Forest Born Read online

  Chapter 16

  Rin’s mind was falling through rings of memory, rains and drafts and seasons of early cold, days of clouds and days of sun, circles and circles, back and deeper, protected inside a hide of bark, tender roots buried deep, fragile leaves lifted high.

  She’d grown up plunging into the thoughts of trees, but this felt new. Perhaps she experienced it differently because she had a name for it now—tree-speaking. Or perhaps in her desperation for escape she submerged herself deeper than ever before. She let all these possibilities pass through her like water through roots, without stopping to consider. Still her mind fell.

  It was not a dream—time still moved in dreams, things happened in order. This was a moment with no comprehension of time, like a circle has no beginning or end. Rin met herself there, saw herself in a way without seeing—a girl who listens to trees.

  The slick wrongness poured over her, coated her. But she did not try to flee, still aware that the terror that existed without was worse. She needed to keep Razo and Tusken resting and quiet, and she needed to hide from searchers, from Selia.

  Alongside the tree’s own memories of rain and sun and storm, Rin met her own memory, the one she’d been fleeing from for months—Wilem is beside her in a tree, leaning near, and warmth rushes through her whole body as she realizes, I can make him stay.

  Rin jolted, almost waking from the tree sleep. Stumbling across that memory was like tripping on a hidden root and falling flat. She became aware of cicadas screaming in the forest night, the crackle of leaves rubbing in the breeze. Rin’s heart slammed into her ribs, and she felt sleeping Tusken stir and heard Razo moan.

  No, Rin. Calm. Peace. If embracing the memory of Wilem was the only way to maintain the tree’s calm, then she would face it. That spinning wrongness clutched at her, but she clenched her jaw and submitted to the memory—not the thin, scrubbed thing she’d toyed with these past months. The truth of it, all of it.

  For the first time since Nordra’s stick, Rin desperately wants something for herself. Razo was her best friend, but he’s gone off into the world, and the homestead has become just a place for him to visit. Besides, he has Dasha. Who does Rin have?

  For one afternoon, she has Wilem.

  He comes over to wrestle and run with the Agget-kin, and mostly with Kif and Len, two of Rin’s older nephews. She likes the way Wilem looks, black eyes and black hair that is so long in front he has to push it out of his eyes. His eyeteeth are especially pointy, and when he smiles they peek below his lips and give him an exciting, feral look. She finds it easy to fall into Wilem’s pattern of speech, his careless but thoughtful way of seeing the world, easier than anyone besides Razo and Ma. It is a pleasure to emulate him, to feel as he must feel.

  They sit in a tree all afternoon, hiding from work and tossing pine cones. And leaning closer to each other. The smell of his skin . . . That treetop afternoon seems like the life of a different Rin. She is as carefree as Razo, has some of that pretty sauciness that Ulan does when she tosses her hair and laughs, some of that sweet girliness that Genna does when she bats her lashes. Rin does not worry about all the chores she is missing and making sure the little ones are fed and readied for bed—for the first time, she feels not like Ma’s shadow, but like her own girl. A girl who might be worth knowing. She feels extraordinary.

  She takes deadly aim at her brother Jef’s tousled head and pegs him with a pine cone. He looks around wildly, but not up. People rarely look up, she realizes.

  Wilem laughs. “You’re wild, Rinna. You’re dangerous.”

  She’s never wanted to kiss someone before. But now as she leans against Wilem, she imagines how it might be—like how she feels when her hair is freshly washed and a warm breeze blows it back from her face, like when her belly is full of roasted quail and fresh bread. Extraordinary.

  Dusk settles around them in great dark folds, and the nephews come looking for their friend.

  “Wilem!” they shout, not knowing which tree is his perch. “Come on, we’ve got a prank planned. Are you still here? Come out!”

  Without a word to Rin, Wilem begins to scramble down the tree. Rin feels all the air go out of her, all the girliness and prettiness and possibilities. She climbs down after him, faster than is safe. Her only thought is, If Wilem goes away, the wild Rin goes too. And she wants to keep that Rin so badly, she wants to cling to her and not return to being Ma’s shadow—silent, harmless, forgettable.

