by Joni Sensel
When Scarl joined her, he brought the walking stick that helped him offset his limp, but also a metal poker from the hearth.
"What's that for?" she asked.
"I've got my staff and my knife." The latter hung at his hip. He gave her the poker. "You carry this. In case I'm feeling too lazy to battle any lion that jumps us."
She scowled. "It's heavy." She'd rather complain than imagine its use as a weapon--especially if Scarl's were already defeated.
"Don't carry it. Lean on it like a cane." At her expression, he added, "Unless you want to wait for the safety of daylight."
Ariel grumbled and shifted her grip. Feeling like an old woman, she set off.
Once they got moving, she enjoyed swinging her weapon, stabbing dried leaves and beheading seed stalks. She imagined splintering bones with it, too. Scarl wisely stayed out of range.
The sun rose over their shoulders as they climbed, warming the miles. By the time it had slipped west to glare in their eyes, Ariel's legs were tiring and she leaned on the poker, glad their return trip would all be downhill.
She recognized her destination with a half-mile to go. A large slab of the peak had fallen and come to rest aslant on the slope. It made a cave-like shelter beneath, but Ariel cared only about the slab's uphill edge--the last place she'd seen Elbert alive. His bones should lie somewhere in the rubble below.
"Odd to see it again, isn't it?" Scarl said.
Ariel nodded. "So much has changed. Not here, I mean. Us." The first time she'd been here, she'd been recently orphaned and running from Elbert and Scarl toward home. Since then she'd embarked on her trade, proven the truth of a legend by discovering the Vault, and made a new home at the abbey with Scarl and Zeke. She'd also met Nace. The loss of her mother at Elbert's hand would never be forgotten, but the pain had been soothed by new loves.
"There's a saying," Scarl said. "'You can never set foot on the same ground twice, for every step alters both the earth and the walker.'"
Ariel ran ahead to avoid thinking too much about Scarl's saying. If it was true, nothing could be trusted to stay the same. Good things and friendships would never last, and bad men, although dead, might come back.
As she turned the corner of the slab, her eyes darted. No skull stared at Ariel from the base of the stone. No bony arm reached from the litter of pinecones and leaves. She scrambled along the loose shale, searching.
After a moment, she spun to Scarl, behind her. "Oh, I'm a dolt--you can just find it! You brought your Finder's glass, right?"
Scarl eyed the top of the slab as he walked beneath it. "If I remember right, the body came to rest about... here." He bent, shoved aside clinking rocks, and withdrew what looked like one more bleached stick.
"Forearm, I think." He measured it against his own to confirm and then, after a moment of indecision, set the bone at the base of the slab.
Ariel used her poker to shove aside rocks and debris near his feet. She turned up only shreds of rotting clothing. "Where's the rest? You think an avalanche dragged it away or something?" Or had the crow already hauled it to a cache near the abbey?
Scarl grimaced. "Or something."
Ariel followed him as he circled the slab to its low side, where they could both scramble up onto the stone. A white jumble rested on its far edge, above the place where they'd stood moments before.
Scarl led her up the incline. Ariel tried to ignore memories of being forced up this stretch, Elbert's big paw around her neck. The knife-wound scars on her cheek and left forearm itched. She had thought her life would end that fateful morning. Fortunately Elbert had been so busy with her that he'd not heeded any knife but his own. Ariel wasn't sure if Scarl's stab or the fall from the height had stopped Elbert's heart, but the combination had. Scarl had made certain.
As they drew near the pile of bones now, he glanced at her. "You all right? Bad memories here."
"Yes." But the word trembled. The bones lay where Elbert had last stood alive. Ariel couldn't tell if fingers were among them or not. Although the ribcage had fallen to pieces, the skull sat grinning toward the abbey, much as Ariel had imagined. The bones seemed to vibrate against the rock, emitting a barely perceptible growl.
Ariel took a step back. "Do you hear that? Is it my imagination?"
"The buzz? I hear it. It puts me in mind of--"
Seized by a fury, Ariel swept one boot through the pile. She expected the bones to soar over the edge, but instead they all burst in a white puff of dust. Since her kick met almost no resistance, she tottered. Her arms flew wide for balance, and Scarl grabbed her. Bone dust swirled into their faces, accompanied by a cloud of black flies.
