Forest Born

  This is people-speaking, Rin thought. This was the curse, as Enna called it, the one gift that corrupted everyone it touched. This was more dangerous than a sword, more than wind, water, and fire. Rin was still hidden behind the cairn, and Selia had not seen her. She should do something. But she did not. Under Selia’s voice, Rin felt like an ant in a flood.

  “I think I will take you all back to my castle—yes, my castle.” Selia’s eyes were triumphant, hungry even, as her gaze returned to Isi. “Did you think I would never have my own?”

  “Selia,” Isi said, getting three slow syllables out of her name. Her breathing was heavy, she blinked slowly. “You—”

  “That’s enough, Crown Princess,” Selia said in a voice meant to soothe. “Please don’t tax yourself. You are to be my very special guests, and I want you in the best of health. We’ll have a fortnight of celebrations before the big ending.

  Oh, the things I have planned for your amusement! Such a collection of barrels and nails and wild stallions to please a boatful of royalty! I know what fondness you have for such things, so I’ve spared no expense. But don’t be alarmed. If you play by my rules, no one need be harmed, not even a squealing piglet.”

  Selia was going to take them into the castle. Into a cage. Like Tusken, like Razo. Rin took a step backward, another, but she was shaking so badly a small stumble brought her to the ground.

  “It really is wonderful to see you. We haven’t been alone, just to chat, in years. The last time we were in a forest and I was admiring one of your gowns, but you did not want me to touch it. Rather petulant of you, I thought at the time, but you never did know how to be royal and yet behave royally. Do not concern yourself about that now. After all, not everyone is born with social grace, and I long ago pardoned you for your stinginess with clothing. Speaking of clothing, don’t you adore this dress?”

  Selia spun around, the soft pink fabric flipping up and wrapping her legs. “Imagine it without the scorch marks—that was unfortunate, but you see how forgiving I am to look past it, as I know Enna cannot truly cause me any harm. This dress is the latest Kelish fashion, but I added the lace on the sleeves myself. As soon as Scandlan and I announce our marriage and I make appearances at court, you will see all the Kelish women add lace to their sleeves. People look up to their queen—when their queen has substance to offer. That will all happen soon. My husband the king wished to announce it at once, of course, but I thought it wise to take it slowly. He is so indulgent. He loves me tirelessly. You just can’t imagine how thrilled he was to make me his queen.

  “Look at me! I just talk and talk when you’d think I’d be a proper hostess and take you back to my palace for refreshments in our commodious dungeon, but I see you and realize how long we have been apart. I have so much to tell you! First of all, I want you to know that the little boy is safe and healthy.” She looked up at the cage, smiling distractedly. “Such a find. Such a treasure. I can’t thank you enough for bringing him out of the palace yourself. Cilie just didn’t know how she was going to manage kidnapping him from under your nose, even with the distraction my hearth-watchers started to get Geric out of the way. This convenience was much better.

  “I’m thinking of raising him as my own. A child can be a charming accessory for any noble lady, and it will save me the trouble of having to go through the unpleasantness of bearing one myself. He already passed the bawling baby stage and is conveniently mobile, and so will do nicely.”

  Isi’s jaw flexed, and she leaned forward as if preparing to take a step. Selia laughed, so light and fresh it was as if the moonlight sang. She rubbed a consoling hand on Isi’s arm.

  “There, there now, we can still talk about his fate. Nothing is decided for certain. I will appreciate your input greatly. You see, Crown Princess, how reasonable I can be when you play nice? I will save your child. I won’t wring his tiny little neck and toss him to the hounds, but only so long as you don’t cause any trouble. You want him safe more than anything. Oh yes, you do, I can see the power of your desire wetting your eyes and quivering your adorable little chin.” Selia stroked Isi’s chin with her finger. “You will do anything to protect him. No need to say it. And I will protect him, I swear it. I will keep him safe as long as you and your friends are good girls.”

