There it was. Rin was sitting firmly in the saddle but felt herself tumble a long way down.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” asked Isi.
Rin did not answer. Shaking her head would have been a lie.
“You were born with it, perhaps?” Isi’s voice was soft. “But maybe by the time you were old enough to understand something of what you could do, you realized it was dangerous. Maybe you often want to speak but stop yourself.” Isi waited, but Rin stayed silent. “A few times you may have used it in earnest and been frightened by what you could do.”
Rin shut her eyes against her own embarrassment. “When I’m careless, the longing begins to sweep through me again and assures me I can be anything. I can do anything. All I have to do is speak. Sometimes I believe I could become that person, and this me is only a shadow of who I really should be.”
“That may be true.”
Now Rin looked up. “True? But—”
“You can allow yourself to be powerful, Rin. That’s not a bad thing.”
Rin shook her head, truly wordless now.
“You saw Selia. You know what not to become. So, what will you be? I have a feeling that discovery will be an adventure to make these last weeks look like a stroll through the wood.”
They were entering the city gates, and conversation hushed with the relief of arrival and the hurrahs from the gate guards. Rin let her horse fall back and rode alone up the long, twisting streets of the capital.
What will you be, Rin?
Chapter 30
All who had journeyed were given three days’ leave from duty. Most spent it sleeping, Rin and Razo included. Enna spent it planning. On the fourth day, Enna and Finn were married.
It was not a day too soon. Rumor was that the palace kitchen-master had resigned his post due to Enna’s aggressive planning style, only to be cajoled back by Isi, and the thread-mistress had on three occasions faked a wakeless slumber to avoid the bride. But at last the court gathered in the great hall, lords and ladies alongside soldiers and Forest born. Pine and fir boughs entwined the pillars, filling the hall with the deliciously sweet scent of evergreen, transforming the chamber into its own forest.
Isi stood on the dais dressed in bright yellow, and with her pale skin and yellow hair, she had an inhuman beauty, like an image stamped on a gold coin. She spoke lovingly about the couple before Geric performed the ceremony. Gilsa, Finn’s mother, was positioned beside the king and queen in a place of honor. She wore what were no doubt her best woolens, a bright yellow top with deep blue skirt and a red scarf in her hair, but must have shunned the idea of dressing in finery. The way she glanced at the crowd with a carefully concealed eye roll, Rin felt certain that Gilsa would not have cared if Finn and Enna had married in Kel. She was just looking forward to grandchildren.
No one stood for Enna’s family on the dais—she had none. Her mother and brother had both died in the past few years. Rin wondered that she had not thought of that before. How lonely Enna surely would be, if she did not have Finn.
Enna and Finn held hands before the dais, directly on a square of sunlight cast by a window high in the ceiling. Enna wore a long red gown with Kelish lacing at the bodice, a style she fancied at the last minute. Her hair was wound together and pinned up, twining posies making a band of white across her crown. Rin barely noticed Finn’s black tunic and jacket, because whenever she looked at the Forest boy, her eyes naturally traveled back to Enna again. He stared at her as if she was so stunning, so perfect, nothing else needed to exist. His gaze made Rin want to stare at Enna too and reason out her perfections. Did love make him blind to any faults until his Enna was a lie? Or did love imbue him with a specific kind of people-speaking, so that only he in all the world saw her truly?
Rin felt a tiny crack in her heart as she realized no one would ever look at her as Finn looked at Enna. Rin must keep herself silent and apart.
Geric pronounced the final words. Finn held his hands to Enna’s face, his fingertips light on her cheeks, and leaned down to kiss her. Enna blushed, a thing Rin never thought she’d see. The whole room cheered till the pine boughs swayed.
“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah for the woman and the man,” the crowd shouted in the traditional chant.
“It’s about time,” Razo muttered at Rin’s side.
Dasha wiped a tear and shouted loudest of all. “Seven children, seven hearts, seven lives of happiness!”
Rin grimaced and figured it must be something they said in Tira.
