“Second thoughts?” Saeldian asked.
“You wish.”
Kell strode between the beech trees and into the garden. The hedges were perfectly trimmed red-berried holly, and their leaves looked too pointed, too sharp. Dangerous.
Just before the entrance stood a basin on a pedestal filled with leather-covered balls.
Shuahn pointed. “Take one.”
Saeldian took theirs, so Kell did the same.
“Listen carefully.”
Shuahn had become…more. Power gathered around her as she spoke, and it felt like every word in her croaking voice curled in the cups of Kell’s ears. “In every meeting of people, in every friendship and brotherhood and partnership, in every courtship and marriage, every meeting carries the potential to build a bond or lay a stone.”
The air around them stilled and paid attention.
“Bonds are shared. Happiness, grief, annoyances, experiences. Stones are held by one person, but they lie between them both.”
This was a ceremony. Shuahn was telling them both what the ceremony did and what it meant.
“Stones are secrets. I don’t mean that having secrets is what puts stones between people. If you have to keep someone else’ssecret, that is a small stone, and easily moved past. I mean the secrets you keep that build between you.”
When Kell glanced at Saeldian, they looked back, their golden-blush skin gone to ashes. He wanted that to feel good. It didn’t.
“You’re hurt by the other’s words, and you choose to say nothing. You worry how the other will react, so you choose to say nothing. Your own hurts and painful lessons build stones that you put between you and everyone you meet.”
Saeldian’s breathing became very controlled.
Shuahn went on. “Leave enough of these stones, and the bonds aren’t strong enough to withstand them, even if they never break. And when those bonds don’t break, even though the stones have built so high and so thick you can’t see each other, that is the worst of all. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Kell and Saeldian said.
“Throw the balls into the hedge.”
Kell lobbed his in a high arc. It landed far from Saeldian’s, whose ball went off to the right.
“Go in and get them, and put them in the bowl like this one at the center of the maze. Then you’ll be ready.”
Kell stared at the hedge and then back at Shuahn. “So that’s it? We have to use teamwork to get our ball back. That’s how it works?”
“You find your own ball. If you find the other’s, it will refuse to be touched by you.”
“Shuahn, I really appreciate this,” Saeldian said. “Your words about the stones make so much sense. But I don’t think we can put things back the way they were.”
“You don’t need to put the bonds back where they were. You can’t ever get that back, honestly. But you have to unsnarl them enough that you can start the business of mending.”
“To be friends again?”
“To clear the stones enough that you can see each other, not the wall you’ve built. Friendship once more? I can’t guarantee that.”
“But we’ll be able to go to Hearthaven’s Repose.”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
Saeldian walked away, straight into the maze. Kell followed, but just at the entrance, he turned back—