  Everything inside Rin was screaming, No, no, no! That’s Razo up there, that’s Tusken. Stop listening to her. Stop! She clung to the rocks in the cairn and tried to stand, but her legs ached with shaking, and everything seemed too hard. The effort exhausted her muscles, and Rin slumped back to the ground, the lulling of Selia’s voice soothing the anger from her blood.

  “It was easy to coax Tusken away from those soldiers. They were at camp. Geric was in a tent with a physician, and twenty men were guarding one little boy. He was so darling! Overjoyed to see a fair-haired lady just like his own mother. He was eager to come, and that short soldier only too happy to carry him for me. I left my men and hearth-watchers in the wood. They never had to use arrows or fire. Sweet of you to raise such a compliant child.”

  Rin wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep. Still on the ground, she lay on her side, extending her arm to rest under her head. Her hand brushed something hard—the exposed root of a tree, arching up out of the dirt like a bent knee. A tree. She crawled, following the root to the tree. The cairn now completely blocked all sight of the girls and Selia.

  Rin leaned against the trunk . . . please, please . . . aching for the escape of trees. She did not dare open herself to the tree, but her skin crawled with Selia’s voice and she was desperate for relief. Just to be near the tree helped a little, just to try and remember how she used to feel inside that uncomplicated stillness. Green and buzzing, drowsy and sweet, she reminded herself, and she almost heard that murmur in memory. Heard it in a different way than she heard the urgent rasping of crickets spilling out of the wood or Selia’s voice from the other side of the cairn. Heard it through her skin or deep in her chest.

  “. . . I will make sure Tusken never wants for anything . . .”

  Stop, don’t listen. Rin pressed herself closer but still kept herself from opening her senses to the tree. She wished she could plant her feet in soil and grow thick bark, let her arms trail through breezes and twist toward the sky. That promised safety. Trees did not care about what people said, did not understand. Just the slow throb of sap, the quiet stretch of roots, the sleepy crackle of leaves feeling a breeze . . .

  Rin shut her eyes and insisted that her body relax. Remember the rhythm of sap, leaves tasting wind, trunk a fortress of memory, bark thick, limbs strong . . . Selia’s voice slithered back into her consciousness.

  “I really hated it when the king of Bayern died and you became a queen before I could.”

  Rin put her hands over her ears, but it did not matter. Even blocking out the sound of Selia’s voice, the feeling of the words continued to roll around in her mind until Rin yearned to hear them again. Her hands dropped.

  “But one can’t rush into things—no, plans must be carefully laid, and sometimes that takes years. Oh, we have so much catching up to do! Or at least I do. Why am I always catching up to you, when I can run faster and think faster? Do you know? It is irritating. Still, I will always be sure that . . .”

  No.

  “. . . and Tusken will be as happy as an otter in . . .”

  No.

  “. . . his very life depends on . . .”

  No! Stop listening to her. Remember the trees. Relax. Rin breathed, filling her lungs, her center. I am nothing. I am part of the scenery, a fallen leaf, a scrap of bark. No danger, no time, no rush.

  Her trembling slowed, and her thoughts cleared as if the wind had swept fallen leaves from her mind. Before she could lose the stillness, Rin gripped her hands into fists and left the shelter of the cairn.

  The first few steps were the worst. If anyone looked her direction, they would see a girl moving toward the wood. So she went slowly, no motion worth drawing notice, no sound to pro
voke a turn of head.

  When hunting, silence was essential. But sneaking past people required seeming casualness as well. No exaggerated tiptoeing or fleeing from tree to tree. Back home, no one bothered to look at Rin much, and she was practiced at keeping quiet. She could stroll behind one of her brothers and lift the meat out of the sandwich in his hand without drawing attention. That trick always made Razo laugh.

  Razo. The thought of her brother kept her moving through the night, slow but persistent, and she was reminded of a root, seemingly still yet always digging, always moving. She entered the deeper wood in order to skirt Selia and her guards, then swing back to the cage. Keeping one hand up, she touched trees in passing, just to remind her of the steady peace she was trying to maintain, the voice of trees flowing through her, the drowsy hum of sap and water, the wistful murmur of leaves on wind.

