A Dragonbird in the Fern

by Rueckert, Laura

  By now, I’d visited all of the villages and towns within a two-day distance and found no one with the murderer’s tattoo. If I were to find the killer, I’d need another lead. Before Aldar could show up, I sat down and wrote the slowest letter ever to my mother, asking how the family was and if they had any more information on Scilla’s death. If they could give me new details, I could forward it to Raffar’s agents and check it out myself. The serving woman’s story about her aunt and the blood-smeared house wound through my mind every day. It had been so long now since Scilla had become an earthwalker. And she’d grown strong and violent. What if my loved ones were already severely injured—or worse—and I just hadn’t heard about it yet?

  When the letter was ready, I turned back to the other problem. If my time alone in Baaldarstad wasn’t almost up, I could have sent Raffar a letter about Aldar, one hopefully not full of gibberish he couldn’t decipher anyway. But my skill at letter writing didn’t matter. I’d be traveling to meet Raffar tomorrow, and I’d make it to him as fast as any letter. Considering there was no concrete danger or proof of wrongdoing, the time it took for the journey would even be useful to work on formulating my suspicions.

  Aldar arrived shortly afterward, and when language class was over, my head buzzed, like every day after hours of staring at the dancing letters on the slate. I needed some fresh air to clear it. I opened a window. A wagon laden with vegetables and bright summer squash towed by four elephant birds rolled by, on the way to the market. But looking outside wasn’t enough. With every day Raffar had been gone, Aldar grew more lax in acting as my nursemaid. Now that several weeks had passed, he still “taught” me, but he no longer feared to leave me alone. So, I hurried down the hall and slipped out of the manor.

  The warm air and caress of the fragrant summer breeze calmed me. Walking east, I passed the elephant bird pens. I’d never been to the section of forest on Baaldarstad’s east side, and a servant had mentioned a pond there. A pond was a poor trade for Azzaria’s ocean, but outside of the streams, it was the only solace Azzoro could offer in this part of the country.

  The trees stretched to the sky before me. A narrow path trod through lacy ferns invited me deep into the forest. Insects buzzed and chirped in the underbrush, and squirrels leaped from branch to branch. Birds twittered overhead, and the sun filtered through the leaves and needles and fern tree fronds, dappling happily on the ground. Everything smelled so green and damp and alive. I sucked in a cleansing breath.

  Reflected sunlight shimmered before me as the trees thinned out. The pond. I raced down the path. An insect stung my cheek as the last trees fell away, and the pond opened itself before me. It was tiny. Had it been dirt instead of water, I could probably walk across it within one minute, maybe two. But the sky’s reflections were only disturbed by a few water striders inching across the surface. Small as it was, the sight began to refill my chest with peace.

  Another sting, this time on my hand. Absently, I smacked at it, and my palm came away bloody, so I took the time to look at my injury. A jagged red cross. Like the other times with Scilla.

  Blood on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. I stepped back, as if that would help me. “Scilla, you know I’m trying. We all are. In Azzaria and here.”

  In answer, a slash of fire blazed along my cheek.

  “Scilla!” I raised my hand to it. This gash was deeper. My stomach rolled in on itself until it was one big knot. Scilla might have scratched me and given me bruises, but she’d never cut me this badly before. How long had it been now since she’d died? Almost eight months? Too long.

  Earthwalkers didn’t listen to logic, but I had to try. “You probably don’t believe that we’re trying to find your killer, but we are. Father still has agents working on the case. I’ve been—”

  A hard shove at my back sent me stumbling knee-deep into the water. I whirled around. But of course, no one else was there.

  “Scilla! Stop it!” I yelled. I trudged out of the pond, my shoes and pants sopping.

  My eyes traveled the shoreline and the trees beyond it, but an earthwalker wasn’t something you could see, wasn’t something you could defend yourself against, as I knew only too well from the bruises still marring my skin. For a split second, I remembered us playing together on the beach. How could it have come this far? My big sister, now someone to be afraid of.

