Page 8 of Mestra

Arete fed me cakes while I told her the rest.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For what I did to you.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t me. I was here.”

I hadn’t realized how afraid I’d been that she would hate me for it, all those times my father sold her, all the times I’d hidden in her skin. But no. She’d been here. Now that she was in front of me, I saw that I hadn’t even made a very good likeness of her. I’d forgotten the freckles on her wrist, her long narrow toes. So my father had been right. I could have changed them if I’d wanted.

“You kept him alive a long time,” she said.

Too long, I knew it. I still caught myself sometimes, looking for berry bushes to strip, or unguarded baskets of bread, or men who wanted to buy. I wiped my cheeks with my hand.

“I still don’t really understand why he intervened,” I said.

“You mean the god.”

I nodded.

She was frowning a little. It was an expression I had always loved on her, her mind sifting her thoughts. “Has he appeared to you since? Sent any signs?”

“No,” I said.

“Maybe it wasn’t him. It could have come from someplace else.”

I remembered the first day I’d galloped as Oak. I’d thought: this is not a feeling that can be given. It can only be found.

We were quiet. Outside, in the courtyard, a black poplar shook its leaves in the wind.

“I owe the farmers a cow,” I said. “A real one.”

Arete smiled. “Then you’ll find a way to get one.”

I would, I thought. I was Mestra. Mestra the horse, and Mestra the fisherman, and Mestra the cook and the falcon and the lucky cow, and now Mestra the girl with the scar.

I became a sparrow like Honey, but my belly was plumper, and my wings brighter. I flew to my cousin’s hand.