The Farwalker's Quest (14 page)

“All right.” Taking charge of their rope reins, she goaded the horse and tugged on one side to turn him. “If you won't pick a direction, I will.”

Smoke stung Ariel's nostrils. Skirting a blackberry patch, she and Zeke nearly collided with an outhouse just past the brambles. They sidled into its shadow while their eyes picked out the rundown roadhouse nearby. Little more than a hut, it looked abandoned, but chimney smoke lay in the air along with an aroma of breakfast.

A blast of longing hit Ariel. A building with a roof spoke a different language from the one that had moaned to her daily of earthen beds and cold rain.

“If we told them we were stolen, wouldn't they help us?” she pleaded.

“Why should they?” Zeke crushed her quick hopes. “If Elbert says he's our father, how could we prove he was lying?”

Ariel stared at the empty promise of safety. A whimper leaked from her throat.

“Look.” Zeke pointed. “A trail.” A narrow path curled uphill into the trees on the far side of the roadhouse. Ariel's heart resounded as if she had known it would be there.

“If we take it, though,” Zeke worried, “we might be easier to follow.”

“It won't matter if we don't get farther away—and that's how!” She could no longer stand the feeling that Scarl and Elbert would soon grasp at their backs. She smacked her heels on the horse.

Startled, Orion leaped into the yard of the roadhouse, nearly leaving his riders behind. Ariel folded low and kept pumping her feet. Zeke clutched her, barely hanging on. Orion tore past the roadhouse toward the trail, his hooves thudding.

A pair of startled eyes may have appeared in the hut's lone window as they passed. By the time that uncertain impression filtered into Ariel's mind, the observer could have seen little but receding haunches.

Galloping felt glorious and terrifying. The only other time Ariel had gone so fast on Orion, she'd been stuffed in a bag. Branches reached to scratch them from alongside the overgrown path. The horse's hooves clattered on rocks. Too late, Ariel realized the noise might echo all the way to the Finders' ears. She decided she didn't care. As long as Orion could run, the space between them grew wider. Even Elbert couldn't travel as fast as a galloping horse.

They ran until sunlight crept down the hills. The horse heaved, nostrils flared. Finally his riders let him slow. The trail twisted through foothills, trees lining it most of the time, for which Ariel was grateful. It would make them harder to spot from a distance.

“Now tell me, Zeke,” she said at last. “Why didn't anyone come with you?”

She felt him lay his cheek against her shoulder.

“I don't want to tell you,” he sighed. “If I don't, when we get home, maybe none of it will be true.”

Her throat clenched. Finally she swallowed the lump. “My mother—?” she whispered.

Zeke circled his arms around her. His head didn't lift off her shoulder.

“She's dead, Ariel. One of them killed her.”

A buzz slid between Ariel's ears and her brain. It blocked the sound of hoofbeats and Zeke's nearby breathing. It drowned the cheerful chirping of birds. It could not, however, silence words she'd already heard.

Her mind found a crack she might slip through to escape. “No. You didn't see it. You couldn't. It was dark. She—” Her voice broke.

Zeke just hugged harder.

If only he had protested! If he had repeated himself or told her to stop it, she could have believed he was lying or teasing or wrong. His silence wiped away hope. For days she had felt as though vital juices were leaking out through a hole in her chest. Now the hollow space that remained collapsed hard, crushing what was left of her heart.

The buzzing took over Ariel's thoughts for a while. When it finally faded, she realized that Zeke had been speaking.

“… under the dock. He didn't know that I saw, but I did.”

“What?” she said crossly. “I didn't hear you.”

Zeke shifted behind her. “Which part?”

“Any of it. Whatever you said. What was under the dock?”

He took a deep breath. “Never mind. We don't have to talk about it.”

Clop, clop, clop
rose from Orion's hooves below them.

“But why didn't anyone come after me?” Like a fishhook,
that puzzle tugged on Ariel's mind. It wouldn't let her sink back into the buzzing. “Even … even if … what you said before.”

“Nobody knew you were stolen at first.”

