The Word Changers

by Ashlee Willis

  “Not much,” Posy agreed. “But I don’t understand why he wanted to have us killed? Why now? If he wanted me dead, why not just leave me where I was in the Plot? Why send us away?”

  “But Posy, don’t you see ... the real question is, why try to have us killed at all, anywhere? Falak knows, as does every character of the Plot, that though he kills us now, we will only be there again at the beginning of the story. What can he have hoped to gain by it?” Kyran bit his lip, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, I can tell you, I’m certainly not turning around to go ask him,” Posy laughed.

  Kyran paused, turning to glance at her over his shoulder before he said, “Girls from your story must not be contradicted often, for you speak what you have to say rather ... forcefully. As if you take it for granted that you will be heard and considered.”

  Posy smiled at him, but her smile quickly faded as she thought about how it truly was in her life. She never took it for granted that she was heard. In fact, she never expected her opinions or words to be cared for or wanted. And this from those who were supposed to love her the most. She felt a wave of self-pity and sadness, familiar and sickening. She looked up to see Kyran was still turned, looking at her closely.

  “What did I say?” he asked. “I would never want to cause you grief.”

  This brought back the smile to Posy’s face. Only Kyran, only a character from a book, could say something like this and make it believable, and charming.

  “You haven’t,” she said. “Others have perhaps, but not you.”

  He nodded. “I know,” was all he said, and somehow, she knew he did.

  They rode through the forest a while in silence. Posy gazed about her at wide tree trunks with their curling bark, the soft bunches of ferns growing on the forest floor. The sun was high, somewhere above the treetops, and its light filtered through the leaves, dappling everything around them. This Wild Land didn’t seem so wild. But it did feel far different from the Kingdom. The colors weren’t so bright, perhaps, but everything seemed real and solid. The smells of earth and damp leaves filled the clear air, and Posy took a deep breath of it. This was a real world, the Wild Land, and her mind felt a certain release, as if it had been imprisoned before, and she hadn’t even known it.

  “Speaking of girls with strong wills and great bravery ...” Posy said at last.

  “Were we?” Kyran asked, and Posy heard the hidden smile in his voice.

  “Well, we had been talking about me, so I just assumed ...” she gave an innocent shrug.

  This caused Kyran to throw back his dark head and laugh out loud. Posy smiled and laughed as well, continuing, “I was actually going to speak of your sister, Evanthe. Perhaps the answer lies with her.”

  “The answer?”

  “The answer to why Falak might want to kill us. Your sister ran away, supposedly into the forest and beyond the Borders of the Plot. Now we are also beyond the reach of the Plot. Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you? Like maybe Falak is trying to get rid of all of us?”

  “But he can’t get rid of us, Posy,” pointed out Kyran patiently. “I mean, he might—but we’d come right back again, wouldn’t we? We’re part of the Plot, part of the story.”

  “You yourself said Falak does everything with a purpose in mind. If we could find out what the purpose was! You’re sure ... absolutely certain ... that we can’t be killed?”

  “Yes, of course I am! Don’t you think I’ve watched my own sister get sacrificed dozens of times? And she always came back again.”

  “All right, yes. But that was part of the Plot, right? Something the Author said would happen. What if it was something the Author didn’t write down? Something a character—like Falak—took into his own hands?”

  They were riding deeper into the forest, and the light seemed to be slowly ebbing away somehow. Posy could see Kyran’s profile in front of her, and she didn’t like the look that crossed his face after she had spoken.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Something I remembered,” he said slowly. “Something I heard a long time ago. I’m not sure who told me, where I heard it ... but ....” He paused and knit his brows, thinking hard for a moment, trying to recall the memory. “It’s a very hazy memory. Must have happened generations ago. Something to do with things happening outside the Plot. I can’t remember for sure, though.”

  “But what do you remember of it?” questioned Posy urgently.

