Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(23)

What if it was another seven hundred years?

And so, as the song finished, as I smiled at the congregation and thanked them, I made a plan to leave, with only one thing certain: once I ran away, I could never, ever come back.





CHAPTER 8

The villagers had given me enough supplies and clothing to keep me more or less comfortable for a few days’ journey, though I would need to steal food from Shila’s cupboards. So much had been donated to her on my behalf, I felt only minimal guilt for doing so. Yet I had to plan the timing of my escape carefully. My door wasn’t locked at night, but the house doors were, and I didn’t know where either Shila or Father Aedan kept the key. My tenth day in Endwever, I faked sick and stayed in bed all day. Shila was kind enough to bring me my meals, and I stowed away crusts of bread and winter-wrinkled apples for my journey. On the eleventh day, I managed to sneak some cheese from the cupboards at night without waking anyone. On the twelfth, I turned my old dress into two bags I could carry on my shoulders and loaded them up.

And then I did what might be considered blasphemy. I told Father Aedan I needed to talk with the Sun and could only do so at Sunset. He took me to the cathedral, and I knelt at the altar for so long my knees and belly hurt. The first night, I did offer a prayer, though I’m not sure if Sun heard it. The next two nights, I just knelt there, thinking, planning, once dozing off. It didn’t matter, so long as I established a pattern. So long as Father Aedan believed the ruse and grew tired of waiting for my hours of “supplication” to end.

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.