Tanwen En-Yestin was a very lonely little girl without her nursemaid’s company, until she made friends with her new adoptive sibling.
As the words swirled around me, a picture unfolded, like I was watching back the memory. Two little blond heads bounced by as we ran through the fields—me six years old, he eight.
The shadowy image of me giggled and pushed harder to keep up. Were we racing?
No. Chasing a fluff-hopper. A tiny white one we’d stumbled upon in Ma-Bradwir’s garden. It had been eating her greens while it stalked a larger snack—one of the Bradwirs’ new puppies. We’d tried to catch it and it had bitten me, a tiny nibble, for this fluff-hopper must have been a very young baby.
Then it had taken off, and we after it, through Farmer Bradwir’s grain fields.
“Got it!” the boy shouted, and he held the tiny ball of curly white fluff in cupped hands.
I squealed in delight, and a strand of pink light burst from my palm. “If only it were pink, it would grant all your wishes!” As I said these words, the pink light bunched together and popped into a clear pink-crystal fluff-hopper figure.
A little lopsided, I could see now. But the boy looked impressed.
“Sakes,” he said. “You did that.”
“Aye.” I stroked the head of the real fluff ball, snatching my fingers away just in time to escape another bite. “So?”
“It was like magic.”
Little me laughed. “Race you back!”
Then I took off, and the boy after me.
What was his name?
Only blankness answered me. No recollection, no recognition. I knew I had known this boy once—and that I knew him still. But in that moment, I couldn’t grasp his name.
The image of the boy ran past me in the blackness. He laughed and tossed his blond hair from his eyes.
“Brac,” I said aloud to the ghost boy. “Brac!”
A wave of sorrow hit me. It was my accidental betrothed, the one who had been so frustrating and thickheaded and controlling lately but with whom I had shared my lifetime.
“No!” I cried. “I don’t want to forget him.” I reached for the shadowy image, but it was too far away. And not solid, in any case. “I don’t want to forget this Brac—the boy who was my brother. Please!”
But the images of me and Brac as children and the silver strands of memory were gone. Darkness swallowed me, and my tears were my only company.
A pinprick of light invaded my senses. Then it grew to a streak and widened until the whole room came into view, and then finally into focus.
I won’t lie. I expected to see Mor’s face, first thing. I expected him to be crouched over me, calling my name and cradling my head so I might not slam it against the ground, same as he had done for Gryfelle many times.
Instead, my father was there, and so was Aeron. It was she who held me with Warmil beside her, his arm around her shoulders. I could see then that Aeron was crying. How long had I been fitting? Had it been gruesome to watch, whatever my body had been doing?
Master Insegno must be near, for I heard him speaking in rapid Meridioni.
I sat up slowly with Father’s help. My head spun and threatened to split in two. But I looked around anyway. Mor was nowhere to be seen. He had left the room at some point.
At that moment, it truly sank in. Not only was I going to die, but when I did, Mor might not even notice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TANWEN
I traipsed down the white steps onto the Bordino beach. I needed to see something other than the inside of the room I’d been trapped in for a week now. Something other than the inside of the atenne, actually, because if I had to hear Master Insegno, Dylun, Warmil, and Father argue over the curvature of this character or the description of that landmark for one more minute, I was going to scream.
Mor had been scarce all week, and I couldn’t decide if I preferred it that way or not. Probably for the best, as the captain himself would say.
But now I wanted air and light and some pleasanter company. So, I padded across the white sand to where the crewmen worked along the shore among scattered shells, driftwood, and clumps of beached seaplants. They had set up a collection of crates and boxes and barrels to sit upon, and it seemed they had almost created a proper workshop.
“Ho, Wylie.” I sat on an unoccupied barrel beside Wylie.
“Ho, Tannie.” He grinned. “Barely seen you in days.”