“Seven cats too!” Razo shouted.
“With seven fleas!” said Rin.
Dasha bumped against Razo. “Oh stop it, you two. It is a perfectly normal wedding wish.”
Rin and Razo laughed.
The crowd poured out of the palace and into the gardens, where a path lit by small white candles led to tables laden with sweet things. Razo and Dasha hooked arms and began to stroll in a manner that suggested Rin’s brother had been more affected by the romance of the ceremony than he’d let on. Rin left them, making her way through plants heavy with growing, shrubs pulled low by their leaves, waiting for autumn to relieve their burdens. She felt a little autumnal herself, wearing a brownish red dress with fancy thread work around the sleeves. She patted her head, feeling the nice clean crown of braids Dasha had put in. A shrub had lost a few yellow leaves, and Rin swept them up and stuck them in her hair.
“Hello, Rin—Rinna.” A boy Razo’s age with a face thick with freckles stood suddenly before her, his ever-present orange cap in his hands.
Rin sighed. “Hello, Conrad.”
And she kept on walking. Not Conrad! she thought. She glanced back. He was looking after her, twisting his cap in his hands. Well, maybe . . . no. No. Not Conrad. Not anyone.
The misty autumn evening welcomed her, pulling her deeper into the garden. She walked and walked, through the ordered garden, the fountains of late roses dipping their branches into the grass. Then she saw it—the elm tree, the trunk’s girth as wide as all six of her brothers wrestling in a knot. It seemed so out of place beside the garden trees and flowering shrubs, an ancient, gnarled grandfather waiting patiently for a visitor. It had changed in the few weeks Rin was gone, looking shabbier and a little unloved now, many of its leaves brown and ragged around the edges. She knew the tree did not care—autumn was part of circling time, a reason to shed and exhale, prepare for sleep. But Rin mourned the loss of its lustrous summer glory.
She guessed the elm had stood on that hill since before the castle was built. Some early king or queen must have taken a fancy to it and ordered it be spared the ax, the gardens and stables growing around it. Rin wondered if she could drown in the memories of such a thing. Just then, the thought was appealing.
She placed a slippered foot in the crevice of trunk and branch and climbed into its crossing limbs. Like diving into a deep pond with arms still at her sides, Rin lay her head against a branch, closed her eyes, and fell into the tree’s thoughts. She did not leave a thread of thought behind her to hold on to, did not worry about finding her way out again. She just let herself plummet through dry, woody memories and left herself behind.
Her fears encircled her like rings in a trunk, and she existed in the core of it, spinning, facing them, seeing them—speaking a serpent’s words, turning into a monster, becoming Selia, harming those she loved, spending forever alone. She spun and spun, fighting to face herself, trying not to fear so she could see her own face clearly. But she spun so quickly, the rings were a wall higher than any fortress, and she had no hands to climb. She wanted to scream at the tree, demand solace.
No, Rin. Listen.
She stopped fighting, leaned against the wall of rings, and decided to be comfortable inside confusion. As she waited, listening to the pulse of sap, what had felt hard and rough melted into softness. Walls lowered and she began to see again. It was a memory of Isi riding toward the capital, telling Rin she needed balance.
Rin looked at herself as if she were a tree, saw the
circles of her tree-speaking and people-speaking growing side by side since she was a child. After she broke her own rules with Wilem, the rings of tree-speaking thinned, and the rings of people-speaking thickened, turning dark and ragged.
She turned in the elm and saw Selia, her face full of fierceness and need, slaving for her own desires, clawing her way to a crown, words leaving her mouth like cast stones.
Rin turned and saw the elm, passionless, calm, rumbling of deep soil and sunlight on leaves.
Nothing can balance people-speaking, Rin had thought.
The elm creaked in contentment, its trunk settling a little deeper into the soil.
Rin imagined herself thick with the voice of the trees, her center calm, her hands outstretched, words leaving her mouth like falling leaves. Bright autumn leaves, rich in golds and reds. She saw Scandlan, Razo, and Isi gathering her fallen words and weaving them into crowns.
