“That is the story we’ve been told,” Lucien sneered.
Nimue wanted to shrink and crawl into a rat hole. And the light particles would not leave her. Annoyed, she waved them off, but they would disperse only to return to her like a halo.
“What exactly are you suggesting about my daughter, Lucien?”
Gustave tried to play peacemaker and to preserve his son’s chances of being Summoner. “Let us simply have another go at the ritual with Nimue not present.”
“Do we now question the wisdom of the Hidden if we do not prefer their choice?” Lenore asked.
“She is a corrupter!” Lucien snapped.
“You take that back,” Lenore warned him.
Lucien pressed on, “We’re not alone in our suspicions. Her own father rejected her, choosing to abandon his own clan rather than live under the same roof as she.”
Nimue stepped into the circle of Elders. “I don’t want to be your bloody Summoner! Happy now? I don’t want it!” Before Lenore could stop her, Nimue spun and raced up the winding path as the shouting voices below her echoed off the ancient stone walls.
THREE
NIMUE COULD ONLY BREATHE AGAIN when she erupted into the fresh air of the Iron Wood, choking back tears, too furious to let herself cry. She wanted to drown that old fool Lucien and tear her mother’s hair out for making her sit through that mockery of a ceremony.
Pym, Nimue’s best friend, was tall and gangly and was struggling to carry a sheaf of wheat across the field when she saw Nimue marching down the hill, away from the forest.
“Nimue!” Pym dropped her sheaf and caught up with Nimue, who brushed past her. “What is it?”
“I’m Summoner.” Nimue kept on charging.
Pym swung a look to the barrow and then back to Nimue. “You’re what? Wait, did Lenore say that?”
“Who cares?” Nimue spat. “It’s all a joke.”
“Slow down.” Pym loped after her, already weary from lugging the wheat.
“I hate it here. I’m leaving. I’m getting on that ship today.”
“What happened?” Pym swung Nimue around.
Nimue’s expression was fierce, but there were tears in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away on her sleeve.
Pym softened. “Nimue?”
“They don’t want me here. And I don’t want them.” Nimue’s voice trembled.
“You’re not making any sense.”
Nimue ducked into the small wood-and-mud hut she shared with her mother and pulled a sack out from under her bed, while Pym huffed in the doorway. Inside the sack were a heavy woolen cloak, mittens and extra stockings, wood-ash soap, flint, an empty waterskin, nuts, and dried apples. She took a few honey cakes from the table, then was out the door as quickly as she’d come.
Pym followed her. “Where are you going?”
“Hawksbridge,” Nimue answered.
“Now? Are you mad?”
Before Nimue could answer, shouts arose. She and Pym looked down the road and saw a boy being helped from a horse. Even from a distance, Nimue could see the horse’s white coat was smeared with blood. One of the village men carried the boy in his arms. The boy’s skin was light blue, his arms were unnaturally long and thin, and his fingers were spindly, ideal for climbing.
“It’s a Moon Wing,” Pym whispered.
The villagers hurried the injured Moon Wing boy into the Healer’s hut, and scouts rushed to the Iron Wood to inform the Elders. Led by Lenore, they all emerged from the forest with serious expressions. They passed Pym and Nimue with scarcely a glance, except for Lucien, who gave Nimue a crooked smile as he hobbled to the Healer’s hut.
Nimue and Pym knelt down by the shutters as Lenore and the Elders gathered inside the hut. Moon Wings were a rare sight anywhere, being shy and nocturnal, adapted to life in the canopy of the deep forests. Their feet rarely touched the ground, and their skin could take on the color and texture of the bark of whatever tree they were climbing. Besides that, ancient bad blood between Sky Folk and Moon Wings made this boy’s appearance in Dewdenn all the more strange and disturbing.
The boy’s chest rattled as he spoke, and his voice was weak. “They came by day as we slept. They wore red robes.” The boy coughed raggedly, and the rattle worsened. “They set fire to the forest, trapping us in the branches. Many died in their sleep from the smoke. Others leaped to their deaths. For those who made it to the ground, the Gray Monk, the one who cries, was waiting. He cut us down. Hanged the rest of us on their crosses.” Another jag of coughing left the boy breathless and his lips wet with blood. Lenore soothed him as Gustave hurried about, preparing a poultice.
“This is no longer a southern problem. The Red Paladins are moving north. We’re right in their path,” warned Felix, a barrel-chested farmer and one of the Elders.
“Until we learn more about their movement and numbers, no one is to travel,” Lenore said.
Florentin spoke up. “How do we sell our goods without market day?”
“We’ll send out scouts today. Hopefully this restriction will only take us through one moon cycle. In the meantime we’ll make do. Open the fields. Share. And we should reach out to the other clans.”
As the Elders debated, Nimue pulled Pym away from the window and headed for the stables.
“What, you’re still going?” Pym asked.
“Of course,” Nimue said. Waiting would only make things worse. It had to be now.
“Your mother just told us we can’t go to Hawksbridge.”
Nimue entered the stables, grabbed her saddle from a hook, and prepared her palfrey, Dusk Lady, for riding.
“I’m not letting you get on any ship. I’m not saying goodbye.”
Nimue tried to be stern. “Pym—”
“I’m not.” Pym folded her arms.
Hawksbridge was a ten-mile ride through rolling hills and dense forest. It was large enough to draw entertainers and mercenaries to its taverns and hold a decent market on every other Thursday, so to Sky Folk like Nimue and Pym, it was Rome, it was all the world. A heavy wooden fort overlooked the town from a northern rise. More than a dozen hanged men fed the crows from the fort’s highest wall, a grim warning to strangers and thieves.
Pym shuddered at the sight. She pulled the hood of her cloak tighter around her face. “These cloaks are crap disguises. And I’ve been doing chores all day. I smell.”
“I told you not to come,” Nimue reminded her. “And you don’t smell. Much.”
“I hate you,” Pym growled.
“You’re beautiful and you smell like violets,” Nimue soothed, though she tucked her hair under her own hood just to be safe. Fey Kind wore their hair down, unlike women in town, who wore it under a wimple or head covering.
“This is madness,” Pym said.
“It’s why you love me.”
“I don’t love you. I’m still going to stop you and I’m angry you’re doing this.”
“I bring adventure to your life.”
“You bring stress and punishment to my life.”
The guards at the eastern gate allowed Pym and Nimue through with little fuss. The girls stabled Dusk Lady in a stall near the gate and walked to the port at Scarcroft Bay, a small harbor for local fishermen and sea traders. Loud gulls hovered about the hulks and small cogs, then dove to the dozens of filled traps of catch lining the docks, fighting over the squirming contents.