Such A Secret Place (Stolen Tears Book 1)

by Cortney Pearson

  “Something funny?”

  Am I smiling? That only makes me want to smile more.

  Talon ignores me and goes on. “You’ve got to be aware of your opponent’s moves, where he’s going next, and you’ve got to be able to watch him while at the same time keep tabs on what’s around you. Without looking, tell me what’s lying on that stump to your right.”

  I’m giggling at this point. It’s hard to take him seriously when everything he says translates into something entirely different. Be aware of my opponent’s moves, sure. The only person’s moves I want to be aware of at this point are Talon’s.

  “Ambry!” he snaps, meaning business. “Without looking, I said.”

  I breathe and try to relax, to clear my mind, to nudge the magic and call it to me. He and I’ve been working on it several times a day for the past two weeks. The stream is awakening, blinking its eyes. I welcome it, call to it. The magic purrs, stretches its paws, archest its back and yawns—

  A loud clap shocks my nerves, and the magic cowers right back down. My eyes flip open. Talon’s pacing, shaking his head.

  “You can’t take that long every time you try to find your magic. It’s got to be instinctive. Sensory!” He snaps his fingers again. “It’s got to come the second you need it there.”

  I narrow my eyes and snap my fingers in his face. See how he likes it. His mouth purses against the onslaught of a smile.

  Deep breath. Okay, focus. Sensory—that means it should be automatic. Right. I immerse myself once more, reaching, beckoning the stream. But like an animal that’s trusted me once only to be struck down, the magic gurgles in hesitation.

  Come in seconds, right. Sure.

  I’ve never found it on my own, without Talon’s help. And I have a feeling he’s done being my crutch.

  I turn my thoughts inward, my sight inward, and like a good girl, I focus. Because I want what he’s barking at me to do.

  I…focus…

  His breath hits me first, slow and soft. And close. So close I sense him, my sides pricking in anticipation. All magical thoughts bolt. What is he doing?

  “Don’t move,” he mutters.

  I keep my eyes closed—I’m supposed to be…focusing…Oh angels, he’s closer. Heat stirs from his body. His cheek brushes mine. I wonder why he’s reeling in, if it’s for real. It’s impossible to think about anything else when I’m waiting for his touch, to take me in his arms…

  “You’re messing me up,” I say in an embarrassingly breathy voice.

  My lids open. I nearly melt when the flecks of blue in his green eyes glint at me.

  Deftly, he pulls away, clutching the yellow, brown, and red body of a huge snake. It’s got to be at least two feet long and thicker than my thighs, and I squeal. Ugh, that thing was behind me. I feel sort of squiggly all over.

  Talon fights to hold the snake and dig the knife from his pocket at the same time.

  “Give me a hand,” he says, grunting, still trying to reach his belt. His arms bulge, and the snake’s fangs creep closer to his skin each time he lets up.

  Quivering, I keep my eyes on the snake, on its ugly brown head and the way its tongue slithers out. He wants me to get closer to it?

  “Ambry!”

  I screech and, without thinking, tunnel inside and excavate my magic. The stream comes to life at once. My hands spurt out a flash of silver electricity. The snake falls limp and dangles like a gigantic sock in Talon’s grasp.

  “Whoops.”

  Talon grins that grin of his, the one that pushes into his cheeks and brings out a dimple. “I think you’ve got the sensory part down,” he says, walking toward our fire pit. My low belly fills with its own fire.

  “What are you going to do with that thing?” I ask, wiping sweat from my forehead. I snatch my water bottle and chase after him.

  Crouching to the ground, he has no problem unsheathing his knife this time. He flings the snake out. A creepy feeling squiggles back over my skin.

  “This is great, Ambry. You’ve caught dinner for the night.”

  I know better than to question if he’s serious or not. “You know I’m not touching that thing.”

  His lips quirk up. “You’ve never eaten snake before?”

  "No, I can't say I have." Among the wilderness food we’ve been eating, like rabbits, fish, and strange plants, snake has never been on the menu.

