The Farwalker's Quest Page 21

  Ariel listened to Scarl’s voice through the wall as he murmured something to Zeke. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She didn’t say more. She had realized, too late, that she had no business touching this wound.

  They returned to the front room for a lunch of fried eggs and fish. Ariel giggled at the baggy pants tied onto Zeke and he mocked her dress. The clean-shaven Finder teased them both. Staring at her traveling companions, with soft clothes hugging her own freshly washed body, Ariel felt as if all of them had stepped into different skins.

  Wondering who these new people were, she watched Scarl’s eyes follow Mirayna. Plainly, this woman was the reason Scarl did anything, including killing Elbert and bringing Ariel here. She noticed, too, that Mirayna only pretended to eat. That, along with their whispered talk, tipped a decision Ariel didn’t realize she’d been trying to make.

  “Zeke, give me my needle.”

  Her friend paused, fish bones stretched between his fingers. His glance bounced off Scarl before landing on her.

  “Now?”

  She nodded. Curious, the adults watched Zeke dig greasy fingers into the end of his splint. He drew out the needle and gave it to her.

  “A knitting needle?” asked Mirayna.

  “Not exactly.” Some of the charcoal had rubbed away, but Ariel could still make out the symbols. She passed it to Scarl. “I can’t make amazing things like Mirayna, but I made this.”

  “What’s it f—?” Scarl turned the needle. Catching sight of the symbols, he froze.

  “It’s a copy of the telling dart before Elbert took it,” she explained.

  The Finder pulled a long breath, let it out, and set down the needle very carefully.

  Ariel’s face puckered. She had expected him to be glad. Maybe she shouldn’t have revealed her secret.

  Rising from his chair, he circled the table. Ariel drew back as he reached for her head. Taking it in both hands, he planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “That’s for being so clever,” he said. “I wish I had something better to give you.”

  “More nut butter,” Zeke suggested.

  Scarl laughed and held Ariel at arm’s length. She blushed, unable to withstand his warm gaze.

  “And for not telling me sooner, I’d like to shake you,” the Finder added. A light scowl appeared with his grin. “We’ll call it even for now.”

  Relieved by that glimpse of a Scarl she knew, Ariel smiled.

  “What do the symbols mean?” asked Mirayna, picking up the bone needle.

  Scarl returned to his seat. “I’m hoping my grandfather can tell us.”

  Mirayna’s brow wrinkled. “He’s not here.”

  At Scarl’s exclamation, she explained that a man had arrived days ago—a Storian, if the rumors were true. Scarl’s grandfather had decided to take a journey with him, as unlikely as that seemed for two such old men. Mirayna thought they had headed toward Libros.

  Scarl slumped in his chair and tapped his fingers on the table. Then he reached for the needle. “Ariel, would you entrust me with this? I can follow and catch them, but I want to keep you”—he caught himself, continuing—“the two of you far from Mason.”

  “No point in tangling your tongue,” said Mirayna. “It’s obvious who your Farwalker is. I could easily copy her symbols to a bit of wood for you. Except I don’t really want to help any of you leave.”

  Relief washed Scarl’s face. “Ah, good, yes. A copy will work.” To Ariel, he added, “I can leave you here, with people I can rely on. You’ll be safer out of his reach.”

  Dismay flooded Ariel. “No, if you go, I want to go with you.” Grasping for words that might alter the Finder’s stubborn expression, she added, “Ask your Tree-Singer what she thinks of us going together.”

  “Mason is a Tree-Singer,” he muttered. “I’m not sure I can fully trust her on this.”

  “I could ask the stones,” Zeke offered. “If any here will talk to me.”

  “Stones?” asked Mirayna.

  “Please, Zeke, if you’ll try,” Scarl agreed. “Otherwise, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Mirayna’s face fell. “So soon?”

  Scarl reached for her hand, but his eyes gave his only reply.

  Ariel played with the bones on her plate and tried not to feel cheated. Once she’d given herself over to becoming a Farwalker, the dart, with its mystery, had taken on new importance to her. It seemed the one compensation she’d somehow traded, unwittingly, for her mother and all of her old life. It was a poor substitute, but she wanted all the more fiercely to claim it. The message borne by the symbols was for her, her alone, and Scarl couldn’t take away this last consolation, no matter how good his reason.

