Forest Born (9 page)

Rin searched for the dark smudge beyond the town that was the wood, strained with her eyes and then with her heart. At least back home she’d been useful to her ma—but what did she have to offer someone like the queen of Bayern? Rin’s chest felt like a knot too solid to unpick. Tension buried any hope of sleep, so she focused on the distance where the wood waited, trying to remind her body what it felt like to commune with trees, to hear the sap moving through the limbs, a breeze lulling the leaves . . .

Calmer, quieter, Rin became more aware of everything. She could almost hear Enna exhale before the sound reached her ears. Her skin tingled as if the night was just about to get hotter. Something was strange—something about the air. Rin backed away from the window and leaned over Isi’s bed.

“Isi?” she whispered. “Isi? I think—”

There was a noise like wind howling or a voiceless scream. Then the straw roof was blazing.

Chapter 10

R
in fell to the floor as blistering heat stormed above her head.

“Wake up!” she shouted.

Isi was alert at once, upright with eyes wide. A second rush and the wall was boiling with orange and gold flames. Rin grabbed Dasha and pulled her hard, onto the floor as their bed caught fire. The room was engulfed in tearing flames. The heat was so intense Rin could not open her eyes. No breath filled her, the air eaten away. She covered her head with her arms and hoped she would die quickly.

Then wind gushed through the window and blew a hole through the roof. The flames pulled into themselves and extinguished, the heat from those flames bursting into new and harmless fire through the hole and into the sky, leaving a bright streak of smoke. She did not know if it had been Isi’s or Enna’s work, or perhaps both. When the rafters and walls beaded with water, Rin guessed that much was Dasha, gathering the moisture from the outside air and dousing the embers. Finn was at the door with his sword, scanning the hall for an intruder.

The girls gasped at the air that gushed in through the window, cool as water. From elsewhere in the inn they heard a scream.

In the corridor, the roof began to blaze. People in nightclothes wailed as fiery straw fell on their heads, the corridor so jammed no one could get out. Isi was shouting orders at Enna and Dasha, and Finn fought to stay beside them. Rin was getting pushed back. The wailing, the smoke, the people, all choked her with panic.

The crowd shoved, and Rin fell before the open door of a sleeping chamber. The straw roof sizzled and spit, rolls of flames turning the room gold. A young woman had climbed atop a stool with a baby in her arms. Trembling, she put one leg through the window to climb out. They were three stories up.

Rin ducked under arms, shoved between backs, and flung herself into the room. She grabbed the woman by the hem of her tunic and yanked her back to the sill.

“Let go!” the woman screeched. “We’re going to die! I have to save my baby, I have to—”

“We won’t die, not unless you throw yourself out that window. Come down.”

The woman turned, and her eyes were frightening, wild and dangerous with fear. “My baby will burn, my . . .” She began to weep and clawed at Rin to break free.

“The fire will stop,” Rin said, coughing from the smoke.

“We’ll burn!”

“Listen to me, the fire will stop! It will stop. Come down here now, come down with your baby and you’ll see. The fire will stop.”

The woman gasped, as if Rin’s words were a pocket of fresh air inside the smoky room. “The fire will stop?”

“It’s already out, see?”

The hysteria cleared from her eyes and she clutched her baby to her chest, blinking and looking around. Smoke tickled their eyes, blackened straw dusted their shoulders, but there were no flames, no heat.

“I’ve never seen . . . but it’s gone. You said it would.” She stared at Rin, dazed and desperate. “What do I do now?”

“You grab your things and take your baby outside. You can do that?”

The woman nodded. “I can do that.”

Rin watched her go. The frenzy in the corridor had quieted with the fire’s demise. She could hear Enna shouting something, Finn directing people downstairs.

“The fire will stop,” Rin whispered. Feeling like an empty grain sack, she sat down and sobbed into her arms. That mother and her child would have died from the fall. It was a good thing to help them, it surely was. So why did she feel like a very bad girl due a wooden spoon beating? Guilt and confusion and sorrow gnawed at her, and running away sounded so promising.

She heaved herself to her feet, collected their things from their room, and trudged down the corridor, passing empty rooms full of charred and damp wood. The stairs shuddered beneath her feet.

The girls and Finn stood in the road, staring at the blackened inn as it groaned and leaned to one side. Dasha and Isi were retying their headscarves over their conspicuous hair, but none of the dazed travelers in nightclothes looked their way. Gathered in small groups, they whispered and cried, never letting their eyes stray from the ruined building.

