“I think you knew my brother. Kent?”
“Kent Aldred?” I squinted at her, seeing it now. “Kent has only littler brothers. They’re all married now and in town. I don’t understand.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed, as if I had just delivered the most heartbreaking news. “I was born Kevin. But I go by Jade now. Jade Atwood.”
I stood and looked at her. “Kevin died from plague.”
Jade Atwood nodded. “That is what my family was told, yes.”
Staring at her was not giving me any answers, but I was too thunderstruck to take in what she was saying, that she claimed a dead child as her identity.
“This is hard to speak on,” she continued, clearing her throat. “I’ve only told this story to the occasional tinker and then your husband. I cannot really go into town without upsetting folks. I don’t go into Carver much because it is too far, but I do make the journey to visit the tinkers when they set up outside Carver. I am not used to telling this story.”
“Well, I need to hear it,” I snapped. “That’s my man you’ve been entertaining these past moons.”
“Let me say it quickly then,” she replied, gulping.
Part of me felt a strong conviction that I was being needlessly cruel, pressing her to explain something deeply personal. But the rest of me was in charge. I had no self-containment and only knew a hot rage.
Jade seemed to withdraw into herself and then continued. “I was born Kevin. I never felt like that was my name. Or that I was like my brothers. I, as children often do, stated this as fact. The priest wascalled in. I was chastened. This happened several times. I asked to be called a girl’s name. I don’t know if you remember my boxing? I was about ten at the time.”
I shook my head.
She smiled a little. “Likely because you were so often boxed yourself. Hard to keep track of others when you are the most famous culprit.” She spoke as if I was some kind of heroine in a book. Jade went on, saying, “I guess then you remember the summer plague. I had it very badly. Starling told my parents he would take me to the lord’s keep and they agreed, not wanting it to spread to my brothers. I cannot remember what was said. I was in the throes of a fever. I remember him carrying me out of the house and putting me in a wagon. I was taken to the keep. The Lord Sheridan and some of his men spoke over me. I cannot remember that part either. And I fell asleep. But I woke up not in the keep. I was in Nyossa.”
I gaped at her. “He brought you out here to die?”
“That has always been my theory, yes.”
A sickening sensation roiled in my gut, a fury on behalf of the small child being left to the wilds of Nyossa—which, though a sacred and bountiful place, was full of predators. “A wolf or bear could have eaten you. A wildcat would have been so fast you may not have wakened. Gods, I hate that man with a passion.” Any umbrage I had at present was put to the side. “Thatis murder. You know that? You understand that? Even though you lived? They murdered you.”
“They knew they could never change me,” she responded. “So they got rid of me. If it weren’t for both goddesses of Tintar, I would be dead.”
The arithmetic of it shocked me. “You’ve been in the forest all this time? That has to be... fourteen? Fifteen winters?”
Jade Atwood’s brow creased. “I think? I cannot remember my true age. I think I was eleven when it all happened.”
“What do you mean the goddesses of Tintar?”
“Your husband says you practice. That you worship earthand fire?”
I bristled at the idea of them speaking about me, but I was cognizant enough to note her use of ‘your husband’ and not his name, like she was trying to show me she respected my being Avery’s wife. I dipped my chin curtly.
“Well, I did not come to them with any understanding. I never knew anything of Tintar’s religion until the tinkers explained it to me. But Iexperiencedit as a little girl. The first few days were a haze. I was sick. But I found a river and had enough strength to wash myself, which I needed. I fell asleep next to it and when I woke—Do you know what mussels are?”
I shook my head.
“Hold on,” she said, a new energy to her, as if these mussels were exciting things. She returned with something I did recognize. It looked like one of the clams from Magda’s book of the ocean. She offered it to me and, dumbstruck, I took it.
“That is a clam,” I said.
“Close. It’s the freshwater kind. They cling to the riverbeds and the tree roots. Did you ever swim when you explored Nyossa with my brother?”
“That was nearly all we did back then. In summer, at least. I suppose I saw them but never understood them.”
“You can eat what’s inside. When I woke, there was a stack of them in my face. Like someone had piled them there. I don’t know how I knew to pry one open, but I did. I kept cutting my hands on them until I found a rock that worked better to wedge them open.”
“You think the gods of Tintar fed you with mussels?” There was no disbelief in my question. I felt my heart skip a beat at the idea of another sign, when I had seen so few, of their divinity—and not just another sign, but one seen by another.