"Oh!" Buzzing wings tangled in Ariel's hair. She clenched her eyes shut and whisked her hands through her locks.
Slowly the awful swarm dissipated. Ariel shuddered. "Hideous things!"
"Too reminiscent of a riddle I know," Scarl replied.
"I hate riddles," Ariel said, still swatting at her clothes. "But tell me."
He obliged:
"I cannot move, though I may crawl.
I buzz, though not a bee.
Once I smelled, but now I smell.
I stare but never see.
What am I?"
"Yeah. A rotting corpse," she muttered. She studied the mound of dust. "But nothing was left except flies. What would they want with bare bones? Were they in the marrow? I didn't see--"
"We're talking about Elbert. I wouldn't be surprised if he tore wings off insects as a boy, and they're still gathering to celebrate his demise."
"They didn't carry him up here, though. Think the crow did?"
"Not likely. But there is something here besides flies." He dragged the end of his staff through the remaining fragments and dust to dislodge an object hidden beneath. As it emerged, Ariel recognized it: a large knife.
She stepped back from the blade that had given her scars. "That was still in his hand when he fell. Not in its sheath."
"That's my memory, too." Scarl didn't seem particularly troubled.
She voiced words that had been jabbering in her thoughts for hours. "There's a Hallow's Eve rhyme that goes, 'Restless spirit, move your bones. Rise from rot and mildew. Vengeance can be yours tonight. Find the one who killed y--'"
"Stop. There's no need to spook yourself further. It's odd to find these things here, but it need not be unnatural. Mountain lions sometimes drag prey up a tree. They also like high, rocky outlooks. One must have hauled the body up here to gnaw the bones clean."
"I thought they only ate fresh meat."
"I thought so, too, but who knows what they'll do when they're hungry?"
"But the knife--"
"It lay under a corpse a long while," he said firmly. "It may have smelled edible, too. Worth bringing up to lick clean, at least. Enough of this. Come." He kicked the knife toward the edge of the slab. It tumbled and stuck in the dust, not quite making it over the rim. Scarl frowned but turned his back on it and drew Ariel's sock of bones from his pocket. "Or do you want to get rid of this first?"
Ariel took the sock, dropped it, and stomped. She felt the bones inside crunch, but they didn't disintegrate like the others had. So she untied the sock to pour out the splinters. Glad to see they no longer fell in formation, she ground them into the rock with her heel. Then she flung the sock to the wind. She wouldn't want to wear it again.
"Are we done?" Scarl asked.
She forced her voice to be light. "I suppose the worst he could do now is make us sneeze."
"If that." He checked the height of the sun. "So we should try to get home before dark."
Ariel nudged the knife with her toe and bent to peer at the blade. It bore no trace of her blood. She pinched the hilt between two fingers and raised it. The wood felt gritty and gouged--perhaps damaged by teeth. An ivory triangle was inlaid in the handle.
At first Ariel assumed the inlay was bone, and sinister connections raced through her thoughts. Then a detail struck her. She swiped the triangle cle
an with one fingertip.
"Huh." She looked up at Scarl. "Did Elbert tell you where he came from?"
"Originally? No."
"There's a shark's tooth embedded in this." The vicious detail gave Ariel the strange sense that she shared more with Elbert than ever. Had they both been born near the sea? She tried to envision him young--blonde and boy-faced like Zeke, only burly instead. He may have been cruel then already, propped up by this knife. Or perhaps his jolly demeanor had once been authentic, and rather than tormenting flies, he'd cut bait with friends.
Scarl interrupted her musing. "Leave it, Ariel. Or throw it to break on the rocks, and forget it. He's gone. He can't trouble you again."
Ariel rubbed her thumb over the tooth, inlaid so expertly that she could barely feel where the wood stopped and the serrated tooth began. A tingle ran through her bones to her feet. They wanted to move. After hundreds of farwalking miles, she'd become highly attuned to that impulse. She turned to stare over the brink of the slab and northwest, where her feet itched to lead her. Rocky peaks rose in the distance, hindering any journey that way.
