The Farwalker's Quest (2 page)

Humbly—won't you speak to me?

Zeke's eyes closed. Riveted, Ariel strained with him to hear a response. Only the rustle of leaves and the creak of branches reached her ears. Zeke's face fell. He turned his gaze back toward the dirt.

Feeling angry for her friend, Ariel stomped to his side. Still, she smiled inwardly. Zeke had opened a door for the brash idea tickling inside her.

“Maybe she just can't hear you,” she said. Drawing a deep breath, Ariel stepped onto a hump of root, braced her hand on the trunk, and boosted herself into the fork.

“What are you doing? Get down!” He jumped to his feet.

With all her weight on her belly, Ariel didn't have breath to answer. Her hands scrabbled across the bark. Gaining a hold, she wiggled higher until she could draw one knee into the fork and push herself up.

“Come on up,” she said, climbing more easily now. “It's not as hard as it looks.”

“It's disrespectful to climb trees!”

“It's disrespectful of her to ignore you, too. Let's get closer to her head. See if that helps.”

“You don't—Ariel! Stop!” Zeke came after her. She could hear his grunting as he strained past the fork.

“Come on,” she taunted. “Try singing up here, in her ears.”

“Trees don't have ears, you goof.”

“When trees talk to each other,” she said, “it seems to me like they do it up high.”

“Maybe they do,” Zeke allowed, breathless. He was gaining on her. “But that's different from a tree talking to us. They hear us the same up here as down there.”

“Then it can't hurt to try.”

“It'll hurt a lot if you fall!”

Ariel looked down. Already she was higher than she'd intended to go. All she had really hoped to do was distract Zeke and perhaps make him laugh. Now she felt the urge to climb higher. In fact, Ariel had the strangest sense that the tree wanted to be climbed. Gazing past Zeke at the earth below, she knew she ought to be scared. The fear wouldn't come. There was too much to hold on to, and the route beckoned.

Reassured, she clambered up past the tops of nearby saplings, past a snarl of dry leaves that had sheltered some squirrel. Zeke's protests grew.

As the branches became slender and frail, he grabbed one of her ankles.

“Ack, don't!” she cried. The space between her and the ground seemed to throb.

“What if a branch breaks? The wind's starting to blow. Come down.”

Ariel tightened her grip. While she was here, why not look around? Swiveling west, she could see the meadow and the creek running through it. Beyond that were thatched and tiled roofs, the docks, and the sea.

Zeke exclaimed. Ariel peeked down at her friend. One of his hands flattened against the trunk. His mouth dropped open.

“I hear her!” He turned a huge grin toward Ariel. “It worked! It really—I don't know why, but—” His grin faded. Head cocked, he listened again, brow furrowed. “She wanted us to come up … ?”

A hand might almost have tugged on Ariel's ear, twisting her head to the east. Braced for a squirrel or bug to leap into her face, she leaned to peer around the trunk in that direction. Her eyes widened.

“What is it?” Zeke called, climbing once more. “There's something up here, huh?”

Ariel tipped her head from side to side, afraid the bright brass surprise might vanish.

“Come see for yourself!” Heart tripping, she shimmied a few inches farther around. She wanted to reach it before he did.

Ariel had never seen a telling dart, but she had heard plenty of stories. The brass shaft was no larger around than the handle of a carved wooden spoon. Its tail bore three slender blades like the feathered fletches of an arrow. The dart had embedded itself in the underside of an upswept branch. Where the tip pierced
the tree, golden sap bled. A fly struggled in the sticky drip. Although the dart itself must have been old, it could not have been stuck in the tree for very long.

Excitement bubbled into Ariel's throat. She reached up from her perch with one hand. The metal shaft felt cold, but its scored surface faintly buzzed under her fingers. Engraved marks circled the dart. The barrel would be hollow, or so she'd been told. Whoever had sent it might have slipped in nuggets of silver or gold, a ruby or two, or something even more priceless—a secret message.

She tugged. The dart didn't budge.

“It's stuck,” she told Zeke as he climbed up beside her.

“Let me try.”

Ariel gave way. She hated to admit it, but his hands were stronger than hers. The two shuffled awkwardly, trading places.

It took a few tries, but Zeke yanked the shaft free. Clinging against a sudden strong gust, they inspected it together. Ariel fought an urge to snatch the dart from Zeke's fingers. She marveled at the tiny bright scratches in the metal. Several she recognized as the signs of a trade: the Windmaster's
, the Tree-Singer's
, and of course the
that marked the home of a Healtouch. Others were strange. But she knew they could speak, the way different flags on a mast could alert other boaters to schooling fish or trouble back home.

“I didn't think you could still find stuff like this anymore,” she said. Darts that could talk were only one of the marvels lost after the Blind War and now known only in legend.

“Me either,” said Zeke. “I wonder how it got up here. This isn't like finding it in a pile of old garbage. But I didn't think anyone still knew how to send them.” They both gazed northeast, from whence the dart seemed to have come. Nothing
interrupted the sea of trees but a passing bird and the distant faces of mountains.