  “I was telling you, I’ve been to the tattoo artist, I checked out a local boy—”

  Scilla cut off my words with a slash to my other cheek, followed by one to my neck. This one was different—it burned like flames. I could barely think. Hot liquid spilled down my chest, and I forced myself to look down, to assess the damage.

  My tunic was transforming into a blanket of red. Through the fiery pain, I managed a coherent thought: Scilla must have hit a main blood vessel. I tried to scream but only a wet cough erupted from my mouth. I couldn’t speak. No one was there to help. Weakness stole over my body—I wouldn’t be able to run for help.

  The scene before me blurred, and the world tilted until my shoulder hit the muck at the edge of the pond. A thick red river flowed from me to the water’s edge, washing over Watcher of Stone, which had fallen out of my neckline.

  I braced my hands in the mud. With this much blood loss, I wasn’t going to survive. But despite the searing pain, a grim smile stole over my face because I didn’t have to. Not if the Watcher would bring me back.

  Ice-cold fingers of fear gripped my heart—I was going to die—but this was no time to lose my head. I had to keep my wits about me, to use the time wisely, and to get a message across to Scilla . . . while we were both dead.

  A massive weight rammed against my back, sending me down into the muck again. It was cool against my cheek, against my chest, bathed in hot blood. I flattened my hands against the mud again, pushed up, but my body was so heavy. The weight on my back held me down, held me immobile. I couldn’t do anything, anything but think.

  Maybe Scilla was right. I’d been so focused on Aldar and the potential danger to Raffar that I’d neglected my search for her killer. I heard her in my mind: You are my sister. You should have done more.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Scilla,” but I didn’t know if it was out loud or only in my head. I had to concentrate. I had to talk to her.

  After one more futile shove, my vision dimmed until there was only gray. For a second, I rested my cheek against the cool, damp mud and pretended it was the ocean, and that Azzoro cradled me in his embrace. The bird tweets disappeared, and the buzz of insects. I floated in the dark, then the threads appeared. To my family and Pia, to Raffar, and new ones to Freyad and Linnd. They were so strong and grounding and made my heart feel grateful and full.

  Scilla swooped in front of me, scowling. That same too-dark thread bound me to her, and it felt different than the others, wrong. A part of us, but also strangling.

  I reached for my sister. “What can we do to help you, Scilla?”

  She threw her hands over her head and screeched so loud it echoed in my skull: “Why doesn’t anyone help me? Why doesn’t anyone understand me?” Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “Just you, Jiara . . . so close to death, so close to me . . . but only sometimes. Sometimes even you don’t care. You of all people. You’re my sister—I expect more of you!” She screamed again.

  “Tell me what to do! We want to help you. We’re your family, and we love you. You have to remember that.”

  Scilla’s face softened, and for an instant, she looked like her rational self. “You love me. I remember. Mother and Father, and—” She shook her head back and forth, and her voice grated, “Love is not enough! You don’t know what it’s like. I’m not myself like this.” She clutched at her head. “I have no control. I do terrible things. I want terrible things. You have to find the one who did this to me!”

  She lunged forward, stopped barely a breath from my face. “If you find my killer, I will do the rest.”

  “Scilla, you know we’re—”

  “F
IND MY KILLER.”

  “We’re try—”

  The wildness took over her eyes again. “We’re trying, we’re trying, we’re trying,” she mocked me. Then she floated even closer, her expression pure hatred, her hands raised to the level of my throat, and I knew I’d lost her. It was over. Blackness closed in.

  In a blink, a cool, calming presence descended, a cloak like the damp forest and the cool river and the fresh night air all at once, like everyone and everything I’d ever known was gathering around me, giving me shelter. In my heart, I was certain, those were the Watchers, the ones who came to welcome me and take me beyond this world.

  It felt so right. There was nowhere else I belonged. But, no! I couldn’t allow it. “I’m not done in this world yet! And I have a Watcher. Please, send me ba—”

  Maybe they listened. Maybe it didn’t matter what I said. My body grew rigid, hardening into something without a pulse. I was a boulder, a statue. Nothing inside me moved, not my muscles, not my heart, not my lungs.