  She’s nearly climbed to the Forest floor when in her haste, she slips off a branch and into Wilem. He catches her. And he doesn’t let go. Her heart bangs against his chest, a sensation that’s pleasantly painful, and with barely a hesitation, she breaks that safe barrier she’s built since Nordra and the stick. She speaks her desire.

  “Stay,” she tells him. She does not just say the word—she speaks it with meaning, with intent. She hurls the word like a stone. He stays, for the moment at least. But his gaze shifts, his arm drops from her back. One word won’t keep him.

  This is when she lies.

  She studies his face, as she did long ago with Nordra, and knows what words will convince him to stay. She can read his anxious doubt—his admiration of her nephews is intense, and he fears they think him a hanger-on.

  Don’t, Rin, she warns herself, but she feels so free, so wild; no fledgling on the nest but a falcon commanding the winds.

  “Kif and Len never really liked you, you know,” she says, one hand smoothing Wilem’s tunic. His chest muscles flex under her hand.

  “What do you mean?”

  She glances up at him through her lashes and then back down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you knew how they are. Meaner than hungry dogs. They talk about you when you’re not here, say you’re boring and foolish. They were planning some cruel joke on you to night, that’s why I wanted to keep you away from them.”

  “But . . . they wanted my help pranking Jef.”

  She shakes her head sadly. “Kif and Len are waiting by Jef’s house, but they mean to shove you into the dung pit.” That was not a playful prank—that was the kind of cruel trick no kin of Ma would dare pull.

  Wilem’s brows pinch together. “Why?”

  His sadness almost changes her mind then, but there are so many unspoken words beckoning her, filling the world with new risks, new chances and adventures. She’s reminded of her brother Deet’s report of drinking his first ale in the city, how it was bitter and made his stomach sore, but he did not want to stop drinking. Words are ale on her tongue and in her belly, heavy and foul. And irresistible.

  She lies some more. “They’re blind for not liking you. It makes me so angry. I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted to keep you with me, keep you safe from their cruelty. You should stay with me, be my friend. I won’t treat you like that. You’re smarter than them anyhow, so let’s play a trick on them instead.”

  “Sure, that’s what we’ll do.” Wilem’s eyes light with pained pride. “We’ll show them.”

  Words are easy when she allows herself to use them without fear or shame. Now speaking is like that rare and perfect kind of sleep when she can control her dreams, guiding her own mind to what images she wants to see. She is controlling this moment. She is not a feeble stick of a girl after all. All this time wasted, acting as Ma’s shadow, hiding inside others’ behaviors, being small, dismissible. Now she feels power like a staff in her hands. Even the wrongness of what she does thrills her.

  Why has she been so afraid of words? They are wonderful!

  She steps closer to Wilem. “They mocked you, said you’d never kissed a girl. They said you would be too afraid to kiss me. I said you weren’t afraid.”

  She moves even closer and puts her hands on his arms. It feels dangerous, the most dangerous thing she’s ever done. But she feels crazy with words, she feels wild. She believes she can keep creating this perfect dream for herself, and it will never have a chance to fray and fall apart. She just has to keep talking.

  “K
iss me, Wilem. Just kiss me, and prove everyone wrong. You’ll show them.”

  Kiss me. They are not idle words. She can feel the strength of them, a command as sure as if she were his queen. And he obeys. He holds her arms, he kisses her lips, fast and hard. It does not feel good like a breeze combing through freshly washed hair. It feels like what it is—a hard, cold lie pretending to be affection.

  “See? I did it! I’m not afraid.” But there is a sadness in his eyes, as if he has been asked to give away something precious, like Nordra handing over her doeskin boots.

