Rootbound (The Elemental Series, Book 5) (4 page)

“And if there is no training?” Because who the hell would I ask to show me the ropes? Cassava? I think not.

“You will burn out your powers, leaving you an empty husk.”

“Oh, well if that’s all.” I drew a breath and brushed a hand over my face, wiping off rain and sweat.

“Do not take this lightly,” she chastised.

I held a hand out to her. “I’m not. I just . . . I’m exhausted.”

Cactus stumbled up to us, his brows drawn in two deep slashes. He raised his voice to be heard over the howl of the wind. “Why did you do that? You could have killed someone.”

His unsaid words were that I could have killed him too.

“But I didn’t kill anyone. Did I?” I put a hand on my spear, balancing myself against a particularly hard gust of wind, the rain slapping at us—at this elevation, more ice than rain. Around us branches snapped in half and were flung with a violence that seemed as if the trees were attempting to spear us. Several landed at my feet, plunged into the ground like fallen arrows. From above, a squirrel chattered incessantly as if that would somehow slow the pace of the frenzied storm whipping around us. Or maybe he was thinking the same thing as me. That Cactus talked when he had no idea of what he spoke.

“Didn’t think about humans, did you?” Cactus stood and scanned the horizon, the accusation clear in his voice.

I narrowed my eyes. “Nothing happened, Cactus. And even if I had dropped off that edge, anyone foolish enough to risk being in a storm of this size deserves what they get. In particular the humans.” Anger coursed through me again, lighting a flame I thought I’d banked by throwing my weight around.

His eyes flicked to me and then away. “You won’t scare me from you, Lark.”

I threw my hands in the air, fully and totally exasperated. Making my way to the deck, I ducked under and sat against what I thought of as my pillar. Peta didn’t ease off the side of my leg as I crept through the short space.

Cactus ducked down, and I pointed a finger at him. “No. Go up to the house. I don’t want you in here.”

His jaw ticked and he spun on his heel, a flick of pebbles spraying out behind him, he moved so fast.

His feet on the deck pounded a steady thud that was gone swiftly. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around Peta, burying my face in her thick fur as a sigh escaped me. The warmth of her body and the steady rumble of her purr soothed me enough that I rested.

The storm raged, lashing the deck until it creaked and the wood sounded as though it held on by mere splinters. None of that mattered as fatigue rolled over me, pulling me under its spell completely. For the first time in days, I let myself sleep, falling into a place I feared like no other, and only because I clung to my familiar.

“I am here, Lark. I will not leave you,” she whispered into my ear as she curled around me, sharing with me not only her warmth but her strength too.

My dreams were fitful and full of death, blood, violence and an urgency I couldn’t place. The world was safe. The demons defeated. Yet the sense of time slipping through my fingers remained.

The feeling that I was missing something integral, something I needed to understand, yet couldn’t see was overwhelming.

What could possibly be driving the emotions that fired my adrenaline and jerked me awake, sweating and panting for breath? The darkness disoriented me and for a terrifying soul-sucking moment, I was entombed, held by man-made material I couldn’t escape, once more in an oubliette.

I lurched forward, stumbling over Peta’s sleeping form. She let out a cry, but I barely acknowledged her, barely recalled she was with me, so turned around as I was in my mind. Believing I was once again confined, swallowed by a prison I couldn’t fight.

Scrambling on my hands and knees, I spilled out from under the deck and onto the hard-packed dirt. Fear nipped at me, and I drove my hands into the loose earth, letting the power slowly fill my soul, and drive the haunting ghosts back. No one could take me while I held the earth’s power.

Except Blackbird. A shudder rippled down my spine. Blackbird . . . Raven . . . one and the same. My younger brother had betrayed our family, destroying so much of the Rim, I wasn’t sure it would ever come back.

A soft wind blew through the trees, and the sharp tang of pitch and decaying earth filled my lungs. I drew it in and out, slow and even as I calmed my racing heart. This was the smell of home. The fresh scent coaxed the fear out of me piece by piece. The moon hung heavy over the treetops, its light reflecting off the tips, tinting them silver in the darkness. In the aftermath of the storm, the world was peaceful, clean, and safe once more.

