Forest Born Read online

  The idea of leaving the Forest felt like standing on the rim of a well and willing herself to fall in. But she could not stay home, not as she was, not with the piercing disquiet, the wrongness that clung to her like wailing children who never sleep. She needed to run farther. She needed to go out into the world that had changed Razo and ask it to change her too.

  Somewhere a mouse squealed inside the talons of an owl. Somewhere a dry leaf cracked under an animal’s step. Everywhere the trees sighed. It was a long time before Rin could fall asleep.

  Chapter 3

  When Razo and Dasha took leave of the family four days later, Rin stood beside them, wearing her good tunic and boots and dangling the small sack of her possessions over her feet.

  Everyone was gathered before the main house—Ma, the five oldest brothers, their five wives, and the twenty-three children. They patted Razo’s back, engaged in last-minute wrestling matches, and gave Dasha timid cheek kisses, since she was too foreign and fancy for common handshakes and slaps.

  Then one of the little ones said, “Why’s Rin got her pack too?”

  Everyone went quiet. A bird called out from a tree, shrill and insistent. For only the second time in her life, Rin found herself the focus of her entire family. She kept her eyes on the shadow of her bag swishing over her boot.

  Dasha cleared her throat. “Rin’s coming with us. To the city. It might be nice for her to have a change of scenery. Work in the palace. That sort of thing.”

  No one spoke.

  Dasha cleared her throat again. “I’m sure she will be back before long.”

  “Rin’s going? You’re going?” Rin recognized her brother Jef’s voice, though she did not look up. “You’re teasing, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said Razo. “You just open your ears when we say, Rin’s coming with us and don’t make a fuss.”

  Her oldest nephew Meril said, “Don’t believe half of Razo’s stories about the city. It’s not as nice as he makes it out.”

  “It’s a dirty, smelly, crowded—,” her brother Brun began.

  “There are people who’ll hurt you for no good reason,”

  Brun’s wife Sari interrupted. “They’ll knock you down, they’ll spit on you, not care a spoonful of mush about—”

  “Ma needs you,” said Ulan, Jef’s wife. “And who’ll help me with the little ones on wash day? Come now, this isn’t like you to run off and leave us all—”

  “Don’t give her a hard time,” said Razo. “She wants to come for a bit. No harm. So, bye now!”

  Razo took a few steps as if hoping for a fast departure, but Rin could not make her legs move.

  Coward, she thought. You coward.

  Each time Rin had been about to tell her ma, her ma would look at her with eyes full of sweetness, and that expression that said Rin was her beloved girl, her most precious one. Rin could not bear breaking that. She felt fresh sympathy for eleven-year-old Razo sneaking away at dawn so he would not have to say good-bye to his baby sister.

  “Rinna?” said Ma. “You’re going to the city?”

  Rin glanced up and then back at her boots as quickly as she could. Ma looked so confused, Rin’s heart cracked. She was betraying her. But to stay and keep pretending that she belonged in the Forest, that would be a betrayal too.

  “I am, Ma,” she said. “Going for a bit.”

  One of the children started to cry, softly at first, but when her mother tried to hush her, the cry broke into a wail of despair that reached up through the canopy and seemed likely to pierce the sky and make it rain.

  “What’s happening?” another child whispered.

  “Rin’s leaving,” someone whispered back. “She’s going to the city forever.”

  “Forever? Rin’s leaving forever?”

  More crying voices joined the first, and the wail was so loud, no one could hear Rin mutter, “Not forever. I hope.”

  It was all Rin could do not to join in, let her voice rise up to the treetops and crack the sky. She nearly said, “Never mind. I’ll stay and everything will be normal.” Maybe it was for the best that she struggled to speak in crowds.

  What good was she to her family broken? She could not keep pretending to be the same Rin, the never-fail Rin, the helpful Rin, not when she was about to break apart like burned-through wood. The trees had changed for some reason, and she was no longer welcome in the Forest.

