Forest Born

  “Carefully,” said Enna, her eyes focused on the way before them. “We can do that. Absolutely. And then we’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Carefully,” Isi warned.

  “Right.” When Enna spoke again, her voice was so soft, Rin had to strain to hear. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I swore I never would again. But you should know, I will if I need to, Isi. If I need to keep Bayern’s queen safe, I will kill.”

  Rin could see Isi’s profile as she looked at Enna, lines of sadness in her face, torment almost, and Rin expected the queen to declare that Enna need never go back on her promise. But then Isi raised one eyebrow.

  “As if you could.”

  Enna stared at Isi so intently she tripped over a rock. “Excuse me?”

  “You talk so big, I’ll kill if I have to, but you couldn’t even kill me.”

  Rin and Dasha gaped. Enna sighed and waved a hand as if trying to sum up a lot of information quickly. “One time I tried to kill her and I failed. It wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . it was a long . . . well, anyway, after that, there was nowhere for our friendship to go but up.”

  “I can depend on Enna for just about anything,” said Isi, “but I could never make her a court assassin. She’d fall flat on her face.”

  “Ho there now, my queen, I can slay with the best of them. If you just weren’t so good at defending yourself—”

  “No excuses. You can set fire to an army, but when it comes down to it, you’re really bad at individual murders.”

  “Fine.”

  Rin watched Isi closely. There was a tightness in her voice, a sadness in her eyes. Despite the teasing, the queen cared very much whether her friend killed again.

  Isi did not just like Enna, Rin considered. She needed her, and not just for Enna’s talents, her protection and power. The queen needed to hear a second voice, to have someone she trusted always on her side. Rin thought of her own mother, surrounded by people, all family and no friends. The homestead was frantic with people, but they were all people Ma fussed and sweated and cared for. Who cared for Ma?

  “If it’s possible that this queen of Kel has been trying to herd us to Castle Daire, then why are we . . .” Dasha gestured with her chin toward the direction they walked.

  “I know,” said Isi. “It’s an uncertain road. But I can’t imagine she could kill or even capture us. Enna alone can hold off an entire battalion of soldiers or a handful of fire-speakers.” She hooked arms with Enna at her side, and Dasha put her arm through Rin’s. “This queen of Kel thinks she can defeat us? Ruffle our feathers? Make us flinch? Ha, I say.”

  “Ha!” Enna echoed with enthusiasm.

  A loud, contented moo echoed Enna’s laugh, startling Dasha to scream. Rin realized they were walking through a herd of cows sampling the damp grasses of the night field.

  Recovered, Dasha held up her head as she tromped on. “That’s right. Ha to that burning queen, and moo too. There’s a good deal of water hanging in those clouds up there that is eager to meet her fire-speakers.”

  Rin put her arm more firmly through Dasha’s, breathing in the good feeling of being with friends. And not just any friends. Joined with those three girls, she felt as insurmountable as a mountain, as solid as a forest of trees. It made her feel bold, almost as good as them, almost as strong.

  “Have you been to Daire before, Isi?” Dasha asked.

  “No, I believe both the castle and its town are small. Last year Geric and I traveled to the coast and took the sea route to Bressal to meet with the king. Scandlan was reserved but gracious, so his current silence troubles me. We stayed a couple of weeks, taking Tusken with us. He loved the sword dancing and drumming. Geric loved the roast boar and fishing with nets in the ocean. I loved the tales.”

  “You’ve never told me any Kelish tales,” Enna said.

  “Haven’t I? They’re . . . strange, in a wonderful way, but they don’t make good bed tales. I’ve wondered why the Kelish stories are about humanlike animals, as if in order to see the story it has to be a bit removed from what is actually real.”

  “So go on, then,” said Enna.

  “All right. So. The boar, the stag, and the eagle met on the last craggy peak of the world, looked down, and sighed at what they saw. The boar was a king, and he said, ‘There are not enough people.’ The stag was a poet, and he said, ‘There is not enough beauty.’ The eagle was a cleric, and he said, ‘There is not enough mystery.’ Then the wolf, arriving late, looked up instead of down and said, ‘There is not enough hunger,’ and promptly ate them all.” Isi cleared her throat. “And . . . that’s the end.”