Peta trotted to my side. “I hear Cactus snoring. We could leave him and be home in a matter of hours.”

I grinned at her, though my lips wobbled. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

She snorted and I took a step away from the cabin. I paused and looked back, the wide black windows staring at me still. How he could sleep in there, I had no idea. I shuddered and hurried away.

The trees and darkness away from the cabin didn’t bother me, not a bit.

“Tell me again what you know of Ash’s disappearance.” I pushed a low-hanging branch out of my way.

“Nothing more than what we both know. He hasn’t been back for a year, despite Bella lifting the banishment—”

“That has only been a few weeks. Not long enough for him to hear about it,” I said.

“But Griffin couldn’t find him,” Peta said. “That is what Blossom said. They sent Griffin and he didn’t find a trace of Ash anywhere.”

I gripped the haft of my spear a little harder. I knew Peta didn’t actually know anything more than me. But I needed to ask the questions out loud because if they reverberated inside my head any louder, or longer, I would surely go mad with the sound of them.

With the battle over and the world safe, I had no distraction when it came to him. No reason to not think about him and where he was.

We approached the Rim from the eastern edge. I paused for a moment, running my hands over the trees. This was where my first challenge as an Ender had started. The eastern Rim carried a deadly lung burrower that spread through our Terraling family like a wildfire in the heat of summer. We’d lost at least half our family, and all the trained Enders. The only ones left had been Ash, Blossom, a few other trainees, and myself.

“The past, I see it in your face and feel it through our connection,” Peta said. “One day, you will have to let it go.”

She was right. I knew she was. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened to our world if I’d not been pushed to the limit of my abilities. I shook my head. None of that mattered now. Peta was right; it was time to put the past behind me for good.

I picked up my pace. First to the Rim to check in with Bella and make sure she was safe. She would have info on Ash’s last whereabouts, I was sure. Or maybe Griffin would have something, a lead for me to go on.

Then I would be off to find Ash, wherever he was. With my goals set firmly in my mind, I felt my heart settle into an easy rhythm. The Rim was quiet this deep in the night. Movement here and there alerted me to the Rim guards, but they saw me and let me pass without question, only tipping their heads and raising their weapons in a silent salute.

Peta was still in her housecat form and she leapt up to me without warning. I scrambled to catch her as she laughed. “We have to work on your reflexes.”

“I’m not a cat, Peta.”

“More’s the pity. Imagine the fun we could have.” She winked. I shook my head and walked straight across the main section of the Rim. Houses sat in a two-mile-long narrow oval with the Spiral at the center. The destroyed Enders Barracks—six months after the battle and it stood as it had then; burned out and desolate—sat to one side of the Spiral. The seat of power for Terralings, the Spiral had been my home for a short while as a child. Not that I cared about that anymore, but I needed a place to sleep. With the Enders Barracks burnt out, that left the Spiral or my old home at the far edge of the Rim. I paused, thinking.

A flutter of feathers and the thump of hooves hitting the ground spun me around. I knew only one creature who had a combination of hooves and wings.

The Pegasus stomped his foot, and snorted as he flung his head up and down, which sent his mane flipping about like a spray of water. “It’s about time you got here.”

“Where have you been, Shazer?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and he dropped his head over my shoulder. The unspoken question was why hadn’t he been with us in the battle against the demons.

“I was behind you on your cross-country run, decided you’d come home eventually and . . . I’ve been looking for him,” he said softly. Him. Ash.

I tightened my hold. “Thank you. Have you—”

“No.” He stepped back and shook his head. “There’s been no sign of him anywhere. It’s like he just disappeared.”

“That’s not possible. Even if he were dead, there would be sign of him,” Peta said. I drew in a slow breath. “He’s not dead.”

Shazer and Peta shared a look I didn’t like. As if they were adults and I the child who didn’t understand the ways of the world.

“I need to sleep. Then I will start my search for him in the morning. I’m no good to him running on empty.” I said.

I turned from my original path to the Spiral, and headed for the western edge of the Rim. I doubted anyone else had taken over my old home. Bella and her daughter, River, had lived in it during my banishment, even though Bella, at the time, was the heir to the throne. Seeing as she’d given birth to a half-breed, people weren’t sure if they wanted her as their potential new queen. Even if she’d told them the child wasn’t her choice initially, that River was the result of rape, the truth would have made no difference.

