The Scourge (A.G. Henley) - By A.G. Henley Page 0,74

I squirm with embarrassment, but I have to talk to someone, or I’m going to explode. “I’m sorry, I know you probably don’t want to hear this about your son.”

“I want to hear anything you have to tell me, Fennel,” she says. “Anyway, I’m not surprised. I won’t claim to know Peree or his feelings as I once did, but I do know young men. And the way he looks at you–”

I groan. “Not that again. What does that even mean?”

“He watches you. All the time. When you move, he moves. When you smile, he smiles. When you walk away, it seems hard for him not to follow. Clearly he has strong feelings. But do you feel the same way?”

“Does it matter?” I grab my head in frustration, remembering too late that my hands are covered in sticky bits of dough. “No matter how we feel about each other, there’s no future for us! Not one I can see, anyway. I’m a Groundling. He’s a Lofty. That’s not going to change, no matter what happens when we get home.”

“The future can be hard to predict,” Kadee says. “I certainly never saw Koolkuna in my future, when I was your age. And after I came here, I didn’t allow myself to hope I might see my child again, but that too was meant to be. Who knows what might happen to any of us? All we can do is follow our hearts.” After a moment she says, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

“That sounds like something Wirrim would say.”

She laughs. “Those words were written long ago, before the Fall.”

“Written?” I wonder if that’s a Koolkuna word.

“Writing is . . . marks on a piece of cloth. Marks that can be read and repeated. People used to write down what they thought and said, so that it could be passed on to other people. I can show you what I mean, if you’d like. It won’t take long.”

We clean the dough and flour off our hands and leave the village, walking along the path to the water hole. A bird shrills from a tree beside us and I automatically tense. I wonder if I’ll ever quit listening for the Scourge, or if it will always be part of me, as permanent as my Sightlessness.

“When I came to Koolkuna the first time, I was entranced by Wirrim’s storytelling,” Kadee says. “I was especially intrigued by stories from before the Fall, when the world was a vastly different place. After I went home, I was afraid to tell people the stories, worried they’d ask where I learned them. So I whispered them to Peree at bedtime, night after night.”

I smile. “He told me some to distract me as I collected the water.”

“They distracted me, too, and they helped me remember my time in Koolkuna.”

We pass the turn to the water hole. I can hear the crashing waterfall as we go by. I didn’t even know the path continued on. “Where are we going?”

“To a special place—for me, at least. The place where I learned many of the tales.”

Some minutes later we enter a large clearing that’s unimpeded by trees, judging from the bright light. Tall grass sweeps across my legs. It’s quiet, except for the chitchat of the birds. They sound like they’re gossiping about us.

“When I returned,” Kadee says, “Wirrim didn’t have enough stories to distract me from my misery over leaving Peree. So he brought me here.”

She leads me forward, placing my hand on something solid and rough, like rock, but too even to be natural. It feels man-made, like clay. I explore up, down, and across, but the rock feels the same all over.

“It’s an old building, from before the Fall,” she says.

Excitement bubbles through me. “Really? An actual pre-Fall building? Our teacher, Bream, talked about them. Is this one as high as the sun?”

Kadee laughs. “No, but it’s taller than our homes. There are other buildings here, too. This was a village once, like ours, but larger. When the people arrived in Koolkuna, it was already abandoned—except for the runa. Come in, but watch yourself, the building is old. It does its best to crumble while we’re not looking.”

I immediately notice the smell as I step inside. It’s dusty and dank, and makes my nose itch. There’s an intriguing odor, like the rows of pouches and pots on the shelves in Nerang’s room in the trees. The building is dark, but not pitch