And wasn’t he thirsty?
Bannan hung the bridle over a branch so Tir would know where he’d gone and draped the rein across his shoulders. He wasn’t chasing after the fool horse. He’d walk a little distance past the bend, see if he could find a stream.
The air was pleasant, the sun warm on his shoulders. He hadn’t gone far at all when his steps gained a four-footed echo.
Bannan smiled and didn’t look around.
Which was a mistake.
~ What’s happened to you? ~ From above.
Another, closer. ~ Does it hurt? ~ The question held a hopeful malice. Those of his kind who’d escaped penance took singular joy in his.
Wisp spat black ash and ignored them all. He hobbled down the path to his home, desperate to be alone, to understand. He would have gone faster if he didn’t keep . . .
He fell again, hard on one side, and fought to catch his breath. Crystal wept beneath him. Above, air pulsed, driven by great wings. Curious, they swooped perilously low, trying to see him within the narrow cleft.
~ What are you? ~
How could he answer, when he didn’t know himself?
Wisp forced himself to his feet and stumbled downward, falling twice more before he reached the blue shimmer that was the door to peace and safety. He lunged for it, only to strike a solid barrier.
The impact threw him backward. He huddled where he landed, rocking back and forth in sullen misery as he stared at what was now forbidden. Why?
What had she done?
~ You cannot stay here. ~ From above, with none of the mockery of the others. ~ You must return to her world. ~ The bone-shaking timbre of the voice left no doubt.
Sei.
Wisp looked up. The being had shaped itself into one of his kind, though none of his kind would be this gaudy emerald green. Its clawed feet clenched the rock wall above the blue shimmer, but the limbs connected to those feet shouldn’t have bent at such angles. The wings folded reasonably, but the bearded face and maned neck were too large for the body. As for the fanged jaw—that was farce. Though sei tried, their manifestations were never perfect. Which was just as well. It was important to know what you faced.
~ What did she do? ~ Wisp demanded. Tried to demand. Nothing came out. Why could he hear, but not speak? Instead, he lifted a limb. One ended in a man’s hand, the other in a proper set of claws. The rest of his body was the same, a horrible blend of what he’d been and this—this travesty.
The sei understood. ~ You fled before the transformation was complete. ~
This was somehow his fault? Wisp trembled in fury, clawed feet—foot—shredding crystal. War was forbidden, not battle. And his kind excelled in battle.
~ We see an opportunity for your penance. ~
Opportunity and penance together in the same sentence was not, in his experience, a good thing. The sei had considered his servitude with the turn-born to be an “opportunity” too.
Wisp sank to his haunches, easing the wing he had left out of the way. He’d been doing his latest penance when the girl attacked him. He felt a different sort of anger, thinking of Jenn Nalynn, deeper, like a wound’s pain. Why had she done this to him? They’d been friends.
Hadn’t they?
~ We see the expectation of this turn-born. You will be finished and sent into her world. ~
Wisp tried to protest, to plead, but nothing came out. It might have been one of the bad nights, when the blue of his sanctuary smothered his screams.
~ Your penance remains. Keep her from harm. ~
Like this? He could barely stand. How could he protect anything like this?
~ Your penance remains. Only you may know the truth. ~
Truth? The secret the sei had sealed in him was worse than the ruin of his body.
Like any turn-born, the girl was of both worlds. Her life, like the roots of the neyet, should have bound their worlds together. But, unlike other turn-born, her birth had taken place in the midst of crossing from one to the other, and part of her remained there still, between worlds, caught like the trapped ones themselves.
Should Jenn Nalynn step beyond the edge, should she leave Marrowdell and so the Verge as well, her small, hollow form would tug its frail thread to the breaking point and so begin the unraveling.
All would be undone. All. Their worlds would be torn asunder. Nothing in the Verge, nothing along the edge of her world, would survive.
The trapped would be freed at last. Or finally die. The sei were unclear on that point.
The risk posed by the girl’s very existence they told to him and no one else. The turn-born were left to believe her curse the same as theirs, to exist solely where the worlds overlapped. Wishing her ignorant, but not wishing her harm, they set him to keep her within Marrowdell. They cared only that Jenn Nalynn not cross into the Verge to challenge them.