“We’ve been busy.” I dragged my toes through the sand. “I thought this whole journey-mapping thing would take a day or two with all the progress they made the first day.” I picked up a coil of rope. “Turns out they were just ‘rough-sketching’ things, and now they get to argue about the finer points, exact locations, and specifics of long-dead languages until we grow old and our teeth fall out.”
“That long, eh?”
“Gryfelle is running out of time.”
It didn’t need saying. That dark cloud hung over us all the time, a constant threat as we worked to make progress. And still, I needed to voice it. To vent my frustration.
I glanced down at the rope I’d picked up. “Hey, what are we doing with these?”
“Cleaning them.” He dipped his rope in a bucket of water. “We rinse off the salt in fresh water and lay them out to dry in the sun. Keeps them nice and healthy.”
“Maybe that would work with me and Gryfelle.”
“Dunk you both in buckets of water and lay you out in the sun to dry?”
“The cure of the ancients!”
Wylie laughed, but then his smile faltered. “How have you been feeling?”
I shrugged. “Fine, I guess. Haven’t had any more . . . spells or fits, or whatever you want to call them.”
“Captain seems worried.”
“Aye, Gryfelle’s his lass,” I answered, a little too quickly.
Wylie didn’t press matters further. Bless that lad. He just leaned over and adjusted the way I was dunking the rope.
I sighed. “Can’t I even wash rope right?”
“Apparently not.”
“Hey, Wylie?” I said suddenly.
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad you’re here.” I meant it with all my heart.
Wylie leaned back and looked at me.
“Aeron really tries,” I continued. “She tries to be there for me, but I think it’s hard. She watched Gryfelle get sick, so it seems like she’s keeping her distance with me. It’s too much to watch it all over again, I suppose. And besides that, Aeron is . . .” But I didn’t really know how to phrase it.
“Aeron is Captain Bo-Lidere’s friend first?” Wylie suggested.
“Aye. Aeron belongs to Mor. They’ve been friends a hundred times longer than she and I have, so if Mor and I are at odds, it puts her in a spot. I guess.” I shook the rope gently in the water, trying to copy Wylie’s easy movements. “I’m just saying I’m glad to have a friend. A friend who’s fun and doesn’t mind me hanging around.”
He smiled. “Glad to be your friend, Tannie. Truly.” Then he looked down at my rope. “Really, you’re terrible at that.”
“How can I possibly be doing it wrong? I’m doing it just like you.”
“You’re agitating it too much.”
“You’re agitating it too much.”
We settled into a comfortable silence where I watched him wash the ropes and didn’t bother trying to help, and he didn’t get offended that I wasn’t helping.
After he’d gotten through several more lengths of rope, I said, “I think I’m ready to be back aboard ship.”
“Tired of Meridione?”
“No.”
“Miss the roasted fish?”
I wrinkled my nose. “No.”
“What, then?”
“I just want to feel like we’re doing something.”
He nodded. “That makes sense.”
“I need to go see her.”
“Gryfelle?”
“Aye.”
“I’m sure
she’d like that. See you later, Tannie.” Wylie nodded to me once, then returned to his ropes in silence.
Gryfelle’s room was through an old stone archway where the white plaster had crumbled who knew how many centuries before. I wondered why they didn’t replaster it, but I was glad they hadn’t. The stones were beautiful in their own way, and they reminded me of Tir somehow.
A breezy curtain made of nearly sheer, pale-green fabric covered the doorway. Karlith hummed just inside. After a pause, I drew the curtain aside and went in.
“Tannie!” Karlith’s eyes lit up, and she set her knitting aside. “It’s good to see you here.”
Gryfelle stirred slightly, but her eyes didn’t open.
“Ho, Karlith. How goes it?”
“Gryfelle’s morning has been good.”
I looked at the still, ashen body before me and couldn’t fathom Karlith spoke truth. “Has it?”
“Aye. She’s not had a spell in a full day now, and her fever is down.”
“That’s good.” And it was, of course, but it pained me that the bar for health was so low for Gryfelle these days. “Has she been awake at all?”
