Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(23)

On the fifteenth night, I again went to the cathedral to pray at Sunset, and once more knelt at the altar past nightfall. Father Aedan had taken to sweeping the floors, just as he had at our first meeting. And when I could no longer hear the broom, I dared to rise early from my knees and peer behind me.

I was blessedly alone. Taking off my shoes to minimize noise, I hurried deeper into the cathedral, easing open the door that led to the cemetery. I slowed only long enough to touch the Wenden graves, offering a final, silent, and heavy farewell before moving on. The walls surrounding the burial ground were short and easily scalable. I bounded over them and, under the cover of the waning crescent moon, cut through Endwever back to the Aedans’ house. This was the riskiest part of my plan, but I hadn’t been able to conceive of anywhere else to hide my bags.

The two parcels waited just behind the woodpile en route to the privy. I had stashed them, one at a time, under my skirt and tucked them away there. To my relief, both still awaited me. I pulled their straps crosswise over my chest and darted into the wood. It was the wrong direction for Terasta, but I would change my route later. Right now, I needed to get as much distance between myself and Endwever as possible. I needed them to lose me.

These were my woods, where I had spent so much time with Caen. They, too, had changed over seven hundred years, but I knew these trees. I knew where to go.

I hurried through the forest for an hour before the excitement of my escape loosened, as did the added energy it had given me. I slowed, picking my way carefully. The hairs on my arms stood on end. Had things gone my way, I would have hired a guide. Not only to prevent me from getting lost, but because it was dangerous to travel alone, especially for a woman. I severely doubted that fact had changed during my extended time away.

I ate some of my pillaged cheese to keep up my strength and peered up at the moon as I walked, trying to gauge when it would be safe to turn toward Terasta. The spring branches were not full, but dotted with tiny budding leaves still discovering their place. I tried spying past them to find my star, and in my strain to do so, stepped on an uneven bit of ground and toppled into moist, weed-ridden soil, bags swinging around my hips from the fall. Pulling my foot free, I rotated my ankle carefully, and said a prayer of thanks to all gods that I hadn’t hurt it.

Then the first wolf howled.

My spine went stiff as an icicle. The sound was high and sorrowful, and not very far away.

Swallowing, I slowly stood, adjusting my bags so their weight wouldn’t throw off my steps. I changed direction, walking away from the howl. Its answer came seconds later, from the south.

That one felt closer.

I forced my breaths to stretch up and down my throat. Forced my mind to think. I’d had little real exercise for nearly a year; I could hardly outrun them. They might not know I was there, but I knew better than to hope I could slip away unseen. Moving as quietly as possible, heart thudding, I shifted from scanning the shadowed way ahead to searching the trees, looking for one I could climb without injuring myself.

I spied a promising pine when another howl sounded. Was it closer, or did my fear amplify its call?

Setting my jaw, I reached the pine and grabbed the rough bark of its lowest branch, heaving myself up, adjusting my bags, and then heaving myself up again. Needles prodded my skin, but I ignored their discomfort. I would gladly take pine needles over wolves.

I leaned against the trunk as I tried to stand. The next branch was almost directly overhead. I took off both bags and hung them from it before climbing up and up again, grateful I’d disobeyed my mother’s rules about the “boyish” pastime of tree climbing in my youth.

The howls stopped, but I heard movement in the forest now, the soft kind that stands out in the quiet of night, when birds and bugs are silent. I straddled a branch, the bark scraping my thighs, and hugged the pine’s trunk. Sap stuck to my arms and clothes. I blindly twisted my Sun ring on and off, hoping the change of power might alert Sun that something was wrong.

I never saw the wolves, but I heard more than one beast pass under my tree that night. Even when the forest quieted again, I didn’t move from my spot, enduring the needles and the cramps. I think I dozed at some point, letting the bark imprint against my forehead in uneven patterns. It wasn’t until after dawn, my limbs and back sore and shaky, that I finally climbed down.

Using the Sun as my guide, I oriented myself as best I could toward Terasta, constantly on alert for pursuers, both of wolf and human make.



It took longer than I had planned to find the main road. Looking back, I think I overshot it by a couple of miles and ended up walking parallel to it for a few hours instead of perpendicular. Needless to say, I did not find a road through the wood until midafternoon, and I was so exhausted I found a thicket not far from it to lie down in, the brush thick enough I was sure anyone searching for me would pass on none the wiser. I wrapped my second dress around me for a blanket, and used my elbow as a pillow.

I dreamed of my infant star, her body human and glowing like Sun’s, her fiery fingers tracing my palm. I whispered her name to her, but when I woke, I could not remember it.

My eyes opened to dimming Sunlight and three unfamiliar faces lurking over me.

I startled, thinking a search party from Endwever had come to drag me back to my worshipful duties. But though the town I had returned to was unfamiliar to me, I had seen its inhabitants at the cathedral every day for two weeks, and none of these men had been among them. They were well built though thin, with mismatched, travel-stained clothing. One had tied a strip of fabric around his head.