Aefa’s eyebrows flew high. She snapped and whispered fire in the language of trees, and a spark lit at the tips of her fingers. It burned for a flash and went out.
“Are you a wizard, too?” Elia whispered. She did not think so, but she had to ask.
“No. I only make fire, and honestly, sometimes when I’m not with you it doesn’t work. But I couldn’t stop.”
“Why?”
“I needed to remind you that such things are possible.”
Elia slept that night weary and relaxed, falling away to the island’s low, rough lullaby.
Again at dawn, Elia wandered down into the lowlands, where the grass grew tall over the edges of the Innis Road, that long path leading from the Summer Seat in the southwest to Errigal at the southeast. Once the road had been set with granite, but now grass and weeds grew up over it, and the flat stones were sunken into the earth. Heather pulled away in all directions, streaking over the hills and valleys like low purple mist, and boulders and rough rocks jutted up, ruining the land for farms. This was grazing land, or land for digging up great star stones. And then for collecting well caps, too. It was harsh and beautiful and Elia’s favorite part of the island. Unlike the rocky cliffs of the Summer Seat, unlike the furious ocean, unlike the emerald hills north at Dondubhan, or even the thick, wet shadows of the great White Forest, these southern moors gave her the feeling of flight. The wind gusted, nothing slowing it down. It roared with vivid life.
When Elia had given her heart to the stars, she’d stopped loving her island, too.
Dark clouds gathered far to the north: a storm brewing at the far end of the White Forest. By this afternoon, it would rage. For now, the wind sang, brushing her hands against the bearded wheat: she remembered how she’d loved the sensation when she was a girl, how it would make an almost-conversation, a loving murmur between her skin and the earth. The breeze blew, drawing her attention back again: there halfway up a sweeping hill stood a hawthorn tree, bent and scraggled by pressing, constant wind. She climbed to it and grasped the peeling old bark. Most leaves had dropped away, and the bright red haws already budded along the twigs and branches.
The tree shuddered under her touch. Elia shivered, too. What would you tell me, ancient lady?
You were missed, the tree croaked out, slow and so very quiet.
Tears pricked her eyes, and Elia closed them, pressing the side of her face to one rough line of trunk. She knew the tree did not mean only this month, since she’d gone to Aremoria: it meant since she was a child, since she sang magic and practiced duets with the roots. She felt sad for herself, and for her father, who had never done such things. And then sad for everyone who did not listen to trees, who lived alone and in silence.
Kneeling, Elia cried harder. She touched her cheeks and put her tears from her fingers to the hawthorn. Her weeping shook her shoulders, as the hawthorn shook, too, and she bent over herself. This was not the overwhelming, unknowable grief from before; no, she understood now what she had lost, and why. A wild tree grew in her heart. Its roots wove throughout her guts, thick with worms of death and rebirth; it stretched its crown up into the bright, open space in her mind, where she worshipped the shining stars.
The hawthorn shifted its trunk, bending around her, making a lap for Elia to curl against.
Elia cried, and she let go of so many things, even those she had no names for, so she called them instead by the trees’ word for the light between shadows. And let them all go.
When she finished, Elia lay quiet and soothed, scraped empty as bark peeled in a storm. She thought she might finally be ready to fill herself up again with a new thing, this time born of her own choosing.
The hawthorn whispered, Are you ready?
Elia shuddered, and kissed the hawthorn tree. Ready to what, grandmother?
An urgent wind tugged at Elia’s curls, drawing her attention to the gathering storm.
The island answered, To become a queen.
THE FOX
BAN THE FOX did not hold his liquor well, or much at all.
It was perhaps the thing that made him most aware of his relative youth, despite having aged so fast in Aremoria’s frequent border wars.
Leaning against the smoke-stained wooden walls of what passed for the Errigal Steps public house, Ban was surrounded by soldiers and retainers, those belonging to his father and those from Connley. Once again, the morning had been spent in war exercises, and Ban was exhausted. He’d led three charges and organized the overall structure of the games, both to prove his martial worth to Connley as well as to instruct the duke’s army in the techniques he’d learned during his fostering in Aremoria. But island soldiers were unused to facing cavalry or mounted spearmen, and the new methods were harder to teach than Ban had expected.
He tried not to imagine what Morimaros would say if he found Ban exposing their army’s weaknesses so readily. Even if the Fox did it to further ingratiate himself to Connley, in order to spy on behalf of Aremoria, it was a tenuous rope to walk.
Ban would rather be looking for Elia. Knowing she’d returned, but not contacted him or Regan, made him burn with eager desperation.
The pub spent most of its time as a middle-sized forge, but once the sun set on certain days, the smith had the front walls taken off their basic hinges and opened it all up. The fires kept everything warm, even tamped down for the night, and the two families who competed for the best brew in the Steps would bring barrels. Everyone was supposed to fetch their own cup to this sometimes-pub, but Ban was instead lent one
