Page 29

She scratched her left arm a little too hard, which made her feel better, and said, “If you want to tell me your story, I’m good at listening. You’ve probably been wanting to tell it for a long time.”

Zaf narrowed her eyes. “You won’t interrupt me?”

Thorn shook her head.

“You’ll believe what I tell you?”

Thorn hesitated. Zaf had used the word “witches.” Witches and healing powers and girls trapped in storms were things that belonged to Noro’s stories about the Old Wild. Things that had once been, long before the Vale split, but were no longer.

Things it had become hard to believe ever existed.

“I’ll listen very hard,” Thorn said. “And I will take what you say seriously. That’s all I can promise.”

Zaf tilted her head. “That’s a good answer.” She raised aneyebrow at Bartos. “What about that muddy, floppy-eared boy? Will he interrupt me?”

Bartos was looking out at the swamp that had eaten his friends, his eyes bright. He found the one clean patch on his sleeve and wiped his face.

“I swear to you I won’t interrupt.” He smiled faintly at Thorn. “I triple swear. Remember?”

Thorn did remember. When Bartos was a boy, and she and Brier were even littler, that was how they promised things. They triple swore them. One, two, three. Thorn, Brier, Bartos.

“In that case,” Zaf said, “I’ll begin.”

She wrapped Thorn’s coat tight around her body.

“Once,” she said, her voice hushed, “the Vale was full of witches, just like the rest of the world. Thentheycame, and split open the skies. And nothing was ever the same again.”

They?Thorn wanted to ask. But she had promised no interruptions. So as the howling swamp winds of Estar swept past them, she watched Zaf’s tired, pale face, and listened.

.11.

The Breaking of the Vale

Cub knew the story too—the story Zaf told Thorn, Noro, and Bartos in that dark and hungry swamp—though Cub’s version was a bit different.

All stories change depending on who tells them, but the hearts of Cub’s story and Zaf’s story shared a nut of truth:

There was a war, long ago. A war of ancient, powerful witches.

And that war killed Cub’s mothers, and trapped Zaf and those like her in bolts of lightning, and changed the Vale forever.

Cub remembered the day fire split open the skies.

He remembered the fire not being healthy, sunset-colored fire. Instead it was a hundred different colors—all brilliant, all angry. A furious pulsing purple and putrid green and sick vivid orange like the feeling of fear Cub got when he woke up from a nightmare.

He remembered the fire slamming into the storms that covered the Vale like a great swirling fist. That punch of power was so strong that the ground shook and wouldn’t stop.

And the fire, when it split open the skies, also split open the earth itself.

The angry-colored fire spat across the stormy skies and spread crackling across the ground. It uprooted trees and turned clear lakes a steaming yellow, and it carried a bitter stench that stung Cub’s wet black nose.

“What is that?” Cub cried, cowering between the giant ivy-draped legs of his mothers.

“It’s magic,” one of his mothers replied, looking gravely toward the eastern mountains, so high and fearsome that even Cub and his mothers didn’t like to cross them. “It’s witch-magic.”

Cub’s other mother wore such a deep sadness on her face that Cub felt afraid.

“They’ve turned on each other at last,” she said, her voice heavy and tired.