Page 26 of A Fractured Song

Marieke laughed outright at that. “Veronica, you’re a dear, but there’s no way I’d let you do that. Don’t you have your final exams soon?”

“Well…yes,” Veronica admitted. She gave a swift grin. “And to be honest, I don’t relish clambering into any gorges.” Her expression grew more serious. “But I really don’t think you should do this alone.”

Marieke shrugged. “I don’t have anyone to come with me.”

“What about the previously discussed farmer?” Veronica’s expression was sly enough to tell Marieke that the other girlhadn’t missed her slight flush earlier. She could hardly miss the more fiery one rising after her latest words.

“There’s a story there,” Veronica pressed, studying Marieke’s face. “I guess he made quite an impression in the day he was with you.”

“It was more than that,” Marieke admitted. “We actually ran into each other again, back in Oleand. We sort of traveled together.”

“Did you now?” Veronica was suppressing a grin by the sound of it. “What exactly did this traveling entail?”

Marieke gave her a dark look, but she couldn’t sustain her sternness in face of Veronica’s twitching eyebrows. A self-conscious smile escaped her, even as her heart ached with the longing to unburden herself—it would be such a relief to tell someone about what had happened with her and Zev. She didn’t know Veronica that well, but maybe that was all the more reason to confide in her.

“All right.” She raised her arms in a gesture of surrender. “I thought there was maybe something there.” She frowned a little to herself. “No, Iknowthere was something there. He kissed me, after he…well, saved my life, actually.”

Veronica’s eyes were as round as coins. “This is all sounding very exciting and very romantic. I hope you don’t think you can leave me without details.”

Marieke sighed. “It’s not so easy to tell details. There’s just…so much story behind it all.”

“At least tell me what he’s like,” Veronica pressed.

“He’s…” For a moment Marieke struggled to answer. How to put Zev, with all his indefinable presence, into a few words? “He’s honestly not like anyone I’ve ever met. There’s this quality to him…this confidence and self-assurance. It’s something that needs to be experienced, not told. Judging by his demeanor,” she waved her hand in a vague gesture, “by thefeelof him, you’d say that he’s direct, straightforward, solid. No pretensions or affectations. But then what he actually says is so cryptic. He’s always giving away as little as possible.”

“You’ve fallen hard,” Veronica commented. She said it without mockery, stating it as a simple fact.

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Marieke protested, her cheeks heating once again.

“Whether you’d say it or not makes no difference, Mari,” Veronica pointed out. “You’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about him since you’ve been apart.”

Marieke stayed silent. That much she could hardly deny.

“Why don’t you contact him?” Veronica urged. “Instead of going on some wild quest in the canyon.”

“Because our lives are too separate,” Marieke said. “He’s the one who chose to walk away. His home is here, and my…” she caught herself before sayingfight, “life is in Oleand.”

“And yet…” Veronica let the words hang in the air for a moment before finishing, “here you are. There’s a reason for that.”

“Yes,” said Marieke briskly, ready to turn the topic. “And that reason is that I wanted to ask you something. Or at least to ask someone at the academy.” She smiled disarmingly. “And I only really know you.”

“What is it?” Veronica leaned forward, protecting her clothes from her iced sweet, which had been neglected in favor of their conversation and was now dripping.

“It’s about storytelling song,” Marieke said. “Do you know much about it?”

Veronica shook her head. “Not many people do, do they? It’s such a difficult area of study. I took an aptitude test—everyone does at our academy—but I didn’t have the skills to progress.”

“I took a similar test,” Marieke said. “And I also didn’t progress. But…” She frowned. “But I’ve recently heard about a new aspect of storytelling song that I wasn’t familiar with. Something to do with asking questions.”

“Questions?”

Marieke nodded. “Someone told me that for some people, when they ask questions, magic pools toward them. Apparently it’s a branch of storytelling song.”

“Oh, that does sound familiar.” Veronica squinted in an effort of memory. “I think it’s called sifting song at our academy. Because you learn to use magic to guide your questions so you can sift through the information and find what’s valuable.”

“Did you study it?” Marieke asked.

She shook her head. “It’s a branch of storytelling song, like you said. We learn what the basic categories are, but we don’t learn to actually do it unless we pursue storytelling song as an elective.”

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