Mist's Edge (The Broken Lands #2) - T.A. White Page 0,38
do me the honor.”
Laura snorted. “I doubt I’ll be around long enough for that. The years come quick when you get to my age.”
“You’ll probably outlive us all, Laura,” Shea said. “You look much the same as the day I first came here.”
Laura’s knitting paused. “How long’s that been?”
Shea thought about it. “Ten, maybe twelve years?”
Laura went back to rocking. “The days just float on by when you get to my age. Time was, such an event as the mist appearing would have sent me into a tizzy of worrying.”
“So, your people do have record of it,” Shea said.
Laura nodded. “We do, as I expect most villages that kept up with their past do. As your own people do.”
“Do your stories mention anything about the soul trees?”
Laura’s knitting paused, and her faded blue eyes swung to fix Shea with a long stare. “They might. What’s it to you?”
“I’d like to hear them. When we were lost, I thought I noticed something about the trees.”
Laura looked into the distance, her gaze faraway. She was silent for a long time—long enough for Fallon to step closer to Shea and place his hand on her back as he leaned down to say in a low voice, “Are you sure this woman is the right person to ask about this?”
“She’s one of the oldest in the village. She’s also a respected teller, someone who keeps the Airabel’s oral history and speaks it to her people at gatherings and when asked. If anybody knows anything, it will be her.”
Fallon gave her a look that said he had serious doubts that Laura was in the right mind to share anything of note.
“She’s also in possession of perfectly good hearing,” Laura said acerbically, fixing Fallon with a gimlet stare.
Amusement tinged Fallon’s eyes as he gave her a courteous bow of contrition.
Laura harrumphed. “You asked about the trees. I may know something.”
Shea leaned forward in interest.
Laura’s eyes shifted to Shea. “Did you feel it when you were there? The connections?”
Shea nodded. She had.
Laura put her knitting in her lap and looked out at the tree before her. “Our history says these trees exist in many worlds. That their branches lead to different places, ones not ravaged by magic or mist, ones where beasts do not exist and the world was never broken.”
Fallon made a small movement at Shea’s side. She looked up to catch a fleeting grimace before he schooled his face to impassivity.
Laura’s smile was sly as she looked at Fallon. “You don’t believe. That’s alright. I didn’t either for a long time and then I followed one of these branches to a place so utterly unlike this one that I fled in terror. That day, I learned that every story that was passed on to me, even the ones we no longer tell as anything but myth, was true. You see, these trees don’t just protect us from the mist. In a way, they call it to us. They’re one and the same. Two halves of a whole. With the mist will come other things, some wondrous, many terrifying.” Laura picked up her knitting and began rocking again. “You have your work cut out for you, future conqueror. Pick your teller wisely.”
*
Shea and Fallon were quiet as they walked along one of the thick branches, its bark covered by a mossy plant except in the middle where hundreds of feet had worn a path through many years. Each digested the teller’s words and predictions. One thing she now knew was that the tree would protect those touching it from being lost in the mist, but it sounded like it could be dangerous in its own way too.
Shea and Fallon climbed one of the ladders hanging from the branches above, then made their way across one of the many rope bridges as they traveled further and further from the village’s heart.
The air was cool against Shea’s face, while patches of sunlight warmed her as she passed under them. She took a deep breath then released it. She let go of some of the worry eating at her. They were away from all of the responsibilities and duties that came with the Trateri. She was determined to enjoy the next few hours.
The sun was setting the world aflame with a golden glow as it sunk behind the horizon when they finally reached the spot Shea had picked. The golden tint picked up the deep auburn in Fallon’s hair, a color that was only obvious at times like these.