by Shannon Hale
She slept fitfully, dreaming of the horse bucking her off, of finding the girls only to be sent away, of a yellow snake that dropped from the trees and tightened its smooth body around her throat. She woke for good when a shaft of morning light cut through her eyelids.
Another hour wasted while she tried to saddle the horse. Eventually she managed to lift the heavy thing onto Gladden’s back and strap it on, but when she clambered up, her weight made the saddle tilt to the side, the mare prancing uncomfortably. After climbing a tree and dropping onto the saddle, she’d ridden only a few minutes before the saddle leaned even farther over. The horse stopped fast, and Rin was dumped onto the ground. She scrambled for the horse’s reins, but no doubt tired of sliding saddles and girls jumping out of trees, Gladden trotted off and was gone.
Tears of frustration made a haze of the trees, and that horrible dead ache in her chest grew so heavy she thought it would stop her heart. She was lost. If she made it back to the road, the king’s camp was sure to be gone, and she’d have to walk to the capital on her own. That could take weeks. Worse, she would not be able to find Isi and the others now.
She leaned against a tree and let sorrow rise up to her ears like flood water. Her cheek pressed against bark, she closed her eyes, and for a moment she saw her anxious fretting as if watching it from a distance.
“What am I doing?” she said. “Of all the pointless . . .”
She shook herself, found the hoof tracks, and followed on foot. That path crossed with another set of multiple horse prints, and she followed the new set for a few hours until she heard voices.
Rin sneaked forward. When a girl wanted to be alone in a family of dozens, walking around undetected was an extraordinarily useful talent. Also, if a girl wanted to climb a tree and dump a bucket of wash water over a certain brother’s head, quick and quiet movements were paramount. Rin had years of practice. So she shinnied up a tree, perched near the trunk where branches would shield her from view, and listened.
“I think we should keep to the wood until we’re closer to Geldis.”
“We would move faster on the road.”
“But I’m concerned about watchers.”
That voice was definitely Isi’s.
Out of habit, Rin mused over the good pranks she could play, hidden as she was in the wood. She could wait until they were asleep and drag Enna and her bedroll off, so she woke up alone and disoriented—that trick was an Agget-kin standard. Dozens of times she’d seen one of her brothers hauling his bedroll back home in the morning, muttering, “Very funny,” while the guilty parties snickered out of Ma’s hearing.
Dasha spoke again. “Isi, but what about—you said someone had followed us into the wood.”
“Yes, but I know who that is now.” Isi’s voice raised, shouting directly at Rin’s tree. “Would you care to join us?”
Rin felt made of ice from her toes to her fingertips. Discovery was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable sensation, and she wondered if Isi had help from the wind. Rin grabbed a branch with her hands, swung out of the tree, and dropped to the ground.
“Rin!” said Enna. “Were you doing an imitation of an enormous squirrel? Honestly, I thought you were the sensible one in your family, but you’re half Razo after all.”
“That’s odd. I was actually expecting . . .” Isi scanned the wood behind Rin. “Did you come on a horse?”
“It ran off. I—”
Isi mounted her black stallion bareback and rode into the trees, her face intent as if listening.
Enna sat on the ground and began sorting through a bag of food. “I give her six minutes to find your horse and come trotting back with it in tow.”
Dasha was embracing Rin. “Look at you! What in the—Why are you here?”
Rin shrugged helplessly. Dasha laughed in her pleased way, her nose crinkling in pleasure. “She follows us in the dead of night through a wood full of sticky brambles that leave burrs on your tunic, jumps out of a tree like a hopping bird, and when I ask her what she’s doing, she shrugs. Rin, you are darling!”
Isi returned, just as Enna predicted, with Gladden following behind. Isi did not even have the horse’s reins—it just trotted after the queen’s stallion like a puppy after its master. The saddle was dangling off the horse’s side.
“Have a little trouble with the saddle, did you, Rin?” There was humor in Isi’s voice, which relieved Rin immensely. If something was still funny, then perhaps everything would be all right.