The tree-speaking pulled her down and center, roots deep, content and sturdy in the soil; but people-speaking branched her up from herself and out toward sunlight—and people.
Finally she turned and saw herself, a thin, quiet girl with haunted eyes. An uprooted thing that longed to anchor herself and grow. She had been Ma’s shadow, and Razo’s and Isi’s—but there she was now, ready to let herself be changed. She was not a queen—not Isi, and not Selia. She would be the Forest girl who listens to people the way she listens to trees and speaks truths the way leaves fall.
Rin was glowing with joy there, spinning inside the tree, weightless and without worry, whirling through images of good things, tree branches filled with people, people she loved crowned with leaves. She spun and glowed and maybe laughed until she felt ready to stand, to stretch, to look on the world with her own eyes.
And with that decision, she came crashing back and found herself sitting upright on a branch, her heart pounding, her breath coming into her lungs like blows of a hammer. She smiled, then began to giggle, throwing herself out of the tree and onto the ground. Her fancy dress was wrinkled, stuck with leaves and flecks of bark, her woven crown of braids coming loose at the ends. She felt pretty.
And new, too. Remade. Ready to move again. Listening was the start, she decided. Doing was the next step.
She patted the tree in thanks for letting her share its thoughts and come out again. By the light in the east, it was nearly morning—hopefully just the next day, she thought. Her limbs quivered with cold and exhaustion, and she was thirsty enough that the trough near the stables looked enticing. But she could not help giggling some more as she stumbled toward the palace.
She stopped in the castle to change into her old Forest clothes and pack her few things. The waiting women were asleep, the door to Isi’s chamber shut. Rin glanced once at her bed and thought longingly of rest. But her heart was pumping hard with life, and she could not bear to lie down and close her eyes again, to say good-bye to the whole world even for as long as a nap.
She meant to search out Razo, but no sooner had she left the antechamber than she bumped right into him, his upright hair matted on one side.
“You’re up early,” she said.
Razo swept his fingers through his hair, encouraging the tips up. “When I couldn’t find you after the wedding, I bribed a few sentries to wake me if you turned up. Where were you anyway?”
“Sleeping in a tree.”
He snorted. “Of course. And now . . .” He looked pointedly at her pack. “Sneaking off again?”
“I’m going home.”
He exhaled. “That’s all right then. Be sure to give Ma a hug from me and do something spooky to Jef—could you tell a tree to bend down and wrap its branches around him while he naps? No? Shame. But do something good, and make sure you tell me all the details when I come back. Dasha and I . . . you know, we’re going back to Tira for the winter, so I won’t see you till spring.”
She nodded. There was a burn of sadness against her heart at the thought, but the burn did not consume her. She was Rin, Razo was her brother, and that would not change through autumns and springs.
He rubbed the top of her head. He did it fondly, but in the process pulled more hair loose from her braid, and she shoved him back before he could make a complete mess of her.
His eyes brightened with a sudden thought. “Maybe you could come with us! You’d love the boat ride, and Ingridan is . . . well, it’s amazing. You’ll see.”
“Maybe sometime. But I can’t leave Ma waiting any longer.” She was not ready to explore the wide earth yet, not when home still felt mysterious. Besides, she aimed to visit the capital now and then. She might help Isi unstitch the words Selia had stuck inside her. And she could not imagine leaving Tusken for good. But she still felt like a shadow of a girl, sitting at the feet of the fire sisters, half-formed and callow. Home was a good, safe place to learn some and grow some.
“You going to want a horse for the trip home?” Razo asked.
She looked at him without humor.
“Oh. Right. But I don’t know if you should make that walk alone.”
“Razo.” She lifted her palms up. “I’m Forest born.”
Razo nodded.
“Will you let Isi know I went home for a bit? I’m no waiting woman—she knows that, and she expects me to go. I could tell. But I’ll miss that Tusken. Hug him for me? And invite them both to the homestead before winter.” She spoke lightly, aware of a low heat she could draw up and pour into the words, make them stronger than what they were, but just then she found it easy to resist.