  The green world, she named that place where she could hear trees. It had been like a second surface to everything, a soft barrier she could lean through. When completely submerged in green, she was immobile. But if she could barely touch it, lean half in and half out, perhaps she could gain some of that clarity and slowness and still keep moving forward.

  This was not like sneaking with Razo. She quivered with the strange and yet familiar impression that she was different somehow. Air filled her in a new way, thick and cool and fluid, like water filled a fish.

  Wonder at what she was doing was distracting. She pushed aside her thoughts, focusing on balancing herself in that place where Selia’s voice did not matter, where panic could not turn her into a useless, quivering animal. She forced herself to relax in order to maintain the nearness of the green world, physically trembling with the effort. What she tried seemed impossible—struggling to slow, fighting to be calm, laboring for rest. She might as well scream for quiet. As she thought it, she realized how absurd it really was, and in that moment the stillness crumbled. There was no calm, no control. Selia’s voice slammed back into her head.

  “. . . could just chat with you all night it seems! I have a particular fondness for words. I suppose you know that, Crown Princess. This has been a true joy, but the night grows chill and we should retire indoors.”

  Rin was alone in a foreign wood, vulnerable, confused, anxious to run away but stuck to the spot with fear. Her heart pounded as if it wanted to escape from her chest, her vision wavered, her whole self seemed to be thudding away with the heartbeats, and she gasped just to breathe.

  “Stop it,” she told herself in a haggard whisper. “Stop. Be like Isi, like Razo. Fearless and just fine. Do it.”

  She rested against a tree, still not daring to actually listen, sweating as she fought for the courage to be calm. The greenness seemed closer, so she shut her eyes and bid herself slip toward it, almost hearing the tree’s low rumbles, almost tasting that tranquility. When she was no longer aware of Selia’s voice in the distance, she walked on.

  Though she moved as slowly and casually as a deer nosing for greens, the effort made her muscles warm. Razo and Tusken were in a cage, Isi and the others trapped by that voice, and if the soldiers noticed Rin they would kill her and Razo and Tusken too because Selia had said she would kill them if the girls did not do as she said and stay still and . . .

  No. Think about Razo. This was just a game. She was playing stealth. She’d stolen Jef’s sandwich and was sneaking away, that was all. To go laugh with Razo. She could do this.

  She was just a tree.

  It seemed she would never reach the spot, then suddenly she was there. An oak tree, large, ponderous. The cage was lashed with ropes to one of its thick base limbs, hanging above the lapping fire. Selia was heading back to the castle. Isi, Enna, and Dasha were following, flanked on all sides by soldiers. The fire sisters were not bound. They would go willingly or not at all.

  Most of the soldiers were moving toward the castle. Even those stuck to their knees in mud had managed to dig themselves out. Only about ten remained. They would return their attention to the cage and take Razo and Tusken back to the castle too. Rin did not have much time.

  She pulled a knife from the pack on her back and gripped its blade with her teeth while she climbed. She lay flat on the branch holding the cage and pulled herself closer. Razo was watching, eyes unblinking, terrified and hopeful too. Tusken was asleep in his arms. At the rope now, high enough that the fire below was just gusts of warmth and wind-battered smoke, she pulled the knife from her teeth to show Razo her only weapon. He pointed to a fat, intricate knot securing the rod in the latch, then he made a sawing gesture in his hand. Rin cut at the rope, the effort making the metal cage creak. Her heart blasted with each beat. Razo shut his eyes, his lips muttering something that looked like, “Please, please, please.” Just as Aileann had in Kelish. The echo gave Rin chills.

  At last her knife hit the metal rod, and Rin pulled the rope loose, opening the door. Relief poured through her like warm water. She stuck the knife in the ropes for Razo to pick up and took Tusken from his arms. The sudden weight almost threw her from the tree, but she gripped the sleeping boy and bade her trembling legs to hold her steady. She inched along the branch to the trunk, Razo behind her. Tusken moaned softly in his sleep, and even in that moment of terror, balancing for her life, scraping her legs on the bark and barely able to move, she could not help pressing her lips against his damp brow. He smelled of road dust and Razo’s own sweat. Her heart yearned for him and she thought, I’ll protect you, lamby. I’ll die for you.

