Page 10 of The Fire Apprentice (Sylvania #5)

W hen they’d finished their biscuits, they had a long drink and refilled their gourds from a deep puddle of rainwater gathered in a dip in the rock. Rowan knelt to repack his bag so Jane used the time to shake out her braid, running her fingers through her hair and letting the wind cool her scalp. She lifted her bangs to wipe her sweaty forehead. She gathered up her hair and rebraided it tightly, binding the end and tying the long braid into a knot at the back of her head. If they were going to climb again, she wanted her hair safely out of the way.

At the apex of the trail, where it plunged into blooming rhododendron bushes to head east, Rowan stopped and studied the surroundings. “Axe thought Sunshine’s den was on the south side of this trail, on a peak near to his. We’ll have to get there as best we can.” He pushed aside branches and ducked into the opening, holding the branches until she had them in her hands and could creep in after him.

Walking through a forest where—probably—no one had ever walked except squirrels and chipmunks was strange. They were the first people ever to see this tree, or that rock. If the forest held any secrets, they might uncover them. In places, they had to detour around underbrush. Rowan would check the sun after each detour and realign them onto his path to the south. The ground sloped upward but only slightly.

They passed through a clearing where the extra sunlight had produced an especially gorgeous cluster of blooming rhododendrons. When the trees closed in more densely and blocked the light, the forest floor cleared of growth. Only a few of last autumn’s leaves littered the bare expanse of moss, as well as a few small boulders, and they could walk more quickly. She moved up beside Rowan.

Even this high in the mountains, birds twittered in the branches. The squirrels were shyer than the ones who hopped around on the grass in Woods Rest. Here they scrabbled around the tree trunks with clicking claws to stay out of view. A small reddish one sitting on a high branch glared down at them with its tail up stiff and vibrating. It let out a volley of fast cheeps, continuing to scold them as they passed below.

“He’s warning his friends that we’re here,” Rowan said. “I tried to calm him, but I’m not sure anything got through, given my weak skills.” He smiled ruefully.

“You probably could have learned if you’d been allowed in the forest when you were younger,” Jane said. She hated to see him think that he was lacking.

“Did you consider smithing when you were younger? Was there a shop in your village?”

“No. Nothing like that in the Gulch. It’s not much of a village.”

He kept watching her as they walked side by side.

“Most of the farmers could mend a horse’s shoe, but we didn’t have a proper smithy. We had a building for gathering and a few merchant carts came through each summer. But otherwise the Gulch is only cottages on farmsteads with long stretches of road between them. Our farm was up against the edge of the forest, several leagues off from the village center.”

“Would you like to go back?”

“Maybe to visit. I wonder about my family. My brothers must be bonded by now. But I felt too ashamed to return after... after what happened. And then Elle came back to me, and it seemed too hard to travel all that way with her. I don’t think I’d want to raise her there. I did send a letter so they’d know I was all right.”

“You did nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I trusted someone when I should have known better.”

“You trusted someone who took advantage of you,” Rowan said with a hint of an edge in his voice. “He is to blame, not you.”

“But it’s exactly what my family said would happen. They said I shouldn’t daydream the way I did. They expected me to bond with one of the neighbors’ sons and become a farmer like everyone else. But I couldn’t.”

“None of them attracted you?”

The rumble of his voice saying those words heated her inside. Jane swallowed and forced her thoughts to their conversation. “Maybe at first? I did like some of the young men. But we’d fool around and that part... wasn’t so enjoyable.” Her cheeks heated.

“They were disappointing?”

She had been disappointed but the problem had been her, not the young men she’d known. But how could she explain that to Rowan? “I suppose. But I’d imagine someone instead—a handsome stranger appearing in our yard and falling in love with me and taking me away on an adventure. So when I met Cedric—Larch—it felt like my daydream was coming true.”

“How did you meet him?”

Jane turned to Rowan in surprise. He wanted to hear more about Larch? She’d never told the details to anyone. Her friends in Woods Rest had each had her own, similar story and hadn’t needed to hear of another heartbreak.

