CHAPTER NINE
So now to decide if everything Falak had told them was untrue.
“He is the true power in the kingdom, not my father,” pointed out Kyran as they rode through the forest. “I believe he would like nothing better than to be the only councilor my father ever listened to. I believe he’s not far from that goal now ... that is, if it weren’t for my mother. She is a force to reckon with.” Kyran’s expression was wry.
“And there is one more tiny thing you are forgetting,” Posy said wryly. “He tried to have us murdered in cold blood. There’s always that, if nothing else convinces you he’s bad news.”
The corner of Kyran’s mouth quirked as he threw her a look. “Yes, there’s always that. I suppose that doesn’t leave any room at all for trust, does it?”
“Not much,” Posy agreed. “But I don’t understand why he wanted to have us killed? Why now? If he wanted me dead, why not just leave me where I was in the Plot? Why send us away?”
“But Posy, don’t you see ... the real question is, why try to have us killed at all, anywhere? Falak knows, as does every character of the Plot, that though he kills us now, we will only be there again at the beginning of the story. What can he have hoped to gain by it?” Kyran bit his lip, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, I can tell you, I’m certainly not turning around to go ask him,” Posy laughed.
Kyran paused, turning to glance at her over his shoulder before he said, “Girls from your story must not be contradicted often, for you speak what you have to say rather ... forcefully. As if you take it for granted that you will be heard and considered.”
Posy smiled at him, but her smile quickly faded as she thought about how it truly was in her life. She never took it for granted that she was heard. In fact, she never expected her opinions or words to be cared for or wanted. And this from those who were supposed to love her the most. She felt a wave of self-pity and sadness, familiar and sickening. She looked up to see Kyran was still turned, looking at her closely.
“What did I say?” he asked. “I would never want to cause you grief.”
This brought back the smile to Posy’s face. Only Kyran, only a character from a book, could say something like this and make it believable, and charming.
“You haven’t,” she said. “Others have perhaps, but not you.”
He nodded. “I know,” was all he said, and somehow, she knew he did.
They rode through the forest a while in silence. Posy gazed about her at wide tree trunks with their curling bark, the soft bunches of ferns growing on the forest floor. The sun was high, somewhere above the treetops, and its light filtered through the leaves, dappling everything around them. This Wild Land didn’t seem so wild. But it did feel far different from the Kingdom. The colors weren’t so bright, perhaps, but everything seemed real and solid. The smells of earth and damp leaves filled the clear air, and Posy took a deep breath of it. This was a real world, the Wild Land, and her mind felt a certain release, as if it had been imprisoned before, and she hadn’t even known it.
“Speaking of girls with strong wills and great bravery ...” Posy said at last.
“Were we?” Kyran asked, and Posy heard the hidden smile in his voice.
“Well, we had been talking about me, so I just assumed ...” she gave an innocent shrug.
This caused Kyran to throw back his dark head and laugh out loud. Posy smiled and laughed as well, continuing, “I was actually going to speak of your sister, Evanthe. Perhaps the answer lies with her.”
“The answer?”
“The answer to why Falak might want to kill us. Your sister ran away, supposedly into the forest and beyond the Borders of the Plot. Now we are also beyond the reach of the Plot. Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you? Like maybe Falak is trying to get rid of all of us?”
“But he can’t get rid of us, Posy,” pointed out Kyran patiently. “I mean, he might—but we’d come right back again, wouldn’t we? We’re part of the Plot, part of the story.”
“You yourself said Falak does everything with a purpose in mind. If we could find out what the purpose was! You’re sure ... absolutely certain ... that we can’t be killed?”
“Yes, of course I am! Don’t you think I’ve watched my own sister get sacrificed dozens of times? And she always came back again.”
“All right, yes. But that was part of the Plot, right? Something the Author said would happen. What if it was something the Author didn’t write down? Something a character—like Falak—took into his own hands?”
They were riding deeper into the forest, and the light seemed to be slowly ebbing away somehow. Posy could see Kyran’s profile in front of her, and she didn’t like the look that crossed his face after she had spoken.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Something I remembered,” he said slowly. “Something I heard a long time ago. I’m not sure who told me, where I heard it ... but ....” He paused and knit his brows, thinking hard for a moment, trying to recall the memory. “It’s a very hazy memory. Must have happened generations ago. Something to do with things happening outside the Plot. I can’t remember for sure, though.”
“But what do you remember of it?” questioned Posy urgently.
“That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Posy’s voice was incredulous. “You mean all you remember is that someone said something about things that happened outside of the Plot, but you don’t remember what?”
“Exactly,” Kyran said with a sigh. “That’s no help, I know. It’s just that ... well, I’ve felt different, this past hour or two. It’s like something here is making me ... remember things. Oh, just little things,” he said quickly. “But things I had long forgotten. And now this ... this memory of what happens beyond the Plot. I feel certain it will come to me eventually. The air is clear here, and light. Don’t you feel it? It’s as if the air I’ve been breathing all my life wasn’t even air at all ... it was heavy and thick. I had to fight through it every day. It muddled and confused me, made me slow and indecisive. But all that’s swept away here. At least, so it feels. Now my mind is my own again.”