  “Oh,” Dasha said. “I see.”

  Isi laughed. “The Kelish enjoy the unexpected endings, especially ones that involve death. All Kelish tales are questions, and this one asks, if the boar was king, the stag was poet, and the eagle was cleric, then what was the wolf?”

  “A woman,” said Enna.

  “Unkindness,” said Dasha. “Brutality, selfishness, people who play life like a game and kill to win. What do you think, Isi?”

  “King, poet, and cleric are all professions, so maybe the wolf represents a profession as well, like a warrior. Or perhaps it’s something less tangible, like . . . time.” Isi shrugged. “It seems like a riddle, but then I think, maybe there isn’t one answer. What do you think, Rin?”

  Rin still had not said a word since yelling at the mercenaries to go away. She cleared her throat and was about to agree with what Isi had said, but a different thought seized her. “Maybe the wolf isn’t a person or a thing. Maybe it’s something inside—inside us.” She imagined the wolf poised in her own chest with maw open at her heart, a beast that could eat her from the inside. The girls did not answer, and Rin cursed herself for speaking her thoughts.

  “Huh,” said Dasha. “Well, I like the tale. It is sort of dreadful, but so is this night, and the distraction is constructive.”

  So Isi told another, and another, as they walked forward and up in the night of a hidden moon. Rin listened but only barely, because she kept asking herself, What is the wolf?

  A solitary tree lurked on a hilltop, its branches reaching high and wide. It was a perfect outline against the starlit sky, perhaps the loveliest tree shape Rin had ever seen, and it filled her with wonder for the beauty in the world, even here, so far from home that people spoke a new language and told animal tales that asked questions more confusing than dreams. It was not until they passed beneath it that Rin realized the enormity of the thing, and she held her breath in awe. She was reminded of the ancient elm in the palace yard, and marveled again at what a tree could become outside a forest. Isi, Dasha, and Enna had all left home and family, and they were doing fine. Rin had hoped that she too could bloom away from home, but passing beneath that tree, under a foreign night sky, she felt even tinier than before, a mote of dust that could be lost in the merest huff of wind.

  On they marched, the hour moving through them and past them so quickly, Rin was not tired by the time they reached Daire. They halted at first sight of the castle, in a rocky field dotted with trees. The wind troubled the leaves and stirred them into a fluster, chattering and nipping at each other like kits. The moon revealed itself, leering over the castle battlement. In its shadow, the queen of Kel was waiting.

  Part Three

  The Castle

  Chapter 14

  The moon lit the castle from behind, scratching its jagged outline across a blue-black sky. Much smaller than the palace in Bayern’s capital, this border fortress was built of connected towers with toothy tops. Rin could hear the occasional bawl of cattle, for Kel was as seemingly full of cows as the Forest was of squirrels. It was a comforting sound, a reminder that there were creatures who did not know about crossbow bolts and fire-speakers, and were just happy to smell late-summer grass.

  Just beyond the field, Rin felt the pull of trees. A wood. A place to hide. She began to veer that way, hating the open plain where anyone might spot them by the garish light of
that white moon.

  Dasha’s arm was still in hers, so Rin pulled the Tiran girl along.

  “This does seem too open, doesn’t it, Isi?” said Dasha.

  Ahead stood three dark figures. Rin startled and Dasha made a dry scream. How had Isi’s wind not given warning? Then Rin noticed their huge height, their stillness. Three pillars of stacked stones, standing three men high, side by side as if guarding the wood.

  “They’re cairns,” said Isi. “Built both to honor the gods in the wood and to keep them there.”

  “Why?” asked Enna.

  “Gods in the wood are good luck. Gods roaming free get involved in people’s lives.”

  Rin could tell from Isi’s voice that she did not believe in sacred cairns or gods in the wood, but as they passed by the third pillar, Enna’s face was full of curiosity and reverence. Rin herself felt something peculiar just seeing the cairns, as if she were looking at the body of someone she used to know.