  She secretly vowed not to let him leave without her.

  CHAPTER

  30

  After lunch, the Finder spent a long while with his glass. It seemed to tell him that the remains of Gust’s band also had left the Drymere, but he decided they did not lurk near enough to be an immediate threat. That resolved, Mirayna insisted that all her guests visit the Healtouch. She arched her eyebrows at Scarl and said, “I’m not feeding any of you again until you’ve had attention from her.” So he led his young friends across the small village.

  “Oh, lass,” murmured Pres Healtouch, when she examined the ridges where Ariel’s arm and cheek had been split. Scarl had asked the wiry old woman to look after Ariel first, and the healer scowled at him now. “You deserve a whipping if this girl was in your care when this happened.”

  “I know, Pres. I feel guilty enough as it is.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll wear scars,” Pres told her. “There’s nothing more I can do now.”

  Ariel fingered the wound on her face. “Can I see?” she asked, pointing to a small looking glass on the worktable.

  Pres hesitated, but reached for the glass. When her eyes fell on it, Ariel exclaimed. It wasn’t the pink scar that shocked her. She barely recognized herself. Too many days without quite enough food had thinned her cheeks, which also bore marks left by fear, grief, and strain. Ariel looked at least two years older.

  “Don’t feel bad.” Pres patted her. “You’re still young. It may fade.”

  Ariel glanced at Zeke. She’d seen his face every day, unlike her own, so she hadn’t noticed that he had aged, too. Now that she looked, though, she could see it.

  The old woman turned to Zeke next.

  “Now, don’t blame me for that one,” Scarl said.

  “He’s well splinted, it would appear, so I guessed you had no part in that,” grumbled the Healtouch. After examining Zeke and finding a sore spot that caused him to yelp, she replaced the splint and told him to let another fortnight pass before he removed it.

  When Pres got a look at Scarl’s latest wound, she chased Ariel and Zeke from her workroom. The pair sat on the front stoop, the sun on their faces and the open door at their backs. Curious villagers peeked at them through doorways and waved welcomes, but kept their distance, as Scarl had asked.

  After a few moments, Pres stepped to her door and nudged Ariel with her toes.

  “So it was you who stitched up the hole this foolish fellow put in himself?”

  Ariel gulped. “I’m sorry it wasn’t much good. I tried my hardest.”

  “You’re a Healtouch apprentice, then, are you?”

  Ariel’s gaze dropped, her face burning. Zeke started to answer for her, but she overrode him. “No. I didn’t pass my test.”

  “Well, you should have,” Pres declared. “It’s rough indeed, make no mistake, and I’ll need a good bit of time with him now. You might want to run off and return. But don’t look so glum. I’ve seen worse stitching by grown persons, and none forced to use fish line to do it.” She turned on her heel and disappeared before Ariel could shut her gaping mouth.

  Zeke grinned. He squinted at the sun and rose to his feet.

  “I’m going back to the waterfall,” he said, “to see if the rocks there will listen to me.”

  “
I don’t want to stay if Scarl goes,” Ariel told him. “I don’t care what the stones say.”

  “Well, I do care. And I’m going to tell him the truth, if they’ll answer my questions. It’ll be for your own good.”

  Ariel scowled at his back as he sprinted away.

  Sitting alone on the front stoop, she couldn’t help but hear some of what went on inside. Whatever Pres was doing to Scarl must have hurt. Ariel gritted her teeth at the muffled sounds of his pain.

  Yet she did not want to leave her cozy puddle of sunlight. To busy her mind, she pulled her bone needle out of her sock where she’d stashed it, much as she’d once slid the dart into her boot. Zeke’s splint had served well to keep the copy a secret, but now Ariel wanted it within easy reach and preferably next to her skin. A touchstone to her mother, it comforted her.

