Eden filled a pouch from her daily bucket of water and passed it to me. I gulped down the drink and thanked her.
She made a small noise of acknowledgment but said nothing. I couldn’t tell if she was shy, naturally quiet, or just ill-mannered. She poured water into a bowl and handed it to me along with a cloth and a folded tunic that looked around my size.
“You should wash yourself,” she mumbled.
I went to the spare room and latched the door. It felt great to emerge clean and dressed in something that wasn’t stained in mud and blood or about to fall apart.
Eden had cooked a vegetable broth at the hearth while I was getting ready. The rich smell of herbs and spices made my mouth ache with hunger.
I told her how wonderful it smelt.
“Thank you,” she said without looking at me. She stirred the food and lifted the ladle to taste it.
For about thirty seconds, my mind could think of nothing but eating. I had a disturbing vision of myself knocking Eden out of the way, picking up the pan, and pouring the scolding broth down my throat, all while my hands blistered and melted against the searing metal. I shook myself out of the mad trance. For days, I had hungered; I was sure I could wait a little longer now.
When we finally ate at the table, I tried to think of things to talk about. I’d thought Eden might ask about my village or my time in the forest, but she didn’t. And when I complimented the food again, she just thanked me with a strained smile.
“Do you mind that I’m staying here?” I asked.
Eden frowned. “I offered, didn’t I?” She looked genuinely hurt.
“You didn’t have to.”
“My neighbors feared you. No one else would have taken you in.”
Now I frowned. She sounded somewhat bitter when she spoke of her neighbors. But at least she was talking. Hoping to build a conversation, I decided to ask more about the other villagers. “Did you see the man I approached in the crowd earlier?”
“The one you accused of being your father?”
I bridled at that. Accused? When Eden noticed my reaction, I gathered myself. “Yes,” I said. “Who is he?”
“Kori Ronnan. He works out in the fields.”
“Do you know much else about him?”
Eden squinted in suspicion. “I’ve never asked. I heard he used to be a traveler, but he wanted to change his ways. He begged to be let into our village. Since then, he’s been partnered with Letti Ronnan, whose last partner died not long before Kori arrived. But, like I said, I don’t know much else. I was young when he settled here. A child.”
Leaning across the table, I peered at Eden. She had blue eyes and a simple, symmetrical face framed by mousy hair that curled inward at the bottom to rest below her chin. But, most importantly, she looked a similar age to me.
The man with mismatched eyes was not Kori Ronnan, and he never used to be a traveler; no, his name was Farrel Nora, and he used to be my father.
I leaned back again. Thankfully, Eden didn’t ask why I had scrutinized her. She gave a concerned smile instead.
My mind and body were a swarm of conflicting sensations. How was I meant to feel? Happy that my father was alive after I’d spent so many cycles assuming him dead? Sad that he had moved on from Mother and was now coupled with someone else? Angry that he hadn’t merely abandoned us with the suicidal intention of dying in the wild, but with the hope of starting a new life for himself in another village?
This swarm of tangled emotions became a storm I fell into. But, at last, Eden’s question pulled me out of it.
“Why did you call him your father?”
I composed myself before replying. It would do no good to cause more upset in the village on my first day. And it would do less good to make Eden worry that I might be about to accuse the man of being my father again. Even if he was.
So I lied. “I don’t know. I’ve been traveling for weeks. I’m tired. Perhaps seeing things.”
Eden nodded. “You’ve been through a lot. You’ve … lost a lot. It’s normal to want to see the people you’ve lost again.” When she smiled this time, it wasn’t forced; it looked genuine, filled with sadness and compassion.
Then Eden straightened abruptly and carried on eating.
I didn’t want her to fall back into silence, so I changed the subject. “That elder, Snuttus. He was … difficult.”
“Maybe because he’s not had an easy life,” Eden said stiffly.