“I swear on my life.” Razo gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head before turning away. She was halfway down the stairs when he called after her.
“I finally thought of the right nickname for you. What do you think about Rinna-girl?”
She smiled. “Perfect.”
Rin took three days to get home. Autumn was young, breathing freshness into every gust. Instead of feeling bone-frozen and homesick for sunshine, Rin was enlivened by the weather. It made her shiver and remember that she was alive.
She took her time on the journey, listening to the pines and firs of her home. She was startled and delighted to discover how much of what she heard from the trees was just her own self echoed back. When she was filled with self-loathing for what she’d done to Wilem, that was all she heard from the trees. And in the same way, when she brimmed with sweet calm, she was not borrowing the tree’s peace but actually tapping into her own. Hers was the core strong, roots running deep, branches reaching high. Hers was the radiating peace.
After realizing that, she just had to run for a while, skipping over ferns, weaving around firs. Running again, but this time toward home.
On the third day, she slowed to greet an aspen, running her hands over the papery bark and hard black knots, a contrast she found more beautiful than sunsets. She let her thoughts go in and down, listening to an aspen for the first time since she’d left home. Now she was not seeking the calm but listening for their silent green voice of life. She startled and opened her eyes. This was not an individual sapling. Every aspen in the Forest was part of the same tree. How could that be?
She touched that delicate bark again and listened. Aspen roots were part of a network that stretched over the entire Forest, thousands and tens of thousands of saplings growing up out of the same shared roots. And that root system was ancient, older than the elm, older than anything she could have imagined. Memories of fires hummed deep in its fibers, flames that had wiped out everything growing, except the aspens. Safe underground, the roots had lived to sprout new trees. Windstorms and mudslides, fires and droughts and axes, nothing had been able to kill those aspens. The tough roots survived, new trees bloomed, and the Forest kept on.
“So it is,” Rin whispered.
She was not that lone elm in the garden, not some far-flung cedar clinging to a wind-battered hillside. She was from a forest as old as the stones of the earth, pines protecting each other from wind, firs entwining roots and sharing rainfall, aspe
ns sprouting from the same source.
“Rin!” Her nephew Incher spotted her from his perch in a tree. Without another word, he leaped to the ground and ran off.
After weeks away, to have home suddenly near made her heart flutter like a trapped bird. Her first instinct was to run off, so she took a breath and found true things to speak to herself.
You are allowed to be powerful. You are not Selia, and you are not dark loathing. You have a strong core, reaching down deep, straining up high, but with eyes to see and a mouth to speak. You don’t control the trees or the people. You are the changed one.
By the time she could see the bough-heavy roof of her ma’s house, everyone was running toward her. All five brothers, five brothers’ wives, twenty-two nieces and nephews (the twenty-third carried), and Ma, white-shot black hair frizzing free of her headscarf. There was no way Ma could outrun the likes of long-and-lean Jef or Hinna of the forever leaping legs. So perhaps she flew, because Ma did get to Rin first, her hands reaching for her girl, and then Rin was inside her mother’s embrace.
It was like being lost in the rings of an ancient tree, how she seemed to be falling and yet warm and still and as secure as could be. There was no fear, no wincing away from herself. There was just Ma and Rin. And moments later, everyone. Hands slapped her back and rubbed her head, children hugged her legs, bread was stuffed into her hands and offered to her mouth, kisses and hugs and demands for news of Bayern and Razo even as others shouted all the news of the Forest.
“Rin, you’re not to touch a spoon or a rag for a week at least, you hear me?” said Sari, Brun’s wife. “We women have been talking about it ever since you left and not liking a bit the way things were.”
“That’s just so,” said Jef’s wife, Ulan. “We’ve been treating you like an old lady instead of the girl you are, and it’s not right. So you just take it easy for a time till we figure out how to treat the new Rin.”