But he watched her as he walked, as if waiting on her answer.

“I was picking berries in the woods behind our house,” she said. “He seemed to appear from nowhere, and I should have been alarmed but he was so solicitous. He kept his distance as he spoke, and I thought he was handsome. He said he was traveling through and had stopped to rest in the shade. His story made no sense because he was far off the road—my daydreams had never been logical. That’s what made it seem wondrous, though: I’d imagined something nearly impossible and it had happened.”

Rowan was still listening, breaking his gaze away only to check the ground at his feet. When he again turned to her, unsmiling but not unkind, she found herself continuing the story.

“He helped me pick berries and asked about my life. When the sun got low, I said I had to go, and he asked me to meet him there the next day. He told me not to tell my family—he insisted he wanted to meet them, but only after we spent more time together. I just wanted to see him again. I went the next day as soon as my brothers and father were out in the fields. I knew they’d be working until sunset.”

She took a moment to remember. For so long, it had been the happiest day of her life. Even after Larch betrayed her, and after she understood he had enchanted her with a love spell, she still remembered the feeling of joy she had had that day, until finally after many seasons, the memory had faded.

“Larch had a picnic spread in a sparkling glen—now I know he used some fairy trick to make it sparkle—and he gave me wine, which was so sophisticated. I felt odd after drinking it, but I thought it was the alcohol. I’d never drunk much ale. I was kissing him within the hour and hungry for more but he wouldn’t give in, promising only to give me more if I’d leave with him that night. And I wanted to—I had no thought to how it would hurt my family. I’d like to blame the love potion for that because I hope I wouldn’t have been so callous. He sent me home with a basket of berries so I could say I’d been working all day. I never even wondered when he’d gathered them.”

Her throat tightened when she thought of her last sight of her family, all those seasons ago. “I don’t know how I faced my family that evening and kept my secret hidden. After they were asleep I packed my clothes and sneaked out. I left a note so they’d know why I’d gone, if not where. The moon was rising and everything felt romantic. Larch met me at the edge of the trees and led me into the forest and he had a horse. It never seemed odd he suddenly had a horse—but again, I hope the love potion made me so stupid. I was only glad we weren’t using the road where someone might stop us.”

Rowan faced ahead as they walked. But if he wanted her to stop he didn’t say, and she couldn’t stop now.

“We walked some of the time and each time my legs began to ache, he’d stop and kiss me until I was too distracted to care. He must have known people would come after us because he kept us moving through the night and past dawn, until I was sleeping against him on the horse. He didn’t stop until night came again. That night I lay with him on a blanket on the forest floor, and he gave in to my begging. And it was better than it ever had been...”

Had it been better? She hadn’t anticipated the pain because she’d been besotted with “Cedric.” But she had felt the usual stinging, rubbing feeling as he entered her, only muted as if the edges of the pain were dulled. Maybe the love potion had made intercourse easier, too. And she hadn’t cared about her enjoyment because she’d wanted to please Cedric so badly. At the time she’d thought it must not hurt as badly because Cedric was “the one” for her, her true love, the most amazing lover of all time.

Blech.

Rowan walked beside her in silence.

“Anyway,” Jane said, “after that, he wanted me all the time. I thought he must be as mad for me as I was for him. But now I know... he was trying to get me pregnant so he could take the child and be done with me.”

Jane’s face heated the moment she stopped speaking. Once she’d started remembering, the whole story had poured out. All her foolishness and the reckless decisions she’d made. Maybe she’d been under a love spell once she drank Larch’s wine, but she hadn’t been that first day when she’d fallen for his phony charms and decided to lie to her family and sneak out behind their backs.

“You were young,” Rowan said as if he knew she was blaming herself again.

“I was stupid. My family was right. I had my head in the clouds and my daydreams led me astray. And the absolute worst thing that could have happened did. If it weren’t for Rose and Dustan, I’d never have gotten Elle back.”

“All you did was go to meet with Larch. That’s not a terrible thing. The rest of it was the love potion.”

