Feeling like she had stepped into some sort of fairy tale, Alina set her fork down. “How did you know I would come?”
That brought Nola’s gaze up, her eyes dark and sharp as obsidian. “We always know. Not you specifically. But somebody. This place draws the lost. It is what the valley does. It heals.” She closed the book and slid it aside.
The silence pressed in, comfortable and complete. Alina tried to think of something clever to say, something to impress or at least define herself, but nothing came. She felt transparent under Nola’s gaze, every trick and defense she’d learned in the palace or the rebel caves useless here.
“Rest today,” Nola said eventually. “Tomorrow is for learning. You may find it harder than you expect.”
Alina nodded, sated and heavy from the food, yet exhausted and suddenly eager to return to the bed. She thanked Nola for the meal and crawled under the quilt, letting the smell of lavender and the faint scratch of wool lull her back toward sleep.
This time, the dreams came soft and slow—water running through moss, leaves curling in the sun, voices singing in a language she did not know but understood anyway. When she woke next, the morning was new again, and she did not dread the day.
Dawn brought with it a hush so complete that Alina was reluctant to break it. She sat up in bed, blinking the last of the sleep from her eyes, and let herself listen to the muted rustle of a light breeze through the leaves, the faint clatter of distant work, the slow tick of water dripping from the eaves. The valley felt empty, in the way that a page feels empty just before the pen finds it. She took a breath and was ready to start the day.
She took inventory of her body and found with wonder the pain almost gone. The stiffness plaguing her muscles had vanished, and at her core she was warm and relaxed, no longer shivering from the cold. The weird feeling of blurred body boundaries had vanished. Her body felt as that of a young woman should: energetic, elastic, fresh. She wasn’t even overly hungry, just a nice little appetite that formed in her belly. The state she had been in, it should have taken her much longer to recover. Nola must possess powerful healing magic. Or was it the valley itself?
Nola met her at the door, already dressed and laced up for a day in the wild. She handed Alina a chunk of fresh, fragrant bread and a wedge of hard cheese, then set off without a word, leaving Alina to catch up. They walked out of the village and followed the path through amber fields of grain and colorful meadows swarming with bees and butterflies. Alina munched on her breakfast, taking in the scenery. The sky was a bright azure, the air infused with the perfume of wheat and rye, of warm earth and a dozen different wildflowers, and of something else, like the scent of summer itself. As she trailed Nola through the sunny meadows, she realized thatthere was no tense feeling of suspicion or mistrust in her. She walked with this stranger, feeling safe and free. She knew she had been brought here to be rescued. She knew there was magic at work. Somehow, her Gift had taken her here, whatever and wherever this dreamlike, enchanted place was. Her grief and pain lingered on the edge of her consciousness. She knew she would have to deal with them eventually, but for now she was content, a little happy, even. She didn’t know whom or what exactly to thank for being freed of that burden, but she said a silent prayer of thanks anyway, for having that oppressive, dark cloud lifted and letting her feel the sun again.
As they walked on, single trees started to dot the landscape, huge deciduous trees with large, expansive branches. Sunlight filtered through their leaves, creating ever-changing dapples of light on the grass beneath them and a light greenish haze that gave them an aura of sacredness. Alina walked past them in awe. Their ethereal beauty was deeply touching.
Nola led her to a small, pebbled bank beside a creek that meandered through the countryside. Its water was so clear Alina could see the veins in the stones beneath. Dragonflies flitted over the glittering water, specks of green and blue. The stream added a happy gurgling to the hummings, flutterings, birdsongs, and rustlings that created the heartwarming cacophony of life surrounding them. Here, Nola stopped and waited for Alina to find her footing on the cold, wet rocks.
Nola looked at her, face showing nothing but friendly concentration. By now, Alina was more than curious what this was about. “We start with water,” Nola said without preamble. “It’s the easiest to move, but the hardest to control. Like anger, or laughter.”
“You mean with the Gift?”
A look of surprise flitted over Nola’s face followed by a warm smile. “Of course, my dear. That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
Huh. Now that Nola had said it, Alina knew it to be true. The Gift had brought her here to learn and understand. Again she asked herself if any of this was real or if she was still in that tiny cave, slowly freezing to death.
Shoving that thought aside, Alina knelt then, her knees damp through the thin cloth, and studied the stream. The current was quick and narrow with roots and grass tangling into the water on the edges, an endless movement of waves and ripples, droplets spraying up and single leaves or tiny twigs swirling with the flow of the water. The sunlight glittered and where the water sprayed, minuscule rainbows of refracted light appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye. It was absolutely beautiful.
Nola pointed at a set of smooth stones that jutted out above the surface, then at a fallen branch lying across them like a bridge.
“Move the branch,” she said, “without touching it.”
Alina frowned, but she nodded. She closed her eyes, the way she’d been taught, and called the Gift. For a moment, she felt nothing, just the shiver of cold water against her knees and the heavy beat of her heart. Then it flickered, the old familiar surge, and she reached for the branch, willing it to roll off the stones and into the current.
The branch twitched, then bucked wildly, flipping over and sending a spray of water into Alina’s face. It landed with a splash and spun out of control, ramming into a rock a little further downstream where it got stuck again.
Nola did not comment, just observed. Alina half expected some form of judgement, a roll of the eyes or a meaningful sigh, but none came.
“Try again,” Nola said simply, her expression unchanging.
The next attempt was worse. Alina wanted to do better but focused too hard, and the water near the stones bulged upward and collapsed, yanking the branch straight under. It bobbed to the surface five feet away, then tangled in the grass on the bank of the stream, no closer to the goal.
Alina was disappointed with herself, anger and frustration rising in her chest. Again, she expected some reaction from Nola and glanced in her direction. Still, none came.
“Again.”
On the third try, she could barely muster the strength to do anything at all. The branch shivered, slid an inch, and then sat there, stubborn as her own shame, welling up in a huge wave inside of her.
She gritted her teeth and looked up at Nola, expecting her to end the instruction and give her up as a bad case.
“I don’t understand.” Frustration welled up. “I can blast a crater into the landscape and flatten everything around me in a half-mile radius, but I can’t do the simplest things. I don’t control the Gift. It controls me.”
The older woman crouched beside her and gestured at the water.
“You see the Gift as something separate from you. Something that sits inside your body like an independent entity, erupting when there is too much pressure. But that’s not what the Gift is. The Gift is you,” she explained, calm and direct. “You are the Gift. It draws its strength from nature. It is nature’s representationwithin yourself. If you are one with the Gift, you are one with nature. You don’t have to force the elements to bend to your will. They are your will. You are them. It is all one and the same. You are water and wind and earth and fire. All of it, in different aspects and as a whole. You don’t tell the water to move the branch. You are the water. You move the branch.” She watched Alina taking all this in and smiled encouragingly.
