Chapter 5 #4
The question made my spine stiffen. Before I could answer, Old Ferin laughed.
It was an ugly sound. Not amused. Disgusted.
Everyone turned. He stood near the ruined fountain with his walking stick planted between his boots.
Ash had dulled the usual riot of paint staining his sleeves, but flecks of blue and yellow still clung to his fingers.
His shoulder remained wrapped from the attack, and the bandage beneath his shirt had begun bleeding through again. He looked at me. Then at everyone else.
“Your home.” No one interrupted him. Ferin pushed himself upright.
“You’re looking at them like you owe them something, girl.”
My throat tightened.
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because this is Edenlo.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
I looked away. Ferin walked toward me slowly. His bad leg dragged more than usual.
“Look at them.”
“Ferin.”
“Look.”
I did. Merra. Sylla. Derren. Fenric. Tomas. Rina. Faces I had known for nineteen years. Some frightened. Some ashamed. Some angry. Most unwilling to meet my eyes. Ferin stopped beside me.
“They’re grieving.”
“So are you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
My eyes snapped to him. His eyes softened only enough to make it worse.
“You buried your mother this morning.”
My mouth trembled. I pressed my lips together.
“You buried that girl you loved like blood beside her.”
I looked toward the grove.
“And now you’re on your knees scrubbing their stones while they whisper about whether you brought death to their doors.”
“Ferin.”
Tomas’s warning came quietly. Ferin turned on him.
“No. You don’t get to make that sound now, boy. Not after standing there and letting her wonder whether you’re afraid to touch her.”
Tomas went white. Ferin looked around the square.
“Any of you remember what happened three nights ago?”
No one answered.
“I do.”
His walking stick struck the stone.
“I remember the dark coming through this village. I remember people screaming. I remember watching those things tear through doors and walls like they were paper. And I remember that girl standing in the middle of it.”
His finger pointed at me. My chest tightened.
“I remember thinking she was dead.”
His voice roughened.
“I remember seeing one of them reach for her, and then I remember light.”
The square remained silent.
“Enough light to burn the bastards out of Edenlo.”
Merra looked down. Ferin’s mouth twisted.
“You want someone to blame because dirt went over people you loved this morning? Fine. Blame the things that killed them. Blame the gods. Blame whatever miserable piece of fate decided Edenlo deserved to learn what death looks like all at once. But you do not get to stand here breathing because of her and decide the breath in your lungs is evidence against her.”
No one moved. My eyes burned.
“Stop.”
Ferin looked at me.
“Please.”
His anger disappeared. That was worse. I stared down at the stones.
“This is still my home.”
Ferin was quiet for a long moment.
“Then let them act like it.”
I closed my eyes. No one spoke. Not one person.
I waited anyway. For Tomas. For Fenric. For Merra to take back what she said.
For someone to tell me Ferin was wrong. For someone to tell me to stay.
Nothing. When I opened my eyes, Tomas was staring at the ground.
Fenric had turned his face away. Elder Rina was crying silently. That was my answer.
Ferin reached into one of the pockets sewn crookedly into his coat.
He pulled out a small piece of driftwood.
I recognized it immediately. A star. He had carved dozens over the years.
Hung them above windows and doors because he claimed they kept dreams from wandering too far from the people dreaming them.
Maia had always called it nonsense. Ferin had always told her healers were miserable people who had forgotten how to believe in anything they couldn’t grind into tea.
He took my hand. His fingers were rough and warm.
He placed the star in my palm and closed my hand around it.
“For the road.”
My throat closed. “I don’t want a road.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want any of this.”
“I know that too.”
“I want Maia.”
His face broke. Just for a second. “I know, girl.”
The tears came before I could stop them. I hated them. I hated crying in front of everyone who had spent three days deciding whether I was dangerous. I wiped them away with the heel of my hand, but more replaced them. Ferin squeezed my fingers around the star.
“You don’t have to know what comes next.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Then you’ll be in excellent company. Most people who claim otherwise are lying.”
A broken sound almost escaped me. Not quite a laugh. I looked at the wooden star in my hand.
“Do you think I caused it?”
Ferin’s face hardened.
“No.” The answer came without hesitation.
“Do you think they came because of me?”
“That isn’t the same question.”
