Forest Born (16 page)

Chapter 18

R
in’s thoughts heaved inside her. She pushed away from the tree and hunched over, her belly and throat cramping. She pressed her hands against her eyes, against her chest, breathing until she could get herself under control, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake Razo and Tusken.

A rotting sensation throbbed in her gut, reminding her of what she’d done. But there was a little comfort too, just to have a glimpse of clarity. The trees of her Forest had not rejected her. It was the other way around—she had flinched away from them. These past months, she thought she’d thrown away the memory of what happened with Wilem and what she discovered about herself. But it had swelled inside her, the hidden thought becoming the loudest in her head. Ever since, when she’d tried to listen to the trees’ calmness, the thought they reflected back to her was that pulsating secret that lurked just below the surface. She’d sought peace, but the memory of her mistake and the glimpse of her wrongness sickened her. Inside a tree’s thoughts, she was surrounded by her own self. And after Wilem, that was a place she did not want to be.

That gray worm stretched, reminding her that she still wanted to be that wild Rin, still yearned to speak like Selia, to not be afraid of herself, to claim what she could do, and to let everyone see her shine.

Razo gasped and sat upright, his hands clutching his chest. He looked around deliriously until he saw Tusken beside him. The little boy snorted in his sleep and flopped onto his other side, his mouth open and drooling. Razo breathed out in relief, patting the boy’s head.

“Thought he was gone. Dreamed she took him.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Ugh, that was an ugly dream. I won’t be sleeping any more today. Did you hear anything out there?”

Rin shook her head, ashamed she had not been paying attention. Razo stole out, tiptoeing around their small glade, pausing to listen. He slipped back in and sighed as he sat, speaking low so his voice would not carry beyond their tree. “Now, you’d better tell me why you’re being so naughty and hiding things from me.”

Rin’s heart was a startled jackrabbit. “Wh-what?”

Razo looked at her hard, his brown eyes glittering in the rising sunlight. “Well, I
was
teasing, going to accuse you of hiding all the food. But since you’re acting guiltier than Incher with his pockets full of bread dough, why don’t you just tell me what you thought I meant?” “Nothing.” She shook her head, shrugged, looked away.

“I didn’t . . . I mean, nothing . . .”

Razo’s gaze was bright. “That won’t do it, Rinna-roo. You’re hiding something from me. Come on before I get my feelings hurt and start to cry.” He let his lower lip quiver.

She smiled with a shrug. “Nothing really. I just . . . I’m realizing that I had—or have—some kind of understanding of trees. Sort of.”

“Understanding of trees. Interesting. Go on.”

He was not going to let her get away with shrugging it off. She could tell him this part but not her fears about people-speaking, of course. “Sometimes I can think more clearly when I’m close to a tree, like I’m thinking with it. And I can kind of hear them, be aware of where their roots are growing or their branches, feel the memory of past years and weather inside their trunks, and it makes me . . . makes me calmer to do it.” She was silent a moment, listening for searchers before asking, “Can you do that?”

Razo blinked. “Am I still asleep? ’Cause you sound like you’re talking in dream weirdness.”

Rin cleared her throat. “Isi called it tree-speaking.”

Razo slapped the ground, but even in his passion he was careful to keep his voice low. “Aw, really? Tree-speaking? That’s not fair. Why does everyone—wait, maybe it’s me. Do you think it’s me? I mean, Enna and Isi, and Dasha too, now you. Maybe there’s something about me that sort of sparks something in people, and wherever I go, people just start understanding everything because it . . . because I . . .”

“I think Isi could talk to horses and birds before she came to Bayern, and Dasha knew water-speaking when she was a little girl in Tira.”

Razo considered this. “All right, all right. But all the same—” He considered it some more. “But . . . but . . . yes, all right.” He considered again. “Fine. That’s . . . you’re probably right. Fine. But did you know that I’m deadly good with a sling?” He nudged her with his elbow. “Huh? Did you know that? I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Huh? Huh?”