  He slices down the length of the snake and begins husking the skin, revealing whitish-pink meat inside. Ugh. “You do know that’s disgusting.”

  “This is probably what you look like on the inside.”

  “Yeah, but no one’s going to eat me.” I peel my clammy shirt from my skin and shake it, trying to distract my stomach from wanting to empty itself.

  “That you know of,” he says with a sideways look.

  My mouth drops and spreads into a smile. “Is it possible? The rough-necked Talon can actually make a joke?”

  He darts out and smears blood on my hands. It’s warm and sticky. And, well, blood. I nearly dry-heave.

  “Ew!”

  “Is it possible?” he asks with false surprise on his face. “The stubborn beauty can get her hands dirty?”

  I forget all about the grossness of what he’s doing.

  “Beauty?” Nobody has ever called me that before.

  Red flushes up his neck like a sunburn. I can tell he’s determinedly not looking at me.

  “Don’t take it back now,” I say, sinking lower against the log and wiping my hand on his pants—thrilling at having an excuse to touch him. “I heard you.”

  Again, he won’t look at me. “Beauty isn’t a real thing,” he says. “It fades like the seasons.”

  This time my lips quirk up. “Yeah, but while the summer’s hot, it’s hot, right?”

  His mouth twitches, hiding a smile. He slices bits of snake flesh and flicks them onto the skillet near his pack.

  “How do I—” I start, but a twig cracks. I jerk, stealing a look behind me. There's no sign of movement—not even a small animal, but the sound grows gradually, like someone rolling a wheelbarrow over a carpet of sticks.

  “Talon?”

  “I know. I hear it too.”

  The growth behind him lets out a groan, louder this time. I trap a shriek behind my teeth. This is no snake. It’s a blood bear or something worse. Talon wheels around to meet whatever is causing the cascading ruckus.

  The charred smell of wood smoke mists in. We haven't started a fire yet, but I can almost taste the friction, like that caused from two pieces of wood being vigorously rubbed together.

  I rotate again, searching, not wanting to leave my back to one place for too long. Talon rotates too, knife held ready. Then he stops, and before I can question why, my hand shoots to his arm.

  It's not an animal after all.

  The trees are moving.

  "Are you seeing this?” I ask.

  Leafless branches are flattening themselves like dough being rolled out on a counter-top. They widen and touch sides, becoming a perimeter blocking us out. A manicured wall on the outskirts of the Ramald Forest.

  Talon leaves the rest of the snake on a nearby log and cocks his head, listening hard. His eyes flick to me. The wood across from us groans like someone trudging across creaky floorboards.

  I push myself into his warm side as the growth continues flattening. The burnt wood smell is overwhelming.

  A wide opening stands in the center of the brown and green, marbleized timber wall, where two beeches haven’t moved at all. Instead, they’ve lengthened and intertwined their branches to create an archway.

  Three smaller trees crack in succession and slam to the ground, one after the other, to become stairs on the edge of the entryway. I clench Talon's arm tighter with each slam. Vines crawl along the surfaces, tickling the trees, and I get the scuttling sensation like they’re crawling over me instead. I’m not sure where that entryway leads, but I don't want to wait around for whatever is going to come out.

 
“Let’s go,” I say with unease. “Talon?” Letsgoletsgoletsgoletsgo.

  Talon gives me a questioning glance. “I’ve never seen trees do that.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Let’s see where it goes,” he says. Not in a giddy way, like it’s an adventure. More like it’s a challenge that needs to be investigated. Like he’s got something to prove.

  “Are you kidding me? Talon, this place is seriously creepy.”

  He gives me a quick shrug as if creepiness is No Big Deal. “I don’t like that there’s a part of the forest I’m not familiar with.”

  Like he’s some kind of tour guide? “But that doesn’t mean you just go in a place like this!”

  He raises his foot to enter. The vines expand, snaking around to block the archway and crawling for his hand like prowling green spiders. I snatch his gloved palm.

  "Talon!"

  He backs away, gauging my face for a few moments. I’m used to the feel of his skin mixed with his gloved palms—those gloves never come off. As if he notices my noticing, he tugs his hand away.

