“I think those Owlfae used us as an excuse to dump whatever useless shit they found when they cleaned out the bottoms of their wagons,” Ragan said. He bared his teeth and winked at Rose. “Though, I do think that rat stole would be quite becoming on you. The dirt and vomit color would really bring out the yellow in your eyes.”
“It's hideous, Ragan,” Rose said with a grimace. “I'm not wearing it unless I have to.”
“I wasn't talking to you, Mom. You and Iefyr ought to trade gifts, because he's the one the fur would look fantastic on.”
“Shove it, Ragan,” Iefyr said with a sneer. “Rose, keep the fur. You won't care what it looks like if the situation arises that you need it.”
“I'll gladly tolerate the stench if I ever need it to survive, but I don't want to look at the damned thing,” Rose said.
I had been playing a lazy game of fetch with Serida and a large puffball mushroom, but I stopped tossing the mushroom as a realization came over me. We were missing something. No, someone. Serida nudged my hand and I lobbed the mushroom toward Shan, who was trying to teach Lumin how to sit on command. “Where's Nador?”
The meadow fell silent aside from the huffing and stomping of our grazing horses. Everyone stared at me, then slowly spun around.
“Nador, you lost in the grass?” Ragan called. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don't remember seeing her since we woke.”
“Me, neither,” Iefyr said. His ears tilted forward as he scanned the perimeter of the glen. “Come on, where'd you go?”
“Maybe she's still asleep somewhere.” Rose's tail flicked at the long grass, startling a contingent of grasshoppers. The dragons licked their lips, then bounded after the insects.
Worry crept across Ragan's face. “We've been stomping all over. Someone would've tripped over her, or at least seen her. Spread out, look for her. Iefyr, she better not have been hit by one of your gods-damned arrows.”
“I didn't shoot her. I know I didn't. I accounted for every arrow, especially the weird ones.” Iefyr gulped, then jogged toward the forest.
“Come, Serida,” I said, then walked in the opposite direction. Serida trotted at my side, happily chomping on a grasshopper the size of my pointer finger. Behind me, my companions diverged to search the edges of the meadow.
“Nador?” I called. I shivered as I walked into the shade of the cedars. The smell of spent bonfire sat heavy in the still, trapped air. “Nador, are you out here?”
What if she wasn't? What if she went to relieve herself, got lost, and was lured into the snail pit? What if she was stolen by a predator and eaten while we all slept? What if she decided to leave us and travel with the Owlfae? The latter wouldn't be such a bad thing in comparison, but I didn't think she would have purposely left us without at least leaving a note. Had anyone looked for one? I hadn't, and we were all terrible friends for not noticing she was gone until over an hour after we woke.
I kept my hand on my sword hilt as I ventured into the forest. Moss squished and twigs crunched underfoot. I made no effort to reduce the amount of noise I made. If Nador was lost or injured, I wanted her to hear me so she could call out or come to me.
It was quiet, so quiet, so still. Some of the others weren't far away, but the foliage muffled their calls. I walked straight forward as I scanned the ferns and trees. I feared getting lost myself if I deviated from my path and couldn't simply turn around and return to the meadow.
“Chirp?” Serida looked up at me, then bounded ahead, the bulbous end of her tail casting a soft yellow-green glow upon the cedar boles.
“Did you find her?” I asked.
Snap! A large, partially-buried twig splintered beneath my right boot.
“Go away, Tessen.” The voice was nearly inaudible, hoarse and stifled. It rose from behind the dirt-clogged roots of a fallen oak.
“Everyone's looking for you,” I said, slowly stepping toward the source of the voice. Serida was already on the other side of the roots.
“Don't care. Go away. Go away, dragon, go away.”
I slapped a mosquito as it attempted to feast on the back of my hand. “No. We were afraid something bad happened to you. We need to go back to camp so everyone can stop looking for you and calm down.”
“Go away, little boy.”
I reached the edge of the roots and peeked around. A halfling-sized lump sat huddled beneath a road-worn cloak. The cloak heaved and a faint whimper escaped from the drapes of the hood.