  __________

  A bird whistled so loudly overhead that it woke me up. The stiff, rocky sensation in my body crumbled away. The grass just before the shore of the pond pressed against my temple, the dirt damp and sticky under my cheek.

  My hand flew to my neck. It was whole, healthy.

  I pushed myself up to sit on the ground. A small scratch stretched over the back of my hand, but nothing severe. Blood no longer soaked the sandy shore or even my tunic.

  I was alive.

  My own sister had tried to kill me. No, not tried. She had killed me. I’d felt the life flow out of me, felt the deathly cold overtake my limbs. But at least I’d talked to her. Somewhere inside of all that rage my sister was still there. And she said she still understood me. At least partly.

  I tugged Watcher of Stone from its place below my tunic. Twisting it made sunlight glint off the tiny crystals embedded within. I enclosed it in my palm. I could no longer deny that the Watchers had the power to save a person. Maybe they could help in other ways. I’d keep looking for Scilla’s killer. And as soon as I returned to my room, I’d read more of the book on Watchers. Maybe they could help her.

  I gripped the stone until its edges pinched my flesh. “Thank you, Watcher of Stone.”

  It was twice now that death had engulfed my heart. I probed my emotions, searching for . . . what? Instability? Did I have to fear ending up like Scilla? Out of control and vengeful, a kind of living earthwalker? No, no. I shook my head. I wouldn’t end up like her, confused, forgetting who my loved ones were, punishing them for crimes they hadn’t committed.

  With limbs stronger than they should be for one so close to death, I heaved myself up from the ground. The birds continued singing. The tall evergreen trees swayed in the breeze.

  A gentle stroke brushed across my cheek, then over my hair.

  I bit my lip to keep from crying and hurried down the path to the royal manor, every rustling in the bushes a threat to my safety. What if Scilla attacked again? I wouldn’t survive something like that again.

  A dry branch snapped up ahead. I froze, seeking out the source, praying I’d see something tangible.

  And it was tangible. But it was Aldar. I sidled behind a thick ironfern tree trunk, out of his line of sight. I dared a peek at him; he just stood there.

  After everything that had happened with Scilla, I was in no condition to meet up with him, but leaving the path, going straight through the forest would not only be loud, I’d probably also lose my way. I had to wait him out.

  Aldar leaned against a tree for a couple of moments. He paced several feet away. Then back, then forth. He craned his neck, peering down the path.

  Waiting for someone out here? In the middle of nowhere?

  I changed my mind about wanting to go to my room. I needed to see what he was up to. Within minutes, the crunch of leaves and snapping of twigs filled the air, and a man came tramping down the path. But not just any man.

  He had no tattoos, and his clothes bore the same Stärklandish diamond-shaped embroidery on the sleeve cuffs as Jonas’s. Why would Aldar meet someone from Stärkland? He always talked about how Raffar should avoid contact with that country.

  The two men exchanged a few short words, then the Stärklandish man handed over an envelope with a black seal on it. Without a word of goodbye, the foreign man turned and stomped back out of the woods. Aldar waited a few moments, opened the letter and read it, much more slowly than he normally read. He contemplated for a few seconds, scanned the trees and bushes around him, and sauntered down the forest path.

  Aldar’d had a clandestine meeting with someone from Stärkland. I needed to find out why. Which meant I needed to get a hold of that letter.

  __________

  Freyad was on a brief but urgent trip to one of the nearby villages, so while my tutor visited his sick father, Matid kindly obliged my request to open Aldar’s office to “look for the vocabulary list I had left there.” While the guard waited outside the door, I searched every drawer and cupboard, looked under furniture and in potted plants, and even checked behind the shutters on the window. Nothing.

  I was taking too long as it was, so I rushed out of the room and thanked Matid for his assistance. If Aldar wasn’t hiding the letter in his office, it must be in his house. The only other option would be that he’d destroyed it, but I prayed that wasn’t the case. It was the first possibility of hard evidence I’d come across. If I found it, maybe I could even do something about him before I left town to meet Raffar.

