Page 85 of Silverbow
A log popped and sent a shower of sparks into the sky. Enya watched them wink out one by one. “How does the Dreamwalking work? Can you find anyone?” She asked Colm.
He gave a slow nod. “Anyone who is dreaming. With a face and a name, I can find most. With only a name or a face it’s not always possible.”
“You can speak to them?”
“I spoke to you. Do you remember?”
Enya scrunched her face. She hadn’t, but his mentioning it shook something loose as was sometimes the way of dreams half remembered. A face she thought she’d seen before had appeared to her in Greenridge that day the dreams went the wrong color.
She nodded slowly. “Can you find my family?”
“To what end, Silverbow?”
“I just want to know that they’re alright.”
“I will look.”
She nodded, her throat too tight to say anything more. She didn’t speak when Oryn threw his blanket roll down within a pace of hers. She simply rolled onto her side and let her tears silently water the dirt on Berdea Plain. She was still gazing at the tufts of grass when the fire burned down to the last glowing coal and soft snores came from the camp around her. All but from the blanket roll beside hers.
Enya pushed herself up, ribs protesting, and tiptoed to where Arawelo was a sleeping mass on the ground. The mare flicked her ears at her approach but didn’t stir. Kiawa stood a silent vigil at her side.
Enya sat, leaning her back into Arawelo’s solid shoulder and closed her eyes, uncaring that Oryn was staring at her in the dark. She breathed in the smell of the horses and pictured herself high in the Greenridge Mountains where they took the herd to graze in summer. She felt the ache of a long day in the saddle, which was real enough, and smiled faintly as she sifted through memories, feeling the rise and fall of Arawelo’s breath beneath her.
Enya’s throat burned as some internal dam burst, and all of the sadness, all of the grief tried to come pouring out at once. She let her breath follow Arawelo’s and stared up at the inky sky above. There were no walls here to press in on her. There were no chains binding her, but still she felt the weight of the signet ring hanging around her neck and and all that crushing guilt for whatever the High Lord of Pavia had done to her family.
When the sound of the demi-elves sparring brought Enya back from her dreamless sleep, the stars were gone. Exhausted, her eyes were swollen from the tears she shed. Overhead, gray clouds blotted out the sunrise, and she looked down to realize someone had covered her with her blanket. She twined her fingers through the grass and brushed them over the petals of a little white flower before joining that someone at the fire.
“Fire and earth are required to mend bone,” Oryn said by way of greeting. “But I can ease the pain if you would like me to heal you.”
Enya didn’t answer. She looked expectantly toward Colm. He shook his head and she stared into the fire. Her ribs didn’t ache half as much as her heart and there was nothing Oryn’s healing could do about that.
“Where did all these bloody moonflowers come from?” Aiden asked as he stomped around the horse line.
No one seemed to pay them much mind, but he plucked one of the delicate white blossoms and tucked it behind Enya’s ear. Colm studied it, or her, intently. Enya didn’t care what he was looking at. The fire that had blazed in her had winked out, and she was simply too tired to spare a thought for the demi-elves.It was all for nothing.
“Do you want the healing?” Oryn asked again as they made to mount.
Enya stared resignedly at the stirrup that seemed to hang so far out of reach as the others mounted around her. Colm swept past him and knit his hands together in an offer for a leg up. She took it, grimacing as Oryn muttered under his breath about mules and fools.
***
A week from Windcross Wells, or what she thought had been a week, Enya wasn’t counting anymore, the land began to pitch and roll. They were leaving Berdea Plain behind, just as they’d left her father.
She stopped rising to Aiden’s goads and banter, even as he tucked flowers in her braid and sent up winkling little sparks in the evenings, making the dragon bugs flash and dance for her. Enya had never seen a dragon bug with its brilliant little light, but she couldn’t bring herself to find any wonder in it.
I left himbehind.
She mostly ignored Colm’s careful prodding. Sometimes he rode at her side and talked of gods and stars and places she’d never heard of, trying to keep her tethered to this place, but she asked no questions. Most days slid by without her saying anything at all. It was much as it had been in her first days on the road, but unlike those first days, she left her bow unstrung and rode along in resigned silence, cursing the gods who cursed her.
I didn’t ask for a gift.
Oryn hovered over her like a brooding, surly gargoyle, but he said almost as little as Bade, almost as little as she. Most nights, she wrapped herself in her cloak and feigned sleep before Colm could force dinner on her. Still, the demi-elf would brush a finger across her brow and let a dream ward settle. She didn’t object. She didn’t want to be left alone with her dreams.
One morning, they topped a rise that revealed a dark patch of land on the eastern horizon. Enya squinted at it.
Colm, noticing her interest, heeled Lanta forward to ride at her side. “That’s Eastwood.”
The other demi-elves were silent as she watched that dark smudge in the distance. When the clouds parted and sent rays of sun scattering around the shadow, she caught the flash off something that glittered, but it was gone again when the clouds shifted.