Something in his voice made a shiver go down Posy’s spine. His words, free and content, were like harbingers of something new, sounding clearly through the silence of the forest, and she thought the trees leaned in to listen to them.
“I feel it too,” she whispered.
* * *
That first night in the Wild Land forest, under the blanket of trees and the clear white eye of the moon, was to remain in Posy’s memory forever, for its wonder and terror both.
They had ridden all day, making their way deeper into the forest. However, a strange thing happened as they went further into the heart of the Wild Land. Kyran’s horse, Belenus, became nervous, and once or twice refused to respond to Kyran’s command. It troubled Kyran more than he wanted to say, Posy could see, and at last in frustration he announced they would stop for the night, though the sun had not yet gone down.
Kyran began to build a fire as Posy drew their blankets and some food from the saddlebags Alvar had packed for them. She looked around into the darkening trees, and if she had thought they listened to Kyran’s words earlier that day, she didn’t doubt it at all now. They leaned and swayed to a movement all their own, not commanded by the wind. Posy’s hand idly stroked Belenus’ dark mane, her eyes transfixed. She didn’t see the moment of change, it came so gradually, so naturally, where shadows and moonlight met on bark and dirt and leaf. What her eyes saw flowed together, like a silent song, and suddenly, there they were. Creatures like trees, like the forest itself. Posy didn’t know if they had come from the trees, or from the bushes, or from the floor of the forest. She was frozen, watching them, but not with fear.
“It’s the Wild Folk,” Kyran’s voice came in a soft breath at her ear. “Evanthe used to read of them, and she would tell me .... But I never dreamed they were real.”
“What are they?” Posy asked, never taking her eyes off the procession that moved in and out of shadow.
“Creatures made from the land itself. They are a part of it, more truly than any other who lives here. Only look at them, Posy.” His voice held awe.
They were people—or at least their forms were similar to people. They had limbs, face and body, but their arms and legs were long and slender, gnarled like tree branches. One had skin covered with patches of green moss, another had eyes like acorns, and still another had hair of supple leaves flowing over its shoulders. They moved with the grace and silence only a forest could hold, creaking and swaying. Posy drew in a shaky breath as the last of them disappeared. The shadows around them seemed to sigh.
“Where were they going?” she whispered still, though they were gone. “They were heading back where we have come from, toward the Borders.”
Kyran only shook his head, a troubled expression on his face.
* * *
Later, after they had eaten, they were sitting, with blankets wrapped around their shoulders, in front of the fire Kyran had built, Posy said suddenly, “What do you think?”
Kyran turned at the intensity of her voice and raised his eyebrows. “Think about what?”
“You know Princess Evanthe better than anyone. You loved her better than anyone. So—where would she go?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Yes, you do!” answered Posy forcefully. “Just think about your sister, who she is, what reasons she had for leaving.” Kyran’s face clouded in thought and Posy continued. “Put all those together, and you might have at least an idea of where she could have gone. If she’s smart, she won’t be just wandering the forest. She had to have a destination.”
Kyran was silent for a long time. Finally, he said slowly, “Evanthe is brave—that is her strongest characteristic. She is opinionated, but soft spoken. She is smart, and not just from reading and having lessons. She is wise—wiser than I ever was, that’s for certain.” He shook his head. “But those things are just ... just traits she has grown into ... they are not who she is."
“Who is she, Kyran?” Posy asked quietly, thinking now of her own sister. Posy knew Lily better than anyone. Her mother had often joked that there might as well be no one in the world but the two of them, as far as they were concerned. Posy had always been surprised when she heard the resentment in her mother’s voice, as if this closeness with Lily was somehow wrong, or unhealthy. But she wondered, too, that her mother hadn’t suspected the cause of it.
How can we not cling to one another? thought Posy with a sudden surge of anger. What else is there to cling to, after all?
Yet her mother was right for all that. Posy and her sister were two halves of the same whole, and a single look between them usually spoke more than hours of conversation. But putting the heart of her sister into words? She didn’t know if she could do it.
“She had eyes that saw things,” Kyran said. “Eyes that knew. I could see from watching her she knew what I was thinking, no matter what I said. And she never had any fear of admitting it. She saw long ago the trouble in the Kingdom and the poor decisions of our father. She spoke of things to me, said things that should have made me suspicious if I hadn’t been too lazy or stupid to understand what she was truly speaking of.” He paused, knitting his dark brows. “That heavy air in the Kingdom, that haze we all live in and move through .... I feel sure Evanthe could see through it more clearly than any of us. She knew the Plot had been changed. She knew things weren’t as they should be. That’s why she left. Not from fear of her fate, but because a stand must be made by someone. And that’s who she is,” he said, straightening as he spoke, a new expression on his face. “She’s a girl who won’t wait for someone else to do something, someone else to change or fix things, if she can do it herself. Making things right,” he breathed. “That’s what her heart always wanted. Yes.” He gave a slow nod, and Posy saw something like dread, or fear, rising behind his eyes. “I think I know where she has gone.”