I decided to wait to wrap my arm until after I had successfully climbed out of the cauldron. The blood had clotted and while I feared other creatures being attracted to it, mournlings sensed spirit rather like I did and they were by far the greater danger in ruins such as these.
In a spat of over-ambition following my survival of the mournling attack, I attempted to lure one of the baby ibex away from its parents and only just escaped the wrath of the bull ibex. No matter how quiet I kept my steps, they still echoed across the stone of the isla.
It was disappointing—I should have liked to raise a baby ibex, though undoubtedly it would be happier with its family. I cast my gaze back upon the cauldron before making my way through the winding cavern paths. Uncle and several of the others would be curious about where I had found the Seed and wish to learn more for themselves. I erected a cairn at the edge of the cavern and set about locating stones that would allow me to leave similar markers so they might trace my path.
My hands occupied with such simple diversions, my thoughts raced ahead. Upon my return, I would have not only an object of value but also important news to share. If I chose to share it, but could it be avoided? Aveela, the spirit-speaker, had been waiting for her successor to be revealed. Waiting for the entirety of my life and for decades before it. She’d served for nearly two centuries. There would not be another spirit-speaker born for generations. She had been waiting for me. Did she know?
I chewed my lower lip, picking my way through the canyons and retracing my former path. Being the spirit-speaker was certainly not what I would have picked. Once appointed, one remained spirit-speaker until death. I hadn’t yet returned from my coming-of-age ritual or been inducted into the Clan. How could the rest of my life already be spoken for after having only just reached the part of it where I might decide what I did with it at all. Not that Uncle and Aunt prevented me from deciding what to do with my time, unless Mirdal and I had recently found ourselves in a spot of trouble.
The three days’ journey back, I debated. How could I explain my coming upon the Seed and how I’d learned what it did without also revealing the spirit who had spoken to me to tell me about it?
I picked my way through the northern forest path, the one I had traversed to travel to the ruins, thinking of what Mirdal would say about my news.
He was the first to greet me of course, when I came back into view of the settlement. “There you are!” he exclaimed, bursting out of a hidden bend in the path where the undergrowth was thick.
I jumped back, surprised but, much to his dismay, I recovered quickly and wrapped him in a tight hug.
“I was growing worried,” Mirdal confessed. “We all were.” All in this case likely meant Mirdal and my aunt. Most everyone else would know that such journeys took time.
“I was barely gone half a fortnight. How did you even have time to be worried?”
“I have very little to do while you are away,” he replied with a quick nod, pleased with himself. “Well, don’t delay! Tell me everything.”
And so I did.
My tale took us through the gates of our settlement and through fond greetings from the guards who called out to me. One teased Mirdal about beginning his vigil the hour after I had left—they knew what close friends we were. I had just reached the part where I faced off with the mournling as we came to the bathing pool, a rare, flat space by the river where I could wash away the dirt of the road before returning to my aunt and uncle’s house and preparing for the induction ceremony.
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I stopped abruptly as I came within sight of the pool, as did Mirdal beside me.
Flinging his thick, dark curls back as he emerged from the water, Bansaerin, leader of the Nightblades, locked eyes with me. And grinned. At me.
I’d joined the Nightblades against Aunt and Uncle’s express wishes half because I wished to learn to defend our Clan from outside threats and half because of him. Mirdal had joined expressly for Bansaerin and the, as he called them, ‘slew of handsome warriors’ who tended to follow Bansaerin around.
I found myself unable to continue forward.
Water dripped off of his tattoos, casting shiny rivulets over lean, sculpted muscles. As we were momentarily unable to continue toward him, Bansaerin strode up to us instead.
During this prolonged, luckily unlucky moment of my life, Mirdal was prodding at me as best he could. He stopped as Bansaerin drew close to us.
The founder and leader of the Nightblades was not who I had expected nor even hoped to see—at least not in this moment when I was covered in dust and grime from several days of traveling through the wilderness alone.
“We were nearly preparing to send out search parties for you.” His golden eyes gleamed as he stared down at me, a smirk twisting into the corner of his lip. “But here you are, well and returned. Was your mission successful?”
I nodded—it was the most he had spoken to me on my own before. Mirdal elbowed me in the side, reminding me to actually respond. “Yes, it was. Quite, actually.”
His smirk deepened. By the ancients, I sounded as nervous as I felt.
“I have been most curious about what you would bring back with you. I take a particularly keen interest in the contributions of my Nightblades, as you know.”
Nodding again—I don’t know what I would do without Mirdal here to help me, though the terribly awkward interaction would be a good deal shorter if he were not here to help spur both it and me along, and that would be its own sort of relief. “It was a surprise to me to find but, umm, I think I should like for it to remain that way. Unless you’d like to see it?”
His gaze flickered away from my eyes for a moment, grazing down my person for some sort of clue as to what I might be returning with. “I would like to see it.” The glint behind his eyes darkened, and my heart began hammering even louder in my chest. “But some things are worth waiting for. I will be looking forward to your surprise, Draeza.”
He slung his tunic over his shoulder and sauntered off back toward the center of town.
Beside me, Mirdal was standing with his mouth hanging open, which he didn’t bother to shut as he spun himself toward me, his hand on my shoulder. “Umm, where have you been keeping that a secret?”
I grinned nervously, running back through the conversation in my head. I was fooling myself, right? Bansaerin couldn’t possibly be interested in me, couldn’t be flirting with me, could he? No. He kept too involved a rotation going among the Nightblades already. And I didn’t really want to be squeezed in, though I could have been persuaded . . .
“I don’t know. I didn’t know,” I insisted to Mirdal when he shoved my shoulder again. We stifled our giggles, and Mirdal began hatching a very involved plan to ‘uncover the depths of Bansaerin’s affections’ that very night during the celebratory feast in honor of my coming of age.
I might have already destroyed what little interest there had been by my inept flirting, so I did not hold out great hope.
“Let’s get through the celebration first and then, perhaps, we can embark upon your plan.”
Mirdal’s plans were always elaborate and nearly always unsuccessful though he would never admit as much. But he agreed that, since I had been gone for such a prolonged time, he would allow me to first finish my story, then have my party, and then he would hatch phase one of his elaborate plot.
We stripped down to our underthings and plunged into the water, quickly falling back into our old, bantering patterns and leaving my blush-inducing interaction with Bansaerin behind us.
I savored those few moments of peace—Mirdal’s constant conversation was no impediment to my wandering thoughts, but the chaos of the induction ceremony would be.
I twisted the water out of my hair and let it hang loose over my shoulders, draping myself in my least-soiled shawl besides the one that held the Seed, and we made our way into the Clan proper.
