by Amber Argyle
Magic
Caelia woke to the smell of roasting fish. Her belly clenched hard, making her nauseous. She tried to sit up in the hammock and instantly fell back. Her sore muscles tore a groan from her throat. But she had sat up! The forest take her—which she supposed it had—she would never take her body for granted again.
“You’ll loosen up the more you move,” Gendrin’s voice called from somewhere below.
Gendrin. The enchanter who had saved her with magic.
Her leg ached. She glanced down, neck screaming. Blood crusted her leg from when the lizard’s teeth had grazed her. She groaned again. “I hurt too much.”
The boughs shifted, though there was no wind; Gendrin was climbing up. A moment later, he peered down at her from above.
She hadn’t had a chance to take a good look at him before. He was deeply tanned and barrel-chested, his head shaved—save for one long, thin braid behind his right ear. His prominent nose and brows framed his dark eyes. His beard was thick and wiry, with the faintest hints of auburn.
Not an especially beautiful man, but not an ugly one either. And yet there was something about him. A steady presence that made it hard to look away.
He studied her too. She wondered what he saw. “You have magic?”
He shrugged. “Where I’m from, all men have magic.”
“Not the women?”
“No,” the word was heavy with emotion she didn’t understand—sadness and anger and bitterness. “Not women.”
Of course not. The world seemed intent on keeping women utterly powerless. “Why?”
“The same magic that lends my music power over emotions also binds my tongue. I can’t tell you more, Caelia. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a wooden box. He slid it open, revealing six vials packed in straw. He took out the second one and held it out to her. “Here. This will cleanse the remaining venom from your body.”
She drank the antidote, not caring if it tasted like pepper if it made the pain go away. She eyed him warily. “Are you manipulating my emotions now?”
He replaced the empty vial in the box. “Only when I play my music. And you can stop looking at me like that—I have a feeling you’d stick me with a pitchfork if I ever tried to manipulate you.”
“Or break the flute over your head before you even got started.”
He laughed. He looked nice when he laughed. “I promise I won’t use it on you without your permission first.”
She let him pull her into a sitting position, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from groaning again. She took stock of their surroundings. They were in an enormous tree, bare of most its leaves. Forest surrounded them, the river rushing past. Below, a small fire let off lazy smoke. A little pot boiled and fish sizzled on a rock nesting in the coals.
“The River Weiss?” She pointed with her chin.
Gendrin followed her gesture. “Yes.”
Which meant her town was downstream, though she could only see more forest. She couldn’t have gone too far in the few hours she wandered. Less than a day’s walk and she would be back with the rumors, sharp and piercing, that would surround her like an angry cloud of hornets for the rest of her life.
“Where are you from?” He had a strange, precise accent—one she’d never heard before.
“Hamel. You?”
He glanced upriver. “A place far different from anything you could ever imagine. Or believe.”
Longing and pain were at war in his gaze. A woman, maybe? “There’s nothing upriver but more forest.”
“How would you know?”
Could such a thing be possible? But then, she supposed no one had ever really been able to go into the forest and find out. Yesterday, she would have scorned anyone who believed magic was real. That was before she’d seen it. Felt it.
She looked him up and down. His tunic, trousers, and cloak were all finely woven, pied fabric. The design and making were foreign from anything she’d ever seen before. A pan pipe and some sort of flute hung from around his neck. Those things coupled with his strange hair made it clear he wasn’t Idelmarchian as she was.
“Why were you in the forest?” he asked.
Harben’s words echoed through her, I’m going to find you, and when I do . . .
Shuddering, she rubbed at the bald spot on the back of her head; Harben had pulled out a chunk of her hair. “I—I saw a man murder my friend.” Her voice choked on the last, a sob rising in her chest. “He chased me in.”
Gendrin swore.
Caelia pushed the fear and horror and sorrow deep—she wasn’t out of the forest yet. “Will the beast and the gilgad hunt us now?”
“They winter in the hot springs. You happened to fall into their nest. As for the beasts—they hunt at night.”
She was safe, at least for now. She sagged in relief, though guilt still ate at her for her cowardice. “Why are you in the Forbidden Forest?”
He eyed her, his gaze seeing far more than she was comfortable with. “You’re not the only one running from something.”
“What are you running from?” she whispered.
He looked away. “The fish are going to burn.” He held out his hand.
She understood the need to keep secrets, perhaps better than anyone. She took his offered hand. He braced himself and hauled her up. The pain surged, but she forced herself to ride it out. After a moment, it eased.
It took far longer than it should have to get down the tree, and far too much holding hands with a man she barely knew. By the time she’d reached the bottom, she collapsed against the trunk, her whole body aching.
He went to the fire and used a stick to push the cooking rock out of the coals—when had he woken up this morning? Leaving them to cool, he wrapped a bit of leather around the cookpot handle and brought it to her along with the pack. He rummaged around inside and pulled out bandages, salves, and the like.
“I’m no healer, but I can clean and stitch.” His dark eyes asked permission.