  We step back in unison, and with each step branches creak and the vines and trees retreat. The place opens itself up again.

  “You try it,” Talon says, his brow stitching together. “Maybe it’s just me.”

  “I wouldn’t try twice,” comes a voice.

  This time Talon’s hand goes to mine—more of a protective motion than anything. A woman layered with wrinkles appears to the side of the strange entryway. Gray curls tangle down her back, and her bare feet duck below a long, gray dress. “They take prisoners if people start to tease them.”

  “Who are you?” I say at the same time Talon says, “What is it?”

  She examines us for a few seconds. Her left eye narrows in an almost wink, and the action makes me blink. Not sure, but I think this lady can feel emotions, too. Maybe she’s recently had a powerful dream, like Gwynn’s.

  “As far as I know, they just do it,” she says, gesturing to the arboreal wall. “I’ve lived here long enough to know people who go in are never seen again. So I keep an eye out."

  "That's comforting," Talon grumbles.

  "Why don’t you two come with me? I’ll tell you more about it.” She motions for us to join her and begins walking in a different direction than we were heading.

  I press harder against Talon, unsure where she got the impression that we’d follow her anywhere. Talon seems to agree with me.

  “Thanks,” he says, shifting, “but we’d really better—”

  She waves him down, and a shockingly warm breeze rustles through the trees around us.

  “Keep an old woman company for a while. I was just about to cook dinner.”

  Though her lips move while extending the invitation, an inner part of me swears she doesn’t speak at all, just conveys the message to us through some wild form of telepathy.

  I chew my lip and try to cling to the reasons we shouldn’t go with her. We don’t have time for this. I have too much to learn. Who knows, but while we keep her company, Ren is being tortured right now. Oh, and a big fat we-don’t-even-know-who-she-is. The tears don’t give any opinion aside from their usual incessant pangs at the back of my skull. I shake my head at Talon, but he chin-nods at the old lady.

  I open my mouth to protest.

  “At least you won’t have to eat snake,” he says under his breath, cutting me off.

  I drag out a huge sigh, and we snatch our bags and follow her into the maze of coarse trunks.

  After walking a short distance, a small hut appears, hidden among tree trunks and the latticework of branches. A single chimney pokes through a roof that looks like it’s shingled with twigs.

  “Come in, come in,” she says.

  The narrow door complains under her grip, opening into a single-room living space. A fridge, sink and a single cupboard line one wall, a table in the middle. Some potatoes, carrots, and an onion lie on the narrow countertop.

  What looks like bed sheets drape along a string of twine, separating two other areas, a store room packed with bags and cans of food, and a room holding a twin-sized bed with a patchwork quilt.

  “The name’s Nattie Wilde.”

  “I’m Talon. And this is Ambry.”

  Mental alarms resound. He wasn’t so eager to give me his name the first time I met him, and yet I wasn’t a threat like this lady could be. The thought comes out of nowhere and is gone just as quickly. Nattie gives us a gummy grin, adding more lines to her face, and then scuffles to the cupboard above the sink.

  “You’re probably wondering why I live clear out here. It’s so that bandihopping wizard can’t find me.”

  The wizard? “But--I thought he was dead. You know him?”

  “Let’s hope the two of you don’t, or you can scoot this minute!”

  Talon chuckles, and a smile teases my lips, too. “No, we don’t know him.”

  “I’d like to,” Talon adds under his breath. I look askance at him. He would.

  It’s weird. Even though I can tell Talon and Nattie are speaking, their voices seem to come from somewhere else, like I’m hearing them through a pane of glass.

  "Arcaians killed all the wizards--how did he survive?" My customary lectures at school repeatedly spoke of Solomus Straylark's death. Could they have it wrong?

  I think back to that archway, the way it appeared out of nowhere. The way Nattie came out of nowhere. A question hounds the edges of my mind, but it evades me when I try to grasp it, like something is blocking me from wondering any further.

  Nattie shakes her head. Her curls nearly sweep the floor. I wonder when the last time was that she cut them.

