Meek

Chapter 43: The Owls and the Mice

That evening, Laranya tied an oilcloth at waist height between two trees and said, "At this rate, you'll be juggling with the sparks before we leave the forest."

"When's that going to happen?"

"Probably four or five days, if we stay off the path. Maybe a little more."

"Are you going to tell me where we're going?"

She stretched out on the blanket beneath the cloth. "No rush. You need, uh ..."

"What do I need?" he asked, sitting beside her.

"A lazy stretch of time? To relax, to train, to remember. You lost yourself. I guess we both did. But you ... I keep calling you 'Eli,' but you're not the same Eli, are you?"

"I feel like the same Eli."

"No, you don't."

"No," he admitted. "I don't."

"And you're not 'Cloaked-in-Meekness,' either. You're ... " She rolled onto her side to peer at him. "You aimed yourself at the marquis like an arrow at a stag's heart. You blocked out everything else, except, I guess, revenge?"

Eli didn't answer. He didn't know if, while drugged, he'd mentioned his seething regret at leaving the skinny torturer alive. He didn't know if he'd mentioned that he'd burned the name 'Treli Trestan' into his memory ... and vowed that one day he would return.

One day he would extract a price.

"You put yourself in blinders," Laranya continued. "And you need a five-day to let things settle."

"How about you?" he asked. "What do you need?"

Her gaze turned icy. "I already asked and you said no. For a whole year."

"Not that. I meant, uh, um ..."

She snort-laughed at his expression. "I don't know what I need. I guess to make my own choices again, instead of obeying someone else's. To take charge of my life."

"Apparently to take charge of mine, too."

"Yeah, I ..." She eyed him, with a rare hint of hesitation. "I'm sorry. Do you mind? I just think ... maybe you need to step back right now, and I need to step forward?"

"You're a managing woman, Laranya."

"Lara."

"Lara," he said, then added: "I'll let you know if I start to mind."

She nodded, then chewed on her lower lip for a moment. "I gave him the reins to my life, but now I'm taking them back. That's what I need. That and to listen to night birds courting. To fall asleep with branches above me and leaf litter beneath. To remember the owls and the mice, and the scent of earthen caves hidden beyond the dangling roots of fallen trees."

Eli didn't need much rest, on account of his trollblood. And maybe because he'd spent days unconscious--that was a good way to catch up on your beauty sleep.

So he lay still until Lara's breath deepened into sleep. Every time she rolled over she made a faint sound, a sort of inquisitive chirp. Well, that wasn't completely adorable. A family of skunks shuffled through fallen leaves, then one of his sparks caught a glimpse of a ringtail civet stalking beneath a sharp-leaved bush.

Owls spoke and the night seeped into all the deep places. Eli dozed for a few hours. Or half-dozed, as the sparks wafted around him, keeping watch despite his slumber. At least he thought they were keeping watch; they certainly felt more alert now they'd started responding to his core. Surely they'd rouse him if they detected anything alarming.

Yet when he woke in the darkness, he felt no threat or urgency. He simply felt rested.

He sent the sparks to play among the branches. Tapping leaves this way and that. Testing his growing strength, startling a spiny mouse just to watch her jump. Pushing the sparks faster, punching holes in leaves.

He tried grasping smooth-skinned seedpods between the sparks, then plucking them from their stalks. That took delicacy, like using rocks to grab a tankard--and it took heft, too, so the seedpods didn't ignore the sparks completely.

Still, with some trial-and-error he managed to achieve the right balance. After he plucked his third seedpod, he rolled from the low-slung tent.

The donkey whuffled inquisitively, and Lara said, "Mmuh?"

"Shh," he murmured. "Go back to sleep."

"Muh," she said, and rolled over with another chirp.

He drifted from the campsite into the midnight forest. At the fern gully he ate a handful of fiddleheads. Then another handful. Delicious. After that, he sent the sparks scouting for food--using a troll's definition of 'edible'--and snacked his way in loop around the campsite. He discovered long pinecones that tasted like pine needles smelled: acidic and sweet at the same time. He sent the sparks as high as possible to dislodge them. Once they fell, he knocked them closer to himself in mid-air, trying to catch them.

Training and snacking. Perfect.