“But my mother …”

“They thought she'd gone with you. That's what Elbert told some of the Reapers that night—that he offered to take her along, too, and that swayed her. She wouldn't worry if she was traveling with you.”

“Where was she?” The dull words formed by themselves.

“She—her body washed up under one of the docks.”

The notion was so fantastic, Ariel could pretend it was one of Storian's tales. A silly story, that's what it was, about someone who didn't swim as well as her mother. Ariel did not need to cry. Tears were for girls whose mothers were dead.

Zeke added, “Windmaster found her on the late-morning tide.”

A flare of anger seared up through her guts. “But if Windmaster knew, why didn't anyone figure out Elbert's lie? And chase us?”

“By then it was too late.”

“You caught up! You found us!”

“That's not what I meant. It was too late for anyone to be brave enough.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “The Fishers are brave. And your dad—”

“Don't.” What felt like Zeke's forehead dropped against the back of her head. “My dad is … it's like he's sick or sleepwalking. It's like the whole of Canberra Docks got stuck in a bad dream and they're too scared to even wake up.”

Unable to add up this terrible math, Ariel just waited,
numb. By then she knew that awful answers came by themselves, whether she sought them or not.

A few heaving breaths later, Zeke spoke again.

“The Finders burned the sycamore when they left that night. My maple, too. She tried to speak to me a little before she—” His voice cracked. He swallowed. “They must have used flame-fix. The Flame-Mage wouldn't admit that she'd traded any to Elbert or Scarl. But one of them must have put something like that on the trees. By the time I saw the sycamore in the morning, it was all black and twisted, and grown-ups were wailing or stumbling around in a daze.” A few more words shoved out of his throat, but Ariel could not understand them. They were too swaddled with tears.

They rocked with Orion's motion, each alone in their shock. A bitter slime rose from Ariel's heart to her mouth. She was glad to consider the horrible fate of the trees. It kept her mind from the black, buzzing corner where she'd stuffed any thought of her mother. The idea of burning a tree whipped Ariel's world upside down. For all of their cruelty, Scarl and Elbert still had been men. But only lightning or wildfire or other insane things could burn a tree still growing out of the ground. A person who did it must be as alien as the creatures that lived in the dark depths of the sea.

Ariel shifted one hand to cover Zeke's fingers. There was still another person nearby who was not such a monster. It was the only comfort she could give or receive.

But sharp thoughts began piercing her mind. Each sliced straight through to her heart: no more tender glances, no good night kisses, no arms to draw Ariel close. No skirts rustling at dawn to call her from bed. No and no. None. The no's hit her one after another, each knocking her down a terrible,
bone-breaking stair. Each jolt left her breathless. No mother. No home.

“Don't cry anymore,” Zeke whispered after a while.

Lost in
no
, Ariel had not been aware of her tears. She hadn't even known she was still riding a horse. The road had been lost behind glimpses of a mother who no longer awaited in a home that no more could be found.

“It'll be okay,” Zeke added. He gulped, draining his words of conviction. “Someday.”

“No!” Filled so full of that word, Ariel had to voice it. “No, it won't! Never!” Some of her pain squeezed out as anger. If he had not been behind her, she would have hit him. Zeke would go home to two parents. She'd lost the only one she still had.

She clenched her hands to her chest and curled over her stomach, not caring if she fell off the horse. A tuft of mane muffled her wail. “You can find a different tree!” she cried. “I can't find a different mother!”

A distant part of her cringed. Zeke didn't deserve her anger. Her heart turned away from that whisper of conscience, not able to heed it right now.

“No, I can't,” he replied quietly. “But I know what you mean. I'm so sorry.”

She let his words, which confused her, dissolve in her grief. Too stricken to make room for anyone else's pain, she didn't want to understand what he'd just said.

Miles passed beneath her, unknown and unnoticed. Eventually, drained to dregs, Ariel looked up and unfolded her limbs. She hated her own arms and legs for daring to ache. They seemed to be mocking her heart.

She twisted to look at Zeke. Anxiety sculpted his face.

“Why did you come?” she wondered.