I looked at him. He didn’t lie. That was one of the things I loved most about him. Even now.
“Someone was out there.”
Ferin’s brow furrowed.
“Beyond the ridge.”
Coren went completely still behind me. I noticed. So did Rina.
“What do you mean?”
Ferin’s voice had lowered. I looked west. The Veil could not be seen from the square. Only the ridge and the forest beyond it. But I knew it was there. Waiting where it had always waited.
“When the light came out of me, I felt a presence beyond the ridge.” I swallowed. “And it felt me too.”
No one spoke. I could feel Coren watching me. I turned toward him. The tension around his mouth had loosened. Only slightly. But the detached certainty was gone.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That isn’t nothing.”
“No.”
“What did I feel?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at him. He held my gaze without blinking. He was lying. I knew it with the same certainty I knew Maia was buried beneath the Mothertree. Maybe not about knowing exactly what I had felt, but he knew more than he was telling me. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“A great many things.”
Anger flared hot beneath my grief.
“Then why in the hell would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because you nearly burned yourself open creating enough power to be felt across Alareth, and three days later a rune carved itself into your body while you knelt in the dirt.” His voice remained infuriatingly calm.
“You can stay here and wait to discover what happens the next time your magic answers before you understand how to control it. Or you can come somewhere built to teach you.”
My fingers tightened around Ferin’s star.
“I saved them.”
“Yes.”
It was the first person besides Ferin who had said it without hesitation. I looked at Coren. He glanced around the square.
“So ask yourself why you’re the one being made to prove it.”
The words landed somewhere I did not want them to. I looked at Tomas. He finally met my eyes.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
My chest hurt. “You stepped away.”
His face tightened. “I watched what those things did to her.”
“So did I.”
“And then I watched you destroy them.”
“Do you think I killed Irelia?”
“No.”
“Do you think they came because of me?”
Silence. There it was. I nodded.
“Lyra—”
“No.” I couldn’t hear whatever came next. I didn’t want it. I looked at Fenric. He looked miserable. That hurt almost more.
“Anything?”
He swallowed. “I don’t know what happened.”
I nodded again. At least he said it. Elder Rina stepped forward. Her cane struck softly against stone.
“Lyra.”
I looked at her. She had known me my entire life.
She had watched Maia raise me. She had taught me the harvest prayers.
Scolded me for climbing the Mothertree when I was nine.
Held my hair away from my face the first time I drank too much fermented pear wine at Riverlight and spent half the night vomiting behind the meeting hall.
She had been part of every version of Edenlo I remembered.
“I should have stopped this sooner.”
I looked at the people around us. “But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Rina closed her eyes briefly. “Because grief makes cowards of people who would rather be angry than afraid.” Merra flinched. Rina looked at her, then at the others. “And because I am grieving too.”
I wanted to forgive that. I almost did. Then I remembered the crossed-out star on Maia’s cottage. The mothers pulling children away. Tomas stepping back. The silence after Ferin told them to act like this was my home.
“I can’t stay here.”
Rina’s eyes filled. “No.” The word surprised me. Not because she disagreed. Because she didn’t.
“You think I should go.”
“I think there is nothing left for you here that will teach you what you need to know.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Rina looked toward the grove. When she faced me again, she looked older than she had that morning.
“I think Maia would tell me to stop being selfish.”
That nearly undid me. I looked away before she could see it.
Coren remained several paces behind us. Waiting.
He had not asked again. He did not need to.
I stared at Edenlo. At the square where Irelia and I had danced.
At the meeting hall where Maia had taught me to stitch wounds.
At the path leading toward the cottage where she had raised me.
At the bakery that would never smell like cinnamon and honey again.
At the western road where the first wraith had appeared.
Nineteen years. Every memory I possessed fit inside the borders of this village.
And somewhere beyond those borders was the place Maia had believed I came from.
Not from here. She had looked west when she said it. Toward the Veil.
I had spent my entire life wondering what lay beyond it.
Now I had magic under my skin. A dead mother who had taken her secrets into the ground.
A village that looked at me and saw the reason thirty-two graves had been dug beneath the Mothertree.
And a stranger from a place I had only ever heard about in stories telling me the Sanctum had felt me from across Alareth. I looked at Coren.
“If I go with you, I get answers.”
“You get training.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”