“That could’ve been my grave right there,” someone said. “I sleep like a tree most nights. Good fortunes, that could’ve been my grave.”

“That fire started pretty suddenly, don’t you think?” Enna whispered. “Spread quickly too. Funny that.”

Other townsfolk on the crossroads were opening windows, creaking doors, blinking into the night, judging whether what they were missing was exciting or dangerous.

Rin still felt spooked, her muscles tense, begging her to run.
Be calm,
she told herself. She inhaled, drinking in night—her favorite time, when the world was scrubbed of edges and hardness—and tried to remember how it used to feel to lean into a tree, hear its deepness with her own. While seeking that stillness, she looked around, taking in the moment.

Everything seemed slowed, easier to see. And in that stillness, she noticed a figure. Every other person either stood before the inn as if they’d just escaped its smoky ruin, or in the doorways of their homes afraid to emerge. But one man rushed away, no protective home around him, no sign of ash on his clothes. Even from a distance, she could spot that no-good look of a man with something to hide. She exhaled, letting the moment go. The seeming slowness fell away, and she decided she had imagined it.

“I bet he knows something.” Rin gestured to the figure now bolting toward the cover of trees.

Isi nodded. They all ran, ducked between two cottages, and emerged facing the wood, no one in sight. Isi paused, her head cocked, and Rin guessed she was feeling something tangible in the air, listening to what images the wind brought her.

“Another house, through the trees. He’s in there.”

“Let me go first,” said Finn.

“Not a chance,” said Enna. “You stay with Isi.”

She ran ahead, her white shift outlining her form against the night. Rin had stuck on her boots but still wore only a shift too, the cool air creeping up her legs and bringing out goose bumps. They followed Enna through trees and tree shadows until the darkness peeled back and the gray outline of a roof poked through the gloom. As one they slowed, creeping as they neared. Rin could make out the little house now—wood, no windows, one door in front. Enna moved faster than the others, and Rin suspected she was determined to put herself in front of Isi in case of danger. Finn did the same, walking now between Isi and Dasha and slightly ahead.

Rin quickened her pace, gaining on Enna.

“Rin,” Dasha said with warning.

The sound of her whispered name tingled through Rin, made her whole body more aware of the danger. That man might be the one who tried to roast them in their beds, and he might burst through that door and burn them like Geric, like Brynn.

She stepped from heel to toe in fluid motion, balancing herself from her pelvis outward, mindful of twigs and leaves. Her passage nearly silent, she aimed to get to the house first. Perhaps she was not powerful like Finn, Enna, and Dasha, but Rin yearned to show Isi that she was worthwhile in some way so she could stay with the fire sisters. If she got to the house first, she might warn Isi if the man was truly inside and if there were others.

Rin moved faster, but Enna would not be left behind and broke into a jog. Enna’s foot came down on a stick. The crack seemed to make the entire wood tremble. Rin froze. They all did, breaths held, feet midstep. The door did not open.

Enna exhaled softly and started to whisper, “I think—”

The door slammed against the house and a bolt fired from a crossbow. Rin felt a shout heave from her throat as she raced forward. Wind howled. Fire burst in the air, lighting the scene in a brief, eerie flash of orange. The man hollered and dropped the crossbow before he could reload, the weapon ablaze in his hands. Then Finn was upon him, yanking both the man’s hands behind his back. Rin glanced down at her own body, at the other girls—no sign of the bolt. She had a nudge of instinct to look high to her left, and by the light of the burning crossbow she saw the bolt stuck in a tree where the wind must have blown it off course.

“Back into the house,” said Enna.

“We won’t hurt you,” said Isi.

“I don’t think we can promise that exactly. But we won’t unless we have to.”

“We just have some questions,” Isi continued as if Enna had not spoken.

Finn pushed the man inside. Rin followed, last this time. She looked back at the bolt, stuck deep into a solid trunk. The wood was quiet and so dark. There could be others out there in the trees, pointing loaded weapons at her even now. Rin had never realized that the world was so full of sharp things, and how many people were eager to use them.

She turned her back on the night and hurried into the house, pulling the door fast behind her.