  She ran her fingers over the symbols. As it had on the dart, the lightning bolt tingled her skin as if vibrating gently. She smiled, sure the sensation had to be imagined, if not simply a barb left when she’d scratched it. None of the other marks even seemed rough, and a few were so shallow they’d become hard to make out. She decided she’d better rub more charcoal into several when they returned to Mirayna’s.

  Scarl had shown her and Zeke the mark that represented the Vault. She peered at it and tried to imagine where it might be and what lay inside.

  Each time the rod turned in her grip, the Farwalker mark caught her eye with a wink as though something shiny in its depths were reflecting the sun. That glimmer gave Ariel an idea.

  Rolling the bone between her hands, she tried to remember everything Scarl had said when he’d let her try his Finder’s glass in the desert. It was just a place to focus attention, he’d told her. That didn’t explain how red sparks had appeared, or the black flecks when he used it, but Ariel supposed both could be caused by the Essence in all things. Perhaps her needle had some of its own.

  She cradled the bone in both palms and gazed at it. Rather than focusing on individual symbols, she tried to see the complex design they all made together. Viewed that way, they looked like an assembly of ants, legs spread and tangled.

  “Where does the summons want me to go?” she breathed. “Show me the way, ants.”

  She stared without blinking until her eyes watered. The ants blurred. A yelp from Scarl, inside, broke her attention. Ariel looked quickly away from the needle.

  “Stop thinking completely,” he’d said about finding. That was harder to do by herself than with his help. “Where?” Ariel asked herself, and then wondered if that counted as thinking. Her eyes stared at the dirt, drawn nowhere else. No secret knowledge rose inside her as it had when she’d found the lizard.

  Ariel sighed and leaned back on the stoop. Clearly she’d just gotten lucky before. She was no Finder.

  Her feet tickled in her boots. Ariel rubbed one against the other, but the itch grew. Unlacing her boots, she kicked them off and peeled away her socks to scratch, half expecting to find the ants she’d imagined. Nothing soothed the tingling until she nestled her bare soles into the cool dirt. An overwhelming desire to walk seized her legs. Unable to resist, she stood and took three purposeful strides before it dawned on her what she had done.

  “Oh!” Ariel slapped her hand over her mouth, trapping Scarl’s name, which had been next on her lips. As her mind raced, the urge to walk faded. She took another few tentative steps, just to see if that itch would return. If it did, she was trying too hard to feel it.

  Ariel returned to the stoop and admired her wiggling toes. Could it be true that they felt a destination unknown to her mind? They’d done it before in the desert, though, without the least effort or knowledge on her part.

  Drawing her socks and boots on once more, she wondered how to convince Scarl that her feet knew where to go. He need not go to Libros, unless that happened to be where her path took them regardless. She wouldn’t know what to do when they got there, but if her feet led to the Vault, what else could matter?

  She’d confide in Zeke first. He’d know the best way to win over Scarl. She’d rather wait until they’d all rested and she’d tested her feet a few times, but the Finder had sounded intent on a speedy departure. She couldn’t wait past that evening to tell him.

  When she heard Scarl’s footsteps behind her, she slid her needle back into one sock, ready to leave. But Pres stopped him not far from the door. After she gave him instructions for tending his newly mended wound, she added, “One more thing, boy.”

  Ariel smothered a giggle.

  A hush entered the Healtouch’s voice. “Don’t go wandering away again soon.”

  “I likely will need to, Pres. I’ll be all right.”

  “It’s not you I’m concerned with.”

  Silence leaked though the doorway. His voice, when he found it, carried more of a groan than a question. “Mirayna?”

  “Don’t make that girl leave the world without your help. Be here to hold her.”

  The muscles in Ariel’s face and neck strained tight. In her mind she saw the hollows beneath Mirayna’s eyes.

  “How long?” Anger roughened Scarl’s words.

  “You know I can’t say. But a new moon is coming and that’s often the mark.”

  In the next silence, Ariel imagined Scarl’s jaw clamping tight. She’d seen it often enough for less cause.

  “Thank you for warning me,” he murmured finally.

  “She’ll be upset if she learns that I have. But it’s best for you both.”

  Scarl emerged to trip over Ariel. Cursing, he demanded, “Where’s Zeke?”