“You know I can just pick you up and carry you back, but that's degrading so I won't do it unless you force me to.” I sat on the ground next to the whimpering lump and picked up a slender twig. I snapped it in half, then in half again. “You can continue sulking at camp, or I can sit here for a few minutes and you can sulk with me, but you're not staying out here alone, so I won't go away.”
“Go away.”
“Okay, I guess I'm staying here.”
Leaves crunched behind me. I twisted around to see Marita in the ferns several trees to my back. I waved to her and said, “She's here. I think she's okay.”
“I am not okay,” Nador groaned.
Marita jogged toward us. She stopped just short of the roots and rested her hand on my shoulder. “Nador? Are you injured?”
“No. Go away. Meddling gods-damned gutter elf.”
I touched Marita's fingertips. “Can you go tell everyone else we found her? I'll stay with her for a little while.”
Marita withdrew her hand from her shoulder, but let her fingers linger on my hair. “Yes. I'll hang a lantern at the meadow edge so you can find your way. We're not far in, but I don't want you to get turned around. Try to get her back before sundown.”
“I will. If I have to carry her, we'll be back by dusk.”
“Don't you touch me, baby human. Sard off,” Nador grumbled.
“I told you I won't unless you make it necessary.” I beckoned Serida. She circled once, then sat next to me and rested her head on my thigh. Snapping twigs and shuffling leaves echoed behind me as Marita returned to the meadow. “We can sit here in silence or you can talk to me, your choice. I'm not leaving you, though, and the only thing I won't listen to is you telling me to go away. Insult me all you want. I'm not leaving without you.”
The cloak shuddered and emitted a series of raspy breaths. I wondered if Nador was hiding something under there besides her tears. Perhaps the Owlfae had given her a gift that physically changed her and she was upset about it.
“You're insufferable.” Nador coughed and drew a strident breath. “Insufferable child with an insufferable pet.”
“Why am I insufferable?” I asked.
“Because you care.”
I tried not to laugh. “Then I'm proudly insufferable.”
“Benevolent asshole.”
“If that's the worst you can insult me with, I'll take it.”
Serida sneezed, then returned her head to my thigh. Frog croaks and cricket chirps broke the silence of the deeper forest. A crow cawed from the branches of a nearby tree, then fluttered to the ground. It scratched at the detritus before pecking the loam. It raised his head, a large, struggling beetle held in its beak, then returned to the branches above.
I closed my eyes and listened for Marita's faint voice calling our companions back to camp. Nothing to worry about, no body to find. Our halfling was safe, if indignant.
I shooed a tiny moth away from my nose and held back a sigh. “I don't know what the Owlfae gave you, but I'm sure you'll find some use for it beyond scaring the shit out of us. Most of us got weird, double-sided gifts. Endless quiver, but filled with mediocre arrows. Hatchet that grows trees instead of cutting them. Wait until you see Rose's fur collar. It's ghastly. They gave me a pair of spectacles that fix my shitty distance vision but I have to take them off to read anything because they turn the letters into scribbles. At least they obscure my eyes a little. Serida changed them again, so I guess I woke up with more than one awkward gift today.”
Silence. Frogs an
d crickets and distant mumbles.
“You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. I can be patient, at least until we run out of light.” I ran a single finger down Serida's spine. She glanced up at me, trilled, then returned to watching Nador.
The hem of Nador's cloak fluttered as she shoved a wood and brass box toward me. Her fingers retreated back under the cloak and she sniffled. “Don't eat any. I ate one and that was a mistake. That's why I'm out here.”
The hinges creaked as I opened the box. Six chocolate creams sat nestled in a bed of blue velvet. “There aren't any missing.”
“The one I ate reappeared when I closed the lid and opened it again.”