“Because.” His eyes slid away from hers.

“Because I promised. And because nobody else would.”

Hollow, she waited to be filled with more of Zeke's horrible knowledge.

“The burning made everyone crazy,” he added. “It took hours before anyone noticed you and your mother were gone. And more till the Windmaster found … what he did. Then they knew you'd been stolen but they pretended you weren't. Even my—everyone. They were scared what else might happen, I guess, and they blamed your mother for ignoring the sycamore's advice. Besides, without the help of the trees, nobody knew which way to look.”

“You found me,” she murmured, grateful. What she'd heard made his presence behind her even more of a marvel.

“They sacrificed you,” he growled. “Just like Fishers throw flowers into the sea during Fallfest. ‘Please don't drown us this winter; here's some flowers instead.' And then they wanted to forget. That's what the maple tree said.”

“Your maple? I thought they bur—”

“They did!” He shouted, hurting Ariel's ear. “But I ran there right away when I saw the smoke. She—” His voice gurgled. “The sycamore burned first, I guess. When I got to my maple, she hadn't left the world yet. She cried that I should help you. I didn't know how, but I promised I would. She told me to listen, that voices would help. Then she … she faded. Only scorched wood was left. And I'll hate the Flame-Mage forever. Forever!”

“I'm sorry, Zeke,” Ariel whispered, frightened by the savage tone in his voice. “Sorry for everything. Except I'm not sorry
you came. I am so, so glad. Even if they catch us and kill us, I am so glad to see you again first.”

“I won't let them,” Zeke snarled, with more outrage and fury than a boy not quite thirteen years old should be able to hold. Ariel believed him.

They never startled Orion into another gallop that day, but they trotted and walked many miles. They stopped only for water and to munch fiddleheads from a thicket of ferns. As their path climbed and day faded to night, they seemed to near heaven. Peaks cloaked the horizon. Stars pricked the black sky. Zeke pulled a blanket from his pack and wrapped it as best he could around both of them to ward off the chill alpine air.

Orion's hooves began dragging. Repeatedly one rider or the other jerked awake from a doze. Finally Ariel snapped alert to find the horse at a standstill, chomping grass. Waking behind her with a start, Zeke fell off into a hummock of springy salal.

“We've got to get off and sleep,” Ariel mumbled. She slipped down beside Zeke and they tied the horse to a tree. Orion hung his head from the rope, trembling.

“Wait,” Ariel said. Their mount's clear exhaustion and the night sounds of the forest roused her fear of pursuit. “We should get farther off the trail.”

Zeke turned bleary eyes down the path, a paler swath in the night.

“They can't catch up that fast just walking.”

Ariel tried to remember if she'd seen animal troughs at the roadhouse. The Finders couldn't ride cows, but she didn't think they would hesitate to steal a horse if they found one.

“You caught up when they had the horse,” she said, fretting.

Zeke lay down, flapping a corner of his blanket to show he would share it.

“I had a boat,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. “And help figuring out where to go.” Before Ariel's next question, he slid into sleep. Yawning, she gave up and snuggled against him, unable to resist the same dragging tide.

Though nightmares haunted both Ariel and Zeke, only hunger finally broke through their exhaustion to wake them.

When she opened her eyes, Ariel's brain took a moment to find her. Her first thought was a wish to relieve her tight bladder—despite a man at the end of her leash. With a flash of joy, she recalled that the rope and the man had both been cast off. Memories kindled, and her joy slid quickly to fear.

She bolted upright, searching for hunters like a small animal might.

“It's okay,” came Zeke's voice.

The loss of her mother crashed down on her next. To endure it, she focused tightly on the world here, now, outside her. Her attention fell on the afternoon tint of the light.

Ariel moaned. “We shouldn't have slept so long.”

“Too late now.” Zeke was digging in his knapsack, which looked nearly empty. He sighed. “All I've got left are some walnuts.”

Ariel took her share eagerly and cracked the shells with a rock. Only then did she realize that Orion was gone.

At her cry of despair, Zeke nodded glumly.