Page 37 of Echo North

Heat flooded up my neck.

He winked at me, unfolding himself from the window seat and standing in one smooth motion. He bowed with a flourish. “Fancy a walk, Echo?”

I glanced once more out the window. “As long as we avoid that awful Empress.”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

We left the music room by way of the rose garden, passing through the hedgerows and out onto a wide hill, where tall grass rustled in the wind. The air was alive with honeybees and the scent of wildflowers, and huge white clouds scudded through the sky; their shadows stretched long over us.

“Where are you from?” I asked Hal, trailing my hand over the tops of the grass. It was feather soft, but it itched.

“From?” He raised an eyebrow at me, as if that was a difficult question.

“Where are you when you’re not reading?” I clarified.

“Oh, I’m always reading.” He dashed ahead of me and I ran after him, half tripping the rest of the way down the hill.

Ahead of us, a wide lake sparkled in the sun, and beyond it was a wood.

It seemed there was always a wood.

“You can’talwaysbe reading. You have to be from somewhere.”

Hal walked up to the edge of the lake and pulled his boots off. The water lapped over his toes.

I watched him for a moment, then followed suit. I yelped at the icy touch of the water and Hal waggled his eyebrows at me.

“Well, where areyoufrom?” he said.

“The village. Although right now I live in the house under the mountain.”

“Sounds very pretentious.”

I gave him a little shove and he nearly toppled over. “You’rethe pretentious one, with all your opinions about harpsichords.”

“They’re not opinions, they’re facts.”

I shoved him harder, laughing, and that time he lost his footing, grabbing my arm before I could leap out of the way and yanking me down with him. We tumbled into the lake with an enormoussplash.I surfaced first, sputtering, and pulled Hal up after me. We couldn’t stop laughing.

“I’m not sure,” said Hal a while later. “Where I’m from, I mean.”

We were stretched out on our backs in the grass, still damp, but warm from the sun. Overhead the clouds knotted together and grew dark, the wind blowing colder than before. It smelled like rain.

“How long has it been since we met on the hunt?” he asked.

“A few months at least.”

He folded his hands behind his head and I found myself staring at his eyelashes, which were long and light. “For me, it seems like yesterday.”

“You haven’t … been anywhere since then?”

“I’ve just been reading. There was the book about the hunt, and then one about a boy and a glacier, and then something about sea monsters. Definitely a few wars. A handful of dragons. And—” His brow creased in concentration. “I think there was a woman made of clouds. Or cats. I don’t quite remember, it was very peculiar. And then this one.”

“So you just go from book to book.”

“It seems so.”

He rolled on his side, propping himself up on one elbow. There was a light dusting of freckles across his nose.