She winced but nodded. He pulled up her shredded, filthy skirt, revealing her pale legs coated with a fine layer of dirt and blood. Embarrassed at her state, she braced herself and looked. Long parallel lines began as puncture wounds and ended as welted scratches on her outer thigh, above her knee. Not as bad as she’d thought.
Gendrin hummed low in his throat. “This won’t even need stitching, though I’ll have to clean it. Gilgad bites tend to fester.”
He used his knife to extract steaming bandages and let them cool a bit before laying them on the side of her leg. She sucked in a breath at the heat.
“That’ll soften the scabbing.” He went back to the fire and tested the cook stone with his fingers. Finding it cool enough, he set it between them with the larger fish facing her. Using his knife, he scraped the meat off the bones for her in one clean swipe.
She ate all of it—the fish hot against her cold, filthy fingertips.
When they’d finished, he tossed the stripped bones into the fire and watched her. “Are you ready?”
Teeth gritted against the coming pain, she nodded. He dipped his hands in what had to be scalding water, pulled them out, and rubbed them together for a full minute before dunking them again. They came out looking a painful red. Pennice had done the same when she’d tried to clear the festering from inside Caelia.
He pulled away the bloodstained fabric from her leg and hummed low in his throat. He poured some too-hot water over the wound and scrubbed until it bled fresh, the pain raw and sharp. Worse than when it had happened.
She gritted her teeth and tried not to moan. “Tell me—tell me something. Anything. Distract me.”
He hesitated. “There is a place where the trees grow so tall, they snag the bottoms of the clouds. Up from the depths of the turquoise waters, they grow. Waters that team with fish pulsing with color. Winter never touches this place. And even on the darkest nights, there is light and music so beautiful it can make you weep or curse or forget ever
ything that has ever hurt you.”
Music like what he’d played for her last night. Music that could make her forget. The words awoke a longing that vibrated from the top of her head down to her feet—feet that ached with the need to take her there.
She resented him for painting such a glorious picture. “Places like that don’t exist.”
“How would you know?”
She started to reply, but then he tugged at the punctures, peering inside. She gasped, eyes tightly shut.
“You’ll have an amazing scar to tell stories to your children about.” He tossed the rag into the still-steaming pot.
Fingers digging into the loam, she cried softly. As if sensing she needed privacy, he left quietly, his steps leading toward the river. She distracted herself with thoughts of the place he had described. A place with no winter. A place with colors and light and music to make her forget. Such a place couldn’t exist. But then, magic wasn’t possible either.
He came back into camp with a pot of fresh water, which he placed over the fire. He crouched down and packed up his pack. “If we start now, you’ll be home before dinner.”
Home. Where her father would look at her like he didn’t know who she was anymore. Where children would continue to torment her brother. Where the rumors would sting her for the rest of her life. Rumors that would prevent her from marrying. From ever having a job.
But the beast only took maidens. If she never went home, the town would be certain of her innocence. Her father and brother would be spared any further humiliation.
“What if I don’t want to go home?” she whispered.
He carefully packed the antidote. “Where else would you go?”
“The place you described, is it real?”
He slowly nodded.
She eased herself to a sitting position, wincing as the movement tugged at her fresh scabs. “I could come with you.”
“It’s two days’ journey. And every night, you will face the beast. You’re safer going home.”
She looked to the west. Toward her small town with its small people. Atara had been right. “There’s nothing for me to go back to.”
She felt his gaze on her. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “So tell me.”
“Once you set foot in the Alamant, you can never leave again. It’s the law. ”
“My father and brother . . .” She fought back a sob. “They’ll be better off without me.”
“Surely there’s someone else?”
Atara, Joy, the baby. “They’re all dead.” She sniffed. “Is there some kind of work I can do? I’ve been learning to cook, and I know a little about farming.” Mostly that one should put plants in dirt.
“Yes, but—” He rubbed his face in frustration. “Caelia, I’m trying to help you. Someday, you’ll miss your family so much you’ll wish you’d never made the choice to go to the Alamant.”
Caelia used to think she was strong. That she had control over her life. She’d learned in the worst possible way that she controlled nothing. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything. To bury the pain so deep it turns to acid and eats away all that you were.”
He stared into the dying embers. “Don’t I?” The heaviness he bore—he had clearly suffered something. He crouched down by the fire and pulled a set of pipes out of his shirt. She tensed. “Let me show you.”
Because he asked first, she nodded. He played. The first note wrapped around her, bearing her away to the memory that haunted her every moment.
She was holding her baby again. He was tiny, so tiny he fit in one hand. He was sticky and red with her blood. He’d been perfectly formed, his skin fragile, the delicate tracery of veins visible beneath. His tiny chest rose and fell frantically, his ribs vibrating with the beat of his heart.
She’d never wanted him, not from the first moment. Until she did. As fiercely as she had ever wanted anything. And so, after hours of silent agony, she’d called for her father.
He’d stumbled into her candlelight room. He’d gaped at her, at the blood, at the baby. Comprehension had come over him. Comprehension and bitter disappointment.
Through her tears, she’d begged him to go for the midwife.