  So at last Rin shouldered her pack, met her mother’s eyes, and said under the hubbub, “Bye, Ma.”

  Rin turned and walked away before she could cry. The protests silenced behind her. Razo and Dasha soon outpaced Rin, her steps slowing. She needed to shut herself in that moment. Hurting was the least she could do for the offense of leaving her Ma.

  She glanced back once, and a few members of her family lifted their hands in halfhearted waves. Her mother had not moved, her hands still clasped together, her weight on one foot, her face nearly expressionless. But when she caught Rin’s eyes she sprinted forward, and her blue headwrap slipped, setting free loads of kinky black and white hair. Rin waited, her heart squeezing painfully.

  Ma seized Rin and squeezed her, pulling in her arms and her head, as if afraid the girl would fall apart. The whole world became Ma’s warmth, her hands, the smell of juniper, the thud of her heart.

  She released Rin to look her in the eyes, anxiously smoothing her daughter’s dark hair away from her brow, straightening her tunic. “I never thought you’d leave. Of course you might, but I just never thought . . . Razo’s always had half his mind elsewhere, so that boy coming and going feels as natural as the turning of the seasons. But not my Rinna-girl, not my baby girl.” She took Rin’s hands, rubbing them between her own. “You’ve not been yourself of late. And I know if you’d wanted me to know why, you would have talked to me about it long ago, so I don’t ask. But I tell you this—go out there and find whatever’s floated out of you and then come back to us right quick. Some folk is made for wandering and being in the open world, but you’re a Forest girl, Rinna. I can’t help thinking that the longer you’re away from your family and your trees, the more you just might wither away. So come on back and be my sweet-eyed tender girl home in her Forest again. Right quick. You hear me?”

  “I will, Ma. I’m sorry. I’m really—”

  Rin shut up, her voice hooked to tears now. Her mother was right about the withering. She already felt dried-up and half-dead, and it hurt so much she actually looked to see if her limbs were splitting.

  “I’ll miss you every moment until then. My baby girl, my peaceful Rin. Go on and catch up with Razo, I won’t keep you. Just you know I’ll be hoping for you each day.”

  Rin nodded. She had not intended to run, but when she turned her back on her mother, her body wanted to collapse, and running seemed the only way to stay upright. Dasha glanced at her when she caught up with them, but she did not ask why Rin had been fleeing as if for her life. They walked in silence for a time. And Rin did not look back again.

  It was good she was going. It was. Living with her family, letting them believe she was her ma’s shadow, that was a lie, and the kind that would build into a storm to blow her down. It was good that she was leaving, so why did she feel like a straw doll that had lost all its straw?

  They traveled for two days, the hum and click of the Forest sweeping past Rin in a blur of green. Emerging from under the canopy to join a main road, Rin had to gasp at a sky that grew bigger and bigger till she thought it might swallow the whole world. Eventually she had to admit the sky was greater than the Forest, a thing she had never before imagined.

  An escort waited at the city gates with two spare horses for Lady Dasha and her chief personal guard. Rin rode on her brother’s horse, her arms seizing his chest in case the beast took a fancy to flinging them off. She did not trust horses. They were so large and they moved in unexpected ways. People were one thing—Rin enjoyed trying to guess a person’s thoughts. But who knew what a horse was thinking? Rin looked into the huge round eye o
f the beast beside her and decided that she did not want to know. It most likely involved eating its rider, bones and all.

  The city was everything that the Forest was not. A wall ten men high kept the trees out and the people in, boxing in the clanging and whirring and cracking and whacking. So much noise that Rin wondered how the people could stand it. She startled constantly, confused by the commotion, imagining she kept hearing someone call her name. Her heart was tired from stopping and starting, and she wanted to cover her ears and yell at everyone to just hush up.

  Dasha said, “Soon it will all sound like wind in the leaves to you—just noise you find yourself ignoring.”

  “You don’t notice the noise anymore?”

  “Not so much.”

  Rin considered. “If there was a dog standing on your pillow barking in your face every night, do you think you’d eventually get used to that too?”