  She selects a few potatoes and scrubs them under the faucet. Shutting the water off, she says, “You don’t wanna go around associating with wizards. They like to meddle.”

  “The way he did with tears,” Talon says.

  “Exactly!” She raises a potato in the air as if he just made an important discovery. Water flicks onto my cheek.

  “That man was a fool, thinking he could block out feelings, block out tears. If the heart wants to be heard hard enough, tears will push through. No magic can stop that.”

  “Why did he take them away?” I ask, abandoning the sneaky thought that I can’t grasp quite long enough to think it.

  “And why do they break through?” asks Talon. I’m surprised to hear him ask such a seemingly simple question. From the way he acts, I thought he knew everything.

  Nattie digs a knife out of a drawer and begins slicing the potatoes, chucking them into a pot on her small stove. It already has water in it. Almost as if she was expecting us.

  “What do you do when you come to a door you can’t open, but one you know you’ve got to get through? You either find its key—”

  “Or something big enough to break through it,” Talon finishes, sounding contemplative. She nods and points to him with a stubby finger.

  “Dreams are the axe, honey. They allow tears to find a way out, if they need to. That man’s magic couldn’t touch people’s dreams. The feelings are still there, in their minds. People just don’t know it.”

  Her brow furrows, adding wrinkles to her aged face. Her eyes cloud over. Her lower lip even trembles.

  “Nattie?” Talon says.

  I gasp as a clear, tiny drop begins seeping from the corner of her eye. It moves slowly, making a trail down her cheek. Another tear follows, this time from her right eye, trickling down, unhurried and steady. And wet.

  Nattie wipes the moisture from her face with a sniff. I expect some sort of colored trace on her fingers, but her tears don’t glow like the ones in my jar. The tiny hairs at my neck prickle. And from the open gawk on Talon’s face, I can tell he’s as shocked as I am.

  “The thought alone saddens me,” Nattie says. She stops tinkering with food and evens her face back into a smile.

  “It’s criminal,” she goes on. “That’s why that man stays hidden in Xavienke, lets the world think he's dead. O
h, not that he’ll receive any sort of punishment for what he’s done—the few people who even care are more concerned with what those Arcs are doing nowadays. But he knows the crime he’s committed, deep inside. What he’s done goes against his very being, his nature. It defies all of humanity.”

  “Do you know why he did it?” I ask, thirsty for more. I want to know everything I can. Why he took emotions from us. Why I can still feel, despite the wizard’s spell. And what makes tears so powerful.

  Nattie shakes her head and stirs the soup. It’s not until after she speaks that I realize she’s crying again.

  “The man tried to restrain something that was uncontrollable, like caging a wild animal. Yes, magic is powerful and great, but he underestimated the strength of the inborn magic every person holds, no matter their race.”

  I stare blankly at her. Every person. She obviously doesn’t know me.

  I double back. I guess I do have magic now. Weird.

  “It’s not obligation that drives a mother to run in front of a moving vehicle to protect her child who toddled into the street when her back was turned. Nor is it obligation when we welcome starving or hurt strangers into our homes when it’s clear their need is bigger than ours.” She smiles again and tips her head to us. Is that what she thinks she’s doing?

  “It’s not coincidence that defies all odds and brings two people’s hearts together. No magic can compare to what can be found in the heart. And even his spell can’t completely keep that from us.”

  Heat flushes to my cheeks. I do not look at Talon.

  “Solomus deeply misunderstood this fact.” She says the wizard’s name casually, like she knows him.

  “That’s why I’ve relocated out here. Others misjudge, and I’ve gotten sick of peddlers and townsfolk coming to me, trying to buy my tears.”

  “So just now—” I don’t know how to say it. The question seems so odd. “You mean you can…you still…any time?”

  “Cry? Of course!”

  “But how?” Her magic must be powerful.

  Nattie’s laugh wobbles her chin. “If I had a moyen for every time someone asked me that question. I feel deeply, Ambry. I cried easily before Solomus’s spell as well.”