The Farwalker's Quest (27 page)

“That's pretty good,” Zeke said. Ariel stole a peek at his face. Respect rode there.

When Scarl touched her opposite shoulder blade, she flinched.

“Yes.” Scarl nodded. “A Farwalker's song.”

She flushed and looked hastily forward again. It was infuriating, really. Every time she decided to dislike him, every time he pushed her and she meant to push back, she instead managed to make them both proud. Her own skills seemed to conspire against her. Maybe that reassured him, but it left Ariel uneasy about what surprise might come next.

They marched long into the evening, dodging trees in the gloom, and began early again the next morning. As they climbed into foothills, Ariel began to dread another freezing mountain pass, this time with no blankets. Her worry so consumed her that small signs of human passage went unnoticed until the pines abruptly gave way to a cluster of little brown houses. She stopped in shock.

“They're all made of wood!” Zeke exclaimed, disapproving.

“We haven't so many stones here,” Scarl said. “But old trees sometimes wish to leave the world and return as new saplings again. Our Tree-Singer usually can find one when we need.”

“This is Hartwater?” asked Ariel.

“At long last. Come on.”

He led them to the second house in the cluster. He didn't knock. He just opened the door.

A pale woman with loose, dark hair glanced up, startled. She shrieked Scarl's name. With two long strides, he scooped her out of her seat and into his arms. His face was soon covered with kisses.

Stunned, Ariel stared at the woman's vacated seat. She could only assume it was a bike. The seat of a wooden chair was affixed between two wheels larger than those on barrows back home. Ariel couldn't see any handles, but clearly the contraption could be wheeled about. When the woman's gaze finally shifted to Scarl's companions, he set her gently back into the seat.

“You look dreadful and I can tell that something is hurting you,” she told him. “But I'll scold you later for that. Who are your friends?”

“Ariel, Zeke,” Scarl said. “Meet Mirayna Allcraft.”

Ariel dragged her attention from the bike to its owner. At home, she'd known only men who repaired roofs, mended boats, or built tables and chairs. But this Allcraft was neither male nor well. Mirayna might have been pretty, but hollows dragged at her cheeks and dark circles hung beneath her pale eyes. Even her hands looked as if the skin clung too close to the bone.

“Your wife?” Ariel asked, fumbling for a foothold.

“You might say so,” Scarl said.

“No, you might not,” countered Mirayna. The adults swapped an impatient look.

“Never mind that,” Mirayna added. The wide smile she turned on Ariel and Zeke almost dispelled the haunted look in her face. “Please sit and rest.”

While they perched on a bench near the fire, she asked, “Why has he brought you here? Where are you from?”

“The less you know,” Scarl said, “the safer you'll be.”

“I'm not interested in safe,” she replied. “Tell me.”

Scarl's jaw tensed. “They're hungry and tired, Mir. So am I. Can you argue with me after we take care of that?”

Her face softening, she reached to squeeze his hand. “I'm just glad you're back. You were gone for so long this time, I started to worry that … Well, let me put on the kettle.” Placing her hands on the wheels alongside her, she pushed. Her chair turned and rolled to a pantry box.

Ariel could contain her amazement no longer. “You have a bike!”

Mirayna and Scarl both shot her startled glances. Then Scarl chuckled. Removing his coat, he sank into a chair by the window.

“Not a bike,” he said. “A wheeling chair.”

“My legs don't work anymore,” the woman explained. “But your friend and I make a good team. He knew stories and could find things to use, so I was able to craft it.”

“And that is one of my reasons.” Scarl drilled Ariel with his eyes. “Wheeling chairs. Along with food keepers and better ways to stay warm, so winters don't mean somebody else we know freezes or starves. Plus devices to call for help in the night and cures that work better than crossed fingers and hope.
That
is the kind of thing we're Forgetting.”

Ariel looked back at the wheeling chair. She'd thought of marvels from the past only as enticing, not important. But she could imagine what a difference this chair made for Mirayna. She longed to try it herself, even if it wasn't a bike. She knew she could never ask.

Fidgeting with his splint, Zeke asked Mirayna, “Did your legs break and not heal right?”