“Right … but that doesn’t mean he has to make things harder for other people.” I paused to think about the awful experiences I’d endured since the Wolf’s attack on my village; I hoped I would never use any of them as an excuse to be cruel toward others. “I think, perhaps, he enjoys his role as an elder more than he should. Could no one else see that he presumes too much? Or is everyone afraid of him?”
“Senla. It’s not my place to have those thoughts of him. And it’s not yours either. I like to keep to myself. I do my work. I do what I’m told. And that keeps me happy.”
In the few hours I had known her, Eden did not strike me as happy. Her quiet, reserved nature gave off an impression of simplicity, and she seemed pleasant enough, but I sensed sadness beneath her composed exterior. It was the same heavy energy that had surrounded my mother.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I let my anger speak for me. I shouldn’t have. I’m just so tired and exhausted after everything I’ve been through. I had hoped Aldan and I would be received better.”
Eden shrugged.
I asked, “Why has his life been hard?”
“Sorry?”
“You said Snuttus hasn’t had an easy life.”
“This is foolish talk. I’m sorry, but it’s not my place to tell you his past.”
“No, I’m sorry. Again.”
Eden finished eating, stood up, and used a wet cloth to wipe her bowl.
With a piece of bread, I soaked up the last of my broth and chewed the food happily. Oh, how I had missed bread; it was the most filling thing I’d eaten in weeks. Even so, my stomach moaned after the meal was gone. I could have eaten it three times over. But to ask for more would have been rude. Eden had already split her daily share to feed me.
Once Eden had dried her dish, I rose to clean mine.
“And what about you?” I asked. Without even looking at Eden, I sensed her go rigid.
“Huh?” she said.
“Why do you live alone in this big house?”
I turned to face her. Eden’s eyes softened, losing focus. Lost in her thoughts, she stood motionless and silent.
“Eden?” I said gently.
She flinched, almost imperceptibly. Then she forced a tight-lipped smile. “I must return to my duties. You should get some rest. In the morning, go to the training court and ask for Kuna Ruff. We all have our duties.”
Eden picked a few tools out of one of the wooden crates and went outside, leaving me alone and confused. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions on my first night, and especially not one so personal. For a second, I wondered if the villagers who’d muttered about me earlier today were right. Had the forest turned me half wild?
I went to the spare room and settled down on the straw. Despite being tired and desperate for sleep, I faced the red-stone wall and thought. A bit of shame itched at me over upsetting Eden. And as if to worsen that guilt, the remarks from the crowd repeated in my mind. I still felt their judgmental eyes on me.
How long could I last here?
I no longer held the same beliefs as these villagers. The Wolf didn’t attack people for presuming too much. If that were so, then terrible people like Taker would have been killed long before I’d left him to be ripped apart by night-apes. The Wolf, like the Fox, was just some ancient, vicious creature that loved violence. And soon I would destroy her. But first, I needed to put up with this place long enough for Aldan to settle in.
Oh, and what about my father? When exhaustion finally conquered my busy mind, I fell asleep thinking about him. I dreamed
the dream I had dreamed many times before: the one of the man, with an eye of brown and an eye of blue, kissing my young forehead and then drifting away until he vanished.
40
At the training yard the next day, the Head Guardian, Kuna Ruff, marveled at my iridescent black sword. The male guardian who’d stopped me at the village border yesterday had returned my belongings to me this morning.
“What kind of metal is that?” said Kuna. She ran a finger along the flat of the blade as I held it out for her to see.
I had never asked Illus about the sword. But if I said I didn’t know, Kuna would wonder how I’d obtained the weapon. “It’s just … metal. All the metal in my village looked like this.”
Kuna put her hands on her hips. “Just metal,” she repeated, her voice drenched in disbelief.
“Uh-huh.”
“I see … Well, let’s find out how good of a metal it is.”
Kuna clicked her fingers, and a young, well-toned man with a chiseled face and piercing blue eyes rushed over.