Rin swatted his arm away, trying not to laugh, or he was sure to get a big head.

“So, trees, huh? Well, fine, as long as that’s all.”

Rin let her face go dead serious. “Also, I can talk to bears and wolverines.”

“You’re joking now. You’re teasing me now. I can tell.” He stared at his sister as if he could see through her eyes to her thoughts beyond. Rin did not flinch. “You’re not teasing, are you?”

She could not help the smile that teased the corners of her mouth. He sighed and leaned back.

“And wolverines.”

“Not like anyone else I know.”

“So you say.” His look was suspicious. “You’re still being dodgy. Are you hiding something else?”

“Only this . . .” She pulled a handful of grass from the ground behind her back and tossed it at his face. He answered with a clod of dirt to the chest; then they were scrambling for any ammunition, flinging sticks and grass and leaves and pebbles, then wrestling each other as if they were children again. Razo only grappled with one arm—to give her a fair shot, she thought. She was not sure how the wrestling match changed to an embrace, but moments later her arms were around his neck, and he was rubbing her back, promising her everything would be all right.

“Thanks for that rescue back there, by the way,” he said.

She nodded her head against his chest, feeling like a little girl. She remembered a time they’d been playing in the trees when she was six or so. He’d dared her to climb higher than she ever had. He’d never dared her to do something she could not do, so she had not questioned it. She had climbed and climbed and climbed, the sound of his cheers pushing her faster and higher, though soon the height was making her head feel swimmy and swoony, and her hands seemed too small to grasp another branch.

The next day when Razo was elsewhere, Rin had climbed the tree again.

“I wish we could go home now,” she said, homesickness so thick it filled her up inside, pressed out against her ribs and up into her neck.

She felt him nod. His muscles clenched and his jaw clicked, and she could sense how furious he was, how determined. No chance Razo would run when Dasha, Enna, and Isi were prisoners in that castle. But everything would be all right, because her big brother was here. She did not let herself stop to think why, instead of being relieved, she tingled with uncomfortable chill.

Rin squeezed her brother a little tighter, and he groaned painfully. She let go.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Fine. I’m fine.”

He scooted beside Tusken, resting on his side, and Rin did the same. She placed her hand on Tusken’s back, feeling the slow rise and fall of his sleepy breaths.

“We should get moving as soon as he wakes,” Razo said, idly rubbing his left side. “North, where the searchers won’t expect us to be. Then you and Tusken hide out to night, like you did last night, and I’ll go to the castle.” She must have looked worried, because Razo added, “Trust me, Rin. I’ve been in stickier spots.”

That thought was not comforting. Her arguments and fears for his safety rose into her throat, but she swallowed them down, afraid of the damage she could do by speaking. Instead she asked, “Razo, who is Selia?”

Razo groaned and rolled onto his back, resting his head on his right arm. “Selia the soulless. Selia the treacherous snake. Selia the unkillable, apparently. She was Isi’s lady-in-waiting back in Kildenree. When Isi was traveling to Bayern to marry Geric, Selia and half of Isi’s guards rebelled and tried to kill everyone else. Isi escaped, but Selia had gone on into Bayern and pretended she was the Kildenrean princess. Geric hadn’t met Isi yet, you see. And . . . well, it’s a long story, but in the end, I myself was an indispensable part of how Isi convinced Geric and his father that she was the real princess. Ask Isi yourself. She’ll tell you.”

Rin nodded, to show that she was certain it was so.

“There you go. Now when you go home, you just convince Jef about that, will you? Anyway, all of Selia’s evil guards were killed in a fight (in which I performed nobly), and later Selia was supposedly executed. She’d named the punishment herself—she was put in a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets until she was dead. Guess that didn’t happen after all. Talked her way out of it, most likely. I wonder what dim-witted soldier or prison guard let her go and put a pig or something in the barrel instead. Hmph. Poor little innocent pig.”