Ariel nudged him too late. Mirayna's smile barely slipped. But Scarl shoved his weight back out of his chair and crossed to the pantry box himself. He squatted and yanked it open much harder than needed. Mirayna touched his shoulder to soothe him.

“Not exactly,” she told Zeke. “I have a sickness that stopped them working some time ago. But I get along all right.” Her fingers tapped Scarl as her gaze returned to his back. “I see, however, where you're hurt. If it looks as bad under that filthy shirt as it does from out here, we'd better get the Healtouch for you.”

“It'll keep,” Scarl growled. He pulled out a half loaf of bread and a small dish of brown paste, banging both down atop the box. He paused as if he couldn't remember why he had taken them out. Twisting, he took Mirayna's hand from his shoulder and pressed it to his lips, his eyes closed. She laid her other hand on his cheek. Ariel could see that Scarl loved this woman terribly, ill or not, and Mirayna returned it. The knowledge wove a new thread through her understanding of him.

Squirming, Zeke kicked her ankle. To the relief of both, Scarl pulled himself from Mirayna to bring over the food, along with a spoon.

“Nut butter,” he explained, setting the bowl on the bench next to Zeke.

“Come let me see what you've done to yourself,” Mirayna told Scarl. She rolled herself toward the back room. With a glance at his charges, he followed.

Zeke swiped his finger through the unappealing brown paste and poked it into his mouth. When Ariel saw his blissful expression, she used the spoon. Within moments, they'd devoured the bread and licked up the last of the sweet treat.

“We should have left some for them,” Ariel whispered.

“Anyone who can make a moving chair must be able to trade for more food than they need,” Zeke replied. “She's lucky.”

Ariel shushed him, hoping those murmuring in the next room had not overheard. She didn't know what illness troubled Mirayna, but there was nothing lucky about being so sick. She
could guess now why Scarl hadn't answered her question about children.

When the adults returned and saw the empty nut butter dish, Mirayna laughed and set about preparing more food. Stirring the fire, she sized up Ariel and Zeke.

“I think I can find a few things that won't fit them too badly,” she told Scarl, who'd reappeared in a clean, unripped shirt. Fresh clothes sounded more pleasant than Ariel would once have believed. But when Mirayna suggested that Scarl “show them the basin,” she wondered how all three of them would share just one washbowl.

To her surprise, Scarl waved them outside and down a well-used path. Ariel braced herself for a cold bath in the creek and thought longingly of Tree-Singer Abbey.

They ducked under the sweeping boughs of a cedar to a mossy cleft in the hill where water spilled down a rock wall. Zeke stripped off his shirt, ready to stand in its shower.

“You can do that, Zeke,” Scarl said, “but you might like this better.” He led them up a stair in the hillside. At the top, water pooled before it found its way over the falls. An unpleasant smell of eggs rose from the pond.

“It stinks.” Ariel wrinkled her nose.

“It's worth it.” Scarl pulled off his boots and socks to plunk his feet in the water. “Ahh.”

Gingerly, Zeke followed suit. He grinned and waded in to his knees, then turned to splash Ariel.

“It's warm!”

Soon the two of them sat chest deep in the basin, fully dressed, ducking their heads. One corner of the pool was too hot, but as the water flowed toward the falls, it cooled to a comfortable warmth.

While Scarl bathed more properly, Zeke ran back and forth between the basin and the chilly waterfall. Too lazy for that, Ariel lay back to float. Once she got used to the smell, soaking felt better than a cozy fire and a soft bed combined. Closing her eyes, she let the water leach away sorrows and pain—not to mention bug bites and grit.

A lone Hartwater resident appeared, perhaps drawn by Zeke's hoots each time he plunged into the falls. Scarl rose to speak with the man in low tones.

“What did you tell him?” Ariel asked, after the man had retreated down the path.

“I begged a few favors,” Scarl said. “First, to give us some peace, and second, to keep a sharp watch for strangers, in case those we left in the Drymere have followed and are foolish enough to approach. I'd rather the whole village didn't know you are here, but I need them alert. Everyone will be safer that way.”

When the dripping trio arrived back at the house, plates had been set on the table. Mirayna handed Zeke garments and asked Ariel to join her in the back room. The air there smelled of wood shavings and oils. Mirayna's crafting table and unfinished goods crowded her bed.