  She scrambled out of his way, afraid to look at his face. “Trying to sing to your stones.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. When he spoke again, he was gentler. “All right. Come along, then.”

  As they walked back to Mirayna’s home, Scarl kept his eyes on the path. Halfway there, Ariel gave in to an impulse. She slid her fingers into one of his hands, which hung limp at his sides. He didn’t react. She thought he was too sealed in sorrow to notice.

  He withdrew his hand just before they arrived. First, though, he gave a brief squeeze.

  Ariel spent the afternoon watching Scarl with Mirayna and mulling what had happened on the stoop of the Healtouch. Now that her elation had faded, she was afraid to test her feet’s sense of direction, worried she’d imagined the whole thing. Besides, Scarl made little sign of preparing to leave the next day.

  She was about to fetch Zeke from the basin to discuss it when he returned, looking troubled.

  “Any luck?” Scarl asked.

  Glancing at Ariel, Zeke shook his head. “Not really.”

  Scarl only nodded thoughtfully and returned to Mirayna’s workroom to help her finish a project. Ariel couldn’t blame him for not recognizing what she did: Zeke wasn’t telling the truth.

  She didn’t get him alone to find out why until bedtime. Pres Healtouch had offered the use of her sickbed, currently empty. So when Ariel and Zeke began yawning, Scarl walked them back to her house. Pres arranged the pair at opposite ends of the deliciously soft bed so that only their feet overlapped. Zeke’s big feet tickled and shoved against Ariel’s.

  Pres blew out the candle and left, leaving the door ajar. Ariel sat up.

  “Tell me what the stones said,” she whispered to Zeke.

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  “I know that’s not true, Zeke. So stop it and tell me.”

  Zeke sat up, too, meeting her in the middle of the bed. He plucked at the blanket.

  “They didn’t say Scarl should leave here without us. Just the opposite. ‘Restless young feet will press distant bedrock,’ they said. ‘His will pace this ground a few moments longer.’ Somehow we’re leaving without him.”

  “He can’t leave Mirayna yet,” she said, reluctant to explain further. She already felt as if she’d stumbled on something that should have been private. The message Zeke had received from the stones shot even more dread through her heart, though. It recalled things Zeke�
�s father had said about her departure from home, words that burned in her memory. “It is best that she go,” Jeshua had told Ariel’s mother. “And she will. Ignoring the advice of the trees always seems to cause trouble.” Often in the days since, Ariel had wondered: if her mother hadn’t changed her mind and withdrawn her permission, would she still be alive?

  “We’d better go on our own,” she said, “before Gust or someone else comes and takes us, and people get hurt.”

  Zeke nodded sourly. “But to where? Home?”

  “No.” Too aware that the cushy mattress beneath her wouldn’t be there for long, she hugged the blanket to her chest and told him what had happened that afternoon. “I think my feet can take us to answer the summons,” she told Zeke. She swallowed to firm her voice, which wanted to waver. “If your stones will help us.”

  “I believe you,” he said, “but Scarl will never let us leave by ourselves. I bet Mirayna won’t, either.”

  Ariel knew he was right. That meant they’d have to sneak away and move fast. But how could they stop the Finder from chasing after?

  “Perhaps I can help,” came a voice from the doorway. Both young people jumped.

  “I’m not going to beg your pardon for overhearing,” said Pres, slipping inside. “You’re in my sickbed—that makes your troubles my business. Zeke’s voice carries better than yours, lass, but I didn’t figure he was talking that much in his sleep.” The edge of the bed sank as she rested upon it. “Your friend Scarl was planning to deliver you elsewhere, was he?”

  Nudging Zeke under the covers to be quiet, Ariel nodded. “But I heard what you told him this afternoon. So we can go by ourselves.” The new knowledge that she looked older than her years pressed confidence into her voice. “I’m just afraid he’ll come after us, so he won’t be here when …” She didn’t want to make the pending sorrow more real by saying the words.

  Pres nodded. “I can take care of that, at least for a while. I’m less sure of you. I can see you’ve been down some difficult paths with him, but are you sure you’ll be—”

  “We’ve done it before,” Zeke assured her.