Katrinka rubbed a hand over her heart. “By the Light, I’d forgotten how much I missed them. Just being with you has unlocked a door I did not know still lived within me.”
I knew what she meant. “It’s good to remember, Kat. Even if it’s painful.” I hadn’t called her “Kat” yet, not since we’d been reunited. I waited for her to rebuke me or complain about the childish nickname, but she instead linked her arm through the crook of my elbow and laid her head on my shoulder.
“I don’t like the pain,” she admitted. “It hurts too much, cuts too deep. I would much rather be able to shut it all up again and not think of it anymore.” I had just opened my mouth to argue when she added, “But I loved them more than I want to avoid the grief. We were so lucky back then. So loved. What I wouldn’t give to feel that again. To be able to crawl onto Papa’s lap. Or watch Mama get her hair braided again. To follow Papa into the woods while he shouted orders to look for fairies and dragons. Or listen to one of Mama’s stories about the pagans while we stretched out in front of the fire. I learned to love my life in Barstus, but nothing can replace those happy days at home.”
My eyes stung with tears, so instead of saying anything, I simply nodded. How I had often yearned over the years to simply hear my parents’ voices again. To hear their laughter. To feel their touch on my cheeks in love. To get in trouble again because of my brothers’ nefarious plans. To have them tease me once more. To have them near me. Several tears rolled off my cheeks, but my smile was relentless.
But even more than the gaping sense of grief and loss was this new, fragile connection with my sister. I talked about my family with others in the long span between losing them and being reunited with Katrinka. I had shared with Oliver, especially, told him stories, and remembered them. But he could only sympathize. With Katrinka, we shared this grief. This tragedy. When we spoke of our parents, our brothers, they were memories we both had and treasured. I had not known to miss this connection. And if I had, my mourning would have been exponentially worse. But now that I had it with Katrinka, I would forever and always be reluctant to let it go.
I needed Katrinka for the future, for all that lay ahead. But now I knew I needed her for the past too. For all that had already happened.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I noticed the Keep was no longer in sight. Nor were the gardens. We’d been wandering without much thought to where we were going. Shiksa was just ahead, carefully stepping over fallen branches and larger rocks. She had her nose to the ground as if she’d caught a scent that required all her attention. And we’d been thoughtlessly following her in her pursuit.
“Do you think we’ve gone far enough?” I asked when a trill of unease spiraled through me.
Katrinka lifted her head too. She’d been as intently focused on where she stepped as I had been. “I-I don’t know.”
The trees in this part of the forest had started to change. There were not fewer of them, but they were barer. Not as though their leaves had fallen off, but as if they had no leaves at all and hadn’t for a long time.
The ground was less cluttered too. Without the sparkling leaves to act as a carpet, the ground was a mixture of dry and cracked earth with wet, soggy mud. We’d begun leaping from dry spot to dry spot, hurrying after Shiksa, who was picking up her pace.
“Does she often run off?” Katrinka asked, grabbing a low-hanging tree branch for balance when she’d leaped over a particularly wide puddle. The dead branch gave way beneath her weight, and she swayed wildly before practically hugging the tree trunk to counterbalance her momentum and avoid plopping right down in the gritty mud puddle.
When I was satisfied she wasn’t going to face-plant in the mud, I said, “No, never. She always stays right by my side. Unless she’s at Extensia. Then she prefers to hunt down her dinner. But she always comes back.”
“Could that be what she’s doing now? Hunting?”
I watched the fluffy white tail of my pet fox twitch with agitation as she leapt onto a fallen tree and tiptoed over moss and mushabooms to the other side.
“Shiksa!” I called. But she only briefly glanced back at me.
“Let’s get her, then head back.” Katrinka sounded as concerned as I was becoming.
“Good idea.” We hurried after the fox, hoping she would eventually see reason.
But she didn’t. The terrain grew more difficult and much less beautiful. The spring breeze picked up too, whipping through the bare trees and pulling chill bumps from my arms.
I called her name again and again as Katrinka and I held our skirts high and tried to avoid the mud by jumping and climbing our way over the now stark trees. It was growing futile, though. Both of us had stepped in so much mud that our slippers, stockings, and hems were now thick with blackish muck. I had no idea how we were going to explain this to Ravanna.
“They’re dead,” Katrinka finally exclaimed. “These trees are dead.”
A sickly realization doused my good mood. I had been holding a tree branch and let it go as quickly as possible. Then I wondered if it wasn’t the tree that was the problem but the ground. So I grabbed the branch again, with two hands this time, and tried to hold up my weight by leveraging my feet on the trunk.
The branch snapped instead, and I landed in a heap on the ground, in the grime and dirt. Now it wasn’t just my dress and silk slippers that were filthy, but my hands and bum as well. Clesta was going to give me an earful as soon as we found our way back to the Keep.
If we found our way back to the Keep.
Ifwe did not simply die from walking on the cursed ground. Because that was what this had to be—the cursed ground. Forests did not just die like this.
“How much time do you think we have?” Katrinka asked in a choked whisper. Her thoughts had been exactly where mine had been.
But still, I played dumb. “Time for what? Before Ravanna comes looking for us. Hopefully only minutes.”
She looked as aggravated as I’d ever seen her. “No, not Ravanna. The cursed ground. Are we going to die, Tessa?”
I took a deep breath and searched my mind and body for signs of pain or disease. I felt as normal as I should. But then again, I wasn’t entirely sure what dying from a curse entailed.
“This is not cursed ground,” a bodiless voice said.
