As we return to the road, I realize that I forgot to ask Wren for spikes to secure the goals to the ground. I turn back to him and instantly bite the insides of my mouth to keep from bursting out with laughter. With his head tilted to one side, his eyes dreamily follow Tela while she continues to walk away. Completely lost in his trance, he doesn’t even notice that I’m looking at him.
“Wren,” I say. He’s so fixated on Tela that he doesn’t hear me, so I call out again a little louder. “Wren!”
When he looks at me, his cheeks flush red with embarrassment. “I, uh,” he mumbles, “was just making some calculations.”
“I’m sure you were,” I reply, still trying to keep from laughing. “I forgot to ask you for something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Spikes with a hook on the end to secure the goals to the ground. Eight inches should be long enough. Nina will make rope loops for the corners of the goals that they can go through.”
“That won’t be a problem,” he tells me.
“Thanks, Wren.”
After he nods his head to me, he returns to putting his things away. I jog after Tela, wondering why Wren would look at her that way since that type of attraction doesn’t exist here. I’ve never seen a person in Krymzyn look at someone else with an apparent crush, but that’s exactly how Wren was looking at Tela.
I can’t say that I blame him. Tela is smart, helpful, and very pretty. Her big, round eyes have an underlying intelligence in their gaze, and her oval face is naturally cheery. The bridge of her medium-sized nose might be just a little too wide for her face, and her eyes a hair too far apart, but they’re the kind of imperfections that only enhance her overall beauty. Full, red lips over a smoothly curved chin complete a face that most guys would find alluring.
As I think about it, I decide that Tela and Wren would actually make a great couple, although I doubt there’s any possibility of that happening. She was blind to his admiring eyes, and romance isn’t part of life in Krymzyn. When I catch up to Tela, I slow to a walk by her side.
“Wren is sure a good guy,” I say, studying her face for a reaction.
“He’s very skilled,” Tela replies in a typical Krymzyn response.
“You two are about the same age, aren’t you?” I ask, thinking that if I’m twenty-four now, Tela must be around twenty, and Wren is twenty-one or twenty-two.
“He’s a little older than I am,” she answers, “but we were at Home together for a long time.”
“Were the two of you close?”
“All of us at Home at that time were very helpful to one another. Did you know Sash was the one who taught me to blend my light?”
“I didn’t,” I say.
“I think I told you once that I learned to travel soon after the first time I met you on the Tall Hill. Sash had recently ended her Apprenticeship and had her own habitat. She came by Home at the end of one morrow and took me to the Traveling Hill. I remember her exact words. She said, ‘Stop pretending that you don’t know how to blend your light and do it. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.’”
“That sounds like something Sash would say,” I comment.
As we near the gate where the other Travelers are waiting for us, Tela and I stop walking and face each other. Her eyes light up when she resumes the story.
“We ran down the Traveling Hill side by side several times, but nothing happened. Sash refused to let me give up. Larn happened to pass by and stopped to watch what we were doing.
“On the fifth try, I saw the beams, jolted forward, and streamed my particles into them. I was so stunned that I was traveling that I lost my focus while crossing the meadow. I flipped through the air several times and broke both of my legs. The strange part was, I didn’t care. I didn’t notice the pain because I was so excited that I’d traveled at such a young age. Sash knelt beside me and told me how proud of me she was.
“I spent the next few morrows at Home in bed. Sash came by to see me several times each morrow. Nina was an Apprentice Weaver and made special pillows to prop up my legs. Wren sawed the legs off a table, set it by the side of my bed, and made sure I always had a full cup of sap. Even though he was small, Cavu refused to leave me alone in my cavern while I slept. He sat by my doorway with a training spear across his lap to watch over me.”
“Wow,” I say. “What a great group of kids . . . children.”
“We were very different from our elders,” she says. “We took a much greater interest in each other’s lives.”
“Do you miss having that?” I ask. “I mean, do you ever get lonely? Everyone here is so solitary, but you seem to like it when you spend time with us.”
Deliberating her response, she looks up at the highest branches of the steel trees. From what she just told me, I understand a little better why her relationship with Aven seems so natural. She eventually lowers her eyes to mine.
“I don’t know that lonely is the right word,” she says. “I’ve always felt like I want to have experiences that don’t exist here. I honestly don’t even know what they are. Just something more than what the norm in Krymzyn is. You’ve told