“Endless arrows, endless squirrel seduction, endless chocolates. What do they do?” I held the box to the fading light so I could read the inscription on the inside of the lid. “Sweets for health restoration and pain reduction. Warning: guaranteed side effects include digestive upset and uncontrollable recollection of the patient's worst memories, lasting a minimum of two days per sweet consumed.” I snapped the box shut. “Oh. That is unpleasant. Didn't you read the warning before eating it?”
Silence. Nador shifted her weight as a rumbling growl escaped her guts, but didn't look at me. “Insufferable asshole. I didn't know you could read Pysakee runes, you mangy fopdoodle. Why the hell can you read Pysakee? No one can read Pysakee except Pysakees, and even they struggle with it. The language is a disaster.”
“I can't,” I said, confused. I reopened the box and stared at the inscription. “I read and speak Common and Dwarvish. That's it. This is written in Common.”
“No, it isn't.”
An epiphany grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “Oh... Oh! I think I understand.” I raised my spectacles and looked again. The letters became an illegible mess of swirls and dots. I lowered the spectacles and I was again reading the inscription as Common. “I get it now. These spectacles won't let me read languages I do know, but they translate languages I don't know. That's useful, if inconvenient.”
“More useful than chocolates that make me remember the horrid shit of my adolescent years,” Nador grumbled. “My shoulders don't ache anymore, but I can't shut off or ignore the memories. They just keep coming and coming. Every stupid thing I did and everything that was done to me. Every death, every failure, everything, even things that I had forgotten about.”
“Healing chocolates, and the side effects are temporary. I would have gladly eaten them when I was dying on the plains.”
Nador's head whipped to the side and she glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “At such a price. You would have been forced to relive everything. Your little brother's death, Rin and Shan's kidnappings, everything. Every time you were teased, every time you cried, every time you were left red in the face with embarrassment. Birth to now, all of it in rapid succession. I've been living my own flavor of that hell for half a day, and now you're telling me it could be days more before it stops.”
“Maybe Iefyr or Marita could give you something so you sleep through it,” I suggested.
“I don't think sleep will do anything aside from turn the waking nightmares into sleeping ones.” Nador frowned, her teeth bared. “I don't like your new eyes. They're disturbing.”
I shrugged and patted Serida's back. “More disturbing than the memories? If they are, maybe you should fixate on my eyes instead of the shit in your head.”
“Less disturbing, more unnerving.”
“Can we go back to camp now?”
“No. I can't face Rose.” Nador looked down, hunched her shoulders, and resumed being a cloaked lump.
“Why?”
“Memories. I keep seeing her husband die over and over. I keep watching her mourn. It was my fault, but she doesn't know that. I mixed things wrong when I was making a plant grow elixir, left for a minute to take a piss, and boom! Chemical reaction. Lab blew up, and Corran blew up with it. It was an accident, but it was my own stupid mistake and everyone assumed it was his. I let them think that because I was scared of what would happen if they found out I was responsible for his death. Twelve years. Never told her or her kids, never told anyone, and now it's slapping me across the face and demanding that I keep watching.”
“So tell her.”
“I'm not telling Rose that I killed her husband,” Nador growled. She pressed her palms against her temples and spat in the moss. “I'm not going to reopen her wounds, asshole.”
“Sounds like you've been letting your own wounds fester for over a decade. That's a long time to let that magnitude of guilt eat away at you.” I traced a spiral on Serida's flank. She looked up at me and huffed. “Listen, it's not my place to tell her or anyone, so I'm not going to break your confidence. Your choice. I just think it might help you.”
Nador stood and stared into the forest. “I'm not telling her, ever. Naive child, you don't realize how cruel it would be to make her remember? Don't you remember who she is, what she is? She's an operative and a mercenary, and she has killed people for far less. I carry this pain so she doesn't have to. She would spend the rest of her life second guessing her friendships because I couldn't bring myself to be honest twelve years ago. That uncertainty would make her even more dangerous than she already is. Some truths are better kept locked away.”