Doubtless, they slept soundly.
The sei stopped wars and punished the perpetrators to ensure their peace, no one else’s. They didn’t explain why they wanted the girl to live. Perhaps they believed she’d be a check on the more outrageous of the turn-born. Perhaps they played games.
Wisp feared, deep inside, that the sei wouldn’t care if Jenn Nalynn tried to leave. Her world was of no interest to them. The Verge must be a source of disturbance and conflict. A blight that produced the turn-born. A nuisance.
It was home. Home to so many. To too many. He clung to hope as if drowning. Surely their loss would disturb the sei more.
~ Your penance remains, so long as she lives. Ensure our peace. ~ The ill-formed jaws of the sei snapped. ~ Then, your penance will be complete. ~
What did that mean? Would he be restored? Allowed to come home?
Or dead?
The sei launched itself upward in an impossible motion that made Wisp’s body ache. Instead of opening wings, it abandoned its form to become flame. As he flinched from the dazzling brightness, every shadow bleached away and the very air he breathed became fire and ash . . .
. . . then, air again.
He sat where he’d been before, but wasn’t as he’d been. Wisp gazed numbly at hands and arms, covered in glittering green ash. The perspective was strange. His body was shorter, his head—his head turned on a stiff, too-short neck. He couldn’t see his own back. Not that he had wings any longer.
A turn-born came through what had been his door and stood before him. Female in form, her limbs filled with sand, she wore a face set in aloof judgment. ~ Take him across. ~
She didn’t speak to him. Who—? As Wisp took a horrified guess, claws sank into his now-tender flesh and he was jerked into the air.
His kind!
One carried him. Others flew beneath, beside, snapping at his dangling feet, crying insults. None pitied him.
Why should they?
Wisp closed his man’s eyelids and pitied himself.
SIX
“THE THREE OF you tried to make a husband.” Radd Nalynn ran one hand through his shock of gray-peppered hair. “Make one. Aren’t real men good enough?”
Aunt Sybb narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have a mill to tend?”
Cheeks burning, Jenn gave her aunt a grateful look.
Her father snorted. “I don’t dare leave you alone. What else might happen?”
“We might,” Aunt Sybb said acidly, “get something done. I’ve to pack. We’ve a birthday celebration to prepare. Let alone the laundry!” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. “Go. Give the girl some peace.” More soberly, “Everything can wait, Radd. Patience.”
“Patience, it is.” He took his lunch bucket from the table and headed for the door. A step short, he stopped and turned. “This was my fault.”
“No, Poppa,” Jenn said quickly.
“Yes. I should never have started all this talk of love and marriage. I pushed you both into rash decisions.”
Peggs looked up from the table. “I’ve made no—”
“Giving my cookies to the Uhthoffs?”
Her lips mov
ed without sound coming out.
“Make extra for Kydd, next time.” With the faintest hint of a smile around his eyes. “Just not better.”
“Poppa!” Peggs’ turn to be thoroughly flustered.
“As for you—” to Jenn. Radd softened his tone. “Go to your meadow. Look for him. You’ve such a good heart. He knows that.” Bright spots of apple red appeared on his cheeks, his only acknowledgment of their surprised looks. Without waiting for an answer, he left.
Tears ran down Jenn’s cheeks; she didn’t wipe them away. Go back? She couldn’t bear it. Not the way it was now. Not without Wisp.
“Bath first,” Aunt Sybb ordered briskly. “Then laundry.” She laid a tender hand along Jenn’s cheek. “Work helps. You’ll see.”
In winter, they sponged themselves clean by the stone fireplace. The rest of the year, the big tub sat outside the kitchen door. In summer, the climbing rose screened it from the mill and a curtain between poles provided privacy from the Emms’ garden—added once Radd noticed the Emms’ twins weeded with exceptional diligence on his daughters’ bath day. Otherwise, the tub was open to the river and distant fields, and kissed by sun.
Peggs wouldn’t hear of Jenn helping to fill it. She’d boiled the water herself, while her sister wiped plates, and shaved a bar of fine city soap to make bubbles.