“I think we can tie this skirt under your arms for a dress,” she told Ariel, pulling a soft brown wool from a beautiful chest. “With a sweater overtop to keep your arms warm.”

She took the wet clothes as Ariel peeled them off. Ariel realized that the fingers of Mirayna's right hand never uncurled. She used it like a boat hook, not a hand, but so gracefully that Ariel hadn't noticed before.

“You're the Farwalker, aren't you?” Mirayna asked quietly.
At Ariel's guilty expression, she nodded and smiled. “I can tell by the way he looks at you. I'm a bit jealous.”

She seemed so kind, and Ariel so yearned for a female friend, that she didn't try to stop her tongue. “Do you love him?”

Mirayna smoothed Ariel's wet clothes and set them aside before she answered. “Yes.”

Pondering, Ariel wrapped the thick skirt around under her armpits. The woman reached to tie the drawstrings. Ariel felt connected to her in some uncertain way.

She murmured, “You know he's killed people?” Such a brash remark would have earned more than a scolding from her mother. But in the dim room, under the gentle touch, Ariel could ignore the rules that divided her from an adult and a stranger. Besides, she was starting to feel like an adult and a stranger herself.

Mirayna tugged and adjusted Ariel's makeshift dress. “He told me. It's dreadful. But I think I understand why he felt that he must.”

“Why don't you want to be his wife, then?”

Mirayna's pale eyes lit on Ariel's face. “You see too much for your age.” She stroked Ariel's shoulders. “The way here must have been hard.”

Ariel gave a lopsided shrug. Her self-pity had been left far behind.

“Perhaps you can understand this, then,” Mirayna said. “I don't want to make him a widower.” Her wan skin and haunted eyes weighted the words so their meaning sank heavily into Ariel's heart.

“My legs were only the first things to stop working,” Mirayna
added softly. “Before long, perhaps, my illness will reach my lungs or my heart.” She draped a sweater over Ariel's shoulders and summoned a weak smile. “If we have not been married, it will be easier for him to find some other wife.”

Ariel listened to Scarl's voice through the wall as he murmured something to Zeke. She shook her head. “I don't think so.” She didn't say more. She had realized, too late, that she had no business touching this wound.

They returned to the front room for a lunch of fried eggs and fish. Ariel giggled at the baggy pants tied onto Zeke and he mocked her dress. The clean-shaven Finder teased them both. Staring at her traveling companions, with soft clothes hugging her own freshly washed body, Ariel felt as if all of them had stepped into different skins.

Wondering who these new people were, she watched Scarl's eyes follow Mirayna. Plainly, this woman was the reason Scarl did anything, including killing Elbert and bringing Ariel here. She noticed, too, that Mirayna only pretended to eat. That, along with their whispered talk, tipped a decision Ariel didn't realize she'd been trying to make.

“Zeke, give me my needle.”

Her friend paused, fish bones stretched between his fingers. His glance bounced off Scarl before landing on her.

“Now?”

She nodded. Curious, the adults watched Zeke dig greasy fingers into the end of his splint. He drew out the needle and gave it to her.

“A knitting needle?” asked Mirayna.

“Not exactly.” Some of the charcoal had rubbed away, but Ariel could still make out the symbols. She passed it to Scarl. “I can't make amazing things like Mirayna, but I made this.”

“What's it f—?” Scarl turned the needle. Catching sight of the symbols, he froze.

“It's a copy of the telling dart before Elbert took it,” she explained.

The Finder pulled a long breath, let it out, and set down the needle very carefully.

Ariel's face puckered. She had expected him to be glad. Maybe she shouldn't have revealed her secret.

Rising from his chair, he circled the table. Ariel drew back as he reached for her head. Taking it in both hands, he planted a kiss on her forehead.

“That's for being so clever,” he said. “I wish I had something better to give you.”

“More nut butter,” Zeke suggested.

Scarl laughed and held Ariel at arm's length. She blushed, unable to withstand his warm gaze.

“And for not telling me sooner, I'd like to shake you,” the Finder added. A light scowl appeared with his grin. “We'll call it even for now.”