“And now she’s come back and wants to kill Isi.”

Razo sat up, looking around with mock terror. “The pig’s come back to kill Isi? We’re all doomed!”

“I meant Selia, you goat brain.”

“Oh, right. Selia.” Razo began stacking rocks on top of each other. “She wants them alive for now, or else she wouldn’t bother kidnapping Tusken. Otherwise, you think I’d risk waiting till nightfall? She came for the boy on purpose, sneaked into Geric’s camp, talked her way near Tusken and meant to take him alone. But I came along. Don’t know how I managed. She was telling me to give her the boy and leave her alone, but I clung on. I believed every word she said and I felt like a fool for not obeying—she’s gotten scary good with that people-speaking—but I’d promised you I’d take care of Tusken and I didn’t let go.”

“You managed to defy her?” Rin marveled, remembering the power of Selia’s words the night before.

“Just in that. When I wouldn’t put Tusken down, she seemed to change her mind anyway, saying two prisoners were better than one and it’d save her having to carry him. She told me to bring him along, and I trotted after her with Tusken in my arms like a good boy carrying wood for his ma and never so much as called out a warning to Bayern’s Own. I tell you, when I think about it, I get an itch right here”—he pointed to the spot between his eyebrows—“that about makes me insane.”

Rin recalled asking Razo to watch Tusken, keep him safe. Ordering him? Was it her own people-speaking that had helped him stay with Tusken? The idea did not please her—it filled Rin with shame. She tried to shut it off.

“Selia called Isi something odd.” Rin closed her eyes, looking for the memory. “Princess. Something princess.”

“Right. Isi was—” Razo put up his hand for silence, listening. Rin listened too. The wood croaked and shook and swayed—clicking of insects, moaning of trees, and silence that was heavy with air and sunshine—but she could hear nothing human. When Razo spoke again, his voice was even quieter than before.

“Isi was the Crown Princess in Kildenree before her mother decided to marry her off instead of letting her inherit the throne. Don’t know why Selia still calls her Crown Princess—just to mock her, I guess. She is rotten and wormy and so far gone I wouldn’t be surprised to see her bite the head off a songbird for fun. Seriously, people-speaking might as well be a wasting disease.”

Rin shuddered, wishing she could rest somewhere far away from herself. “What’s it like when Selia tells you what to do?”

“Like she’s cast a line and hook down my throat, and is pulling fish out of my belly, and all I can do is sit and watch. And gag.”

Rin wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Eww. Was Selia always like that—controlling people with her words?”

“No, not like last night. She probably always had a way with people, could be very convincing and all. But when I first saw her, the king ordered her to be put in chains, and despite her fussing and screaming, the guards still carried her away. Seems like she’s grown in her talent, hasn’t she? Even now . . .” He scratched his head. “You feel it too? Even though she’s not here and talking in my face, I still feel . . . kind of foolish not to like her. My head knows she’s rotten, but I want to keep believing her.”

“I was wondering—you know, just musing—when I asked you to take care of Tusken, if you felt at all like you do when Selia—”

“It’s funny you should ask, because I’m always confusing you with Selia . . . Wait, which one are you again?”

“Never mind, I was just—”

“You were serious?” Razo squinted at her. “Why would you even ask me that? Rin, you and Selia are about as much alike as a pig and a raven.”

“And I would be . . . ?” “The raven, of course. Selia just sits around and squeals. Ooh, it’s going to be fun to see my Dasha roast and drown her! I wish this day would hurry along already.”

Razo thought he heard something, and he quieted to listen. But the noises of the wood seemed normal to Rin. She raised her hands to swat a leaf. A long thin touch of coolness ran across her bare wrist, though nothing was there. She kept sweeping her arm as if reaching for the sky and saw it at last, a single strand of a spider’s web stretched between two trees. She felt it stay with her, lengthening as her arm moved, until it snapped and floated down.