“This is Macken, my son. You will train with him.”
Kuna stepped back to face the yard full of guardians and then clapped her hands twice. We all began fighting in pairs. While I trained with her son, Kuna eyed me, occasionally tutting, shaking her head, and blowing air loud enough for me to hear over the clashing swords and grunts and groans.
She flung up her hands, and everyone paused.
The Head Guardian swept toward me. “I don’t know what they taught the guardians in your village, but it’s no—” She broke off. A flicker of fear ran across her face. We both knew the words held back on her tongue. But it’s no wonder your village couldn’t defend itself.
Her unspoken judgment infuriated me. “I survived weeks in the forest, defending not only myself but also Aldan. I had to kill”—I stopped myself from saying wolflings—“wild beasts to defend myself, night-apes, and I survived an attack from a band of nomads. Perhaps I could teach—”
“Know your place!” Eyebrows up, Kuna tilted her head. Her hands went to her hips again. She fixed me in silence until I gave a stiff nod. Then she clapped twice, and the training continued.
Of course I didn’t know how to fight like a real guardian. But I knew how to defend myself. No matter how much Kuna tutted and sighed, I managed to block her son’s attacks and strike back in ways that left him visibly unnerved. After a while, Kuna began to watch me differently—with softer eyes and a slanted smile, scratching her chin and nodding. I wasn’t sure, but when I sent Macken reeling once, I thought I even heard his mother laugh.
During our lunch rest, Kuna found me and took me aside. “Never talk back to me in front of anyone again.”
I firmed my lips and nodded.
She went on. “It’s my place to teach the others, not yours. But that doesn’t mean I have nothing to learn. Tell me of your travels so I can make our protectors as hardy as you.”
“Oh,” I said, my jaw hanging open in bewilderment.
Kuna laughed at my reaction.
As I told her about my trials in the forest, I was careful to remove and amend parts. I couldn’t have her knowing how flagrantly I had defied the Wolf by killing her beasts. Also, I didn’t mention Illus; instead, I told her I’d improved my skills by defending against nomads and other creatures of the wild.
To my delight, Kuna looked fascinated.
Of course, my experience with guardians was limited to my past sessions with Reni and the short training here this morning. But, in between then and now, the forest and Illus had taught me that the guardians’ style of fighting was too basic. Too rigid. They were trained to defend against imagined attacks from nomads and wild animals. They lacked real-life exposure to the unexpected. They fought as if fighting were fair. They had no grit and showed no cunning. They were too soft, like I was before meeting Illus. These guardians had spent so long preparing for attacks that came few and far between that now they fought as if they expected opponents to take turns in battle.
Real fights weren’t like that: they were a messy, bloody fumble. Often it was only luck or deception that gave someone the upper hand.
I told the Head Guardian all this, rambling excitedly. She was surprisingly receptive to my suggestions and asked for tips on how to bring the unexpected into next morning’s session.
After lunch, Kuna sent me on patrol duty, but I hadn’t earned enough trust to go alone yet. An overly serious guardian joined me as we walked the outskirts of the village. When I tried to speak to her, she said, “At all times, we’ve got to be ready to fulfill our duties to the best of our abilities. Do you know what that means?”
I shrugged.
“No distractions,” she said sternly.
As we plodded along, I got the impression she was more wary of me than of anything that might come from the wild. She stayed slightly behind me the whole time. Whenever I turned to change direction, she flinched and created distance between us. I sighed. The elder, Mira, might have believed I wasn’t a nomad, but that didn’t mean everyone else did.
Oh, well. My day was still more exciting than any I had spent weaving at the loom with mother.
When another guardian took over for evening patrol, I headed back toward Eden’s house. The summer sun was low in the sky; it cast an orange glow across the village, the color blending warmly with the red houses. Long shadows stretched behind each building.
While admiring the sight, I spotted my father. He saw me too. As he turned to walk in the opposite direction, I sped up until I was running after him. If I could get him alone, then maybe I could pull the truth out of him.
