to Wilem too.

  Rin shuddered. It was a thought she’d been fleeing from, and she refused to think it now. Running into the world had not changed her, as it had Razo. She’d stayed close to Isi and tried to be like her, but she was still just Rin—lying, broken Rin. And these fire sisters knew her no more than her family back home. They were only fooled by her, charmed by her seeming sense, when all she did was try to reflect them back to themselves.

  I’m the sheen on water, Rin thought. I’m a looking glass. I’m not real.

  But she seemed to have no choice—she had to keep moving. Was it the tree-speaking that made her feel so wrong? Or perhaps the peace that had once come with tree-speaking had temporarily numbed the truth—that Rin herself was rotten at the core, bug-eaten and damaged, a diseased tree with shallow roots, a hollowed trunk with yellowing leaves.

  Rin kept listening to the girls, her eyes on Isi, studying how to be wise, noble, unafraid. How to be less like Rin. She watched, but the lump of hopelessness hardened inside her. On they walked. And Rin felt farther and farther away from herself.

  Chapter 12

  Isi kept them in the wood past Saxmer, emerging from the trees to join a trade road leading from Saxmer to the Kelish village of Cathal.

  “Cathal hugs the border, and trade with Bayern is common, so folk there should speak our language as well as Kelish. Let’s pass through Cathal and see what we can learn.”

  The road to Cathal was battered and only one wagon wide, with swells of hard earth where mud had frozen during cold and rainy seasons. Enna tripped often, and cursed each time she tripped, until Dasha said, “Enna, you might watch your language.”

  Enna grimaced. “I was. You should hear my thoughts.”

  Cathal lay on the base of a gentle hill bright with yellow-green grass. Rin could count thirty wattle-and-daub houses. The older homes near the road were stone with thatched roofs that might keep out the rain of spring but not the cold of winter. But it was a summer night, warm as a breath on the cheek, and the fields were full of the slow movements of cattle. It was much simpler than the Bayern towns Rin had seen, with no visible inn or market, no lord’s house, no wall or town center or row of shops. But it seemed lovely to Rin’s eyes, surrounded by the hope of healthy animals and meat for winter. To build so many houses so near together seemed like an amiable thing to Rin, people who chose to live close as if they really did enjoy the company. So Rin was shocked when she was near enough to see their faces—depressed, full of gloom and heartache.

  “What’s the plan, Isi?” Enna asked in a whisper. “Doesn’t seem likely we’ll find an inn hidden in this stack of shacks.”

  “I don’t dare sleep here and make it a target for fire-speakers anyway,” Isi said. “But I’m hoping we can stop for dinner and learn whatever we can about this queen of Kel. It’s Kelish custom to offer hospitality to travelers by placing a lighted candle in the window.”

  Dasha nodded. “Inns are rare in Kel, even in the cities. They consider it good luck to house travelers.” Her eyes scanned the town’s windows, shutters open to the humid night, windowsills lightless. “But perhaps not in Cathal . . .”

  On they walked, no candles in sight. The villagers’ eyes flicked over the girls, taking note of their Bayern tunics, skirts, and leggings. The Kelish men wore long tunics in white, gray, or yellow, with sleeves that dangled from their forearms down to their knees. The women wore the same tunics with dangling sleeves, and over the tunics, sleeveless dresses laced at the bodice. Both men and women sported caps with thick bands across the top of their head, the women’s hats rounded in back, holding their hair in a sack at their necks.

  “See the ladies’ hats?” Dasha whispered to Rin, smiling as if nothing was wrong in all the world. “Didn’t I tell you they were darling?”

  An older woman swept out her little house, gray hair tucked into a yellow cap. She had a square face and a build that must have been daunting before age sloped her back. A man sat in a chair beside the door, sword strapped to his side, smoking a pipe into the summer evening. He coughed, but not from the pipe. Behind his back, the woman was deliberately sweeping dust in his direction, gusts of debris swirling up into his face. There was an honest look to the woman’s face, besides the glee she seemed to take at the man’s hacking. The man, on the other hand, had an expression of . . . Rin could not name it, but she was certain he deserved worse than a lungful of floor dirt.

  So when Isi said, “Rin, keep an eye out for anyone who seems a trustworthy soul,” Rin gestured to the sweeping woman.

  “She might tell us the truth.”

  Isi asked the woman a question in a language Rin did not understand, though the sounds of it pleased her. The woman glared at the back of the man’s head before going inside her home and sticking a lighted candle on the windowsill. The man sprang to his feet and shouted at the woman, and the woman shouted back until he stalked off.

  Isi spoke again in concerned tones, and the woman waved her hand dismissively.

  “I know of the western tongue,” said the woman, her accent pinched and sweet, as if she spoke with her mouth squeezed together. “You are Bayern?”

  Isi nodded. “We are. We don’t want to cause you trouble.”

  “I am ready with the trouble.” The woman shook her broom in the air. “If someone was not coming now, I was for hitting him already.” She smiled to show she was teasing, though Rin could see she almost meant her words.

  She gestured the travelers inside, where the smell of bread drenched the air. Rin spied the lumps of new loaves covered by a cloth, and her stomach gurgled, reminding her how many days it had been since she’d eaten bread. That was the smell of home, and her ma, and the warm cottage when rainstorms seethed outside. It was a hard, hard thing to lose a home full of bread and Ma.

  “I have dinner. You are hungry?” The woman sat the four girls on various stools and perches around her one-roomed home, handing out carved wooden bowls heaped with well-cooked beans and meat. The food was thick and well salted, but Rin’s
attention kept straying to the bread.

  Isi introduced them all and explained they were travelers with business in Kel. “Mistress . . .”

  “Mistress Mor,” said the woman.

  “Mistress Mor, if I may ask, who was that man? Your son?”

  Mistress Mor cackled, and Rin could not help smiling at the lively sound. “Not my son! My son is skinny and nice. That was”—she leaned out the door to spit—“soldier. How you say, soldier for no loyalty, soldier is paid?”

  “Mercenary,” said Dasha.

  Mistress Mor nodded. “Like ants they are crawling all in houses. We are ordered for putting them in homes and giving them to eat. And they are no nice boys.”

  “King Scandlan ordered you to take in mercenaries?” Dasha asked.

  “Maybe he. The order coming from Castle Daire. Daire is home to Lord Forannan and Lady Giles, but lord and lady now are gone. They were for being good to us. Now Castle Daire is home of queen.”

  There was a shout in Kelish, and they all stood, Dasha dropping her bowl in alarm. The soldier had returned with another, this one wearing a chain-mail vest and iron helmet. He pointed at Mistress Mor when he spoke. She met him at the threshold and spoke back, her voice taut and angry.

  “What’ll it be, Isi,” Enna asked, glancing at Dasha. “Diplomacy or action?”

  Isi stood between Mistress Mor and the soldier, placing a gentle hand on the soldier’s chest, and spoke in Kelish.

  The new soldier spoke back, and now the language did not seem so sweet to Rin. His eyes roved over the girls, taking in their clothes.

  “You do not belong here,” he said in a hard accent.

  Isi, still calm, said, “Neither do you.”

  The soldier shoved Isi aside and threw a chair at Mistress Mor. She cried out as the chair struck her. Before she’d even fallen to the ground, his sword flamed red hot, and he screamed as he dropped it.

  Rin rushed to Mistress Mor’s side. The old woman clutched at her ankle, muttering something in Kelish.