The Farwalker's Quest (8 page)

Despite this plan, she still felt like throwing up.

Marshyellow was easy. It grew near the hole in the creek where the pollywogs lived, and it didn't look that much like its twin. Wishing she'd thought to bring a basket, Ariel yanked a handful from the water.

True chamomile flowers dotted the meadow. She resolved to get those on her return.

As she entered the woods, she yearned to stop by Zeke's tree, but she decided she'd better not waste any time. With marshyellow slapping wetly against her calf, she found fiddlefern and, after a long hunt, a goat ivy vine. To her relief, she remembered the notched leaf shape that identified the ivy. The fern's sharp scent confirmed that find.

She had just started her search for foolsbane when she felt something odd—not a healer's intuition, but the tickle that suggests somebody watching. The skin between her shoulder blades crawled.

“Zeke? Is that you?” She swiveled, searching. “Madeleine?” Maybe the other girl had come this way after her birds. “Madeleine, it's me. You can come out. There's no rule against talking. Just helping.”

The wind sighed. The birds had stopped chirping. Someone was definitely here with her.

Ariel bent back to her hunt for the foolsbane. Although her eyes roamed the ground, her attention remained tuned for the crack of a twig or a movement.

At last she heard the footfall. She jerked her head up. He stood in full view before her, no longer trying to hide. It would have been difficult anyway, so close and with a horse at his side.

Frozen, Ariel stared at Scarl. He'd ridden out in the fair weather without his coat, so nothing hid the long knife he wore at one hip.

The plants in her hand slipped to the ground. Just before she whirled to escape—as though he'd been timing her courage, in fact—he spoke.

“Well met.”

She didn't believe for a moment that their meeting was any accident. Nobody could sneak up so well in the woods without trying. Her limbs shook in anger as well as in fear.

“What are you finding today, Ariel?” he asked. She could barely make out the soft words over the rustle of the forest.

“Only what I'm supposed to,” she said.

He ducked his head as if amused. “Of course. That would be plants for your test, yes?”

When she refused to even nod, he added, “Watch out for the swarth. Its poisonous brother is plentiful here. I passed some just there.” He jerked one thumb back the way he had come.

Ariel's breath caught. The sixth plant! Her test, though, felt distant. She narrowed her eyes and tried to guess what this stranger wanted.

When she still didn't respond, he shifted and patted the neck of his horse. A cold twist of pleasure unfurled in her chest. She'd discomfited him—not much, but a bit. Her pinching fear eased slightly. Ariel noticed then that his horse was lathered with sweat. He'd ridden hard, either before releasing Madeleine's birds or on the way back. Ariel could only hope the horse was tired and that she could dodge through the trees better, if she had to run.

“Healtouch.” Scarl turned his penetrating eyes back upon her. “Are you sure that's the right trade for you?”

“I would
never
want to be a Finder, if that's what you mean.” The hot words slipped out and then hung in the air like a mistake. Precisely because of that dread, she pushed herself a step closer to him.

“I'm not afraid of you,” she added. Her voice remained steady—almost.

Scarl raised one eyebrow. “I can see that.” Inside, he was laughing, she was certain.

“Go away.” It sounded more like a plea than she wanted. To make it stronger, she added, “You're not supposed to bother people who are taking their tests.”

He did smile now, a thin stretch of the lips. He tipped his head at her politely and swung onto his horse. In a breath, the pair had passed into the green flicker and vanished.

Ariel collapsed to the ground.

After a moment of inhaling the familiar, safe smells of leaf mold and dirt, she sat up. The words she'd exchanged with Scarl were burned into her brain. As her thoughts found their way
back to her test, though, a grin spread on her face. He'd mentioned the one plant she couldn't remember. He'd meant to scare her, she thought, and he certainly had. But he'd helped, too. As birds began warbling again, Ariel jumped to her feet and collected the plants she'd let fall.

Another thought dashed away her victory grin. Helping was against Namingfest rules, and he'd been in the crowd when Zeke's father said so. Maybe the Finder had done it on purpose.