“But the magic can’t completely change you—that’s what Rose said. It only enhances the feelings you already have. I must have wanted him some.”

“That’s not hard to understand. He was handsome and charming and offered the excitement you craved.”

“But now I don’t know who to trust.” She could hear the whine in her voice but couldn’t stop herself from continuing, letting all her frustration out. “Maryanne says I should think strategically: who’ll be a kind father to Elle and a decent partner. Is that the way to do it? That sounds like my family again, telling me to ignore what I feel and choose one of the neighbors and be done with it. And should I feel something in the beginning, or will that come after? I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like when someone is a suitable match. I think about it all the time until I’m looping in circles, confused. How can I tell who’s right for me? How do I sort out liking how he looks, or feeling attracted to him with my body, or if I like talking to him, or if he’s logically a good match, or—”

Jane cut herself off and her face burned. Why was she babbling on about this? Rowan walked alongside her without speaking, clearly embarrassed, his eyes trained on the ground in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

Tears pricked her eyes. He was always kind, but she felt ashamed for her past and for spilling it all out like that.

Jane stayed quiet as they walked a little farther. She listened to the birdsong and tried to enjoy the smell of fresh mountain air. She needed to calm down before they were climbing up another cliff or she’d slip and fall.

One birdcall grew louder, a rapid cheeping with a trill at the end. A pair of birds with an orange splotch under their wings perched on a low branch ahead. “Cheep-cheep-cheep-chi-i-i-i-i-it!” one called before they took off together and swooped to the next tree. “Cheep-cheep-cheep-chi-i-i-i-i-it!”

Rowan followed their flight. As Jane and Rowan progressed, the pair stayed with them, always moving to the next tree.

“What are they?” Jane asked.

“Towhees.”

“Are they trying to tell us something?”

“I think so.”

The birds flew farther ahead, landing on a tree to the right. As Jane and Rowan neared, the ground dropped and split. A rocky chasm opened as the view widened and ahead the trees dwindled with a view off the south side of the mountain. Rowan stopped, scanning the forest on either side of the cleft.

“Cheep-cheep-cheep-chi-i-i-i-i-it! Cheep-cheep-cheep-chi-i-i-i-i-it!” both birds sang together. They broke into a harsh, squawking call, hopping between the branches of their tree.

Rowan took a tentative step toward them and they trilled and flew to a farther tree. He followed them along the right edge of the chasm. “I think they want us to go this way.”

“That’s... nice of them?”

Rowan smiled. “Axe must have asked them to come. To show us which way to go along the side of the mountain.”

Jane smiled at the reminder of the older dragon who was helping them. Next time she saw him, she’d do more than thank him. Maybe she could bring him baked goods or maybe he liked having his scales scratched. Rowan would know what Axe liked.

She followed as Rowan resumed walking. From behind, she couldn’t stop noticing how attractive he was—from his dark hair with its soft locks that cut off at his neck, to his broad shoulders that dwarfed the large pack on his back, to his lean hips and sturdy legs striding over the hard ground. But Woods Rest had plenty of sturdy, broad men. Rowan was different. His stillness, that calm way he handled everything, appealed to her. His low, quiet voice that was somehow commanding, and the attentive way he listened, and how he always excused her faults, declaring that she was young or had not failed when she trusted someone. He made her believe him: maybe she wasn’t hopelessly flawed.

The ground narrowed into a lip along the base of a rocky cliff. To her left, the land dropped away with sickening steepness. Once they started onto the narrow path, the towhees chirped a few times and flew away.

As they progressed around the southern edge of the hillside, the largest trees cleared completely to show the view to the south. One rocky peak to the left towered above the treetops.

“Is that Axe’s den?” Jane asked.

“Yes.”

Rowan moved slowly and Jane took each step carefully. The drop wasn’t sheer—if she fell, she could grab one of the saplings clinging to the steep slope. But hopefully this section of the trail wasn’t long. Occasionally rhododendrons and other bushes hung down over them, clinging to cracks in the rocks, and more and more fire mushrooms appeared. This side of the mountaintop was shady at least, so no sunlight glared in her face as she picked her way along.