What felt like hours later, Pennice had rushed into the room, taken one look at the infant in her arms, and stopped short. She started again, her movements smooth and gentle as she knelt beside the bed. “He’s too little to survive, Caelia.”
The song released her, slipping away like water to go back to wherever it had come from. Slowly, Caelia came back into the here and now. Gendrin stared into the fire, tears streaming down his face.
“What was that?” she cried.
He shifted to look at her. Their gazes locked. He didn’t look away as another might. Instead, he saw her. Saw the tears streaming down her cheeks that matched his own, and he didn’t look away. This man had known pain. Known it as she had. She saw the same realization come over him.
When she’d been dangling over a pit of gilgad, she’d thought Gendrin’s eyes reminded her of her father, which had given her the strength to fight away her fear. She’d been wrong. What she saw reflected back at her was a grief as deep as her own. It was that shared grief that had made her trust him.
He took a ragged breath. “My friends and I were part of a supply line delivering food to one of our outposts when we were ambushed near sunset. We became separated from the group. We were beset by two beasts. All my years of training, all that preparation . . . I froze. My best friend, Serek, died saving me.
“I’d thought I was powerful, strong. But in the face of his wife’s grief . . .” He held out his empty hands. “I couldn’t face her. Couldn’t tell her the truth. To my shame, I let one of my other friends, Denan, take the blame for Serek’s death, when all he’d done was save him from the shadow.” Gendrin choked, unable to continue.
He’d lost a friend to the beast, as she had. Caelia wanted to reach out to this man she barely knew, comfort him. But she held back, unsure how he would receive it.
He wiped his face. “I couldn’t stay in the Alamant. Not knowing what I’d done.” He was running. The same as she. “But after nearly two years . . . I’m tired, Caelia. I’m going home.” He met her gaze. “Someday, you’ll be tired of running and ready to return to your family, only it won’t be an option anymore.”
She let out a long breath. You were right, Atara. I don’t want to live in a place where I have to pretend my son didn’t exist. Unable to bear his judgment, she turned away. “My son died. He was born too early and he died.” That had been the worst of the rumors—that she had done something to end her pregnancy when she hadn’t. She opened her mouth to say the rest, but it wouldn’t come.
Stunned silence. “Surely your husband—”
“I don’t have a husband. I never did.” It felt good to say it. To own it. “Mal . . . When I got sick, he left me. My own father barely speaks to me. The entire town suspects.” Suspicion alone was enough to ruin her. “And the worst part is that I wanted my baby to die, from the moment I realized I carried him. I even wrote it on a ribbon for the Curse Tree.”
She’d been relieved when she’d gone into labor—she wouldn’t have been able to hide her growing belly much longer. It was far too early for him to survive. Even she knew that.
And then she’d held her baby and everything had changed. She took a cleansing breath. “I don’t know how it is in the Alamant, but in the Idelmarch, unwed mothers are shunned.” She felt the sharp whispers, the knowing looks. Her title had insulated her, but it wasn’t enough to save her.
Defiant of the judgment that was surely in Gendrin’s eyes, she squared her shoulders and forced herself to face him. “I told you, there is nothing for me to go back to.”
He didn’t look away. Not once. Neither did he say anything. Not for a long time. The hope inside her wavered like a new vine before a bitter winter wind. And then he spoke, “What is his n
ame?”
She blinked in surprise. “Whose name?”
“Your son?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. “I-I never gave him one.”
“You should name him.” He held out a hand to help her up. “He deserves a name.”
Warmth slid down her face, falling against her collarbone and seeping through her skin to land with a plink into the hollow, brittle nothing inside her. Together, they turned away from Hamel and toward the Alamant.
Chapter Seven
Storm
Gendrin gave her his belt and knife. “No one should be in the forest without a weapon.”
She took it, the leather warm from his body, the tooling worn. The knife was as jewel-like as the sword. It didn’t fit. Gendrin pushed the knife through the leather to make a new hole. Caelia wrapped it around herself and tightened the buckle. He nodded in approval.
He took the pot of water from the fire and left while she washed up as best she could. There wasn’t much she could do about her dress—not unless she wanted to spend the day naked or wet. But her skin and hair were mostly clean. When she’d finished, they started out.
The forest encased Caelia in a living wall, blocking the sky and making her feel small and vulnerable. Anything could be hiding just out of sight, watching her. She jumped at an abrupt bird call. Then again as another burst out of some brush to her right.
“That sound is a copperbill,” Gendrin said. “The other bird is a forest hen—they’re delicious. If I’d been paying better attention, we could have had it for lunch.”
He named each forest sound and pointed to edible plants and poisonous ones. With the steady litany of his voice, her fear gradually abated. The pain eased too. The more she moved, the more her muscles limbered up.
As the day went on, the wind picked up until it gusted, the trees swaying violently above her, fall leaves ripped away en masse and tripping over each other on the ground.
They stopped for lunch, huddled between the roots of a tree as they ate dried bread and meat. The warm sunshine had been replaced by a bitter wind. Caelia kept tight hold of her cloak, her fingers numb with cold.