He slipped behind a building into a shadowy alley. As I reached the corner, I grabbed the wall to swing around it. I landed, expecting to find him there, trapped, with no option but to talk to me. The alley was empty, though. I searched the area for a minute, but the man knew the village’s layout much better than I could.
I groaned and gave up.
On the way to Eden’s, I visited Aldan at the smithy. He talked incessantly, telling me everything about everything: his new breakfast, lunch, and dinner times, what he’d eaten so far, what his duties involved, which room he slept in, and many more things I failed to remember. I tiptoed to give him a hug, and I smiled while pressed against him. A solid routine was the kind of stability he needed.
At Eden’s house, I helped to prepare dinner. After yesterday’s blunder, I decided against coaxing anything out of Eden this evening. She barely said a word all night.
I retired to bed early, still weary from my journey through the forest. It wasn’t just Aldan’s first full day back in a routine, but mine, too. For most of the day, I’d been too busy to stop and think about anything; there was little time to grieve over the past or worry about the future. And, if I ignored all the times I had gritted my teeth to stop myself talking back to people, it had been a pleasant enough day. Overall.
41
Time passed—much more time than I had planned. Two weeks ago, I had staggered into this village. Every day, after fulfilling my guardian duties, preparing meals with Eden, checking on Aldan, getting to know the other villagers, and a host of other tasks, I would stumble into bed and immediately fall asleep.
My time in the forest had been so chaotic it left me with a yearning for predictability, a sense of order, and even some rules—everything I had hated while growing up. But now I understood the comfort, and the sweet illusion of security, that a structured day with clear rules provided.
Something else had awakened in me too. Whenever I was around other people my age, an intense heat swelled deep in my stomach, and I felt a stirring between my legs.
In my village, I had grown up alongside everyone my age. Having known them my whole life, there wasn’t much new or exciting about them—at least not to me. And my heart had belonged to Reni, anyway.
But here, every face was new. There were so many attractive men and women. At times, it seemed as if I had fallen into a different reality, a place fi
lled with thrilling opportunities in love. The idea of each possibility sent hot shivers through my body. During guardian training, Macken Ruff, with his muscles and pointed cheekbones, often bit his lower lip while staring at me. Whenever I caught him looking, he gave a cheeky slanted smile and casually looked away. And at least three or four times, I had passed men and women who shared lingering looks with me. I worried at first that they were looking at me warily, out of distrust, but their stares didn’t seem unfriendly. Their eyes had filled with a hungry fire as they peered at my face and body.
And then there was Eden. Although she hardly spoke to me, I sometimes found myself watching her, admiring how pretty she was.
It wouldn’t be long before the elders planned to couple me with someone. And this time, my mother wouldn’t be around to reject their proposals. Would I have any say in the matter?
It wasn’t worth worrying about. No one knew of my intentions to leave, but I would be gone before the elders trusted me enough to have me partnered. Finish what we started. I would honor Illus’s last command. I would.
Even with the village comforts and the thrill of meeting people, the main thing keeping me here was Aldan. He seemed happy. Whenever I visited, he spoke proudly of his work, and the blacksmith praised him. Ronni loved having a helping hand in the smithy. However, she told me that one evening, a violent look had entered Aldan’s eyes—the look I had warned her about. Ronni had managed to distract him, but I still worried. Had all the horrors we’d endured affected him?
It had me.
Despite falling asleep with ease, I’d been waking some nights covered in sweat. In my nightmares, Taker’s big face and thickset body loomed above me. I jerked awake every time, just as he was about to put his hands on me. Once, I had screamed without realizing, and Eden came to check on me.
“You’ve been through a lot,” she said, the same reassurance she had given me before. “But you’re here now. Nothing you see when you close your eyes can harm you. Got back to sleep.”
Her words of comfort had meant a lot to me.
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