Jean and Kate followed him down the hall, and when they’d gone, Susan stood and said she needed to go to the library, where Nell knew by now she would walk the long hall, looking at nothing. She let her go without a word.
Alone in the room, Nell bent to retrieve the flowers and found that the first of them, the one she’d gotten from the garden, had begun to wilt. She threw it away. The glow of the day had been all erased, and nothing seemed easy or possible anymore.
Desolate, desolate, desolate
The ruined lands
Where children wail, unanswered,
And mothers cry alone
In the barren wood.
— Writings of Eyn, Age of Fire, Ganbihar
The seer of the age of fire had named the bleakest of sounds unanswered weeping. Often the exile thought of the great dispersal, for in that age, exile had come to all. Banishment was an old punishment, far older than the sanctuary. As old as the time of visions, or perhaps, if not so long ago as that, at least of the golden age of sage kings, when the disputes of thinkers sometimes flowed out of the halls of learning and threatened the places of power. But exile then was merely a brief turning away, a rebuke. No madness came with it, no endless term alone. For they lived in a fuller world then, where no one was lost for long, but only wandered a land rich enough to absorb the wayward until his time came to return, forgiven.
Then had come the age of fire, plague, and banishment. With it fear, and rage, and madness.
How was it, the exile thought, that this was the world familiar, that this was the known? Only in the old writings could one find that other, softer time. And what would those ancients have said, seeing the sanctuary and the mountain?
In the night, again, had come dreams. This time, they were no images of thwarted hope, but the sounds of fear and despair. A child lost in a gray dust, one voice calling to another, unheeded. The exile tore from sleep to escape it. But the broken silence of the mountain held in it no memory of the cities and farms of old, waiting to welcome the wanderer. There was nothing, waking or asleep, but desolation, three times over.
With the brightness of that first flower had also gone Nell’s appreciation for lessons. Even when Mistress Leeta brought in the extended stanzas of the chant of seeds, full of the names of ancient plants that had by now been lost, Nell could find no interest in it.
Worse, Max kept his promise, to Jean at least, and next day she came running in with the newest letter, delivered to her by Mistress Dendra herself. She broke the seal and handed it straight to Susan for reading. Nell was so glad to see Susan interested in something besides her long aimless walks that she didn’t even protest. They all sat down on the bed to listen.
“Dear Jean,
I’m sorry about yesterday. You might just be the only one who gets how important it is for me to be here, even if it takes longer than we were hoping.”
Nell snorted loudly at this, and Susan frowned at her. She cleared her throat pointedly and continued:
“It’s not like school back home. That poem I mentioned? That was about a tree. When I read it the first time, I just thought it was a nice little rhyme, but the Guide told me it’s not just words, like at home. It’s instructions. Then he read it, and all of a sudden I could feel this buzz in the air, that wanting feeling I’ve noticed before, only much stronger this time. It’s like the air’s ready to change things, cook something up. I wish I knew what made that work, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I will, though! Tur Kaysh says it’s just in the nature of things, but of course he hasn’t been back home, where it’s different. Most days now are like that. We spend them outside in the garden on our own, and yesterday, after he taught me the poem, he held my hand out to the air, told me to close my eyes, and said I could bring the tree to life like that, layer by layer, just following the rhyme. I tried it, and you know, it worked! I felt the air go funny the way it does, and I wanted to open my eyes, but he covered them, said feel the essence of the thing, boy, which like I said is what he calls me. That and son. So I didn’t use my eyes anymore, but my mind, and all of a sudden I could feel the essence of it, like I was inside it, instead of looking at it from outside. It was a red maple, and I could smell the sap coming as the bark wrapped over it. I could feel the color just under the green as the leaves unfolded. Soon those leaves were tickling my palm. Can you believe it? Remind me, Jean, and maybe I can take you to see my tree one of these days. Isn’t it something here? In some ways, it makes more sense than home does. Tell everybody we’ll figure it out soon and then we can maybe go back and forth through that window as much as we want. I wouldn’t mind coming back for a visit, and you can come with me.
Your brother,
Max”
Susan folded the letter and handed it back to Jean. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” she said to Nell. “He’s learning. If he can make a tree, a window can’t be far behind, can it?”
But the letter lodged like a piece of dry bread in Nell’s throat. For the rest of the day, she couldn’t help
