But I wanted to know all the good places.
“I’ve heard of you,” I said, the rational parts of my brain reaching for a reason not to take his hand. “Henry said you hate the railway, that it’s bringing poison here. If that’s true, doesn’t that make me poison?”
Ezra’s brown eyes clouded over. “Henry’s a little boy. I tell him stories so he stays close to home and out of trouble. Surely you’re old enough to recognize a fairy tale.”
I felt absolutely foolish. As Ezra watched me, waiting for a response, it seemed absurd to believe anything I’d been told by a child. Henryhadsaid Ainsley didn’t want him spending time with Ezra. But any reasonable guardian wouldn’t want her child playing on rafts and docks beside the powerful river.
“You’re sorting things out,” Ezra said, his crooked smile returning. “I can see it on your face. Calculating risk versus reward?”
“Are you saying there’s risk involved?” Absurdly, my heart gave a small eager leap at the notion.
“You could trip and break your ankle. You could miss a summons from your Senior. People could talk about you walking in the woods unescorted with an eligible young man. You could tumble into the river and drown.”
He spoke playfully, his smile never faltering, but none of the risks he cited were unreasonable.
“And the reward?” I asked.
“A good swimming hole and good company.”
I should have said no.
And maybe it was because Julian had been so unwelcoming. Or maybe it was because I didn’t have Gertrude to keep me in line. But I found myself nodding. “All right. Let’s see this spectacular landmark.”
Despite telling myself all I was going to do was see the hot spring, then turn around and march back to the Mission, my curiosity soon got the better of me. “Are you a ferryman?”
Ezra walked ahead of me on the trail along the high riverbank. He laughed, a sound I was already growing used to thanks to its obnoxious frequency. In less than half an hour, he’d laughed at a bird startling me, at another bird startlinghim,and at my insistence that I’d done plenty of walking and hard work at the House of Industry and didn’t need toslow down. This time, however, his laughter held something hollow. “No,” he answered. “I’m not.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Then whatuseam I?”
I wanted to throw a pine cone at the back of his head, even as I recognized something in the ache of those words. That quiet, painful desire to matter. “I’m simply asking about your vocation. Surely you don’t spend your days rafting aimlessly on this river.”
“Do you know what the river is called?”
“I do not,” I answered, rolling my eyes.
“It’s called the Dry Bone.”
“It doesn’t look particularly dry.”
“People say it was called that after the first settlers here found a skeleton wedged between stones in the dry season. The rapids had whisked every bit of flesh off the bones. All that remained was white as pearl.”
“When you show me the hot spring, be sure to show me where to avoid getting my skeleton jammed.”
He laughed, the sound easy once more. His boots swung from his shoulder, and he walked along the bed of glossy pine needles with barefoot sureness. I followed in my boots, feeling anything but graceful.
The trail unfurled like a secret, canopied with trees of every kind. Leaves and needles and moss shivered on the breeze, the light whisper echoed by the constanthush-hushof the river running alongside us.
I’d never known anything this beautiful. Walking made me recognize how different it sounded here. Sterling City was never quiet. It wasn’t quiet here either, but the sounds that filled the air were gentle and organic. Birdsong and creaking tree limbs.
Sweat beaded at my temple and ran down my back under my dress. I loved the way it felt, the way my body had become warm following his easy pace along the trail that rolled with the bluffs. At times, the river was so far below us that my heart gave a leap when I looked down at thesharp roots and rocks. He hadn’t mentioned breaking my neck as one of the potential risks, but I was careful with every step I placed.
At the House of Industry, my days had been scheduled from before dawn to when I finally sank into my little bed, too exhausted to care how hard it was or how noisy the other girls were when they cried out in their sleep. I’d never once gone for a walk for the sake of walking. With every step, an invisible band around my chest loosened—even as my heart beat faster with the knowledge that Julian would never approve of me exploring Frostbrook alone.
Or, rather, worse than alone: with a strange boy.
“I’m an apprentice healer,” Ezra offered, breaking the easy silence between us. “But the only healer here is the midwife, so I’m learning a bit of that here and there.”