  “I think the cairns are the way of the clerics and the people to say, we know there is something more, but we don’t know what,” Isi went on. “So we give it shape, and that shape may be the wrong shape, but it’s there to remind us of what we can’t see. The wrongness of it is what makes us think. The error in what we made will bring us the truth.”

  “That makes me think of the sea . . .” Dasha sighed, a sound of longing. “We see the surface, blue or silver or gray, and waves hitting the shore. But we know there’s so much we can’t see, so what we love about it becomes in part what we imagine it is hiding.”

  Isi stopped. The other girls halted just as suddenly, waiting for whatever news Isi heard on the wind. Isi began to turn, looking for a source.

  “They’re staying downwind, but I got a glimpse. Armed men. Over . . .” She pointed vaguely to her right, then behind them. Enna’s hands were in fists.

  “The wood,” Rin urged. She used to love night, when the worst thing hiding in the darkness was one of her brothers tiptoeing to pull a prank. Now night was full of burners and swords and bolts, and Rin’s skin ached for trees to shield her. Enna and Isi turned as they walked, scanning the darkness.

  “They could pick us off with arrows,” Dasha said, her voice trembling.

  Isi shook her head. “No, they’re too far behind us. Enna, do you hear anything?”

  “Wait.” Enna stopped. “They’re ahead of us, too.”

  All stopped. Enna and Isi were listening—not with their ears, Rin knew, but in some other way, sensing wind and heat. The lurkers must have been close, because Isi or Enna pulled a wind to circle around the four girls. Rin hoped it was thick enough to toss away arrows and protect them from fire.

  A moment later, a group of soldiers came running from the wood, swords raised.

  “Enna, heat their weapons out of their hands,” said Isi. “I’ll take their breaths. Dasha, can you sink them where they stand?”

  Dasha nodded.

  “I’m going to release the wind now.”

  The circling wind died, and Rin could feel light vibrations of wind and heat; then the soldiers were dropping swords and gasping as if the air had been pulled right out of their lungs. While they gasped and stumbled, the ground beneath their feet was getting wetter, deep ground water rising up through the dirt and soaking it through, mud as deep as their knees seizing the soldiers’ boots and holding them fast. When the breeze stilled and the men could breathe again, they found themselves stuck in mud, unable to take a step.

  “None of them are fire-speakers,” Enna said, apparently able to tell from a distance.

  “Who sent you?” Isi’s voice was hard. “Tell us now or worse things will happen than muddy boots. Who ordered your attack?”

  Isi repeated her demand in Kelish, but they did not answer. Perhaps the soldiers guessed that it was an idle threat, or perhaps the threats of their own leader were more dire.

  “Isi,” Dasha said. “It seems likely that whoever burned the inn would know we could handle this many soldiers.”

  Isi looked toward the castle. “She’s planning something.”

  Enna turned her back to Isi, facing the other direction, and Dasha the same, the fire sisters forming a triangle, scanning the horizon for coming danger.

  “Rin, take cover,” Isi said.

  Rin wanted to stay. She did not feel in danger with those girls—stepping away from them and into the darkness, that seemed riskier. So she did not go far, just a couple dozen steps to the nearest cairn, putting the massive stack of stones between herself and the castle. Her boots were coated with Dasha’s mud, and she scraped them off with a rock.

  “Maybe we should—,” Enna started.

  A bonfire of wood blazed so suddenly, Rin had no doubt a fire-speaker had done the job. She peered around the edge of the stones. There, where the outer wall of Castle Daire touched the wood, a fire burned beneath a massive tree. A metal cage dangled from a branch, high enough that the flames did not touch it. But if the cage slipped, it would fall directly into the fire.

  Two people were in the cage. A boy holding a child. And Rin knew them. She knew the shape of them, the size of them. She wished she was mistaken, wished so hard her head ached.

  “Who . . . ,” Dasha began to ask.

  “No,” Isi breathed. “No. No. No.”

  Isi knew. And so, with a sickening drop of her stomach, Rin was certain too—the boy in the cage was Razo, and the child was Tusken.