Enna laughed. “I’d bet twelve slippers that horse was saddled by a Forest girl. Your horse ran off indeed. Can’t wait to tell Razo.”
“Your Majes—Isi,” Rin said. “I came because there’s something I thought you should know. I once saw Cilie arguing with a man, which was odd because she never spoke to anyone besides the waiting women. And I only just realized who it was—Captain Brynn.” The girls waited, looking at Rin, as if expecting more.
Rin flushed.
“And . . . that’s all. It just seemed odd that Cilie disappeared and then Brynn died.”
“That is odd,” said Isi. “Was there anything else? Is Tusken all right?”
Rin’s face burned hotter. “He was with his father when I left. And Razo swore to protect him. With his life.”
Isi nodded. “A great promise.” If she was worried, she made no more sign.
Dasha showed Rin how to saddle her horse and they rode all day, Rin expecting every moment that Isi would send her away. But when the blue in the western sky mellowed into gold, the queen still had not ordered her home.
They soon stopped for night. Enna cleared a space of leaves and twigs and piled a heap of dead branches. A Forest girl should know better than to try and start a fire like that, Rin thought. Enna should begin with kindling, then add twigs before—
“Oh,” Rin said, gaping as the pile of branches suddenly blazed, though no one had touched it. So that’s how it works.
Enna glared at Dasha. “It was my turn to start the fire.”
“Oh,” Rin said again, realizing it had been Dasha, not Enna.
“But you said I need the practice,” Dasha said demurely, stirring the fire with a stick as though it were soup ready for tasting. Her eyes flicked to Enna and then back at the fire. “How did I do?”
“You did fine, as you well know.” Enna pulled a bag of provisions off her horse and began working on supper.
“I just wondered . . . if there’s anything else you can teach me. I mean, I still can’t do as much with fire as you, can’t make big fires or keep creating them as long as you—”
“Nor are you ever likely to. No one can.” Enna sat beside Isi, putting an arm around her waist and tugging as if trying to get her to smile. “Isn’t that right, Isi?”
“No one burns like Enna.”
Rin wished they would explain more, but Enna returned to her cooking. Isi’s eyes flicked to Rin’s face, and she seemed thoughtful.
After a dinner of boiled potatoes and travel jerky, they lay down, but there was only a moment of silence before Enna groaned.
“I’m too jittery to sleep. How about a tale before bed?”
“Maybe something familiar would be nice,” said Isi,
“since we’re far from home. Will you tell about the three gifts?”
“No, no, that’s yours. You tell it.”
Rin kept her eyes on the canopy, where the breeze-lifted leaves raked the sky, and listened to Isi’s voice untangle the darkness.
“When the creator made the world, everything had its own language, and all could communicate freely—tree to wind, rock to snail, flower to honeybee. Last of all, the creator made people, and they strode over the land, speaking strong words and taking control. They broke the balance, and one by one knowledge of the languages was lost, leaving creatures deaf to any but their own.
“But as moons rose and fell and days and nights did a spinning dance, different sorts of people were born in the crannies of the mountains and wilderness. Born with a first wo
rd on their tongues, they could hear and learn new languages. As they found one another and taught one another, three gifts were named—nature-speaking, animal-speaking, and people-speaking. Though rare, now there were people again who could understand the language of fire and wind, of bird and horse, and of people too. The last, however, proved the most dangerous.”
“I’ve never heard you say that before,” Enna said, her voice soft and sleepy. “The part about people breaking the balance, being the cause that the languages were forgotten.”
“It’s just my own telling.” Isi sighed, her blanket rustling.
“But it makes sense to me. People move through this world unlike any other thing. When someone has the knowledge of only a single language—like fire, for instance—it overcomes them unless a balancing language is learned. But I’ve never seen anything that rots a person like people-speaking. It is a gift unlike the others, bound for destruction.” Isi sighed. “Well, that wasn’t a very good tale, was it?”
Enna yawned. “It’ll do in a pinch.”