"Ariel!"
The concern in Scarl's voice made her move toward him, but her fingers wrapped firmly about the knife's hilt.
He eyed it with disapproval. "A trophy?"
"No. I just want it." She tried to understand why and fell back on an excuse. "When you gave me lessons with your knife, you said I should have my own weapon, remember?"
"What I remember is how adamantly you refused. Why this one now?"
"Because." To master a thing that had hurt her? To rob Elbert's power? "It might be handy against a lion."
Scarl grimaced. "It's more likely to worsen your nightmares. And mine."
His dismay pricked her heart, but it also focused her purpose.
"That's why I need it," she said.
Chapter 4
"This knife is too close to us here, like a thorn," Ariel said. Gripping the hilt, she let Scarl escort her down the sloped rock. "I want to take it back where it came from. I'll cast it into the sea. Or a river or lake or whatever they've got." She jumped to the ground and retrieved the poker she'd left there.
"If you do, Elbert will be in your thoughts the whole time."
"It'll be worth it."
He caught her arm. "Are you sure? If you allow his memory to haunt you this far past his death, you're letting him control you as much as he ever did when you were a prisoner. He forced you out of bed and all these miles today. Do you want to hand him that power? You certainly wouldn't give it to me."
She hadn't thought of it that way. To muffle a twinge of discomfort, she retorted, "You're bossy enough without it."
"I see. I'll remind you of that next time you want something of me."
"I take it back," Ariel said. "Because I want something now."
Scarl shook his head. "I won't carry that knife, if that's what you're thinking."
"No." She ignored the direction her feet wanted to take her--for now--and started downhill toward the abbey. "I want a walking stick. Like yours, only smaller. Would you find me one?"
He joined her. "That shouldn't be hard."
"And you'll go farwalking with me, won't you?"
"Have I ever let you go alone?"
"No, but you don't usually try to talk me out of it, either. My feet want to go, Scarl."
He accepted that justification in silence.
As they descended, he found her several possible staffs. Ariel settled on a length of aspen with a brown twist through the wood and a knot at the top. Scarl indulged her by taking the poker so she could begin breaking in the staff to her hand.
At last the abbey's roof came into view below. Goats grazed among puddles of snow in the yard, and Ariel spied the tiny figures of both Nace and Zeke. Zeke was bent at some task and struggling to discourage curious goats from sticking their snouts in his work. Nace hurried up to retrieve them, but he stopped and folded his arms at what must've been sharp words from Zeke. The distance was too great for Zeke's voice to be heard, but their gestures and postures spoke louder.
Ariel sighed. She didn't need a dead enemy to trouble her mind. She had enough heartache from friends.
"Why can't they get along?" she asked.
"You know the answer." Scarl smiled. "They say too much of a good thing makes the best curse. It's true for love as well, then?"
"Don't laugh. It hurts. I'll be glad to escape for a while. Can we leave tomorrow?"
His eyebrows shot up. "I didn't realize you meant to go farwalking so soon. The weather's too nipping yet, Ariel. It's barely half March."
"I don't care. I'll wear all my clothes at once and sleep with rocks warmed in the fire."
His silence tugged at her conscience. She'd forgotten that he'd be uncomfortable, too.
"I mean, if it's just you and me," she added, "we can curl up together under tree roots and ledges to be cozy enough. Can't we?"
"Your faith in my ability to find such shelter is touching," he said. "But if that blade weighs on you so much that we need to hurry, let's just destroy it."
"That would only work if I could cut out my memories and smash them along with it," she said. "I don't want to destroy it. I want to take it somewhere out of my life."
"That won't wipe away your bad memories," he said gently.
"I know. They'll be balanced by new memories, though--memories where I'm carrying the knife."
"Ah." At last Scarl nodded. "All right. Perhaps we can leave the nightmares behind. Give me a chance to gather some gear, though. I still need to mend Willow's tack. And you have paper to make."
"Oh! You're right. It might be cooked enough now. If I can mold it this evening, we could still leave tomorrow." At his dubious look, she said, "The day after?"
