And Ban could make both their fathers pay. As if everything had whispered and urged him to just this moment, with every breeze at his ear and choice in his heart, since the sun rose this morning. Or even longer. Since he’d come home from Aremoria, since he’d fallen in love with a star, since he’d been born.
Before he thought any deeper, Ban pulled the walnut from his jacket, dropped it onto the earth, and crushed it beneath his heel.
ELIA
THE KING DIDnot wish to leave his meadow.
Elia urged their return to Hartfare before dark, but Lear sank stubbornly back against the earth, or pretended to be asleep, or simply ignored her. His eyes drifted up and up, always toward the pale blue sky, awaiting the absent stars.
Finally, Elia asked Aefa to return to Hartfare for dinner, to gather blankets and whatever else she and her father might need to sleep under the stars. The girl began to protest, but Elia smiled sadly and promised the trees and wind would warn her of danger. It would be a clear night, and they would manage until her return.
Aefa left at a run, and Elia sat down beside the king again. She said, “My Aefa will come back with blankets, with wine and some bread, and you and I will curl up to watch the stars be born. How does that sound, Father?”
He sighed contentedly, and leaned back onto the grass, and fell truly asleep.
Overwhelmed with affection, with fear and longing—and anger—Elia picked up his hand and clasped it in hers. He was so ruined, so wracked by madness and guilt, she shouldn’t be angry. She did not have the luxury, though she wished, for a fleeting moment, that she could rage and hate him, as Ban had done.
Struggling for peace, Elia simply closed her eyes and whispered to the nearby ash tree.I’m listening.
So are we,the ash tree said, shaking a little so that three oval leaves drifted down to kiss the rushing creek beside them.
Elia remembered another ash tree, at the heart of her mother’s garden at Dondubhan. It had been the queen’s sanctuary against the harsh winters of the far north. Cherry trees had bloomed a blushing pink, and juniperhad always been green, with tiny pale blue berries in the fall. But the ash itself had leaned over the queen’s favorite bench. The morning Dalat had died, the first black buds had peeked out from the pale branches, later to bloom into deep purple flowers. Roses hugged the keep wall, the barren vines hooked against the huge gray stones. Elia, only eight years old, fled from her sisters to the garden, going first to the rose vines. She grasped one in her hand, squeezing the copper thorns until they hurt, until the curved spikes bit into her skin. The pain had focused Elia away from her churning stomach, and away from her uncertain but swollen grief.
A cold wind had blown gently through the evergreen fingers of the juniper, shaking its voice in sad little gasps to mirror her own muffled panting.
Elia Elia Elia,the wind seemed to whisper.
Her face had crumpled. She’d let free a wail, small as a kitten’s cry, and closed her eyes. That morning, it had felt the only way: releasing the hurt a bit at a time, through soft cries and the pricks on her palm. Would pain melt out of her along with her blood?
“Elia,” someone said.
It was no tree voice, or the wind, but a woman. Elia let go of the rose vine, but the thorns stuck in her flesh and she stopped.
Someone spoke in the language of trees. Elia could only understand, then, two words:roseandyou.She did not move except to glance sideways.
A boy had stood there, not the woman who’d spoken before. He was her size, with ruddy cheeks and a thicket of black hair in tangles like a wild thing. His eyes were mud-gray and chipped with green. He repeated himself.
“I don’t understand,” Elia had said, tears in her eyes. “My sister only teaches me words that my mother wants to hear.”
Behind them both, the woman spoke again. “He said the roses don’t want to let you go.”
Elia had choked on a cry, nodding and shaking. “My mother is dead.”
The words themselves became the ocean of grief in her chest, and so Elia did not breathe for a long moment.
“I know,” the woman said. She stepped to Elia, touching the princess’s thin shoulder. It was Brona, the queen’s friend, and witch of the White Forest. “This is my son, Ban. Do you remember him?”
Elia did not think she’d met the boy before, and she glanced at him more curiously. He did not smile or frown, only studied her with those large muddy eyes.
“I will ask them to let you go,” he’d said finally, then whispered to the roses.
The vine shuddered and sighed, and the wind teased Elia’s loose cloud of hair, without touching Ban’s or his mother’s.
And with a little extra shiver, the rose thorns released Elia’s flesh. She’d pulled her hand back, and Ban snatched her wrist instead in his small, dry hand. Before she could speak, he had touched the smears of blood in her palm and drew three marks on the skin. “Thank you,” he said, and then,Thank you,this time in the language of trees.
Thank you, Elia had repeated.
Ban tugged her hand and then pressed her palm against the bark of the nearby cherry tree.Elia Lear,he’d whispered.