Ariel couldn't cheat. The idea churned in her stomach. She probably would have remembered the swarth on her own, but now she'd never know. And what if Scarl told someone that he'd met her and brought up the name of a plant? One of his comments rang horribly in her ears. “Healtouch—are you sure that's the right trade for you?” He had found her in the woods specifically to make her fail.

Tears rose in her throat. She was stuck. If she went back and confessed she'd had help, they would thank her for being honest, but she would fail nonetheless. If she stayed mum, but he talked, people would believe him because cheaters had something to hide. She would fail either way.

Her only hope was that she was wrong. She could say nothing and pray that he did the same. But even if no one ever found out, her Healtouch name would always feel like a cheat.

In a daze, Ariel got herself moving again. Her heart felt as though it hung near her knees. Dragging her feet, which were heavier from the weight of her heart, she plucked a few strands of foolsbane. She kicked at a swarth fungus where it sprouted low on the side of a tree. Snatching it, she would have rather stomped it to pulp. She'd never wanted so badly to run away.

Ariel haunted the forest until the spring air grew chill. As she returned across the meadow, she remembered the
chamomile. She picked a single flower before continuing on to the square.

Zeke had returned, probably long ago. His face glowed. That was all Ariel needed to know he'd passed his test. Madeleine was nowhere to be seen, but she still had an hour or two. More time couldn't help Ariel now.

The crowd welcomed her back. Unable to match their smiles, she trudged to the sycamore. Zeke's father, the Storian, and Luna came together from conversations they'd been holding with friends. Seeing her daughter's downcast look, Luna tipped her head inquiringly. Ariel pressed a stiff smile to her face and laid her pickings at Jeshua's feet.

“Needlework?” he asked.

“Oh!” She drew the balled handkerchief from her pocket. She could still add better stitching, but it no longer seemed to matter. She handed it over.

Inspecting it, the adults looked disappointed. “It's a start,” Storian said. “And for the last part of your test … ?”

Jeshua called out the names one by one. For each, Ariel held up the plant. Luna raised her eyebrows at the lone chamomile flower.

As “swarth” fell from Jeshua's lips, Ariel's ears buzzed. She saw his lips move but couldn't hear it. She was too busy waiting for a cry of “Cheat!” from the crowd.

Jeshua twitched his hand and repeated the word. Hardly believing the silence, Ariel grabbed her last plant. Her heart soared. She raised the fungus to Jeshua—and froze.

“Ariel!” Her mother gasped.

Ariel saw it plainly at last. Somehow she'd done exactly what Scarl had warned her against: picked a fungus that looked much like swarth. But this one was deadly.

Jeshua's face collapsed into wrinkles. A small groan rippled among those near enough to see. The fungus tumbled from Ariel's hand.

“It's not swarth,” she said, too late. The idea Scarl had planted had sprouted in the fear he'd sown with it. She'd simply been too distracted to notice its bloom until now.

Her heart thudded and ached as if she had actually poisoned someone. The adults in charge whispered together. Luna bowed her head and shook it slowly once: no.

Jeshua looked at Ariel gravely, his eyes sad.

“I'm sorry, Ariel.” He said more words, like “taking more time” and “next year” and “partial.” None of them mattered but “sorry.”

“Something scared me. I got confused,” she whispered into the fog around “sorry.” She didn't expect her explanation to change things. It didn't.

Tears flooding her eyes, Ariel let Luna lead her home through the whispers. A few young voices taunted, “April Fool!” Those were hastily hushed by parents. She didn't look up from her feet until she thought she'd passed every face in the crowd. When she finally raised her eyes, she discovered she still had a few more faces to pass. One belonged to Scarl. She gazed back at him dully, not caring if his eyes glinted in pleasure or triumph.

Neither appeared on his face. If anything, he looked ill. One hand kneaded his temple as if his head hurt.

The other gripped the hilt of his knife.

“It was a hard test,” Luna said. She sat by the hearth and scooped her daughter into her lap. Like a toddler, Ariel hid her face against her mother's collar. “But I thought you'd do fine. I know you've learned your plants better than that.”

She awaited some explanation. Ariel's tongue felt too wooden to give it. Words couldn't turn back Jeshua's “sorry.”

