“You can become my apprentice,” he announced.
“Aren’t we already telling people that?” she asked, confused.
“No, I mean really become my apprentice,” he clarified. “Journey outside the town with me, help me gather and hunt. I also figure there’s more you know about herbs from those books you read, so you can teach me a thing or two as I teach you.”
“Okay,” she said, having no reason to disagree.
“Okay?” He sounded shocked at her quick acceptance.
“Well, it’s not like I have anywhere else to be,” she said as a joke but then thought better of her words. “I mean, I know I have much to learn, and not just about forestry. I don’t know this world, Athan. I feel...lost in it. Except... Except when I’m with you.”
“Oh.” His mouth opened a bit then he gave her a grin. “All right then. I already have orders coming in, so I plan to leave Lee’s Mill in a few days. But, if you aren’t healed up by then, we could postpone.”
“Oh, I wanted to show you.” Dnara pushed up the sleeve on one arm and held it out to him. “They’ve healed.”
Athan blinked at it then took her arm in hand, thumbing the scars. “Well, would you look at that.” His touch set the butterflies dancing in her stomach and she sucked in a breath. He glanced up from her scars, their eyes met and blotches of red appeared beneath freckles she hadn’t noticed on his cheeks before. He let her arm go but didn’t look away.
“Sorry, I didn’t-” He stopped, thought unfinished as his gaze refocused on something behind her in the street, then he glanced at her neck and his eyes widened. “Where’s your scarf?”
His tone sent a chill up her spine as her fingers clutched the paper wrapped garments. “I took it off for my bath. The old woman must’ve wrapped it with the other things.”
A quiet curse left his lips. “Too late now. Just follow my lead.”
“Athan?” She asked, frightened, and made to glance behind, catching the brief dark visage of an approaching horse and rider.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Keep looking at me. And, laugh a little.”
“What?”
Athan didn’t respond, but instead put on a big grin and let out a laugh. With her heart threatening to pound through her chest, she managed a wooden giggle of her own. Athan kept his eyes on her, no longer looking into the street behind, and began talking about random tricks of the forestry trade. The horse drew closer and slowed, but Athan continued to talk, paying it no mind, and Dnara nodded along with his hand gestures, even asking a question about the toe-trap he’d described.
The horse stopped. A shadow loomed. Athan was finally forced to acknowledge the rider. Dnara looked up and the earth tilted beneath her feet. Hung from the horse’s saddle were three black ropes.
“Good day to you, ma’am,” Athan greeted.
“It may be,” the blackrope replied with a weathered grit to her voice.
Dnara’s hands began to shake, so she clenched her fists and focused on keeping her breathing steady. In all the warnings her keeper had given her about running away and being caught by the deadly blackrope mercenaries, never did he tell her that a blackrope could be a woman. This road-weathered woman dressed in the purest black from head to toe had taken Dnara completely by surprise. In her ignorance, Dnara would’ve been easy prey if it weren’t for Athan being by her side.
After eyeing them both for a silent moment, the blackrope asked in a tone that revealed nothing of intention, “You’re the local forester, yes?”
“One of several,” Athan replied. “Athan Ateiros, at your service, ma’am. Is there an item you would like me to add to my acquisitions list? Can’t promise you elk, not even if you were the king himself, but briarbears and field hens are still aplenty, though they are getting skinnier by the season.”
Athan’s normal friendly planter only seemed to agitate the woman, whose face remained cloaked in the shadow of her hood. The sunlight caught the etching of a deep scar along one cheek and the unexpected glint of silvery grey hair. “No,” she replied to Athan’s offer. “I not be needing no forester’s findings. What I’m looking for is a forester, and I think you might be the one.”
A nervous twitch tugged at the corner of Athan’s eye. “Not certain I follow, friend.”
The blackrope dismounted, her figure tall and no less menacing despite the age her grey hair implied. With a swift move of her hand, she lowered her hood, revealing a black streak on one side of her hair that held onto youth with the same grizzly determination apparent in the woman’s cold gray eyes. In sunlight, the glimpsed scar became a jagged gouge that crossed the woman’s face like a cavern, telling the unspoken story of a battle fought and survived. Gravel crunched under black boots and Dnara shied away, drawing the blackrope’s attention.
“Wasn’t sure,” the blackrope said to Athan without taking her penetrating gaze off Dnara. “Spotted you at the south end stable, dropping off your mule. Heard the tender greet you as a forester, so I followed you to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” Athan asked and attempted to step between the blackrope and Dnara.
“That you was the forester I’m looking for.” The blackrope didn’t step aside. “Crazy tale I heard last night, see. A man come into where I sat drinking at the Beggar’s Cup; a man just off the road and looking like he done rode away from the Shadow King himself. Attacked, he was, him and his friends, one man nearly killed; attacked by a forester on the road, a forester and a mageborne girl.”
Athan swallowed. “A wild tale, that.”
“Wild indeed, and most just laughed at the man, since
