Anger rises like bile in my throat. “But I am! And that’s just the problem. I am different from everyone in Tavia. And trying to explain to anyone what I really am, well, it’s impossible! Not to mention forbidden,” I hiss, lowering my voice as best as I can, suddenly remembering that anyone could be out among the trees watching or listening. “Whatever magic made me was banished from Tavia long ago, don’t you realize that? Surely you’ve heard? If I let anyone see me as I am, I put us all in danger, just as you endangered my father by giving him the blue moon’s spell years ago. Why, if anyone saw me here, right now, with you … it’s unthinkable! We’d both be tossed into this fire as kindling!”
I take a deep breath. “Tell me why you did it? Why did you come to him, just as you’ve come to me now, on a night like tonight? It would have been far better if you’d left him alone. He would have been better off without me!”
“Your father chose his path. Just as you will choose yours.”
“But what if my splinters give me away? I didn’t choose them. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days shunned or locked in a cell, and I certainly don’t want to be burned alive!”
Tears pool at the edges of my vision as I remember the dark corridors filled with filth and desperation spanning the length of Wolfspire Keep.
“You are human in every way that matters, girl.”
“Then why do slivers of wood pierce me from the inside out every time I lie? Others don’t have this difficulty,” I say bitterly.
“But they do; some carry a family birthmark, or inherit a crooked nose from a grandfather, or a mother’s hasty temper. Part of who we are is who we come from. There’s no escaping that, not for any living creature.”
I ponder that for a moment, knowing she’s right but hating the stupidity of it all.
“Isn’t there any way to change it?” I plead. “For me to be free of this curse? Is there a spell you can give me, something you can do to make me wholly human and not part of the wood any longer? How do I rid myself of these splinters?”
The trees begin to murmur, disappointed by my longing to be different from them.
“Shun falsehoods.”
“I don’t want to lie,” I say, exasperated. “Please understand, it’s not that I want to be able to lie, it’s just that now that my father is gone, I have no one else to hide behind. The splinters will give me away. I’ll be cast aside as something less than human, something to be hated and feared.”
“What if I were to tell you your wooden nature makes you more than human, not less?” she asks, one wispy eyebrow cocking up like the spread of a bird’s wing.
“My curse is not helpful in any way!” I grumble. “And I still don’t know what it means, my splinters, for … for love,” I say, a wash of heat burning my cheeks. “Can I marry one day without harming my husband or my children? Without making them swear to keep the truth hidden, endangering those I love most?”
“There is one that you love?”
I nod, my thoughts filling with Bran.
Her eyes bore into mine like two black beetles tunneling into a burrow. “Understand, the moon’s spell may have bought you breath, but the power of your father’s love gave you life, girl. The heart of the maker will determine the course of the marionette.
“You will become as you wish when you give life to another under the blue moon’s magic, just as your father did for you. You know the words already, I daresay,” she says, stirring the fire with the broken end of my stick.
Of course I know the words. The words of the blue moon spell are as branded into my skin as the lingering tracks of my lies. Is there really a way for my splinters to be gone?
The tree woman stands abruptly, ready to depart my fire just as quickly as she arrived. She gazes upwards to the canopy, the bespeckled shell of night sky hollowed out between the treetops. I don’t want her to go, don’t want to be left here alone.
“It will rise again you know,” she warns, still holding tightly to the two halves of my broken branch, which she plunges into the ground on either side of her. “Soon. There’s no such thing as once in a blue moon. The sacred blue moon will rise again while you walk ’neath the night. Trust it and you’ll have your chance. Remember to count the cost.”
Afraid she might disappear again, I blurt out a final question for this strange half-woman, half-wild thing. “Please, what was the cost of my father making me? He warned the magic always has a cost. What cost?”
“His strength,” she rasps bluntly. “The blue moon is a patient mercenary, girl. She may bide her time, sometimes for years, but she always collects.”
My heart squeezes in misery. My father lost his strength because of me? It wasn’t just the burden of the Margrave’s demands or his stay in the Keep?
He had grown weaker, aging so rapidly these past months. Tears burn my eyes and they drop on the tops of my knees, which I clutch like they are all I have left in the world.
I am the real reason for my father’s death.
In gaining me, he ultimately lost a vital part of himself. I cannot swallow; grief clogs my throat.
“Better to hold the seed of the