“A little. She took some broth earlier.”
“I wonder if she’s as glad as I am to have something other than fish.”
The sound of a slow, labored breath startled me. “I think it was fish broth this morning,” Gryfelle said, her eyes fluttering open. She smiled slightly. “Hello, Tanwen.”
“You’re awake!” I sounded too bright. Too falsely cheerful. But I didn’t know how to act. How are you supposed to be around someone who could pass from this life at any moment?
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Mostly.”
I sat beside her bed. “Sorry they’re bringing you fish broth. Least we could have real broth if we’re to be stuck here so long.”
“It was shellfish, I think. Tasted like the sea. But I didn’t mind.”
“I always thought shellfish looked like the bugs of the ocean.”
She smiled. “Yes, they do. Quite.”
If it were possible, Gryfelle had gotten paler than she was when we arrived in Meridione. She’d had light golden hair and fair skin as long as I’d known her, but now her hair was white and her face almost green. What had once been high, delicate cheekbones now looked like sharp peaks above the sunken valleys of her cheeks. She looked to be a living skeleton.
“Gryfelle . . .” I bit back my tears. “They’re trying really hard. We all are. They’re working on the map every second.”
“I know, Tanwen.”
“They’re going to find these strands and put them back together and make the cure.”
She took another long, slow breath. “I do hope they will find the cure.”
After a moment, Gryfelle was asleep again.
Something inside me began to boil. It started in my gut, then spread throughout my whole body. I felt my fingertips begin to warm, but I willed the wild strands not to shoot from my hands.
Still. I was fired up.
I didn’t give Karlith a proper good-bye. I flew from the room and stormed toward the atenne, toward those scholars and learned men and world travelers who couldn’t seem to make a proper map in a timely manner.
I burst into the discussion room like I meant it. Conversation ceased immediately, and I didn’t give anyone the chance to ask questions. “Look. I know you’re doing your best.”
Many pairs of eyes snapped to me. Including Mor’s. He was sitting at the table beside Dylun.
“You simply have to move faster,” I continued. “Gryfelle can’t get sicker while we argue about this word or that, fuss over the different interpretations of one Old Tirian phrase or another Ancient Meridioni proverb. Enough. Let’s finish this map and go. Surely I’m not the only one who can’t endure another minute of waiting.”
Dylun spoke up. “Actually, Tanwen, the map is complete. We believe we’ve identified the locations of all the strand fragments.”
“Oh.” I shifted my weight awkwardly. I sure did know how to make an entrance. An exit? Not so clear.
“But we’re puzzled by this one phrase, and until we get it, we won’t be able to start. This phrase holds the key to our first strand, here in Meridione.” He frowned and shook his head at the scroll before him. “None of us, with all our combined learning, can figure out these words. And I don’t know where else to turn.”
Even Master Insegno looked a little ruffled. “I believe my Ancient Meridioni to be fluent. But this phrase puzzles me.”
I don’t know why I did it, for I’d not been any help in the work of translation or map reading, or really anything else except fetching bitter-bean brew and tea all these days. I hadn’t had any proper schooling, after all. But I walked over to the table and peered over Dylun’s shoulder to get a look at the troublesome phrase.
“Rock pile,” I said immediately.
Everyone turned to look at me once more.
“I mean . . .” I trailed off, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m not sure if that’s what it means here. But that phrase. That’s rock pile.”
Warmil stared at me. “How do you know?”
“There’s a saying we use in the country. I guess it must be Old Tirian, though I never thought about it. Un lail napil craig. It means, ‘You’re dumber than a rock pile.’ I must’ve said it to Brac a thousand times. Isn’t that the same thing here? Pil craig?” I pointed to the words that looked to me like they could be nothing other than rock pile.
“Se.” Master Insegno’s eyes lit up. “I know the place of which this speaks. A day’s journey northwest, in the foothills of the Orlos, there is a grouping of stones thought to be a place of worship for the ancients—an altar of sorts.”
