Brightly Woven(87)

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I would make you a loom. Would you be able to describe it to me? Exactly how you want it?”

“North,” I began, but he didn’t allow me to finish.

“It would mean a lot to me,” he said. “It’s something that I want to do for you. I’d only need a little guidance and to stop in one of the towns to pick up the tools I’d need. I think Fairwell would have something I could use, don’t you?”

“North, I would love anything you made me,” I began, wrapping my arms around his warm center. “But I was hoping that you could take me home to Cliffton. I realized after talking to Henry how much I miss it, and I need to see my family and friends. Could you take me there?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” There was a strange touch of sadness to his words that I didn’t understand, but before I could say anything else, he brought the cloak I made for him up around us and we were gone.

EPILOGUE

It was nearly a month and a half before that same smile returned. Once North had twisted us out of the city, I carefully plotted our path west. We stayed on the Prima Road, the road we would have taken to Provincia if we had been able. After walking its straight path across the countryside for several weeks, I had to admit that the way we had taken before, however roundabout, had been far more interesting.

North and I stopped when we were tired, ate when we needed to, and worked when our gold ran low. It was a familiar routine, but one filled with far less fear and a lot more joy than our earlier trip. Everything had changed between us, and yet it felt as if nothing had. It was strange to me how I could go from hating everything about a person to loving even his worst faults.

As we neared the imposing barrier of the Sasinou Mountains and felt the first wave of desert heat wash over us, something in North’s demeanor changed.

“I think I can twist the rest of the way,” he said, stopping suddenly. His eyes were on the mountains, not on me.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “It looks as if it’ll be more than a mile.”

“Do you really want to try to navigate those beastly trails again?” North said. “No, thank you!”

He brought up his cloak before I could protest. I clung to his shoulders, holding him close. When our feet hit the ground, the cloak remained up around us, as if he never wanted the moment to end. I would have been perfectly happy to stay there, cocooned in darkness and his solid warmth.

But there was that scent, just a hint of it, a mere memory. Though I had experienced it only once, I recognized the way the smell of rain combined with the yellow dust and created a scent unique and beautiful.

The cloak fell down around us.

We were standing on the smooth surface of a rock, overlooking a valley of patchwork green and brown. There were roads, the old houses of stone and mud, the small schoolhouse, and the markets all still showing signs of the Saldorran attack.

I knew this view very well. That was Cliffton below us, though it was no Cliffton that I had ever known. There were patches of green dotting the valley, fields of vegetables and maybe even fruit. Not only that, but I could see the irrigation canal they had begun to dig. The lingering traces of the most recent rain shower were around us, casting the valley in unfamiliar light. Heavy gray clouds hung low over our heads, and there was the delicious scent of wet dust and something else.

I walked over the ledge and looked out into the valley below.

“Do you not want me anymore?” North’s words came out in a rushed breath, and I realized he had been holding them in the entire journey back. “Is that why you asked me to bring you back here?”

I turned around sharply. “No! Not that, never! You know how I feel about you.”

“I don’t do well without you,” he said. “Who I was before—I never want to be that person again. But I told you when I took you away from here that when everything was over, it would be your choice. You would get to choose where you wanted to go and who you wanted to be.”

There was a pleading look in his eyes. In that moment, he looked as if I had stripped him of his cloak and magic. I could knock him back into that darkness with a single blow.

But how could he think, after all this time, after everything we had done for each other, that I would ever want to leave him?

I looked from the fertile valley below, cocooned by the rocky brown-and-yellow mountains I knew so well, to the small splotch of wood and sand that was my home. All of it, every grain of dust, was a part of me, and that would never change—but Cliffton had never held my future.

This time, I chose him.

“I thought we could stay for a little while,” I said. “To help them plant more crops and rebuild their homes. I think they could use the services of a wizard.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “If you want to stay, if you want me to go, I will. This is your home—I understand that.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” I said. “My home is wherever you are. I just never had the chance to really say good-bye to the people and places I love. So if you’ll stay with me here, just for a little while, we can go wherever we want to go and do whatever we want to do.”

“That sounds nice,” he said softly, as if too scared even to breathe. I watched his face as the fearful resignation finally gave way to the first touch of hope. North took my hand, and we began the long walk down to the village.