  “Kiss me more,” Rin demands. “Everyone thinks of you as that lonely boy with a boring brother. They don’t really care about you. But I care. I’m the only one, Wilem. If you want Kif and Len to respect you, if you want to be more than just that boy, you need to want to kiss me. You need to be with me.”

  His eyes are hot. He leans to her again, meeting mouth to mouth. She grabs his hair and holds him to her lips, kissing awkwardly, trying to find in that touch the feeling she left up in the tree, trying to find the Rin whom Wilem called wild. And he is trying to please her. He is in pain from her words, she knows, and he is desperate for her touch to take away that pain.

  She allows his lips to move with hers, against hers, to feel that his lips are soft, his chin and cheeks rough. She touches her tongue to his, and the feel of it startles her heart. She grips his arms with her fingers, pulling him even closer, her lips strong, her mouth open, urgent, getting cross that she’s still so hollow. She feels wild. But not loved.

  Wilem stumbles back and looks at her, breathing through his mouth. He says, “What now?”

  You should want to kiss me, she thinks. You should want to stay near me. I shouldn’t need to trick you for a kiss.

  She hates the mean, hard sensation in her heart when she thinks that, hates realizing that Wilem does not love her. So she just shrugs, wishing him gone. And he goes, looking as sad as a rain-beaten sapling with his head hanging down, heavy with her lies.

  It is a relief not to be burdened with regret. Anger at his stupidity feels so much nicer.

  A hot, sweet sensation fills her, burning and delicious, and she walks through the homestead for the first time knowing that she is better than everyone. There are ways to make them see that. She can read their faces as clearly as looking at the sky to tell the weather. She’s always been able to see lies and truths in people’s eyes, to guess what thoughts they hid, though since making Nordra cry, she forbade herself from speaking on it. No more shackles, no more rules. Now she is powerful Rin.

  Is this who she has been all along? When she’s not Ma’s shadow, when she’s not mirroring those around her or huddled up, abashed and afraid to speak, is she so bold, so pretty and fearless, so strong? Then why has she been hiding? The true Rin is wonderful.

  Kif and Len return later, claiming that Wilem accused Rin of lying and kissing him.

  “We told him to go wash his nethers with pine cones,” says Kif.

  “Our aunt Rin would do no such thing,” says Len. “Don’t know what’s gotten into that pokey-toothed fool.”

  “Wilem is no good,” Rin says. “I was shocked by the things he said about you. No one talks like that about Agget-kin.”

  “That little rodent!” says Kif. “I’ll never speak to Wilem again.”

  What a plea sure to lie! Her feet do not touch the ground, her blood rushes through her as warm as sleep, her smile feels real. She might do anything to nourish that invulnerable sensation, might cling to it for days, or perhaps forever.

  But the next person she sees is Ma.

  “What did Wilem do?” Ma asks, stepping onto her porch in her sleep clothes, her fists on her hips. “Go on and tell me, Rin, and I’ll thrash his tunic off his hide.”

  Rin sees her ma’s round face, her white-streaked black hair, frizzy and incorrigible, pulling free from its scarf, her brown eyes that see everybody. Ma cares for every person in the world the same, except for Rin. She calls Rin her lily on a pond, her morning bird song, and everyone knows that Ma loves her daughter just a little more.

  Rin’s heart isn’t floating anymore. Her hands and feet feel made of stone.

  “Nothing. Honest, Ma, he didn’t do anything.”

  “You sure, my honey-eyed girl? You sure? Don’t protect him, now. I won’t put up with naughtiness, not in my homestead, not to my baby girl.”

  Still Rin wants to cling to her strength, wants to keep those words that remake the world into whatever she likes. And she doesn’t want to feel sorrow for what she did to Wilem—she wants Ma to hate him, shoo him away, punish him for not wanting to kiss her, for having to be tricked, for leaving so easily.

  “You just tell me the truth and I’ll take care of it,” says Ma.

  The truth. Rin cannot tell her that. “He didn’t do anything. We were playing a game. It was just a misunderstanding.”