But Rin was spinning with those ideas—everything had a language, and there were people who could learn them. Marvelous thought, mystifying thought.
“Rin,” said Enna, “Isi and I already know each other’s stories, and I suspect Tiran stories are boring . . .”
“What?” Dasha interrupted. “I—”
“. . . so why don’t you tell one?”
Rin did not feel capable of entertaining three such girls with anything out of her mind. But she glanced at Isi once for confidence, cleared her throat, and chose her words, like picking berries from a thorny bush.
“There was a girl who was friends with trees. Whenever she was sad or lonely, she sort of listened to the trees in a different way and could not really hear them but sort of could. Then she did something different than she’d ever done, wanted something for herself, and the trees stopped being her friends. And she didn’t understand why. So she ran away.” Rin realized she needed an ending. “And she found someone who figured out what was wrong with the trees, or with her, and made it all better.”
There was a long pause in which Rin became aware of the painfully high chirp of a night bird, then Enna laughed. “Rin, that was a really pathetic story.”
Rin smiled sheepishly. “I know. About halfway through I was hoping that you’d all fallen asleep.”
“Not bad for a first try,” Dasha said, patting Rin’s arm. “Think about it some more and tell it again another night, will you?”
Enna and Dasha yawned in unison, and the girls cozied into their blankets. By the time Enna and Dasha’s breathing went from restful to dead asleep, Isi was still staring up at the twisting canopy.
“I liked your story,” Rin whispered.
“Thanks. I told it for you.”
“You did? Thank you, for taking the trouble.” Isi must have guessed Rin had not understood their conversation about fire-speaking.
“Did you tell your story for me?” Isi whispered.
“Oh.” Rin’s chest seemed to be full of breath. “Maybe I did.”
“I’ve never known anyone with tree-speaking before, though I always suspected it was possible.”
Tree-speaking.The word felt like fire in Rin’s mind.
“What’s it like, Rin?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I have—uh, had—tree-speaking. I just listened, sort of, and I would feel different. It’s . . . I can’t explain.”
“Do you mind if I guess? When you were younger, perhaps, some need led you to first hear the trees. You were listening in a different way—and it’s not really like listening. Or feeling or smelling, is it? But something else, a different sense.”
“Is wind like that too? And fire?”
“In a way. What do you understand from the trees?”
“Just . . . calm. It’s easier to think, to feel all right. But I don’t . . . the, uh, the tree-speaking doesn’t work for me anymore. I . . . did something. Maybe the trees didn’t like it and they turned away from me.”
Isi moved onto her side, propping her head with a hand. “I can understand some bird languages, and horse too, and I’ve learned that animals mostly don’t care what people do or think. I can’t imagine trees would note the way a person acted, let alone punish you for it. Do you?”
Rin exhaled. “No. I suspected that much. But then I can’t figure why they changed. Or maybe I changed?”
“I don’t know. Will you tell me when you work it out?”
Rin wished now more than ever that she could hear the tree’s calm again, just to have something she could share with Isi. The losing felt as tragic to her as Isi’s story, when the web of languages connecting the world snapped. She felt the mystery of that loss around her, ragged ends of broken webs teasing her skin.
“May I stay with you?” Rin whispered.
“It might be dangerous what we’re doing.”
“I’d still like to stay with you. Isi. Please. I’m better around you.”
Rin was feeling stripped and cold and confused, and she could not find the energy to say anything more, so she curled up tighter, letting her eyes close. The firelight bled through her lids, and she watched swirls of orange and gold collide as she heard Isi say, “Stay with us, Rin, but be careful. Please be careful.”
Chapter 9
They traveled under the cover of the wood for four days. Kiltwin, a large walled town, lay just beyond the trees to the south, and Isi wanted to avoid it. She might be recognized there, slowing them when speed and stealth could be vital. So they kept moving east through the trees, Isi depending on the wind to guide them.
“The wind carries with it images of what it has touched,” Isi explained to Rin. “It’s constantly muttering, though it takes some understanding to puzzle out what it means.”