I stood next to her, but didn't touch her trembling shoulder. “Fine, don't talk to Rose. You can set up your tent and sulk alone, as long as you do it back at camp. This will pass, Nador, and the memories will return to the boxes and chests cluttering up the attic of your mind. What you're going through is temporary. Please keep that in the front of your thoughts. Can we go back now? It's getting dark.”
“Fine, if it means you'll stop yapping at me. I'll go back if it means I don't have to hear your gods-damned voice for the rest of tonight.” Nador scooped up the chocolate box and stomped toward the glow of Marita's lantern and the meadow beyond.
Chapter 33
I heard the Crystal Forest before I saw it. Sparkling, twinkling tones like a chorus of countless glass windchimes tickled my senses and ignited my curiosity. I gazed between the trees, but only saw more cedars and oaks, backlit by a faint, blue glow.
“The sound . . . music brings chaos and chaos brings memories. Plink plink, hail on the windows, thunder rattling the roof. I told her I'd come but I drank too much and fell asleep. She died in the dark, alone and cold. I found her rigid, several hours dead, and the storm raged outside. Rages, rages, boom-rattle-plink. I loved her and never told her. Never can now. She's dead.”
Nador's hair tickled my neck as she forcefully leaned against me. She was still experiencing side effects from the chocolates, but her recollections were beginning to space out rather than stack on top of each other. I was the only one she trusted with her rambling whispers, so she rode with me, slightly behind the others. She wouldn't look at me, though. I had a feeling that my eyes frightened her.
“Whoever she was, I'm sure she knew,” I said. I rubbed my nose to stave off a sneeze.
“No. Didn't know. Couldn't know. Never knew. She might have laughed at me if she knew, might even have hated me.”
The blue glow grew brighter and took on shimmering hints of violet and silver. Shan was on the road ahead, looking back at me with concern while Evinlore snorted and scuffed at the dirt.
“Hey, Tessen, I need you to stay calm,” Shan said. His jaw tensed as he pushed his hair away from his eyes.
“I am calm. I'm fine,” I said, confused. My heart accelerated, just a little bit, then a little bit more.
Nador's head bobbed. “I was fined last winter, lucky not to be jailed. Had a cold, took a potion to help me breathe during sleep, and woke up in the middle of Coldtower, stark naked and screaming. Everyone was staring and it was cold, so cold. Potion made me sleepwalk. Sleepwalking was a known side effect, but its ingredients were illegal. Fined for the potion, fined for being naked, fined for screaming at people who were on their way to early morning temple services. Funny story now, isn't it? H
umiliating then, and expensive.”
“Nador, if you don't want to trust anyone except me, you need to stop talking now.”
Shan tilted his head and curled his lip. “More stories? Haven't you run out yet?”
“Bad little halflings have big bad memories.” Nador shivered and pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders. “Go, keep going. Will be over soon.”
Shan dismounted and walked toward me. “Tessen, stay on your horse. I'm going to take you across.”
“Across what?” I asked. Flutter, flutter, brutal little heart. Why couldn't anyone be direct with me before it became necessary? Anticipation of the unknown only made it worse.
No, this time the reality was worse. The trees ended abruptly as a gorge cleaved the earth below. Beyond the chasm rose the Crystal Forest, an expanse of trees with glistening white bark and luminous, jewel-like leaves. Snow-capped mountains towered above the forest horizon like rows of teeth ready to snap shut and swallow me into the canyon.
The only way across was a bridge, a rough stone bridge that appeared to be held in place only by its own weight.
My heart exceeded a gallop and thrashed against my sternum like a hummingbird trapped in a cage.
No. No, no, no. No rickety bridges, no crumbling heights. Collapse and fall, down we go. Can't trust it, can't cross. Need to turn around and find another way.
Shan grabbed Saragon's reins before I could bolt.
“Let go! Let me go! I'll find another way!” I pleaded. Breathe, breathe. No, I cannot breathe. If I breathe, the bridge will fall.
“There isn't another way,” Shan said. “Close your eyes and I'll take you across. Everyone else is already on the other side.”
“Has to be. Has to be another way. Never only one way. I'll go around.”
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