“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” my uncle said the next morning after I had finished my tale about my adventure with Hytham. He’d finally come to the end of his second round of scolding me for being out in the forest after truedark—with Hume, mournlings, and Empress knows what else roaming around—and in the gray light of early morning had taken particular interest in my description of the spells I’d cast. “Your parents both were magical. I always assumed that was part of what drew them to one another—sharing in that which is now so unusual among our people.”

  I wrapped my arms about myself and couldn’t suppress the grin that rose across my features. I directed it to the earth rather than my uncle. It was a rarity for him to speak of my parents, my father especially, and to do so with kindness and understanding rather than judgement—he could have granted me no better boon before my departure.

  Perhaps I might be so lucky one day, finding someone who understood, who wielded magic of their own. Someone who might help me undo the harm my parents—despite the love they bore one another—had done.

  However proud my uncle was, he was less than enthused about my plan to return to Shakerton and confront the herald. I’d told him my hopes, that the herald would agree to my terms of freeing Bansaerin in exchange for me leading them to the isla. I left out what Bansaerin had told me of the herald’s magic, his ability to force people to lie, to move against their will.

  He stared at the quilt doorway ruffling in the breeze. Despite the late hour, the square outside uncle’s hut was full of activity. On the chief’s orders, everyone was to prepare to leave by midday—a few days before the Hume’s deadline lest they chose to hunt us down through the woods.

  Once I convinced him of the wisdom of my plan, I would return to Aveela and help her finish packing. She had stubbornly remained in bed that morning, refusing any help beyond me preparing her tea.

  “I know you want to help your friend, Draeza.” Uncle spoke with slow deliberation. “But no one would judge you if you gathered your belongings and came with us rather than lingering. It is dangerous. On many counts.”

  I took my time considering best how to answer. I didn’t want my determination to frighten him further, much less to allow him to see the excitement my adventure had brought to my spirit. “Some judge me already, Uncle.”

  He bowed his head.

  “I cannot help what they did,” I added before he felt he needed to remind me yet again. There were times I wondered whether my father had brought him more grief in life or after his death. It was easier for Uncle to blame him than my mother.

  I leaned closer and rested my palm atop his hand. “When I returned with the Seed, I knew I was doing something good, very good, for our people. Regardless of what others would think, I couldn’t avoid judging myself if I had the opportunity to do the same again and passed upon it. It is within my power to help our people in this in a way that no one else can.” I’d rehearsed versions of this speech on mine and Gwinny’s flight back through the forest and throughout the few waking hours between my return and now.

  “No one else has studied the islas like I have, no others could speak to the Bright Age, our history, the working of the structure that makes up the ruins. I can do this.”

  He could not argue with me as he knew I spoke true.

  Uncle sighed heavily. He ran his hand back through his thick, dark hair. “I still don’t like it.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to reach a point of resolve. Aunt Rugan had departed the day before with the scouts set to join the Seed. Half our people would be leaving today, Uncle and my cousins among them, and the other half on the morrow. When I returned, successful, from my mission to free Bansaerin, there would be no one left. I’d have to make the journey north on my own.

  Were I trying to rescue someone besides Bansaerin, I suspected Uncle would have warmed to the idea more quickly. He reminded Uncle too much of my father.

  “But I consent,” he said finally. He returned my wide smile. “You will be careful?”

  “Yes.” I tried to remain still in my seat. I knew what was coming next.

  “And you will be wise?”

  “I promise, Uncle.”

  His eyes brightened as he stared at me. “You remind me so much of her,” he whispered.

  My lower lip trembled at his sudden display of emotion. “But I was raised by you,” I reminded him gently. “This is not goodbye.”

  “No, tir’eaza.” Darling one. He rose and placed a kiss atop my head. “I wish you well on your journey. Come and see your cousins off before you leave.”

  I gave Uncle my word and slipped out of the quilt door, hurrying along the winding walks back to Aveela’s. Her stubbornness had taken on a new power all its own last night and this morning. Was it because I had arrived late and had disturbed her?

  “Aveela, I’m back,” I called as I cracked open her bark-plank door. “Would you like a second cup of tea?”

  I squinted into the dim hut. Strange, we usually had candles going at this hour, and it was not so chilly outside that we could not uncover the windows.

  A wheezing breath snagged against my senses from the corner of the room. Aveela remained in her bed.