  “I . . .” Dasha smiled. “I hope to never find out.”

  It seemed to take all day to ride up the curving streets, but at last they reached the topmost swell and faced what could only be the palace. It was as huge as the city-dwelling beast of Rin’s nightmares.

  “Oh no,” she said aloud.

  “Did you say something?” asked Dasha.

  Rin did not care to admit, “I’m feeling fairly alarmed at the moment and I suspect if I go inside that thing, it’ll chew me up and spit me out,” so she said, “It’s big.”

  Razo snorted. “That’s the truth. Just wait till you see inside—it’s full of Rooms.”

  He dragged Rin through corridors and galleries, courtyards and antechambers, pointing out the absurdity of the palace finery with a tone that attempted derision but sounded proud. “Vases everywhere, as if all the tables weren’t enough. I mean, what’s the point of having all those little tables if you have to go and find vases to put on them, and then find something to put in the vases? Hundreds of vases, nearly a thousand. And you’ll know I’m not exaggerating if you count sometime. I have.”

  His fervor made Rin smile, which was a distraction from her lingering dread. At least the palace had not actually turned into a monstrous beast and chewed her up. Yet.

  Rin could not tell much difference between a stone wall and an inlaid wood wall, but she said “ooh” and “wow” so Razo could believe she was properly impressed. He greeted everyone by name—kitchen staff, chamber ministers, guards and courtiers and maids alike. Everyone hailed Razo in return, and no door seemed closed to him.

  “My sister,” he’d explain in passing. “Here from the Forest. I’m showing her all the Rooms.”

  And the sentry would nod and let him pass.

  “You’re important here,” Rin told Razo, knowing that would make him puff up and gloat, but she could not resist.

  “What do you mean here?” he said, but he was so delighted, he took her to the kitchen next. “Best place in the palace.” She soon agreed. The storeroom alone took her breath.

  The rest of the day rushed past like a spring-fattened stream. They ate; they found Dasha, who had secured Rin a post as a waiting woman, whatever that meant; then Razo and Dasha bid her good night.

  Another antechamber. This one full of beds and wardrobes and screens for undressing. This one was apparently her new home. It came with three waiting women who talked. And talked and talked. And sometimes expected a response.

  So Rin tried to do as she’d always done, patterning her style of speech and attitude after another, trying to fit into their mood. But one girl talked quickly, the other slowly, and one was quiet, then given to sudden bursts of energy. And they spoke of things foreign to Rin, other towns and families, castles and gowns, music and dancing. She did not know whom to imitate or what to say, and the dizziness of so many Rooms and the feeling of being buried inside a stone beast was overwhelming. Rin ended up shrugging a lot until she finally just lay down on her bed and shut her eyes.

  She missed the breeze moving over her skin. She wished she might look up and see stars popping through a canopy of pines and feel nothing but the chill goodness of a night forest, the warmth of Ma at her side, the slumber breathing of her family all around.

  Instead she heard whispers.

  “Relative of someone important, I gather, or why else is she here?”

  “Do you think she’s dim-witted, how she hardly speaks?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Her Majesty’s never had more than four waiting women. This one’s unnecessary.”

  “It’ll be nice to have an extra hand till Cilie comes back, though I could wish she wasn’t yet another rough girl.”

  “How did Cilie secure her post? I never heard.”

  “She’s from one of the east provinces—a poor girl. There was some sad story involved, and you know how the queen crumbles for the sad stories.”

  “I could wish Her Majesty had a little more backbone, to tell the truth.”

  “When does Cilie come back? Perhaps she knows the new girl.”

  “Oh, I doubt the new girl is from the east. If I had my guess, I’d say she’s Forest born.”

  Chapter 4

  Over the next few days, Rin saw little of Razo and Dasha, and had the extraordinarily odd experience of spending most of her days under a roof. Waiting women served the queen, but Rin only glimpsed Queen Anidori coming and going, while she had her fill of the other women.