“I know it feels awful now,” Luna added, accepting the silence. She patted Ariel's back. “But you won't die of it.”

In the hours that followed, three people told Ariel they were partly to blame. The quickest to say so was Zeke. The first time he knocked on the door, Luna took one look at Ariel's face, bent to whisper to him, and sent him away. When he came back just before bedtime, she let him come in.

By then Ariel's stomach, unaware she considered her life over, had rumbled angrily awake. Zeke sat beside her while she nibbled cheese and leftover bread.

“I'm so sorry,” he told her.

“Don't say that. I hate that word.” She would never hear “sorry” again without reliving this day.

Zeke studied his hands before trying again. “It's kinda my fault. My dad didn't want anyone saying he'd been easy on me because I was his last son. And then I think he felt he had to make all the other tests hard, too.”

Ariel looked up from her bread crust. “Did Madeleine fail, too?”

Not sure what she wanted to hear, Zeke gnawed his lip. “No. She came back just before dark. She spent all day looking and calling. I even saw her trying to talk to the horse to figure out where he'd gone. She captured only two birds, but another flew by itself to her coop.”

Ariel gazed at him sadly, trying to imagine Madeleine's day. It was tempting to want company in failure, but she would never wish her own roiling shame on somebody else, least of all gentle Madeleine. Ariel managed a shallow smile.

“She's lucky,” she said. “I think her test was the hardest. It's not your fault, though, Zeke. I just—” She shuddered. She couldn't bear to revisit it yet again. “I goofed up something awful,” she said instead. “I guess this is the second bad thing that was going to happen.”

Zeke sighed. “I'm not too sure about that.”

Unable to imagine anything worse, Ariel just blinked at him and let blankness fill her head. It was so much easier than thinking about what he'd just said.

“What was buried under the tree, anyway?” she asked, changing the subject.

Zeke shared the high points of his test. He hadn't bothered trying to catch the sycamore's attention. Instead he'd walked to his maple, sung her a few songs he thought she would like, and asked if she could help him. Although even trees have enemies and allegiances, they rarely hold secrets from one another.
After an hour or so, the maple gave him an answer. He returned to tell his father that the thing in the ground was a spoon with a bootlace tied around it. Jeshua dug it up. That was that.

He made it sound easy. Ariel knew that it wasn't. Having already done well enough to be a Tree-Singer himself, Zeke would now start as his father's apprentice. She hugged him and cried. In the part of her that still could feel at all, she was honestly pleased. Yet his success also lit up her failure.

The second person to shoulder some of Ariel's pain, the next morning, was Bellam Storian. He didn't use the word “sorry.” He just came by to ask how she was.

“I feel somewhat responsible for what happened yesterday,” he added. “All that fuss about the telling dart was quite a distraction. I should never have mentioned that two of my students had found it.”

“Why did you, then?” Ariel grumbled.

“Ariel, what manners!” Her mother clicked her tongue.

Ariel shrugged one shoulder. She thought she had nothing left to lose. Why be polite?

“That's all right.” Storian whisked his hands together slowly. He gave Ariel a lopsided look—part amusement, part chagrin. “You haven't had much experience with Finders, have you? No one but them understands how they work. But those who eat regularly have to be very good at their trade.” He paused, letting Ariel decide that a Finder as big as Elbert must be skilled indeed.

He cleared his throat, stared out the window, and continued. “You heard them say what they sought—not the dart, but its receiver. They would have found out sooner or later.
I thought sooner was better. I thought then they'd just leave. It never occurred to me—” He faltered. “Well, I guess I was wrong.”

“Nonsense,” said Luna. “You told the truth and should make no apology for that. I can't see how it changed yesterday. Some things just don't turn out as we'd like.”

Ariel choked on a protest. When she'd first opened her eyes that morning, her waking brain had forgotten, just for an instant, that she was a Fool. Memory had crashed down upon her like a wave crushing a seashell.

She and Storian now swapped a look of regret. “I'll try to make the next year of classes as interesting for you as I can,” he said. His eyes dodged away, and he added, “Once we start again, of course.”