So when Isi listened to the wind, she knew of things that were out of sight. She could also send the wind any direction she chose, all from understanding its language. Rin gazed at the passing trees and wondered what else might be possible.
Isi brought them out of the wood near what had been the village of Geldis. It was just debris and embers, heaps of ash. Enna kicked blackened timber and glared at the horizon.
“Where are you? Are you here? I’m here now. Come out!”
Despite the chill icing her gut, Rin did wish those burners would come running at them, and let the fire sisters end it right then. A bird lit at her feet, then flew off; a breeze ruffled loose soil. Nothing else moved.
“Now what?” Enna asked.
“The villagers of Geldis went east to Hendric,” Isi said. “So do we.”
Hills rolled away from the wood, open farms changing to wooden homes sporting pens of pigs and donkeys. By evening buildings clustered into the town of Hendric, clapboard homes and shops clinging to a crossroads.
The inn was a large rickety structure, the rooms upstairs balanced over an enormous common room, the roof thatched with straw that wriggled and whimpered with mice.
Before leaving the wood, Rin wrapped her hair into a cloth common among Forest women so she would not stand out in her own party. Isi and Dasha felt around their foreheads and necks, anxious that no strand of yellow or orange hair escape to draw attention. Enna blackened their eyebrows with a piece of charcoal.
In the common room that night, Enna and Isi made polite conversation with travelers and locals alike, trying to steer the topic to what happened in Geldis, hoping to find a trail to follow. Rin wanted to help, but there were so many people—eating, drinking, singing, laughing, pushing, shoving, yelling, weeping. She sat in a corner, her arms around her chest.
A droopy-eyed farmer cornered Enna, droning on about how the king was to blame for Geldis. When the hearth fire surged unexpectedly, Isi pulled Enna to a table against the wall.
“We can’t draw notice.”
“He was an arrogant cow,” Enna said, tearing a piece of bread into crumbs. “You can see I showed restraint, since he still has all his hair.”
“Truly you are a diplomat,” said Dasha.
“I don’t see you talking to anyone, Ambassador.”
“Because my accent—”
“Lovely excuse. Go on. Take a risk.”
Dasha rose dramatically and moved to the next table beside a man with long black and white hair.
“Good evening, sir,” said Dasha. “I am stopping this night at the inn and was hoping to find news of the kingdom. May I sit beside you?”
He rolled his head on his neck, shifting his gaze from his ale to her face. “You . . . your voice sounds funny.”
“Oh that, well . . .” In her nervous ness, her Tiran accent became even more pronounced. “I have a cold.” She sniffed.
The man rubbed his own nose. “I’ve had a cold for years. Ale’s the only thing that helps.” He sniffed—a wet, grating sound.
Dasha winced. “It doesn’t seem to be helping very much.”
“You should see me the rest of the time.”
“I’m very sorry for that. It must be uncomfortable to be sick, and with unrest about. Sir, you have the face of one who has a deep sight.”
The man’s crumpled face transformed with a grin. “A deep sight, huh?”
“Indeed. That’s why I had hoped to speak with you of all these people. I’m concerned about what happened in Geldis.”
“Who isn’t? I talked to Geldis folk. They were attacked at night, burned right out of their houses, and no one saw the attackers. Some people say the king himself went to take a look and was killed dead. But a traveler came through last week”—he leaned closer to Dasha to speak low—“asking questions about who’d stopped here lately. My cousin said he had an accent. Tiran, maybe. You ask me, I say those stinking Tiran burned Geldis, weakening us up before they invade again.” His voice grated even lower, his eyes shifting. “Tiran might be in disguise here in this very room. You’ll smell them before you see them—they’re fouler than skunks.”
Dasha stood up quickly, humor battling solemnity on her face. “Thank you, sir. You have been so helpful.”
“Don’t be so hasty. I’m here alone. I don’t suppose . . .” He looked up at her through his eyelashes and gave a short, pathetic sniff.
