Page 169 of A Baron of Bonds
“Rev?” I called, my voice young and high-pitched, not one I recognized.
I looked down to my chest, finding it small and thin. I was wearing a ripped brown overcoat. Several of the buttons were missing up the front, and one of the pockets was patched with black thread.
My hands were little. I stared at short, stubby fingers caked in mud with dirt under wide fingernails. My emerald conduit ring was missing.
Revich hadn’t been keeping secrets about the conduit trials. He’d been keeping a secret about this.
Whatever this was.
I pulled my short body up from the ground, surveying my surroundings.
I was at the edge of a small village. Wood houses lined muddy streets, smoke billowing from their chimneys. The sunwas rising on the horizon to the east, and behind me was a vast wilderness of the strangest trees I had ever seen.
Each one was enormous at the root base, their trunks long and thinning out at the top to a small display of dark green leaves. The roots of each tree wove under and over the muck, a tangled maze of thick wood that spread across the silt, wet and bubbling.
“Rev!”
I turned back to the village, my eyes searching for him.
A woman stood on the doorstep of the nearest cabin, wiping her hands on her dirty apron. A sense of familiarity washed over me as I squinted at her. Her pitch-black hair was pulled up into a bun at the nape of her neck, bits escaping and hanging over her ears. Her skin was tanned against her brown, drab dress. Her eyes were a deep blue.
I knew those eyes.
Those were Rev’s eyes. Even the shape was his, along with the straight black brows above them.
She smiled, and I found my feet walking forward, not of my own doing.
She put her hands on her hips, addressing me as I neared. “Revich Schayel, how have you managed to muck yourself up already? Don’t you come in here with that all over your hands and face. Go wash before breakfast.”
She pointed to the side of the door where a bucket sat on the mossy ground, its surface glassy with dark water.
“Yes, Mama,” I spoke in that same little voice.
She went back inside, and again, my feet took me forward.
My mind raced with realization, confusion, and a threatening doom that settled into my stomach for who and where I was. I watched my small hands—Revich’ssmall hands—rinse in the bucket, splashing water on his face—ourface.
He glanced in the small, dingy mirror hung on the side of the wood house, and as his hands wiped at his cheeks, I saw Rev as a child. His face was thin, too thin, his eyes that deep blue of his mother’s. Black hair in need of a wash had been cut short, falling in thick beginnings of waves across his forehead, curling around the nape of his neck.
He—we—sniffed the air and smiled, two front teeth missing, the new ones barely peeking through.
I laughed, the sound coming from his chest light and uninhibited.
“Do you know what I’m doing here?” I asked, watching our mouth move in the reflection.
He didn’t respond, but splashed water on his face again, wiping away the last of the mud.
It seemed, however this had been done, I could speak through him, but he did not notice.
Why did Rev,my Rev, send me here to this memory of his? This must be the village of Mire in the Hallow Marshes. This must be a time when Revich was very young. I’d guess no older than six or seven.
What was he trying to show me, and why? Why would he put me here, and how was I supposed to return home?
Frustrated and curious, I said nothing more as he straightened and turned toward the house. I wondered if I could stop the movement. If I was able to use my own thoughts to speak, perhaps I could move his body as well.
Our short legs stopped, and we moved backward.
So, controlling his body was possible.