  As my eyes adjusted, I took in my mentor in her prone state upon her feather mattress. I’d never seen her so pale.

  “Aveela.” I rushed to her side and knelt on the floor, taking her hand in mine. “You feel like ice. Let me adjust the fire.” I made to pull away from her, but the spiritspeaker held me fast.

  “It is good you returned when you did. Do you accept now that I will not be going to the north? They will have to make do without a spiritspeaker for a while.”

  “They—how did you—”

  She chuckled to herself and tugged at her layered blankets. I adjusted them around her shoulders, tucking the wool beneath her so as to eliminate any draft.

  “Just as I knew it was not mine to go to the north, it is not your path either.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  A knot thickened in my throat. How foolish of me to have so badly misunderstood. Aveela hadn’t refused the journey north out of stubbornness.

  She wasn’t going to live to see it.

  “Do not mourn for me, child. Such a passage has been more than three hundred years in the making.”

  I kept my gaze lowered to hide my tears from Aveela. I knew this was the way of our world, and yet I could not help but be distraught by such a turn of events. So many changes occurring all at once.

  What would our people do without her? What would I?

  I wasn’t ready. On so many counts.

  Aveela closed her eyes, speaking with ease into my silence. “I have kept the company of the dead for so long, it feels more like a homecoming than it does a parting. I am not afraid.” The old woman sighed as she leaned back upon her pillow. Despite her pallor, there was a peace in her expression I hadn’t seen in some time.

  “I know you aren’t afraid,” I whispered. She would laugh at me if I told her that I was. I had spoken to the dead often enough to know we had nothing to fear from passing on into the Exalted Lands, from becoming spirits ourselves. That was not what frightened me.

  I wasn’t ready to be the spiritspeaker for our clan even beyond the fact that I was preparing for a journey in the opposite direction than our people were readying to go.

  “I am not. Nor should you be. You have been preparing for your next steps for some time.”

  I took a shuddering breath. Aveela wasn’t referring to my next steps as the spiritspeaker for our clan. She meant whatever waited on the other side of my negotiations with the herald.

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  A self-delighted giggle gave me all the answer I required.

  I wiped beneath my eyes with the side of my wrist, trying with little success to keep the snuffling in my nostrils silent. “Aveela, do you think that I’m . . . ready?”

  The old Lifkin smiled. “Yes, child. I have known for some time that it would not be for either of us to follow our people to the north. Just as I told your mother yours would be a different path. She had suspected as much all along.”

  My throat thickened again. “Is that why you didn’t want to answer me about the Hume spirit?”

  “Hmm,” Aveela sighed. “Much of your path has been hidden even from me, though I prepared you as best I could.”

  It wasn’t an answer, not really, but I didn’t want to press her, not now. There was one last thing.

  Aveela’s breaths grew deeper. More spaced apart.

  My tears flowed freely. I didn’t try to stop them.

  I wetted my lips and gathered my courage. Before she passed, there was a question I had been longing to ask, for years now. “Has my mother ever appeared to you?” I couldn’t stop thinking about what Uncle had said about my parents finding solace with one another through their magic. Would my mother be that solace for me, now that I was venturing out on my own?

  Aveela nodded as though she’d been waiting for this question. Knowing her, she had been. “She has not, child.” Aveela patted the back of my hand. “But I believe I shall see her soon.”

  I nodded my thanks, unable to say anything further. Would she send my mother to me after she had passed? Was there a reason neither my mother nor my father had ever appeared to me though I was a spiritspeaker?—albeit not a very practiced one yet. It was possible they had both passed on beyond the Exalted Realms, but I didn’t think they would leave me and Iredella here.

  I knew better than to press Aveela about it. Even on the precipice of her passage in to the Exalted Lands, it seemed the sort of question that would lead her to circumvent in her answer. ‘How much of Spirit can we truly know?’ she would ask.

  When the time was right, if ever, my mother would appear to me. Perhaps I would know then what to say to her.

  Aveela patted my hand. “There is one last task you must do for me, child.”

  “Anything.” I held my breath.

  “Upon the desk, within the small chest where we keep the ink from Young Gregory”—a faint smile lifted the wrinkled corners of Aveela’s lips as she mentioned the aged Hume—“you will find a gold coin upon a chain. Bring it to me.”