I shrugged. “Sacred rock pile. That works.”
“Then that’s where we begin,” Dylun said, rolling up his scroll and turning back toward me. “Extraordinary.”
My cheeks heated, but at least it wasn’t my fingertips.
“I said she would do nicely when we first met Tanwen, didn’t I?” Dylun’s eyes twinkled. “I guess sometimes a Tirian farm girl is just what’s needed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TANWEN
An entire day of trekking northwest to a pile of ancient rocks didn’t sound like a party, but at least we were moving.
Or . . . would be, once we found Mor.
We had spent a whole day preparing. The Cethorelle’s crew had helped us pack several donkeys with bedrolls and food and water, and anything else we might need for our journey. We lined a cart with cushions and blankets and hitched a donkey to it, since poor Gryfelle had to travel with us. Karlith protested at first, but something about the way we had to retrieve this living artifact strand required a songspinner, and she was the only one we had handy.
Master Insegno said the rock pile was a day’s journey one way, so we would have to spend a night out in the Meridioni wilderness. Surely that seemed unkind to Gryfelle, but we didn’t have a choice. So sleeping under the stars it would have to be.
And I’d forgotten to ask if they had mountainbeasts around here.
Commander Jule was coming with us, and I’d convinced my father it would be a great idea to have a handful of crewmen around to help care for the animals and set up camp, which was certainly true. But mostly I just wanted to have Wylie along for his easy company.
All was ready, and the sun was up, but Mor was nowhere to be found.
Zel shrugged and popped the last of his steamed maize cake into his mouth. “Tannie, Mor ain’t hardly been sleeping. He’s barely eating. He’s twisted up bad—about all of this. I guess he just needed a moment away. He’ll be back.”
Memories of Mor’s steely glares and hard words snapped back to me.
I rubbed my temples. I couldn’t tell anymore which of us was less reasonable, me or Mor. Was I in the right? What were we even fighting about? Sometimes it all blurred together into a soupy fog of bitterness and strife.
I hated it.
&
nbsp; “I’m going to go look for him,” I said to Zel.
“Are you?”
“You sound surprised.”
“It’s just—”
“We’ve been avoiding each other. I know. But we really need to get going. And since I’m not otherwise occupied . . .” I let the rest of that sentence die and rose to my feet. “I’ll be back.”
I selected one of the stone-paved pathways at random. They all wove through the hillside streets of Bordino in such a way that everything was connected. No matter which I chose—and no matter where Mor was—I’d be able to cover the entire city. The pathways sprawled like the web of a thread-spinner.
Pathway led to alleyway and then back to pathway. I poked my head into open doorways, peeked behind a few curtains, and softly called Mor’s name. No one answered me except a few friendly Meridionis and the sounds and smells of breakfast.
“Ragizzi!” An elderly Meridioni woman stuck a tray of hot maize cakes under my nose as I passed her doorway. My mouth filled with saliva. “Mamanjia, ragizzi!”
I swallowed my mouthful of gluttonous desire, since I’d already eaten about twelve of those beauties not an hour before. “Oh, I’ve eaten, thank you. You’re kind.”
But after living in Bordino for a week, I had learned you don’t say no to a Meridioni grandmam. Or rather, you can’t say no to her.
The sweet lady practically hand-fed me three maize cakes before she would let me go on my way. Seemed strange, but somehow these cakes from a clay oven in a modest, one-room dwelling in Meridione were better than the maize cakes the palace cooks put together back in Urian.
Meridioni grandmams knew what they were about.
“Mor, where are you?” I mostly mumbled to myself. I had crisscrossed Bordino and not seen any sign of him. Now I stood on the edge of the city and stared across the field where the atenne stood.
I didn’t want to return to those white plaster walls, and something told me Mor wouldn’t want to either. We’d been trapped there all week, hunting for every scrap of information, chasing down every lead. The atenne was a place of worry and pressure and exhaustion. Mor wanted escape.
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