  Isi took one step forward and the bonfire died. Wind whipped up, knocking down anyone standing between Isi and the cage. Rin half-expected the entire castle to explode in flame, but before Isi could do anything more, a voice cut through the wind and night. A woman’s voice, her accent neither Kelish nor Bayern. A pleasing voice.

  “Now please stay calm. There’s no cause for an ado. All will be well. I will not hurt you. It would benefit everyone if you would listen for a moment. I know you are curious to understand why you are here. You want to end this peacefully, so it is wise to listen before you strike.”

  Out of the shadows, a slim figure walked forward. Her face was not yet visible, but Isi gasped. “Get away, all of you,” Isi commanded. “Enna, Dasha, go. Go now!”

  “No, don’t, please. It would be better if you stayed.”

  And they stayed. Rin felt turned to wood. More than anything, she wanted to hear that voice again. And the figure kept advancing. She moved in such a way that Rin was sure she was aware of her hips and liked them a great deal. Her robes were made of a loose pink fabric that clung to her curvier parts. Her pale hair, silvery in the night, hung loose over her shoulders, and made her appear tall, lean, almost luminous. In all, she seemed the most beautiful creature alive. It was easy to watch her and forget about Razo and Tusken in the cage.

  Do something quick, Rin thought, though she did not move. Neither did the fire sisters. Dasha’s expression was curious, Enna’s was rigid as if she were in great pain. Isi’s was stiff with horror.

  Isi spoke one word. “Selia.”

  Chapter 15

  Here I am!” said the woman, lifting a hand as if to present herself. The bonfire blazed anew, and Selia was lit from behind in orange and gold, as grand and unearthly as the stone pillars, but sinuous as a snake.

  She kept moving forward. “And overjoyed to see you. Truly. I’ve been simply breathless to—Now, Enna, be calm. Terrible things will happen if you burn me. Terrible things. I think you believe me, don’t you? Yes, you do, poor thing. I am awfully convincing. There is really no choice but for you to listen. Calmly, politely. Unclench those fists there, Crown Princess.” She’d reached Isi, and she picked up Isi’s fist and smoothed her hand straight. There was no hesitation in her fluid motions, no fear in her face. “That’s better. As I was saying, I am completely overjoyed to welcome you to my kingdom. You are the honey cake for my feast. And I cannot wait to eat you up. Easy now, Anidori. Just stand there, harmless please. If you hurt me, your son loses his head at once.”

  Rin glanced around, trying to f
ind some evidence that this claim was true. How could it be? Tusken was in that cage, and she had seen what these fire sisters could do. In moments, surely they could take out all the soldiers, and this Selia too, before anyone got close enough to pluck a hair from Tusken’s or Razo’s head. Did the girls believe Selia’s threat? Why did they not act? Now, hurry, now. And yet . . . why did Rin stand still as well? Just listening to Selia’s voice, her whole body relaxed. Not the same as when she allowed herself to feel the peace of trees—that peace came from her core and flowed out. This calm seemed to fill her head like smoke fills a room. Her body was separate from her, a different being, and her thoughts were too hazy to make it move.

  Besides, why bother? Selia said there was no way to save the boys, and surely she was right. And her voice was so reassuring. The more Rin listened, the more the delicious sound of Selia’s words crept inside, roosted in her like a flock of sleepy birds, happy to be home. Rin almost smiled at the thought. She liked birds. She was feeling cozy and safe, like birds at home in their trees . . .

  “A word of advice? The next time you take it in your head to execute someone, dig up the courage to do it yourself. You can’t trust anyone these days, can you? It takes courage to kill, Crown Princess. Real courage. Time and again, you’ve proven that you don’t have it.” Selia put a hand under Isi’s chin and whispered, “But I do.” She kissed Isi on the lips, like a little girl might kiss a precious doll.

  Enna hissed and fire burst at Selia’s hem, making her take two steps back in surprise. But in an instant the fire was gone, as if sucked away by a fire-speaker, and Selia shook the smoke out of her skirt. She smiled tenderly at Enna. “No more of that, Enna. Be a good girl.” She pressed her cheek to Enna’s, whispering something in her ear. One of Enna’s eyes leaked a tear, but she did not so much as push Selia back.