“I thought telling darts were supposed to find the people they were sent to, anyway, not just stick in any old tree,” Ariel said. “And why—”

“Shhh.” Zeke cocked his head.

Ariel started to protest before she realized what he was doing. Sure enough, he took a breath and softly sang a few words she didn't recognize.

In a moment, he said, “It's been here since just before Thawfest—that night we had the bad storm, remember? It must have gone astray in the wind, or because of the lightning.”

“That was only seven or eight weeks ago. How do you know?”

Zeke gestured to the tree.

Jealousy hummed along Ariel's arms. She told herself they were just getting tired of gripping branches. Yet she hesitated to climb down. Once they were back on the ground, some magic spell might wear off and their discovery prove to be only a twig.

“Let me see it a minute.”

To her surprise, Zeke handed her the dart without argument. “Let's go down, though,” he said. “We can look at it better out of the wind.”

Agreeing, she considered her pockets. None seemed deep or trustworthy enough, so she slid the dart, tail first, into her boot. It rested snug against her anklebone.

Ariel led their descent, which proved harder than the trip up. The handholds and footholds seemed farther apart. Gusts shook the branches.

Halfway to the ground, she heard a scrape overhead—the sound of a boot missing its mark. Instinctively she hugged the trunk. Zeke's arms and legs, in a tangle, fell past. Ariel screeched as his flailing limbs struck one branch and slid off another.

Before her eyes, the tree reached to catch him—or tried to. Ariel never would have believed it if she hadn't seen it herself. Not even Tree-Singers claimed that trees could move, except with the wind. Yet as Zeke hurtled toward the earth, a long branch near the ground swept around toward him.

It was wood, though, not an arm. It couldn't bend far enough. The branch tangled with one of Zeke's legs without catching before springing back straight. An instant later, Zeke hit the earth.

His cry of shock and pain felt like a spike through Ariel's skin. As loud as it was, his yelp didn't cover the crack that accompanied it.

“Zeke!” Throwing caution aside, she scrambled down, calling his name and praying his head had not broken like an egg on a rock.

Her feet hit the ground. He was breathing, at least: sobbing gasps rose and fell. Nothing oozed from his head.

“Are you okay?” She jumped the last distance. Pain stabbed in both of her knees. She ignored them and rushed to her friend. He hadn't tried to sit up. “Say something!”

“She tried to catch me. Did you see that?” Zeke's face was screwed tight against pain. Tears leaked from his eyes despite his sturdiest blinking, but Ariel recognized what was meant as a smile.

“Yes! But the branch didn't reach. Does anything hurt?” Her eyes scoured his body. No blood soaked his clothes.

“It slowed me down.” He wheezed. “I still hurt my arm,
though. Kinda landed on it.” He clutched his right forearm tight to his ribs. A root humped nearby from the dirt. Ariel guessed he'd landed atop it, his bone snapping over the root like kindling across a bent knee.

“I bet you broke it.” She resisted the itch to touch his hurt arm. “Can you move it?”

He puffed. “Don't want to find out.”

“Okay. Just catch your breath.” She thought rapidly. Ariel knew how to help broken bones, but most of the things Zeke needed weren't here in the woods. Unable to keep her helpless hands off him, she carefully petted his shoulder. His ragged breathing relaxed.

“I can run and get help while you wait,” she said, “or I can help you walk back.”

Though every motion made him wince, he insisted on walking. Ariel tucked herself under his good shoulder. Together they stood, Zeke sucking air between gritted teeth. That evidence of his pain made Ariel's stomach lurch.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked. “It might be better if—”

“I'm okay.”

They made their slow way down the path toward the village. To Ariel's relief, the tension she could feel in Zeke's shoulder and ribs eased soon after they'd started.

“It's kinda gone numb,” he explained.

As they entered the meadow, he halted. “Wait. You didn't drop it, did you?”

“Oh!” Her fingers poked into her boot, where the forgotten metal dart had grown warm until she could hardly feel it. “I've got it.” She eyed her friend hunched in pain. A generous impulse moved her mouth. “You want it? It was in
your
tree.”

No fair!
insisted a more selfish voice in her head.

“No,” Zeke said. “You found it. And I got what I wanted.”

“A broken arm?”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on.” He shuffled on without her aid.

Ashamed of her relief, Ariel caught up. “Was it hurting your tree? Is that why she stopped talking to you?”

Zeke shook his head. “I think she … Well, I don't understand everything she tells me. But the dart is for you. You'll take better care of it, or something like that. And, Ariel …” He gave her an odd sideways look. Maybe it was just shock and pain, but she had never seen him so somber.

He said, “My tree thinks whatever that dart has to say is important.”

Zeke insisted he could walk by himself, so Ariel retrieved the pollywogs on their way back to the village. When she lifted the bucket, the creatures' frantic swirling seemed to echo both her stomach and the increasing wind.