The same water being destined for laundry, Jenn didn’t know what their father would say about his shirts smelling of lavender, but when Peggs pronounced the bath ready, she sank into the hot water with a grateful sigh.
“Let me wash your hair.”
She nodded thankfully and tilted her head back on the wide rim. Peggs undid the braid, hands sure and gentle. “You’ve a bird’s nest in here,” she scolded. “And look. A dead bee.”
Jenn wasn’t surprised. She closed her eyes and ducked underwater when Peggs tapped her shoulder, staying down until her sister lightly pulled on her hair.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” she said when up again.
Peggs rubbed suds through Jenn’s hair, digging gently but firmly into her scalp. “None of us knew what would happen.”
Jenn poked bubbles with a morose toe. “Which means I shouldn’t have done it.”
Before she could start to cry again, Peggs tapped her shoulder. “Rinse.”
When she came up, her sister began to comb out her hair, pulling small sections together. “What I know, Dearest Heart,” she said as she worked, “is we’re responsible for our own lives. That means taking chances and making mistakes.” Peggs finished by coiling the remaining length. She pinned it behind Jenn’s head. “There. Like a grand lady of Avyo. I’ll wager you do look just like our mother.”
Jenn sloshed around to face her sister, elbows on the tub rim. “You didn’t tell them we were listening last night.” Peggs made a show of drying her hands. “You did? Peggs!”
“I didn’t have to. Poppa and Aunt Sybb were waiting when I came downstairs this morning. They said it was time I heard the whole story.”
“What do you mean?”
Peggs glanced around as if to make sure they were alone, then crouched by the tub, her hands by Jenn’s. “Remember what Poppa told you?” she said in a hushed, urgent voice. “How Mother’s family wanted her to stay in Avyo—to leave him? There’s more to it, Jenn. They tried to make her stay. Aunt Sybb said they tricked her and locked her in their home, but she escaped with me in the night to join Poppa. They fled Avyo—chased by the city guard right to the gates!”
Jenn gazed wide-eyed at her sister. They’d made up endless stories about their mother. None had included daring escapes or chases in the night. “What happened?”
“In Weken, every settler took oath and signed their bind, the promise to the prince never to return home. Ever. Our mother signed one too. They should have been safe.” Peggs, who was a wonderful storyteller, paused for effect. “But they weren’t. It wasn’t over.”
Jenn almost forgot to breathe.
Her sister lowered her voice more. “Mother’s family had her bind undone by the prince himself. Poppa didn’t say how. That meant if they could find her, they could bring her back. By force, if necessary.”
“They tried?”
Peggs hesitated. She gave a short nod, her lips pressed together.
“Well?” Jenn prompted eagerly. “You can’t stop there. What happened?”
“They sent someone—” Pulling over a bucket, Peggs overturned it and sat. She’d grown pale and her eyes were huge; she swallowed hard before continuing, “They sent someone they trusted, someone who’d never failed the family. He came in disguise during the harvest, maybe hoping a strange face wouldn’t be noticed. But—Mother saw him first. She knew who he was. Th—” She stopped midword and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can’t leave it there!” Jenn protested.
Peggs got to her feet. Jenn grabbed for her with a soapy hand but her sister stepped out of reach, eyes suspiciously bright. “I—I can’t.”
“Of course you can.” Aunt Sybb stepped through the kitchen door, shoulders back, eyes fierce. “You’re neither of you children, Peggs Nalynn. That’s become clear even to your father. You both need to know which roads you mustn’t take—ever—and why.”
Gooseflesh rose on Jenn’s arms, despite the warmth of the bathwater.
Peggs shook her head again. “I can’t tell her.”
“I can.” Aunt Sybb stared out at the river and fields beyond. “Melusine was alone when she spotted the man sent to bring her back. Before he could see her, she fled the village.” Her hand lifted, the lace of her black shawl falling from a delicate wrist more bone than flesh. Her finger stabbed toward Night’s Edge and Jenn didn’t understand.
“Why did she run?” she asked.