"Thursday. No sooner."
She agreed. The two days between would give her time to craft her walking stick--and break the news that she'd be gone for a while to her friends.
By the time she and Scarl arrived at the abbey, both Nace and Zeke had long gone out of sight. As she returned her poker to the hearth, Ariel found her pot of wood soup off the fire, the brown mush inside cooling.
"Zeke has been fussing with it all day," explained Ash, who was there fixing supper. "I wouldn't be surprised if he'd tasted it, too."
"I hope not," Ariel said. The stuff smelled like molasses but looked more like cheese curds in whey. It was hard to imagine how anyone could write symbols on it. Doubtful, she left Elbert's knife by the hearth and headed to her room to free her tired feet from her boots.
She got only as far as her threshold. In the middle of her floor lay a rib.
Another bone! Or...no. Her breath left in a rush. It was only a peeled stick. Approaching, she could make out a few symbols carved on its surface. In the summertime, Nace shaped messages for her from flowers or feathers, but when those couldn't be found, he resorted to marks on fabric or pieces of wood. She bent to retrieve it and read his message.
Meet me? Nace.
Ariel pressed the symbols to her chest as if her heart could answer in beats to his own. She tossed the stick on her blanket and turned, sore feet forgotten.
Scarl, still unlacing his boots, saw her pass by his doorway. "You're not going out again, are you?"
"Not for long." Ariel walked backward so she could reply without stopping. "I just want to find Nace. He's probably penning the goats."
"If you see Zeke, remind him not to dally."
"I will." She turned and ran out.
Unlike the goats, Nace was not at their pen. Ariel scanned the hillside, which was gilded with the slanted light of late day. She finally found him near the edge of the woods, perched in the fork of a horse chestnut tree and chewing on the end of a porcupine quill. When he saw her, he tossed it away and swung down immediately. His hand plunged into his pocket for the small slate and charred stick he carried. Ariel waited while he scratched quick marks on the slate: Last night--I'm sorry.
"I'm sorry, too. I sho
uld have followed you. But I hate it when you two go after each other."
Nace grimaced. He brushed his slate with the heel of his hand and wrote, Where today?
"Out with Scarl." She'd tell him later about the bones and their strange host of flies. Right now, she just wanted to earn Nace's smile. She reached toward him.
He dodged, his charcoal poised over the slate. He got as far as Zeke's name. But he couldn't find the words he wanted--or he realized Ariel wouldn't know the marks for them, because he understood far more symbols than she did. In a flash of frustration, he flung the slate and charred stick on the moss. Then he took both her hands.
His touch sent a thrill through her and put a hitch in her thoughts. Ariel found herself leaning against him without being sure when or how she'd moved there. Her cheek nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. Like the birdsong overhead, the pulse of his heart reassured her that all things were well.
"Remember when you first came here?" she murmured. "I had so hoped you'd be friends." Nace had shared Zeke's room briefly, and they'd studied symbols together until Zeke had realized that Nace had come to the abbey not just to learn but to be with Ariel.
Nace released her fingers to wrap his arms around her. One of his hands strayed to trace down her arm, scribing symbols that spoke to her heart. Ariel closed her eyes to better feel them inside. Graced with more than the usual Kincaller's skill, Nace could listen and speak with his mind, and though she could rarely pinpoint when it happened, or how, she trusted her instincts about what he told her that way.
What she heard now in silence was the passage of time: yesterday giving way to tomorrow, winter to spring, children growing up and maybe growing apart. She understood what he meant about change, and how useless it was to struggle against it. Yet surely old friends should not be cast aside. The problem was how best to hold onto one love while embracing a love that was new.
When at last she looked into Nace's face, dim with shadows, she realized that, indeed, time had passed. Dusk had fallen.
She squeezed him and drew back. "We should head for the abbey. It's practically dark, and you know how Scarl gets."
He wagged his head in reluctant agreement and clasped her fingers to walk hand in hand. Before they'd gone far, though, he stiffened and stopped. He inhaled, not just breathing but testing the air. The birds had fallen silent.