  They seemed competent, though they spent a tremendous amount of time talking before performing any duty, asking another’s opinion how to do this or that, or ought they do this instead? And did anyone else catch a gander of that new chamber minister with the broad shoulders? And wouldn’t another night of music in the grand chamber be just the thing?

  Rin watched and listened, and found ways to be useful.

  “Look at that spot! She’ll never complain, but I know this is Her Majesty’s favorite dress.”

  Rin took the dress back to the laundry-mistress.

  “Tomorrow’s the queen’s riding day, and that stablemaster hasn’t replaced the left stirrup yet, I’ll wager.”

  Rin went to the stables and watched the stablehands at work, and when no one noticed her, she fixed the stirrup herself.

  “Where’s that button? I swear I had it right here. Look at that, just about to sew on a new button and it up and walks away.”

  In Rin’s vast experience as an aunt, no object ever walked away but it had help from a child. She slipped into the adjoining nursery, where the queen’s son, Tusken, played with pale wooden blocks. He had a mass of wavy fair hair tumbling around his face, and cheeks so round and kissable they seemed like peaches ripe for plucking.

  “Hello, Tusken,” she whispered, kneeling beside the prince and kissing his cheeks a few times because she could not help it. He was nearly two years old but still wonderfully chubby, and her heart strained for her little ones back in the Forest.

  She held up both of her hands. “How many hands do I have? Let’s count. One, two. Now let’s count yours.”

  He held up his hands and no button fell out, but he kept his mouth curiously shut.

  “Good boy. Now let’s count teeth.”

  She opened wide her mouth, and he did the same. Inside his cheek, something gleamed. She scooped it out with her finger.

  “Oh dear, you could choke on that. Buttons aren’t food, lamby. We only put food in our mouths.”

  She helped him stack his blocks and cheered when he knocked them down. Then she returned to the other ladies, placing the button on the table.

  “Hello, there it is! Where’d you find it, Rin? Eww . . . why is it wet?”

  Rin decided she’d keep a closer eye on Tusken.

  Summer was lingering out of doors, the days long and sweet as if sucking on a honey stick. Rin watched it through a glass pane. She was continually flinging open windows, leaning out, smelling the air that tingled her nose with scents of flowers and horses. She longed to be the one to escort Tusken on his daily romps in the garden, but she was being especially ca
utious. Don’t ask for anything, make no demands, keep the hard words inside.

  Finally one of the others suggested it, a pale girl named Janissa who sported scratches and an angry welt across her cheek from chasing Tusken through shrubbery.

  Although Rin had taken charge of a dozen children at a time, this one little boy felt as important as a hundred. She took Tusken’s hand and led him past staring servants and observant sentries with an apprehension that made her squeeze her eyes shut.

  It was a relief to be in the gardens, crawling through bushes, making “soup” in a castoff helmet with water, flowers, dirt, and leaves. The few trees were squat and ornamental, but where the gardens merged into the stable yard, a massive elm held court, looking as out of place as a roughly clad giant would in the palace’s throne room.

  Stablehands came and went, soldiers and pages, and no one slowed to touch the tree or even look up to admire its lush crown.

  They must not need trees, she thought. They must not feel any more from a tree than from dead wood.

  She’d wondered the same about her own family in the Forest, but now it seemed true. People would not be willing to live in a city if they needed trees as Rin did. As she had.

  Rin accompanied Tusken outside all week, and on the seventh day at last she dared. She brought Tusken to the elm, where he sat in its twisted roots, breaking sticks into tiny pieces.

  Rin stepped closer. Maybe it’s only the trees of home, maybe they’re what’s wrong and I’m all right . . .

  She pressed her cheek to the ropy bark and closed her eyes. Trembling, she opened herself inside, as if she were listening hard, though not with her ears.

  Please, she thought, hoping for a trickle of that familiar peace to work inside her. Please.

  She gasped and flung herself away, filled with a creeping nausea that pressed against her throat and made her forehead sweat.