The Will and the Wilds(72)

“Stop.”

Scroud hesitates. The narvals slow, and most of the others do the same. A few grinlers continue forward, shoving each other and making that horrendous screeching, laughing sound. Scroud growls loud enough for the sound to carry the distance between us. He takes one labored step forward, then another. He bellows at me, and I cannot tell if it’s in my tongue or his, for the words are too low and harsh. They are nails in my ears, hammering down into my brain.

I squeeze the stone harder. The broken horn heats to a feverish temperature.

“Stop.”

My entire body tingles with the power of the Will Stone. It’s as if I’ve shot an invisible wall out from myself and the army has collided with it. The soldiers freeze and look about in either anger or confusion.

My body is shaking, as though the Will Stone draws its energy from my own soul. Beside me, Papa says, “Enna?”

I don’t answer him. I don’t dare break my concentration.

The goblers inch forward.

“STOP!” I bellow, and my voice echoes against the wildwood. The mystings hit my wall again. The horn burns so hot I fear my body will crumble to ash around it. The Will Stone is so cold in my fist I can feel it searing a hole through my flesh. I meet Scroud’s dark gaze head-on.

“Go. Go!” I scream. “You will not come back here! You are banished! You will not come back here!”

The wall pushes at them. I can’t feel my legs. The simple act of standing is excruciating.

The army doesn’t move. Scroud balks at me, but he does not look away. I can feel the intensity of his will. Of his desire, his hatred, and I am its focal point.

My father gasps with what I can only assume is clarity. Recognition. And I believe Scroud recognizes him as well.

“Leave!” I stagger. My father grabs my arm, the one not paralyzed by the stone, and holds me upright. I lean into him, pushing what strength I have into the stone. My breast is on fire, driving back the ice in my shoulders and gut. “Return whence you came. Leave this realm and never come back. Leave. Leave. LEAVE! ”

A bolt of the bitterest winter spikes through me, filling every crevice of my body. I gasp and collapse into my father’s strength.

He drops me to my knees. The cold has abated, but I tremble with the memory of it. The fire has left, too, but my body tenses as if run through by a sword. I lift my eyes to the wildwood just in time to see the flicking tails of the two narvals as they vanish into the trees.

They’re gone, all of them, as if they never were. Folk from the town begin filling in the almost battleground, lowering their weapons, exclaiming and whispering all at once. They look back at me, their eyes astonished or bewildered. I am grounded enough to recognize Tennith among them, dressed in soiled farming clothes, a scythe in hand. His dark eyes meet mine. He is confused, yet his brows draw together as though he is angry. As though I’ve removed some sort of mask and he doesn’t like what’s underneath.

Trembling, I manage to stand and take a step forward. “T-Tennith—”

His father, behind him, sets a heavy hand on his shoulder. Tennith allows himself to be pulled away, his expression never lifting.

I was clearly the target of the mystings’ attack. I rang the warning bell. My voice shouted mad commands at them. Mad commands they heeded. I have given the townspeople good reason to reject me. I know instinctually that they will no longer buy our mushrooms or sell to us. They will close off their conversations when we venture near. Were I to knock on Tennith’s door again, it would not open to me.

Something sharp bites my right fist. I wince as I open stiff fingers. I can barely see for the tears in my eyes.

The Will Stone, the dark gem my father risked his life to secure for me, rests in a dozen pieces against my palm.





CHAPTER 31

Two Months Later




The town of Crake is a modest one. I had thought Fendell small, but Crake is half its size, barely large enough to be called a town. We have a wisewoman, a biweekly farmers’ market, and little else. One must travel to Caisgard for supplies that cannot easily be homemade.

It was Jerred, the scholar, who helped us find the place. He was the only person who would speak to me after Scroud’s army vanished. It was he who bartered for our supplies, he who found the abandoned blacksmith’s cottage half a mile from the tiny town. It is a small home with three rooms, nestled against a bend in the wildwood, about seventeen miles south of the home my father had built with his own two hands. The house meant for his sweetheart, before the mystings killed her. The house that now stands as a great tombstone for the three loved ones buried on its grounds. A painful loss, but the time had come to leave the dead behind.

Jerred has left us to rebuild our lives, with a promise to return. He saw me turn away the mysting army with his own eyes. His interest will not be deterred. And were I of a more sound mind, I would be thrilled at the prospect of studying with an accomplished scholar. But for now, I must focus on securing this new life, and repairing the damaged pieces of myself.

There is a comfort to this new home, this new patch of forest, and I’m grateful for the endless list of tasks that need completing to make the cottage a suitable place to live. I’ve cleaned cobwebs and spiderwebs, hammered new boards into the floor, filled holes in the roof with mortar while Papa hammered shingles. I’ve even cleared a plot at the back of the house, facing the wildwood, and placed my delicate transplants in its soil. Tusk nettle, lavender, rabbit’s ear, aster leaf, tapis root, and oon berry. It will take time before they grow hearty enough to harvest, but I can wait. I’ve gotten rather good at it—it’s what I’ve done all these weeks since the mystings vanished into the wildwood.