“To protect your father. To protect anyone else who might try to help. Her family’d sent a formidable man, Jenn, a professional soldier. Melusine knew no one in the village was his match. Her hope was to hide till he gave up and left—but she was in no shape to run or hide.” Aunt Sybb looked down at Jenn. “She was about to have you.”
This wasn’t romance or adventure. This was Wisp and the meadow and ash. Jenn wanted to sink under the water, to cover her ears, to not know. To never know.
Relentless, their aunt continued in her soft, steady voice. “The weather failed. Day was turning to night. Your father was desperate. Everyone tried to find her. The soldier guessed Melusine had climbed into one of the tinkers’ wagons and gone with them into the Bone Hills. He had a fast horse. He found her first.”
“And killed her.” The accusation was harsh to her own ears. Ravens flew overhead and cawed a hungry echo. The air chilled.
“No, Jenn. No.” Aunt Sybb came to the tub and sank beside it, the hem of her costly city dress spread in lavender-scented mud. Her eyes searched Jenn’s. “He tried to save her. He found her lying in that meadow—your meadow. She’d—she’d given birth alone. Too soon. Too hard. He stayed with her until your father came and helped as best he could, but it was too late to save you both.” Her hand found Jenn’s and pressed gently. “Dearest Heart, you must believe me. This man had meant no harm. He vowed to your mother he’d keep you safe.” A too-careful pause. “And he has.”
“He’s still here?!” Jenn scrambled from the tub, bubbles flying.
Tight-lipped, Peggs handed her a sheet. Jenn wrapped herself in it, a dreadful certainty growing in her mind.
Who in Marrowdell had been a soldier? Who guarded the road like an obsession?
“Uncle Horst.” Jenn met her sister’s eyes, saw the despair and confusion that must be in her own. “It’s him, isn’t it? The one they sent.” The man who shared their table. Worked with their father. Had become family. “It’s his fault she died.”
“That wasn’t his intention,” her aunt said firmly. “If Horst hadn’t found Melusine, we’d have lost you too. Remember that.”
They’d meet. She’d have to look at him. “What will I say?” How should she feel? She’d nev
er known her mother; now she didn’t know this man who’d been their closest neighbor and friend her whole life. The mother she and Peggs had wanted—had needed—so many times? He’d come to take her from them.
And that’s what he’d done, no matter what Aunt Sybb said.
Peggs helped Aunt Sybb rise to her feet, steadying her until she nodded. “I asked the same question.”
“And?”
The older woman’s smile transformed lines of grief to dimples. “And, because life moves on, that’s when your sister’s young man knocked at the door.”
Peggs blushed prettily.
Jenn didn’t try to think of Kydd Uhthoff as young or as her sister’s. Life moved on? If so, hers had left her behind. Aunt Sybb was leaving tomorrow. Uncle Horst—Horst was a terrifying stranger. Her beloved meadow was where her mother had died.
Where Wisp—
Her hands shook as she dressed.
“It’ll be all right, Jenn. You’ll see. There are other—” Aunt Sybb hesitated, then added brightly, “—other toads.”
Peggs hastily changed the subject. “Good thing it’s laundry day,” she said. “Look at your poor hem, Aunt Sybb. We’ll need to wash that before packing, and be sure it’s dry.”
Dirty clothes, by unspoken agreement, pushed both future and past aside. While their aunt changed, Peggs and Jenn put the least soiled whites into the tub, adding hot water and chips of stronger soap. When her sister hooked the washboard on the side, Jenn numbly took over without a word, taking steaming handfuls of wet cloth and rubbing them with all the strength in her arms.
With each downward press against the ribbed board, she repeated to herself, I can’t stay here. I can’t stay here.
It wasn’t about seeing wonders anymore. It wasn’t about filling the hollow in her heart.
She had to get away from Marrowdell. As far away as she could.
Everyone had known.
Had Wisp?
Was that why he’d first come to care for her? Pity for her tragic birth?
Questions she couldn’t ask. Jenn rubbed harder. She’d betrayed Wisp and he was gone.
Peggs came out with an armload, her nose held high. “Poppa tried to hide his favorite—” She stopped to yell at the top of her lungs: “Cheffy Ropps, get out of our garden!”
A Turn of Light Page 12