  “That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Posy’s voice was incredulous. “You mean all you remember is that someone said something about things that happened outside of the Plot, but you don’t remember what?”

  “Exactly,” Kyran said with a sigh. “That’s no help, I know. It’s just that ... well, I’ve felt different, this past hour or two. It’s like something here is making me ... remember things. Oh, just little things,” he said quickly. “But things I had long forgotten. And now this ... this memory of what happens beyond the Plot. I feel certain it will come to me eventually. The air is clear here, and light. Don’t you feel it? It’s as if the air I’ve been breathing all my life wasn’t even air at all ... it was heavy and thick. I had to fight through it every day. It muddled and confused me, made me slow and indecisive. But all that’s swept away here. At least, so it feels. Now my mind is my own again.”

  Something in his voice made a shiver go down Posy’s spine. His words, free and content, were like harbingers of something new, sounding clearly through the silence of the forest, and she thought the trees leaned in to listen to them.

  “I feel it too,” she whispered.

  * * *

  That first night in the Wild Land forest, under the blanket of trees and the clear white eye of the moon, was to remain in Posy’s memory forever, for its wonder and terror both.

  They had ridden all day, making their way deeper into the forest. However, a strange thing happened as they went further into the heart of the Wild Land. Kyran’s horse, Belenus, became nervous, and once or twice refused to respond to Kyran’s command. It troubled Kyran more than he wanted to say, Posy could see, and at last in frustration he announced they would stop for the night, though the sun had not yet gone down.

  Kyran began to build a fire as Posy drew their blankets and some food from the saddlebags Alvar had packed for them. She looked around into the darkening trees, and if she had thought they listened to Kyran’s words earlier that day, she didn’t doubt it at all now. They leaned and swayed to a movement all their own, not commanded by the wind. Posy’s hand idly stroked Belenus’ dark mane, her eyes transfixed. She didn’t see the moment of change, it came so gradually, so naturally, where shadows and moonlight met on bark and dirt and leaf. What her eyes saw flowed together, like a silent song, and suddenly, there they were. Creatures like trees, like the forest itself. Posy didn’t know if they had come from the trees, or from the bushes, or from the floor of the forest. She was frozen, watching them, but not with fear.

  “It’s the Wild Folk,” Kyran’s voice came in a soft breath at her ear. “Evanthe used to read of them, and she would tell me .... But I never dreamed they were real.”

  “What are they?” Posy asked, never taking her eyes off the procession that moved in and out of shadow.

  “Creatures made from the land itself. They are a part of it, more truly than any other who lives here. Only look at them, Posy.” His voice held awe.

  They were people—or at least their forms were similar to people. They had limbs, face and body, but their arms and legs were long and slender, gnarled like tree branches. One had skin covered with patches of green moss, another had eyes like acorns, and still another had hair of supple leaves flowing over its shoulders. They moved with the grace and silence only a forest could hold, creaking and swaying. Posy drew in a shaky breath as the last of them disappeared. The shadows around them seemed to sigh.

  “Where were they going?” she whispered still, though they were gone. “They were head
ing back where we have come from, toward the Borders.”

  Kyran only shook his head, a troubled expression on his face.

  * * *

  Later, after they had eaten, they were sitting, with blankets wrapped around their shoulders, in front of the fire Kyran had built, Posy said suddenly, “What do you think?”

  Kyran turned at the intensity of her voice and raised his eyebrows. “Think about what?”

  “You know Princess Evanthe better than anyone. You loved her better than anyone. So—where would she go?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “Yes, you do!” answered Posy forcefully. “Just think about your sister, who she is, what reasons she had for leaving.” Kyran’s face clouded in thought and Posy continued. “Put all those together, and you might have at least an idea of where she could have gone. If she’s smart, she won’t be just wandering the forest. She had to have a destination.”

