Dnara’s gut wrenched. “Oh, but-”
“No buts.” Hector looked off into the plowed pasture. “Lost my granddaughter that day, too. She’d be about your age now, I think.” He went quiet for a moment, and even Treven went still as the wind tugged at Dnara’s hair. Finally, Hector sighed and looked back to her. “Ain’t no changing things long passed, but I’d be happy to see them put to good use. The missus wrapped up a jar of jam there, on the bottom. Oh, and this.”
Hector pulled a lightweight scarf from his pocket, its center a light blue and the edges stitched with green vines and yellow berries. With Dnara’s hands full, Hector took it upon himself to wrap the scarf around her neck and tie the bow with a practiced hand, as if he’d done it for his own daughter many times as she grew up on the farm. When he leaned away from her, his eyes were red and wet, and a wistful smile tugged at his lips.
“There,” he said on a rough swallow. “Best be careful. A lifetime in a collar leaves a mark on the skin that may take another lifetime to be rid of. If I can see it with my failing eyesight, sure enough a cursed blackrope can.”
Dnara didn’t know what to say in response, though she felt her own eyes stinging. Past a thick swell in her throat, she managed a quiet ‘thank you’, but it all felt so inadequate. She’d never received a gift before, and the bundle in her hands felt like an unrepayable kindness. Wherever this journey would lead her, she could now at least follow it with shoes on her feet, a cloak on her back and a scarf to help her forget from where she had come.
The wind pressed at her back and she no longer felt the urge to run, but she did feel the desire to keep walking forward.
5
With long waves farewell and a hope to one day return, Athan and Dnara left the farm behind with Treven carrying the burden of their journey. Outside the forest’s protective cover, Dnara became grateful for the gifted cloak and its hood to help hide her from the sun rising past noon. After years of living in a forest, the unobstructed sunlight felt harsh and glaring. The soft leather sandals adjusted easily to her feet, and though part of her missed the grounding connection to the earth, she did not miss stepping barefoot on sharp stones and broken sticks.
As they followed the line of the widening, meandering river, their path changed from worn grass to more dirt until the dirt became uneven and marred by wagon wheel grooves. To their left, other roads met with the path in roughly shaped T’s, and farms more frequently dotted the landscape. When they came to the first T junction marked by a sign, it read ‘Bee Valley - 12 Miles’ pointing away from the river, and ‘Rose Bridge Crossing - 1 Mile’ pointing the way in which they were heading.
“Bee Valley?” Dnara questioned as they passed the sign, the sun now low and dusk creeping in around them.
“Never heard of it?” Athan questioned back. “Did your keeper not have any maps?”
“Not that I noticed,” she shrugged. “Not that I had any reason to look at them, thinking I would never be allowed to leave.”
“Oh, right.” Athan looked chagrined as he walked closest to the river, Treven’s head bobbing between them as if interested in the conversation. “Well, Bee Valley is Carnath’s honey production capital. Fields and fields of wildflowers. At least, there used to be...”
Dnara’s head tilted. “Used to be?”
Athan nodded. “The blight’s taken out all but a few fields, from what I’ve heard. Honey’s damned expensive now, too. I’ve been seeing overpriced imports from Orynthis in the marketplace, which isn’t doing much to quell the growing tension closer to the border.”
With no others around, Dnara felt it was time to ask. “What’s the blight?”
Athan stopped, as did Treven. They both looked at her. She felt like she had said something incredibly stupid. It made her uncomfortable, that feeling, the embarrassing revelation of having been shut away from the world for so long she didn’t know about the blight or where honey came from.
“You’re serious?” Athan asked after a silent appraisal, sounding no less dumbfounded than the look in his eyes. “Retgar’s beard, girl, did your keeper keep you in a hole in the ground since birth?”
Dnara shied away from his question and stared down at her sandaled feet. “No, a tower in the forest.”
“A tower in the-?”
“And I wasn’t born there,” she interrupted, one hand fisting the only package not tied to Treven’s saddle.
She had wanted to keep the cloth-wrapped jar of yellow sunberry jam close, in the hopes it would keep the joy she had felt at the farm close, too. But, that joy had begun to fade with the setting sun and the reminders that she had no life waiting on the other side of the bridge or in the town they journeyed to, because she had no life or semblance of an existence before it. She had simply been born...somewhere, then... there had been the tower in the forest; a collection of monotonous days and people who were all forbidden to talk to her.
As her hands began to shake and her eyes stung, Athan pushed Treven’s nose from between them and stepped closer. “I’m sorry, it’s just-”
“Well, what have we here?” came an unfriendly voice calling across a small distance. “Two travelers of the river road, heading for the Rose bridge, I assume?”
Athan’s apology went unfinished as he and Dnara turned