  I told Matid I wanted to lie down, so he dutifully dropped me off at my suite. Ten minutes later, I was on my way through Baaldarstad’s streets to Aldar’s house. He’d shown it to me on one of our walks, and luck was with me on two accounts. First, Aldar lived alone. And second, Farnskagers didn’t lock their doors; they didn’t even have locks.

  The reason for that quickly became apparent. Aldar resided in town, in a largish house, considering he lived alone, but there were neighbors all around. And someone was always looking. The little girl next door, the grandmother on the balcony across the street, the teenage boy staining wood on the house two doors down. I strode past, my head high, as if I had every right to be there. When I was sure no one was looking, I sneaked onto a grassy strip between two houses across the street. From the cool shadows, I watched.

  After a while, the boy finished his work on the house’s facade and disappeared down the street. The little girl had long since gone inside, called in by her mother. But the grandmother on the balcony above me diagonally was content to relax in the sun as she worked with some kind of vegetable, peeling and slicing, and occasionally laying her head back to rest.

  Did she close her eyes? It looked like it from here. So I waited until the next time she reclined and then shot off across the street. I pushed Aldar’s door open, jumped inside and shut it behind me.

  For a few seconds, I stood in the dim house to catch my breath and adjust to the relative lack of light. When no one showed up to pound on the door demanding I leave the premises, I went to work. Again, I checked in drawers and cupboards, under tables and chairs, only this time, it was his home. I felt like the worst kind of trespasser as I sifted through his neatly folded clothing and lifted up his mattress. A few codices were stacked on a table, but flipping through them showed me nothing.

  I leaned against the wall for a bit, wishing a hint would leap out at me. Then I thought of my mother. She had countless hiding places in her office. False bottoms in drawers, nooks behind furniture just thick enough for a few sheets of parchment or a small box. My third try was a success—the second drawer in the chest next to his bed had a false bottom. When I lifted it, a large envelope with a black seal gleamed in the dim light. Finally.

  I pulled it out, dropping the false bottom back into place. Before I had the chance to open the letter, scuffing sounds came from outside the door. I stuffed the letter into my undergarment beneath my tunic and scanned the room. Everything appeared as I’d found
it. But there was a major problem. Besides not having locks, Farnskager houses also normally didn’t have back doors. No time to think. I shoved the window on the side of the house open, heaved myself over the sill, and tumbled to the ground, rolling out like I had when Scilla and I had played as children.

  For a few seconds, I crouched in the shadow of the neighbor’s house, silently waiting for the door just outside my range of vision to open and whoever it was—most likely Aldar—to go into the house. When they finally did, I hustled away, my arms crossed over my chest to hold the letter in place.

  From behind me, the click of a wooden door opening broke the silence.

  I turned just in time to see Aldar poke his head outside, his eyes sweeping the street. When he saw me, he froze. Our eyes met, and a sudden rage blazed in his that made my heart riot in my chest. I whirled back toward the royal manor and strode down the road. Heavy stomps followed me.

  The street that had been so endlessly alive with residents was now empty; even the grandmother was gone. I picked up my speed, throwing a glance back. Aldar strode toward me, and something nearly black flashed in his hand. Something nearly black? It could be anything, but my thoughts immediately flew to soldiers’ training sessions, and to those impossibly hard ironfern wood clubs that could crush a skull with one blow.

  I gave up on all pretense and shot off down the street, my hair flying behind me like a black Farnskager flag.

  A group of giggling children herded by three adults rounded the corner, and I bounded over to them. I swallowed the dry terror in my throat and called “Guuddug!” as cheerfully as I could muster. Behind the children, three men carrying stacks of wood followed, and I said hello to them also, waving them to come join me.

  The townspeople smiled and greeted me, and all of us together prattled on about it being a lovely day. I smiled brightly at their comments for a full minute then dared to look back at Aldar. But all I saw was his rigidly held back as he headed down the street again toward his house.