Chapter 1 #3
Maia looked at me for so long that the noise of the square seemed to recede. Then she lifted a hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Stay in the square tonight.”
My stomach tightened. “Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to.”
“You’re never just asking me.”
“Tonight I am.”
“Maia—”
“Lyra.” The way she said it stopped me. Not anger. Not impatience. It was fear. Real fear.
I had seen Maia stitch a man’s arm while he screamed in her face. I’d watched her walk into a burning shed because someone thought a child was still inside. Once, when fever took nearly half the southern cottages, she slept three hours in five days and never once let me see her hands shake.
I had never heard fear in her voice. She took my face between her hands. For a moment, she simply looked at me. Then she kissed my forehead. She hadn’t done that in years. My throat tightened for reasons I couldn’t explain.
“Stay where people can see you,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“To speak with Ferin.”
“About what?”
Her hands fell away. “Stay in the square.” She turned before I could stop her. I watched her disappear into the crowd.
Irelia found me several minutes later.
She had changed into her rust-red festival dress, cream embroidery circling the sleeves, her dark hair braided over one shoulder. “You look like someone canceled Turning.”
“Maia’s being strange.”
“Maia is always strange.”
“Not like this. She’s scared, and she won’t tell me why.”
Irelia studied my face. I showed her the cords. “She started putting those on you again?”
“Yes.”
Her face faltered. I wished it hadn’t. “Maybe she’s worried because of this morning.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” The first bell rang from the meeting hall. Conversation broke around us as people began moving toward the center of the square.
Turning.
For one night every year, Edenlo marked the moment the season began to bend toward darkness.
The old people claimed it had once meant more than that.
Nobody seemed to agree on what. There were stories of kings.
Of wars. Of stars appearing where no stars belonged.
Of things that crossed the western lands before the Veil stood between them and the rest of Alareth.
Most of those stories changed depending on who had been drinking.
The parts that never changed were simpler. Light the fire. Burn the sage. Hang protection over every door. Remember the dead. Welcome whatever came next.
Fenric stood beside the fire tower with a torch.
The structure rose twice his height, built from cedar and pine, bundles of dried herbs tucked between the logs.
Sage. Yarrow. Rosemary. Things meant for healing.
Things meant for protection. Maia should have been beside me.
She wasn’t. I searched the crowd. Nara. Tomas.
Elder Rina. Sela on her father’s shoulders. Ferin near the edge of the square.
Maia stood beside him. Both were looking west. The bell rang again. Fenric touched the torch to the kindling. Fire climbed the torch as cheers rose around us.
Irelia slipped her hand into mine. The flames spread quickly, catching the cedar and racing upward until sparks spilled into the darkening sky. For one breath, everything was beautiful.
The ribbons overhead glowed gold. Children laughed. Someone began playing a fiddle near the ovens. Nara passed cups of cider into waiting hands. Irelia leaned against my shoulder.
This was Edenlo. This was home. I wanted to be annoyed with Maia tomorrow. I wanted Ferin’s broken charms to turn out to be nothing more than bad wood. I wanted to wake the next morning and find the sage dry.
But then the wind changed. The fire bent west. Not flickered, bent, and every flame on the tower stretched toward the western road at once.
The fiddle stopped. A strange pressure filled my ears. Then every lantern in the square went out. Darkness dropped over Edenlo. Someone laughed nervously. A child began to cry.
The fire tower still burned. Only the fire was wrong. The orange had vanished from it. For a heartbeat, the flames burned silver. Pure, pale silver. My breath stopped. Beside the oak, Ferin dropped his cup. It shattered against the stones.
Maia turned toward me.
I had never seen her look at me like that.
She was terrified. The silver vanished. Orange fire roared back through the tower.
Voices rose around us. People laughed again, uncertainly this time, already searching for explanations.
Bad oil. A strange wind. A trick of the light.
Anything ordinary enough to carry home. Irelia’s hand tightened around mine. “Lyra.”
“I saw it.” The protection cord around my left wrist snapped.
I looked down. The braid had broken cleanly through the center.
The tiny linen pouch struck the ground between my shoes.
Salt scattered across the stones. I bent to pick it up.
A scream ripped through the forest beyond the western road.
Not a person. Not an animal. The sound tore through the valley and went on far too long.
Nobody in the square moved. The forest answered.
One by one, every bird beneath the western trees exploded into the sky.