“Shitwhiskers.” Fern dropped Bucket’s lead. “Stay here, Bucket. Um, please.” Then she did her best to scamper up the stones to join Zyll. It had been several years since she had scampered, though, and she didn’t remember the last time being so challenging.
When at last she stood beside Zyll, she glowered at her, and tried to think of something to say that would get the goblin off her ass and moving back in the direction of the cart.
Then she followed Zyll’s gaze out over the valley, and all the annoyance leaked right out of her.
The mist churned in slow motion on its way up the channel to the northeast, blushing with conch pinks and delicate oranges. Here and there it tore apart like dough stretched too far, and the river below glittered in sudden sunfire.
Nearer, she could see the road they’d attempted earlier in the day, and at this remove, the water-watchers startled her with their regularity, a seemingly endless line of sentinels guarding the waters beneath.
A flock of starlings looped and bloomed and contracted as it described graceful patterns above the mist, dipping down sometimes to disappear, before reemerging in a plume of vapor.
The rush of the long grass behind them seemed to swell and retreat in time with the movements of the birds.
“Oh,” said Fern.
Then she fell silent.
There atop the bluff, surrounded on all sides by a beautiful distance, Fern was consumed by a sense of remoteness that was not at all lonely.
Asafesmallness wherein the horizon was infinite, and as such, judgment, too, must be impossibly distant.
The bookshop had never felt farther away. Thune, Viv, Tandri . . . they might have all been lost in that soft mist.
Or not lost, perhaps, butenfolded. Safely tucked away.
It was . . . relief. Somehow in this place, in this moment, she didn’t have to strain for it. Her mind was quiet. Uncrowded with apologies or anxieties or anticipation.
Gods, to juststaythere for a while . . .
“Uh, we should probably get back, huh?” prompted Breadlee. “I wouldn’t want to lose the Oathmaiden’s trust—or, you know,wewouldn’t.”
“Yeah. Sure,” murmured Fern. “In just a second.”
Then she dreamily slipped the knife into a pocket within her cloak and slowly sat down next to Zyll.
And thought about absolutely nothing.
The light was nearly gone when Fern stirred from her reverie. The mist below had thinned to purple threads that continued to wisp away, and the breeze had cooled considerably. The starlings were long gone.
Zyll was no longer beside her.
She staggered to her feet on numb legs, her ass suddenly awake to the fact that it had been parked on a stone for gods knew how long. Whirling, she found no sign of Zyll—again—and more worryingly, no sign of Bucket, either.
But before she had time to conjure up a curse suited to the moment, she noticed a figure crouched in the tall grass with one arm resting on a thigh, watching her.
A one-eared elf with ragged silver hair.
Fern’s stomach, which had been plummeting downward, now jagged sideways.
The Oathmaiden’s expression was unreadable.
“Uh, where are—” Fern began, her voice rusty.
“Back at the cart.”
“And . . .howlong have you been there? Watching me?”
Astryx stood, unhurried. “Does it matter?”