  Kyran was silent for a long time. Finally, he said slowly, “Evanthe is brave—that is her strongest characteristic. She is opinionated, but soft spoken. She is smart, and not just from reading and having lessons. She is wise—wiser than I ever was, that’s for certain.” He shook his head. “But those things are just ... just traits she has grown into ... they are not who she is."

  “Who is she, Kyran?” Posy asked quietly, thinking now of her own sister. Posy knew Lily better than anyone. Her mother had often joked that there might as well be no one in the world but the two of them, as far as they were concerned. Posy had always been surprised when she heard the resentment in her mother’s voice, as if this closeness with Lily was somehow wrong, or unhealthy. But she wondered, too, that her mother hadn’t suspected the cause of it.

  How can we not cling to one another? thought Posy with a sudden surge of anger. What else is there to cling to, after all?

  Yet her mother was right for all that. Posy and her sister were two halves of the same whole, and a single look between them usually spoke more than hours of conversation. But putting the heart of her sister into words? She didn’t know if she could do it.

  “She had eyes that saw things,” Kyran said. “Eyes that knew. I could see from watching her she knew what I was thinking, no matter what I said. And she never had any fear of admitting it. She saw long ago the trouble in the Kingdom and the poor decisions of our father. She spoke of things to me, said things that should have made me suspicious if I hadn’t been too lazy or stupid to understand what she was truly speaking of.” He paused, knitting his dark brows. “That heavy air in the Kingdom, that haze we all live in and move through .... I feel sure Evanthe could see through it more clearly than any of us. She knew the Plot had been changed. She knew things weren’t as they should be. That’s why she left. Not from fear of her fate, but because a stand must be made by someone. And that’s who she is,” he said, straightening as he spoke, a new expression on his face. “She’s a girl who won’t wait for someone else to do something, someone else to change or fix things, if she can do it herself. Making things right,” he breathed. “That’s what her heart always wanted. Yes.” He gave a slow nod, and Posy saw something like dread, or fear, rising behind his eyes. “I think I know where she has gone.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Night Attack

  Light and dark shine from the trees,

  A threat to give a soul release.

  Light and dark are mixed and stirred

  Until one over the other is heard.

  Light and dark, the self same face,

  Until a soul can pierce the Place

  Of death and life’s struggling embrace.

  The emerald of trees will light the path

  To the center and heart of truth at last.

  “All right, what’s with the weird poem?” asked Posy, after hearing Kyran recite the poem in a voice that made the forest seem colder. She pulled her blanket tight around her and moved closer to the fire.

  “It’s a poem we used to hear long ago. Evanthe was always infatuated with it,” Kyran said. “I always thought it a bit morbid.”

  “Well, yeah,” Posy said, widening her eyes. “But what is the point of it?”

  “The point is what the poem is about. It’s about this forest, and a place within it. Somewhere that no one has ever been and returned from, at least so the tales go. And I will say, most in the Kingdom don’t think much about it at all, let alone believe in its existence. I don’t know how the rumors of this place began, or when, but I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of them. They are always kept quiet, though, for my father never liked talk of the Wild Land.”

  “What is the place called?” Posy asked curiously.

  Kyran’s face darkened as he answered, “The Glooming.”

  Posy felt a shiver trickle down her spine at the name. “So the princess was infatuated with a poem about this place, and now you think she’s gone there?”

  “It’s the only place we ever had a true consciousness of, outside the Kingdom. And it was a place that held the deepest good and the deadliest evil, together. She was fascinated with the idea of such a place. But everyone spoke of it with fear, when they spoke of it at all.”

  “But Kyran, why would she go there? Surely she wouldn’t have gone there just out of curiosity. Would she?”

  Kyran smiled wryly at this. “No,” he said. “I think you are right. I think she must have had another reason.” Belenus neighed softly behind them, and Posy felt gentle drops of water on her skin, falling from the trees, echoing eerily as they slid and splashed from one leaf to another. “If we assume that she left because she wanted to help the Kingdom change ...”