The steepness below them lessened and filled in with boulders, piling upward, and a tall peak appeared as they came around the mountainside. It was as wide as the entire village center in Woods Rest, much wider than the rock column they had climbed yesterday. They walked until they reached its base.

Rowan peered up at the towering peak. It was so steep it seemed to lean over them and the chill of the perpetually shady stone filled the air. Up high, mushrooms clung to the rocks, along with mossy patches and scraggly shrubs, but the first hundred hands or so was a sheer wall.

Rowan slid his pack to the ground. “I’m going to see what’s on the other side.” He shed his coat and stepped onto the boulder at the base of the peak. He climbed across the rocks, growing smaller and smaller until he disappeared around the distant endpoint.

Jane dropped her satchel beside a bush. She pulled her coat off, enjoying the cooling breeze, and lay it on the soft moss at her feet to sit on. She sorted through her remaining food. She had a packet of crackers, but the fairy travel biscuits served much better to provide energy for a climb. The dried cherries were gone but she had a napkin filled with apple rings and another of pecans. Her water gourd was half-filled. Otherwise, all she carried was her toothbrush, her blanket—Rowan gave it back to her each morning and took his, probably because his was much heavier—and a clean set of underthings, which didn’t seem worth changing into if she couldn’t bathe first.

She spread the blanket on the ground and laid out the food on it. She nibbled on a cracker, closing her eyes to wait.

After a while, Rowan reappeared on the opposite side of the peak from the direction he’d left in—he’d completely circled it. He climbed over the last few rocks at the base. “There’s a better place to go up on the back side.” He stepped onto the solid ground, eyeing her row of supplies.

“This is all I’ve got left,” Jane said. “Do we have enough supplies to go up and back?”

Rowan dropped down beside her, crossing his legs. He dragged his pack over with a clang. “I’ve got plenty of hard biscuits and oats,” he said. He tugged out his blanket and gourd, followed by a stitched fabric sack (the oats, she guessed, based on the dust filtering out the seams), the packet of biscuits, and his knife. The two belts they’d worn while climbing to Axe’s den came out next, and the length of rope with the spring-clip on the end. The two hammocks. Something long and hard tumbled out: a dagger in a sheath. Jane startled but Rowan only moved the dagger to the side.

He took out more rope, this time thinner and shinier. It must have even more of the special fairy thread in it to make it shimmer like that. Hopefully the magical thread made it strong enough to get them safely up this peak.

He pulled out more of the thin rope. And more. How did he have all of this in his pack? And then he pulled out a large iron hammer. And a handful of flat iron pieces with a loop on the end of each, and more of the magical spring-clips.

Jane gawked. No wonder his bag had nearly toppled her over when she’d worn it. “You’ve been carrying that hammer this whole time?”

“We might need it to get to the top.”

“You mean, to get me to the top, don’t you?”

He pushed his hair behind his ear and turned his face up to hers. She was used to him watching the ground so when he did regard her, his gaze was riveting. In the shady spring day, his green eyes mirrored the treetops, filled with life and hope. What would they look like as spring passed into summer? In the warm sun instead of in cool shade?

He smiled slowly. “I could climb to the top without ropes,” he said, “but it’s safer not to.”

Jane’s cheeks warmed. Why? Nothing about his words suggested anything smutty—it was the same as if Maryanne had said, I’m going to buy fabric. But the way he said it, staring into her eyes with his voice soft and curling around her, made her think of crawling across the two paces between them and pushing him down on the moss.

“I suppose it’s not so bad if I slow you down, if it keeps you safe,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and light.

There. Nothing suggestive about that at all. But her cheeks only got hotter.

Rowan blinked and looked down, still smiling. “I’m not sure how high it is or what the climbing will be like. We could wait until the morning to start if you don’t want to risk sleeping up there.”