  Ma frowns, but nods and goes back inside. Kif and Len groan, discouraged the fun of war is already over. They leave her standing under a fir tree. It is spring, and the night air has a bite to it.

  The warmth, the surety, the strength drain from her, leaving her chilled and discarded, a late-winter cellar root. She waits until Ma is asleep before crawling under the blanket beside her, huddled on the edge of the cot, her eyes wide. The memory of that delicious strength stays with her, like the scent of Wilem on her mouth. She enjoyed it. Even now she does not feel as bad as she should, and so she knows that makes her worse than bad.

  She tosses in bed that night, the chill of her guilt settling over her. She cannot undo what she did. She cannot run far enough to get away from hurting Wilem, from lying and commanding. But even more, she is caged by the feeling that the true Rin—her deepest self, who was not simply mirroring others—was the girl who lied, who hurt and did not care. At her core, she is someone Ma would not love. All night, wrestling in the dark with sleep and with truth, she works to bury herself.

  Rin slept inside the oak’s thoughts. Its own memories of weather and growth continued to hum, and like a pond, its stillness reflected back herself. Suspended moments from her life swirled, pelting her like rocks lifted in a windstorm. She saw them the way a tree sees its years, rings circling each other, all memory existing at once—living in the Forest in silence, not tree and not girl; getting lost in the trees all day and finally finding her way home, only to discover no one has noticed she’s been missing; watching Razo leave the Forest for Tira, and feeling as if her insides have been scraped out and dumped aside; realizing for the first time that she is too big to curl up on her ma’s lap.

  There, pulsing white, was seven-year-old Rin watching Nordra play. Thinking with the tree made Rin’s own thoughts clear as snowmelt, and she saw that memory anew. It is the first time in her life she is without Ma and Razo. She feels so terrifyingly alone, she scrambles for something to make her stronger, to make her all right, and discovers an ability sleeping inside her—to see, to speak, to command. That desire, that talent awakes, never to sleep again. The urge is compelling, but Rin fears the loss of Ma’s love and squashes it down.

  Rin turned inside the tree, tracing memories from the years that followed Nordra and the stick, and saw how weakened she became, fighting something unknown inside, her whole self out of balance, tilting. The tree-speaking gave her a place to lean, but it could not cure her.

  Other memories pulsed hot, linked in a white chain from Nordra and the stick to the present—saying anything to keep Wilem close; warning Cilie to keep away from Tusken; asking Razo to guard Tusken with his life; convincing the woman in the inn not to jump; telling that squat mercenary to let the girl go. There were more to these moments than she’d realized, a force behind her words, a power in her voice.

  With a rising horror, Rin’s sleep-self turned to face the most recent memories—standing behind a cairn of stones, Razo and Tusken in a cage; feeling pinned by Selia’s words, subdued and helpless. Selia speaking. Rin speaking. Words harder than words should be, words like w
ind, words like fire.

  Rin quaked but forced herself to name it.

  I have people-speaking. I am like Selia.

  Only then did what was inside her become worse than the world outside. Rin opened her eyes, barely swallowing a scream.

  Chapter 17

  Rin breathed in hard, shuddering gasps, taking in the waking world—the oak tree, the dark sky just stirred by light, Tusken asleep, and Razo staring. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  She nodded. “A . . . nightmare.”

  “Don’t blame you. You were sleeping hard there at the end. I poked you for a bit but you didn’t wake. Kind of scared me.”

  Rin sat up and leaves tumbled from her head onto her lap. Her hand flew to her hair, and she was suddenly terrified that she’d been turning into a tree.

  Razo smiled. “I decorated you while you slept. Made you a little crown. I stuffed one leaf up your nose, but you just sneezed it out and kept sleeping.”

  I wasn’t really sleeping, Rin thought. I was—She felt a jolt pass through her as she remembered her dream thoughts. People-speaking. She tasted bile on the back of her tongue. Could she really have people-speaking? That “curse” as Enna had called it, that decay that turned people into monsters who forced others to do what they did not will?