“The door wouldn’t open if I wasn’t welcome.”
“Right. The Village That Chooses Its Own. So the way you know is if the cookhouse lets you in for a midnight snack?”
“One of the ways.”
The warm room smelled like rising bread. Kell walked in like he owned the place and pulled a bottle out of a hatch. Saeldian stepped just over the threshold and waited for a magic mouth to tell them to leave, but nothing happened.
“Guest privileges,” Saeldian muttered. “A relief.”
“None of that. Sit.” Kell gestured toward the table. “After a magical ordeal, you’re supposed to eat. You said so.”
The bottle held dark malty beer. Kell found a bread heel in a box, a clay jar with butter in it, and a bit of cheese wrapped in a wax cloth.
“It isn’t much,” he said.
“I had half a cookie the first time I passed a magical test, remember?” Saeldian said. “This is a feast.”
Kell drank straight from the neck and pushed the bottle toward Saeldian. “Good enough.”
“So, all this.” Saeldian waved the bottle in the direction of the bread and cheese. “Does this mean that we’re friends now or something?”
Kell smiled. “No.”
“Fair,” Saeldian said. “That might have been a little too weird.”
They rinsed out the bottle and swept up the crumbs before they left.
Kell didn’t rememberwhat he dreamed, but he woke up reaching for something too far to grasp. His fingertips tingled as if they held the memory of it as he stared at his reflection and scraped away his beard hairs. When he made it to the Brewmistress’s hut, Lorzok was already there. Dad was too. Kell dropped his pack onto the ground so he could bend over and give his father a hug.
“I’m glad you’re not too old to hug your dad,” Terandis said.
Kell dropped to sit on a stump beside his father. “I will never be too old. What brings you here?”
“I thought I’d see you off. Hearthaven’s Repose is…distant, if that’s a meaningful word here.”
“Do you know it?”
“I know of it,” Terandis said. “I know enough about it. It’s where you go to heal your grieving heart, or to bind yourself to another in a marriage that can’t be ended. What are you returning?”
“That’s the odd part. I don’t think it’s valuable or even powerful, not really. It’s a spell gem, but all it does is bring you to the memory of the first time you kissed your true love.”
“That memory can be worth more than anything in the world, if that’s all you have left of them,” Terandis said, and looked over Kell’s shoulder.
Giggling. Jubilee, packed up and ready to go, escorted byVerandil, who was still in yesterday’s clothes. Verandil gave them a cheerful wave before he wrapped Jubilee in the kind of kiss meant to draw someone back to his side. She swayed a little bit when he let her go.
Terandis spared an amused smile before he went on. “Shuahn can get you there, but it’s away from Eightbridge, not toward. You’ll be going through the truewild again, but by Shuahn’s paths.”
Jubilee dropped her pack next to Kell’s and bent to give Terandis a hug. “By Shuahn’s paths? What does that mean?”
“Shuahn is unseelie. Her magic is of the shadows and darkness. It embraces pain and fear.”
Jubilee looked shocked. “But she doesn’t seem evil.”
Lorzok patted Jubilee’s shoulder. “She’s not, dawn child. She doesn’t inflict pain and fear to make her magic happen, or anything like that. She meets them where they are and accepts them as part of life. There’s power there, as well as healing.”
“Well said, Oakwarden.” Terandis nodded and continued the tale. “Shuahn will travel through the shadowed parts of the wild, where there is much to take you unawares.”
“Are you delivering my lecture for me, Terandis?”