With Peta on my shoulder and Shazer at my side, I made my way without incident across the length of the Rim. Which for me was saying something.

My old home was a redwood tree, the apartment fifty feet up the trunk. Using the pulley and weight system, I was at the doorway in a matter of seconds. I glanced down at Shazer. “Are you staying then?”

He wasn’t really a familiar, not like Peta. More like a gift from the mother goddess. A tool I was to use to accomplish the tasks she gave me.

“Seriously, you ask me that after I waited around for twenty-five years for you?”

I grinned. “Had to check.”

Peta dropped off my shoulder and trotted into the small apartment. “It smells like Bella’s perfume.”

I drew in a breath. It did indeed. I stripped as I walked toward the bed, dropping clothes and weapons with thuds and clinks, and with each step, I shed some of the anxiety.

I was home. Safe. I would find Ash and we would finally be together. Maybe I would never have a real home again, but I wouldn’t be alone.

I hit the big bed and rolled under the covers, burying my face in the thick pillows. Bella’s perfume permeated everything, and I let it calm me. As if my sister were here, watching over me. I closed my eyes. Peta curled up with me, and I passed out.

What felt like only a few short heartbeats later, the sun knocked on my eyelids. “Worm shit,” I muttered. “I finally get some sleep without dreams and it lasts less time than it takes to close my eyes.”

Peta grumbled something about being hungry. I stretched, the luxury of taking my time something I’d not had . . . since before I’d become an Ender over twenty-five years before. I sat up and stared at the place I’d called home.

Women’s clothes taken from the human world were strung out everywhere. Jeans, tank tops, shoes, bras and panties. With the clothes were other human trinkets, paintings, makeup, a box of black and white cookies. I smiled and stood, stretching again, feeling each vertebrae in my back pop as I breathed through the movement.

From behind me came a nicker. I spun to see Shazer curled up on what was a new addition since I’d lived here: a wide balcony. He flipped his lips at me and nickered again. “Nice view.”

I rolled my eyes and picked up my clothes, putting them back on, piece by piece. They were also human clothes, but at least they fit: jeans, T-shirt, and sports bra. That would change once I was back in the Spiral. They would have extra clothes for me. Ender clothes.

I tied my long hair in a loose ponytail and headed for the front door. I caught a glimmer of my reflection in a full-length mirror. I paused and stared. How long since I’d last seen myself? Almost as many years as I’d been banished.

Six feet tall, blond hair, one eye green, the other gold. I didn’t look any older than I had in my late twenties; elementals aged rather well. But at the same time, I didn’t recognize myself. The scarring down my one arm where I’d been branded by the lava whip in the Pit, and the subsequent healing from the mother goddess had left a long tattoo. Though it wasn’t actually a tattoo, that was the closest word to describe it. Maybe brand would be better. The pattern was simple: a long curving vine of dark green bearing deep purple thorns that dug into my flesh. I ran a finger down it. Sometimes, if I concentrated, I could almost feel the thorns, and with them the heat of the lava whip.

Even with all that, it was my eyes I was drawn to. “How different am I now, Peta, than when you first met me?”

She sat at my feet and her eyes met mine in the reflection. “By the time we were bonded, you were already not the girl who’d started her journey here. And because of that, I cannot say how much you’ve changed.”

I nodded. “Doesn’t matter.” But a part of me thought it did. What I’d screamed into the storm stuck with me. I was no longer that wide-eyed girl who’d left the Rim in search of a cure for the lung burrowers. I was no longer the girl who’d fought Requiem in the Deep. Or the girl who’d faced Fiametta in the Pit. Or the girl who so badly wanted her father’s love and acceptance.

That girl . . . she was the core of me, but she was weak. And I knew better than anyone that weakness killed faster than a bolt of lightning while you stood in a mud puddle.

“Let’s go see Bella.” I scooped my toes under the haft of my spear and flipped it up. Before I could catch it, Peta shifted, jumped into the air and caught it with her mouth. She spit it out to me and I caught it.