Finally, he crouched in the skirts of a tree with drooping branches. Trying to meditate. Trying to sense the weight of the forest in his core. Add that to the weight of the mountain. And also, maybe, to remember the trolls, who were starting to feel a thousand leagues away. He smiled when he thought of his troll siblings. Then his mind wandered for a time ... until it snagged on the echo of Lara saying something like: you can't trust your memories of the trolls.

Why not? Sure, he knew that Mist-Beneath had changed more than his body. He spoke Trollish, and his instinctive response to trolls had become fondness instead of fear. And yeah, he still didn't understand some of the things they did. Not just what they ate, either. Other things. But they weren't human. Only a fool would judge them by human standards.

On the other hand, what other standards did he have?

Halo, what other memories did he have?

Maybe she'd just been trying to convince him not to return to the mountain ... before she'd dragged him unconscious in the opposite direction. He wasn't sure if that bothered him. She couldn't have dragged him to the troll warren, though. If she'd approached, they would've eaten her.

And she'd been right about him needing to relax: he already felt his fear and stress and urgency easing away.

He closed his eyes and tucked the sparks into a mound of fallen leaves. He felt the trees around him, the jagged bark and smooth shoots. The warmth of his core spread through his body, an inner spark that filled every inch of him. He felt mushrooms and molds, and a thousand thousand beetles and ants and worms, and each one felt like another cipher scribed onto the scroll of life ...

In the morning, Eli watched Lara unbraid her hair. He liked how the muscles in her arms moved. He liked her quick, nimble fingers. He watched through a spark so she didn't catch him staring, but she took so long that eventually he led the donkey to the ferns, to share the bounty instead of watching her mess with her hair.

Also, ogling her like that was a little creepy.

When he returned, she was dressed in leather boots and brown pants and dark green tunic. Crooked leather straps, shaped like branches, criss-crossed her vest, securing her blowgun and a dagger. And she'd done her hair into dozens of skinnier braids, with only a single hefty one for her hairclip.

"Huh," he said. "You look different."

"Try again," she said, without looking up from the saddlebags.

For a moment, he didn't know what she meant. "Uh, you look good?"

"Mm." She tossed him a wide-brimmed straw hat. "Wear this, and you'll look different, too."

"Wait. You brought a farmer's hat with you? We're fleeing Rockbridge after killing the marquis and you packed a silly hat?"

"C'mon, Fern," she told the donkey, taking the lead.

Eli tugged the hat onto his head. "Her name's Fern now?"

"You're just jealous 'cause she has a name."

Huh. She sounded grumpy, for some reason. Still, she picked a path through the forest with a dryn's unerring skill, seeing farther than he could despite her lack of sparks. Instead, she read the terrain: moss on a fallen branch, a lek of insects.

After a time, she gave him the donkey's lead and dissolved into the woods--and started peppering him with darts again.

Which got old quickly, but she claimed that training should hurt. And by the time the sun was high, he was detecting half of her darts. A few hours later, he was blocking a quarter of them, knocking them away before they reached him.

Operating by reflex, too. Weight flowed effortlessly from his core into the sparks as they flashed, fast as thought, to intercept the tiny fletched darts. Of course, blocking a quarter of the attacks meant that three-quarters snuck past his defenses.

Including one that caught him directly in the eye.

"Blessdamn," he snapped.

"Oh blight, oh no!" Lara yelped, from the trees.

He pulled the dart from his eye. Which didn't hurt much, but turned his stomach a little.

"I'm sorry!" She dashed toward him from the woods. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean--I'm so sorry."

"It's okay." He blinked a few times. "Half-troll, remember?"

Her eyes welled with tears. "It's not okay."

"It's fine, Lara. Doesn't even sting anymore."

She clamped her jaw. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know that."

"But--but I have."

"Look at me, Lara." He widened his no-longer-injured eye. "It's all better."

"Not that! Not that, you absolute hedgehead." She sniffled. "I've been keeping secrets from you."

"Okay," he said.

"No! That's not okay, either. Y-you were right not to trust me."

"Well, too late now."

"You really can't get the balance right," she said, smiling through her tears.

"It's fine, Lara. Whatever it is, it's fine."

She took a shuddering breath. "There's something I need to tell you."

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