  She felt the moment when she passed from the bare branch to the curtained privacy of the tree’s foliage, felt it like a sigh. Razo was just behind her. That was when they heard the shouting.

  “They’ve seen the empty cage,” Razo whispered. “We’ve got to run, now.”

  “Just climb a little higher and they won’t find us.”

  “Rinna, come on, we—”

  “We can’t run fast enough. They’ll catch us on the ground. The tree will hide us.”

  Razo’s eyes darted wildly, trying to see the soldiers through the leaves. “I’ll drop first, then you give me Tusken and—”

  “Climb up, Razo,” she said. “They’ll look for movement, they’ll look on the ground. They won’t look up. People rarely look up, rarely notice trees at all. Listen to me and climb!”

  Razo hesitated. Rin did not talk like that to Razo. This journey was pulling words and demands out of her, and she feared she’d done wrong. When she spoke again, it was in the barest whisper.

  “Please. I know trees, and I know people. This will work.”

  Razo looked with longing at the ground, but he nodded and took Tusken from her arms.

  The boy was so completely asleep he did not even moan as Razo propped him on his shoulder, holding him with one hand and climbing the tree with the other. They went up two more branches to where the leaves were thickest.

  Razo was staring down, scratching nervously at his hair, and glancing back at Rin with an “Are you sure?” expression. She nodded. If the soldiers stood close to the oak’s trunk and looked up, they would most definitely see three people huddled there. But she believed they would not look.

  Rin sat next to Razo, sharing a branch, the three of them squeezed between two other limbs. Razo’s breath was coming in fast huffs, from the exertion of climbing with one arm, but also, Rin guessed, from fear. Voices darted their way, shouts of confusion and anger at the cage hanging empty. Now the soldiers would search the wood.

  She needed to stay still, stay quiet. But Rin’s heart was thumping again as if to break free, her limbs shaking. Selia had said she would kill Razo and Tusken. Surely she would now that Rin had set them free. And kill Rin too. All of them, in retribution for what Rin had done. The fright and effort burned, and hot tears oozed down her cheeks. Fear was everything and everything hurt so much, she wondered if she might die.

  Calm. Please, be calm.

  She was too terrified to remember that greeness into herself. She felt ravaged by her memory of Selia’s word
s, ruined, sure that death was imminent for all of them, and it was her fault. The fear and guilt was white-hot pain. Her trembling shook Tusken, and he murmured. What if he woke and cried out? The searchers would find them in an instant. Razo seemed to be shaking as much as she. They needed to calm.

  Inside the tree, water flowed like blood in a body, keeping the branches strong and the leaves alive and green. So sleepy, so content with its roots in the wonderful dampness of deep, deep soil, with the sun down and the leaves at rest. Rin put one of her arms around her brother’s shoulder, and between them embraced Tusken, still fast asleep.

  Razo’s eyes met hers, startled and unsure.

  “Try to sleep,” she mouthed silently.

  Razo grimaced, his eyes saying, “Are you crazy?”

  She took a deep breath to show that she was trying, then closed her own eyes. Hoofbeats and shouts from the searchers made her heartbeats scatter and her legs ache, but if she could absorb the calm of the tree, perhaps Razo and Tusken would feel it from her.

  She knew that if she listened to the tree, she was sure to encounter that nauseating wrongness. That fear was nothing compared to her terror of Selia and her searchers. Shouts raised goose bumps on her arms, but she clung both to the tree and to the idea of the tree. She could feel her brother start to relax beside her, his breath slowing almost to the pace of Tusken’s calm inhales and exhales. The nausea was creeping around her, the loathing filling her limbs like water in a jar. She welcomed it now, ready to greet that horror over the reality below. Her stomach rolled, her bones shuddered, but she did not let go.

  Still half-aware of the danger outside their house of leaves, Rin plunged herself through the sickening dread into oak-bound memories until the present was a distant idea . . . and then, just gone.