A small, mean fire sputtered in a hearth so full of ashes, Rin wondered the flames did not suffocate. By the halfhearted light, she could see the man’s face—he was old enough to be a grandfather, though she could not imagine that haggard face ever kissing a child. His hair was probably white, but so greasy it turned a mottled gray, and his beard grew patchy across his jaw. If he’d been a dog, Rin would have assumed he had the mange.

“Have a seat, sir.” Isi pointed to the room’s only chair, and he took it roughly, sitting down so hard the wood complained. Finn stood behind him. “I believe you aren’t the one who set fire to the inn to night—”

“Ha!” said the man.

“And I also believe you know who did. Who was it?”

The man spit on the floor. Enna shoved her way between Isi and the man.

“She asked you a question, and we’re not leaving until we get a good answer. So tell her, what do you know about the burning?”

He spit again on the floor, marking the hard-packed dirt with a splatter of wet.

“You just keep at it,” Enna said, folding her arms. “Spit all night and all day too. I don’t have to live in your slimy house.”

The man gathered more saliva in his throat, taking his time with it, making an unappetizing grinding sound before he pointed his lips at Enna’s face and spit. Before the spittle could reach Enna, wind flew between them, smearing the wet glop over his own face.

“Argh!” he yelled, scrubbing his cheeks with his soiled tunic.

Enna laughed, a surprised, ecstatic laugh that bounded out of her belly, and she exchanged pleased looks with Isi. Rin guessed that both of them had sent wind.

Then Enna was in the man’s face, holding his tunic by her fist. She stared straight into his eyes, and he blinked for the smoke. Because smoke was twisting out of his tunic above the spot where she grabbed him, curling into his face. Unease made lines around his mouth.

“I could fizzle your little abode into ash in the time it takes you to spit again. And I’d enjoy it. Are you starting to comprehend your situation?”

The man blinked rapidly, the gray plumes drifting through his lashes.

“I think you know that I don’t care two eggs for you or your saliva-strewn home, and the only reason I’ll leave it standing is if you give me a more interesting direction to go. So tell me—where?”

Rin could see the man was both angry and afraid, but he shrugged in an attempt to pretend indifference. “Doesn’t hurt me to tell you. She’ll want to see you, way I hear it. Go on to Kel, then. Go north across the border from Saxmer, that’s where her boys came from. You’re bound to find her. Or she’ll find you, the way I hear it.”

“She?” Isi frowned. “Who is she?”

“Who? The one who’ll fry you up for breakfast.”

“Not ringing a bell,” said Enna.

He spoke slowly, as if they were hard of hearing. “The queen of Kel. Imagine not knowing who it is wants you dead.”

“We’re being truthful with you, sir,” Isi said in her most regal voice. “I expect you to be the same.”

“I think he believes what he’s saying,” Rin whispered. It was one way she could be useful.

Isi gave Rin a curious look.

Enna leaned her hand on a small table, her attitude unimpressed. “And just how do
you
happen to be chummy with the queen of Kel?” He coughed as a tendril of smoke tickled his nose.

“Don’t know her myself. But I met a couple of her boys—they’d been staying in town, though they’re gone now, I’ll wager. They gave me gold to keep an eye out—didn’t know there’d be five of you, said there’d probably be two, and when I heard you were poking around last night at the inn, I told ’em. They made you a little wake-up present, did they? Wakey-wakey, little girls!”

The talking brought back his gall, and he laughed in Enna’s face, spit flying at her eyes. She blinked, and the small wood table beside her exploded into flame so hot it crumpled and died into a heap of cinders. A pool of water curled around the spot, cooling the remains and slicking the floor with ash. The man’s eyes widened, and he swallowed.

“If you follow us,” Enna said darkly, “or let her know we’re coming, that black greasy clump will be you. We have ways of knowing.” Rin could tell Enna was lying about that last part, but the man seemed convinced.

Then Enna smiled brightly. “Good evening to you, fine sir!”

The five of them walked toward the inn, Finn and Enna keeping an eye on the house until they were out of sight. Isi fell in next to Rin.

“You believe he was telling the truth?”

“He thought he was. I’m pretty sure.” Rin shrugged. “My brothers play a bluffing game, but a few years ago they stopped letting me join in, ’cause I never lost.”

“I wonder . . . do you think there’s something about tree-speaking that gives you a talent for seeing others more clearly?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I thought about what you said, how animals don’t care what people say and do. The same would be true of trees, I think. Why would they care or notice if a person lied?”