Page 98

THESE SAD TRUTHS

WREN

T he water is a strange consistency — thin, and clear to the bottom, frothing in tiny white bubbles where it hits rock or shore.

It’s almost singing as it runs over stones and tree branches, and in its shadows I can see tiny fish darting through glinting sparks of sunlight then back again.

Everything here is foreign and fascinating, and my stomach clenches in an unfamiliar but eager anticipation for the next unknown thing.

From in front of me Kaden crows, a happy, excited sound that bounces off the larger boulders around us.

“I wonder…” he mumbles under his breath, and runs ahead, leaping from stone to stone with practiced feet, until he’s a hundred yards up, at the turning of the small river we’ve been following for the last few days.

“Yes!” he shouts from the curve. “Wren! Rannoch! Tahrik! Come see!”

And we do, stumbling like children across the tiny pebbles, the stump-sized rocks, keeping close to the shale cliffs that border the quick-flowing water.

Tahrik is careful, cautious, reaching for me to help me over rough areas, but I gently shake off his hands, pulling myself up and over the jagged surface.

“Let me help, Wren,” he whispers, looking behind at Rannoch who is watching the interaction, head tilted like a bird, curious and waiting. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

An unfamiliar kernel of rebellion sits heavy in my heart.

I’ve never felt this hardness towards Tahrik, but my whole life has been lived within tight boundaries of cold, white walls, the dead my only comfort.

This openness calls to me, its raw, strange life echoing through my bones and coursing in my blood.

I’ve been protected and kept from the world long enough, and have no desire to continue the patterns of my youth in this new, wild world.

“I can do it.” I try to be gentle. He just wants to take care of me. But I am not a child.

He frowns, opens his mouth to speak, and then wisely shakes his head to silence himself.

I know he’s unhappy with me, and it curdles in my stomach.

Tahrik’s unhappiness is my own, and it distracts me as I climb over the next boulder, scraping my knee, drawing a small, startled “oh!” from my mouth before I can smother it.

Tahrik jerks back, examining my skin frantically.

“It’s nothing, Tahrik. It’s nothing.”

The lines between his brow are caverns deep as he stares down at my tiny cut, little ruby teardrops decorating the surface.

“You’re bleeding.” The words are flat, accusing, and I’m about to snap back, but feel the weight of Rannoch’s watching eyes.

Taking a breath, I study Tahrik’s face, really look at him, instead of just responding.

His jaw is clenched tight, his eyes wide, hands shaking, and suddenly, clearly, I can see his fear.

Not just for me, although that is at the forefront, but of this adventure, the enormity of the open sky above us, the creeping forest around us.

The walls that were, for me, an Exile — bones that never fit my soul quite right — for him were safety, and surety.

He would never have left the shadow of the mountains if it were not for me, and the magnitude of what he sacrificed to stay with me suddenly hits me.

Reaching out, I lay a pale hand on his face, and study him, even as he stares unwavering at me in return.

We are caught in a moment, a fork in the road, and I don’t have a map to lead me from this place.

Tahrik never minded the boundaries of his birth.

His family is well-respected, three or more generations of millers grinding grain for our village.

They were never in the mines, had comfortable lives, as much as any in our village ever had.

He had friends, family, parents — he was in line to run the mill if his mother and father made it to their sunset years, or before that if they were called to Offering.

Thinking back, really thinking, I remember now how many people loved my friend.

My only friend. How he would laugh with the women in the streets, how the children would sneak to him for crusts of new bread, warm from the oven.

He would sing at every wedding, would dance at every birth.

And, somehow, even in all of that vibrancy, he had seen me in my stillness, and had chosen me.

I am realizing, now, away from my gilded prison, how disparate colors can seem to two different sets of eyes.

Tahrik was part of our village in a way I never could be — his memories of the Dancing seasons, of his milk teeth years…

all of these were lit in a warmer glow than my own.

Perhaps the sun that shone in his memory was not the pale butter yellow that it was in mine.

And I wonder, with a sick suddenness, what I looked like to him, there in the shadow of the Council House.

Was I a wraith, a ghost? A goddess? Or just the girl that I so desperately longed to be.

Had he seen me as I was to myself, or had I tricked myself into thinking that, because he looked at me, he also was able to look inside me.

“Tahrik…” I whisper, and there are so many words I want to say fighting to find purchase, but all slip away at the fading light in his eyes. He sees my struggle, he does see it, and sighs, before smiling ruefully.

“I know you can do it, Wren,” he says, hands still shaking, fighting himself to keep from grabbing me.

“I’m just…mother henning, I suppose. Cluck, cluck.

” He sighs again, then turns from me. “Ah, Wrenling,” he murmurs, shaking his head a little, a true apology clear in his voice though he doesn’t look at me.

“I’m proud of you. I am. You’re stronger than most people realize.

I’m happy for you, too, despite how it may seem.

You’ve needed a rest. And this may be a strange version of that, but you carry so much weight at home…

This break is good for you, gives you room to breathe a little, to recover.

I know you can do it,” he repeats. “Of course you can. You’re sure-footed.

I should have called you Mountain Goat instead of Wren. ”

“So help me, Tahrik, if you call me a goat…” I let my voice drift off into a tentative, teasing silence, and am rewarded when he turns back to me with a wry smile, lifting a dubious brow.

“Baaaaa,” he jokes back, almost stiffly, but he’s clearly trying. Dropping his voice and his eyes, he stares at the ground for a long moment before whispering, “I think it’s me, more than you, who is having trouble with their footing in this new place. But I’ll find it eventually.”

The silence between us is a blank map, waiting for a cartographer's pen.

“Would you…” This time my voice is louder, stronger.

He has given me a gift, by being here with me, by leaving his entire world behind with no promise of a new world in front of him.

Just because a girl who is mostly a shadow, barely linked to the living, asked him.

And if he needs to hold my hand, what do I gain by keeping it from him?

You cannot make yourself smaller than you are forever.

Lorcan’s voice is quiet, much quieter than it ever was in the village, even with the increasingly frequent anointings, and cold fear slips along my skin. I want to answer him, but what can I say that is true in this new world?

Tahrik was my only friend for years. Years . And how does it hurt me to reassure him of his place? “Would you help me?” I hold out a hand — the words are surprisingly hard to say. But I am rewarded by his smile as he looks up at me, and his gentle fingers wrapping around my own.

“Of course, Wren.” He guides me up the steep surface… a rock I could have climbed a rebellious voice whispers insidiously in my brain, but I ignore it.

“Thank you,” I say, and he smiles again.

“Don’t be afraid to ask me for help, Wren.

I’m here for you always, little goat.” The fire of his old confidence comes back at my need, but the weight of his words settles on my shoulders, and, try as I might, I cannot shake it off.

He is here for me. I am responsible for him, and his happiness in this new land.

I asked him once if he would leave the village for me, and he agreed. Did he though? Did he ever say yes?

The memory of the stolen moments in the shadow of the bone wall, when I laid my head on his shoulder and dreamt of chickens and children drifts like smoke through my mind, and I am suddenly unsure.

I think he did. He wanted a home and a hearth with me.

And….if he didn’t agree to leave, not exactly, he would have.

And I wouldn’t have gone without him. That much is true.

I would never have willingly left Tahrik behind.

If the price to pay is asking him for help occasionally, then so-be-it.

At the top of the boulder, once I am safe in his eyes, he moves ahead of me, scouting out the best path towards where Kaden is grinning and waving his arms. Rannoch’s presence presses into me from behind — though he’s not touching me, the air between us warms, the heat from his body pushing away the coldness around me.