  I nodded and rushed to do as she bid. Sheafs of parchment cluttered the desk. I would miss their soothing rustle, the scent of ink that clung to Aveela’s hut. The hinge of the chest squeaked when I opened it. There, beneath the ink and quills, I found what Aveela had sent me to look for, a gold coin held suspended upon a chain by a thin circlet of gold.

  The coin was strangely warm to the touch. I clenched it in my palm and hurried back to Aveela’s side.

  “Tuck it into my palm.”

  With tears blurring my sight, I did as she bid. We had only moments, little more. “Should you need me, call. The coin will help.”

  Aveela sighed, her weight settling fully back upon the pillows.

  I crumpled forward and sobbed. The new spiritspeaker for my clan.

  #

  “Draeza? Draeza!” Mirdal’s voice brought me back to myself. My tears had dried upon my cheeks, and I still knelt by Aveela’s side.

  He rushed into the hut and clutched my shoulders. “By the spirits, what has happened?” His gaze darted from me to the still form of Aveela beside me. Mirdal paled and, saying nothing further, pulled me into his chest, my head resting upon his shoulder.

  I thought I had cried myself out but found I still had a stream of tears left to shed. “She said she was happy,” I finally mumbled to my friend. “That she was going to see those she’d spend hundreds of years in the company of. They were more real to her in the end than we were.” I didn’t have to clarify what those words meant to me to Mirdal. He knew.

  It is the way of the spiritspeaker to find our peace with passing on.

  Mirdal drew back, placing his hands upon my shoulders and looking me over. “Your uncle sent me after you. They’re preparing to leave, and your cousins are growing most impatient, Orabella especially.” My smile twisted into a soft sob at the thought of my little cousin. How long would the two of us be parted?

  “I-I came to check on her. And I found her here. I promised the adjudicator that I would meet him this morning. Bansaerin is counting on me.” Mirdal had been pacing within the gates as I returned the night before and knew most of the details of my adventure.

  He rose, his hand cupped beneath my elbow so I would do the same. “Go. I’ll take care of everything here. We’re not leaving until tomorrow anyway.”

  My lips started to tremble again at his kindness. I threw my arms around his neck before he could stop me or say anything further. “Wait.” I drew back and knelt to remove the coin from Aveela’s hand. As before it was still warm.

  I tucked the gold chain beneath my hair, settling it within the loop of my lifestrand necklace that my mother had made for me. The heat from the coin warmed my chest, providing a sense of comfort and reassurance I hadn’t counted on receiving.

  Mirdal helped me to gather the last of my things and patiently waited while I checked that all the most important records had already been packed and prepared for the journey north.

  I slung my pack onto my back and took his proffered arm, looping mine easily through his. “Come, I will see you off.” He smirked at me. “Leave it to you to start your grand adventure without me.”

  His teasing lifted my spirits as it always did. We both knew that Mirdal wouldn’t easily part from his family, especially not before so grave a transition. “I hope you’ll tell Bansaerin of my bravery, taking on your responsibilities and his. It’s a weight I can hardly bear.”

  “It is most irresponsible of us, I concede,” I answered, smiling in spite of the weight upon my chest. A world of unknowns unspooled before me. Uncle, Orabella, and Mirdal saw me and Gwinny to the gates.

  “Will I see you tomorrow, Draeza?” Orabella asked from my hip.

  “Not tomorrow, little one.”

  She sighed in frustration. “The day after?”

  “Probably not then either.”

  Orabella scowled up at me, a frown wrinkling between her teal blue eyebrows. “Then I don’t think Da should let you go.”

  I grinned, glancing at my uncle who always walked taller and more at ease in Orabella’s presence.

  “She will be back as soon as she can,” Uncle intervened. He held out his hands for her and removed her from my grasp. Mirdal helped to unclasp her plump little hands from my hair.

  “That I will.” I swung up onto Gwinny’s back, savoring this moment. The three people I love most seeing me off. Our bustling clan behind them.

  This felt different than the panic, the fear of soldiers at our heels that had spurred our flight here to Twisted River.

  One day, I promised myself, we would all be together again.

  I bade my farewell to the three of them, and Gwinny and I set off. I glanced back a final time before we disappeared into the forest. Orabella had tucked her head into Uncle’s shoulder. He and Mirdal still had their hands raised, bidding me farewell.

  “Be wise!” Uncle’s voice drifted after me through the trees.

  “I will,” I murmured, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. Wise and careful. But brave as well. Like my parents and those who had raised me.