Sleeping up where? On the side of a cliff? She squinted up at the towering rocks. “Do you have a plan to ‘sleep up there’?”

“I do.”

Jane hadn’t seen Elle in three days. Knowing they’d been journeying toward her had kept her patient, but being this close she didn’t want to wait around for morning.

“Let’s start,” Jane said.

Rowan wedged his coat and blanket into his bag. “Let me carry your water,” he said, deftly whisking her gourd off her blanket and into his pack with his own. The hammer and other goods followed. “We might have tight spots to squeeze through and it’ll be easier to manage if your pack is light.”

Jane bit back a protest. He was the expert here. She wouldn’t try to sort out what was logical behavior and what was Rowan trying to make her comfortable at his own expense. He probably wouldn’t even notice the extra weight.

She repacked her bag, folding her coat and scarf with the blanket at the bottom because she was sure to warm up once they started climbing. She left it on the ground as she stood. Rowan held out the belt. “Do you remember how it goes?”

She took it and wrapped it around her waist, cinching it tight and closing the first buckle. “Like that?”

He watched her hands. “Yes.”

She fumbled with the next buckle and the rest until they were all fastened. She tugged on the front loop to show him it was secure. Because if he reached for her to test it, she might do something stupid.

Rowan donned his own belt and pack and started onto the rocks the way he had come, passing between the peak and the green hillside to the north. Around on the western side, the sheer face gave way to a slanting tumble of boulders. On the low side of the slant, broken rocks continued outward for a few paces before ending at the drop off the side of the mountain. Using his arms as well as his legs, Rowan clambered up the patch of boulders. At least if Rowan or she fell backward, they wouldn’t go over the edge. They’d land on a pile of jagged rocks instead.

Jane started up after Rowan, watching where he gripped and where he placed his feet and copying him as best she could. Climbing this way wasn’t hard and they reached a ledge within a few minutes. Rowan followed the ledge back toward the forest the way they had come. The ledge ended above the sheer cliff they’d first seen but off to the north side so they couldn’t see where they had started from, below. As the rock continued up from where they stood, it became more cracked and knobby than the sheer face below.

“We can go up here,” Rowan said, kneeling and opening his pack. He motioned to Jane to take a seat. He took out the hammer and one of the iron pieces with the loop and slid his fingers along a crack in the rock, concentrating. He poked the flat end of the iron piece into the crack in a few places. After a few tests, he positioned the iron piece and raised the hammer. Jane cringed as he brought it down. The ring of metal on metal filled the air. The first strike drove the piece in but Rowan kept pounding on it, deeper and deeper. At last the hammer went silent.

“Won’t Sunshine hear us?” Jane asked. If they spooked the dragon, she might fly away, presumably taking Elle with her.

“Hopefully we’ll be quieter when we get close. I can try to communicate with her as we near.”

Rowan tried wiggling the loop and it didn’t budge. He tapped lightly on it with the hammer, testing if it could handle a sudden pull downward, before threading the hammer through a strap on the side of his trousers. He tied a length of rope between the new loop and his climbing belt. “It will stop me from crashing to the ground if I go over the edge,” he explained. But as he stood to face the new wall of rock, the threat seemed to be that if he fell he would crash onto the ledge, not tumble off it.

Leaving his pack, Rowan gripped a protrusion and pulled himself up the wall. Jane scooted back to watch. He moved much more slowly today, sometimes stopping for a minute or more as he searched for handholds and footholds. This stretch was a long way up, so far that he crossed the line where the mountaintop’s shadow ended, climbing into the sunshine. When her eyes began to tire, Jane stopped watching and instead worked out the crick in her neck. The air was chill in the shade and she forced in the deepest breaths she could, never quite getting enough air. When she next checked the cliff, Rowan had disappeared.

The hammer rang out, distant and tinny. After a minute of the noise, silence fell. Jane shielded her eyes and peered up, waiting.