  “Then it’s pretty obvious why she went to the Glooming,” finished Posy.

  “Oh?” was all Kyran said.

  “Yes. Something or other about light and dark being the same until someone can ‘pierce the Place’ … whatever, whatever.” Posy waved her hand. “So basically she thinks she can be the one who goes to the ‘Place’—the Glooming—and make things right. Recite the poem again,” she demanded. Kyran did.

  “Yes,” Kyran said at last, and Posy didn’t like the look on his face. “I think you might be right. The poem is saying that good and evil appear to be the same. The only thing that will separate them is when someone goes to this place and ... well, I don’t know what they must do.” He sat in silence, his dark head tilted down looking at his hands. The flicker of the firelight cast dancing shadows on his face.

  Posy pulled an arm from her blanket and reached to Kyran impulsively, putting her hand on his. “We will find her,” she said with more heart than she felt. “We will.” When he didn’t respond, she continued, “Do you know how to get to the Glooming?”

  “I’ve never been there, of course,” Kyran said with a frown. “The poem says ‘the emerald of trees will light the path,’ but I’m not sure what that refers to.”

  “All the trees are emerald,” Posy said dejectedly, gazing about her. “That is either a lousy clue or one that is so genius it’s incomprehensible.”

  Kyran chuckled without much spirit. Suddenly he leapt up and grabbed a half-burnt log from the fire. He took it with him to a cluster of nearby trees, holding the log’s glowing embers up for light. Then he reached out a hand and swept a finger down the bark of the tree on one side.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s moss,” he said.

  “All right ... so?”

  “Well, I’m not sure how consistently moss actually grows on certain sides of trees, but the country folk in the Kingdom always used to say it would grow on the north side faster than any other side of a tree. Do you suppose that means, since the moss is emerald, we should head north?”

  “If that’s true,” said Posy, shaking her head, “it’s the most obscure clue I’ve ever heard. If I had to figure it out on my own, I’d be wandering around in the forest for the next hundred years or so.”

  “Well, I’m not completely certain that’s it, but it’s all we’ve got right now,
” was Kyran’s rather demoralizing reply. “And anyway, going north will lead us deeper into the heart of the forest, further into the Wild Land. So that’s something else in the theory’s favor I suppose.” He shrugged and began moving to lie down next to the fire. Posy began running her fingers through her tangled hair, trying not to think about how badly she needed a bath, and how good it would feel to be able to brush her teeth.

  Suddenly, Kyran was there beside her. “Here, let me,” was all he said. He had a bit of twine in his hands. He ran his fingers gently through the last of her tangled waves, and then began braiding her hair loosely. He tied the twine at the end and let the braid fall against her back. It was quickly done and over with. Posy mumbled thank-you as she watched him walk back over to his blanket. He turned and smiled at her, and she made herself take a slow breath.

  “In ages past, before the Plot had changed,” Kyran explained, “we always braided our horses’ manes before going into battle.”

  Ah, Posy looked down. That was that, then.

  * * *

  The rain that had started before, dripping and weaving its way through the high branches and leaves, had now slowed to an uncomfortable drizzle, cold and damp. Posy pulled her blanket over her head, getting as close to the fire as she dared. She thought this day, the things spoken of and seen, the cold and the rain, would make sleep hard to find. But she was wrong. Her body sank into dreams even as she closed her eyes.

  In this world, this story, it seemed she would dream about the world she had left behind. For she saw her own house, tall and white, as if she approached it from the front street. She saw her porch, the familiar chipped stairs and shaky banister, the mailbox that her mother had hand-painted with tiny flitting bluebirds years ago. There was even the solidly normal charcoal grill pushed into the far corner of the porch. And there were her parents in the window, and she had the thought that they would be happy to see her. She had been gone so long. But they only stared, expressionless, until she felt she would cry, until she wanted to bang on the windowpane and break the glass. And where was Lily? Why couldn’t she see her?