Rowan tipped himself over the edge of the cliff, clutching a rope with one hand and letting it out as he walked backward down the rock, the same way he had at Axe’s. As he let out the rope, it seemed to shimmer and disappear in the light as it twisted and turned. He walked down into the shade and closer until he stepped off the wall onto the ledge beside her, smiling.

“You honestly enjoy this,” Jane said.

He unwound the turns of rope from the spring-clip, grinning, before unfastening the clip, tying the rope firmly to it, and passing it to her.

Jane clipped herself to the rope and ran her fingers up it. It was thin as a knitting needle and faded in and out of view with the tiniest motion. “This rope has more of the special fairy thread.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you switch?”

“It’s stronger. We might have longer distances to climb today.”

Longer distances. Wonderful. She waited for instructions.

Somehow Rowan remembered the holds he’d found that led to the top because he guided her up the cliff, step by step, taking the slack out of the magical rope as she went. Her arms had begun sore and now they ached but she had no choice but to continue. The alternative was asking Rowan to lower her down and waiting for him at the bottom.

When at last she pulled herself onto the ledge, she lay on the rock to catch her breath and let her head steady. She wasn’t dizzy—she could see clearly. But her mind seemed to be catching its breath, too. She could have fallen to sleep right there. She’d reached the sunlight. It shone warm on her face and heat radiated from the rock under her body, but the sun was moving lower. The edge of the sunlight had shifted as she climbed and was right below the ledge.

Rowan was waiting. She pushed herself up to sitting with her bottom firmly on the rock and her legs dangling off. She unclipped herself and fastened the spring-clip to the new iron loop he had hammered into the rock. Rowan untied the rope at the bottom, coiled up the extra, and started up after her.

The mountaintop still blocked most of the view to the north with the sun skating over the rim. Rowan moved quickly up the rock. Jane reached for her water and remembered Rowan was carrying it. Her heart sank as he climbed onto the ledge beside her.

“Rowan, I forgot my bag.”

“Where?”

“At the bottom. I was so nervous about the climb I forgot to put it on. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I should’ve noticed you weren’t wearing it. Do you want me to go back for it?”

After all that work? And they were already racing the sun—how much time would it take for Rowan to go all the way back down? And he had her water. “I can do without it,” she said.

Rowan only nodded, coiled up the rope, and immediately turned to the next section.

They scaled two more cliffs with Rowan searching out a path each time and hammering a loop in at the top, then coming down to guide her up. He left the thin ropes hanging each time they moved on from these resting points. Why? Was it to escape quickly if something went wrong with Sunshine? Or maybe it seemed less risky to leave the ropes here, at the top of the mountain where no one ever came and already partway up the column of rock. Plus the rope was nearly invisible if you weren’t searching for it.

The sky’s blue was deepening as the sun neared the horizon, draining the light from the sky, and a snippy wind blustered through Jane’s bangs where she sat waiting for Rowan to climb up to her. This ledge was fairly deep and she sat with her back against the cliff, trying to absorb the warmth of the stone and escape the biting wind. Because she faced west, the sun had been on the stone for a while. She kneaded her fingers, warming them and rubbing out the soreness from gripping the rocks. The sweat from all her exertion was damp and chill on her neck and she shivered. Drat. Her coat was with her bag.

Rowan clambered onto the rock in front of her. Even he seemed tired. He dropped his pack and crawled over to her.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Cold.”

“We should stop here. The light’s going to go once the sun sets, and I’m not sure how much farther it is.”

“Okay. My, um, my blanket was in my bag.”

“You can have mine.”

“But you’ll freeze! It was my mistake to forget it.”

Rowan’s voice remained patient. “Do you have another idea? Aside from me using the blanket and letting you freeze?”

Jane blushed. At least blushing warmed her. She could hear Maryanne ranting in her mind as she said, “We could share?” She winced, unable to meet his gaze.

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he said quietly, “from the cold or otherwise. I have my coat.”

“No, I don’t mind.” She sat straighter, trying to sound calm and ignoring the specter of Maryanne. “It might be awkward, but it’s more important we stay warm.”

“All right,” he said, swallowing. “We can share.”