Melting Stones - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,11

had a lot of tremors in the last couple of months. Times like this come and go, Dedicate Initiate. You—we become accustomed, anyway."

"Charming." Rosethorn went to grab her horse's reins. "I can't wait to become accustomed."

We stopped for a cold lunch Oswin had brought, then rode on—and up. Moharrin was high on the side of Mount Grace. As it got later, and the river and the road entered forested mountainsides, things turned cooler. I dug out Rosethorn's coat and rode over to her.

"Evumeimei, she dislikes it when you try to put warmer clothing on her." Luvo had seen me do this dance with Rosethorn before.

"You just have to wait until she isn't paying attention," I whispered to him. "Hush."

"Stop." Rosethorn climbed off her horse and walked away from the road. With her eyebrows together and her forehead crinkled, it was clear she was in a thinking mood. Myrrhtide reined up his horse and grumbled. He didn't like to ride, I could tell, but he wouldn't say so. Oswin and Jayat dismounted. Jayat went to refill their water bottles.

"Perfect, Luvo. If I move fast, I'll get Rosethorn's coat on her before she even notices." I slid to the ground and caught up to her. She was busy inspecting two dead trees.

I danced around her back and sides, working her arms into the sleeves, while she ignored me. Of course, I made sure not to get between her and the dead trees.

"I can get my own coat, Evvy." She looked at a big patch of dead plants behind the trees. In the dim woods light, that spot looked as if it was filled with plant ghosts, the dead leaves pale against the living shadows of the forest beyond. At the heart of the ghost space, dead birds lay beside a slab of basalt that jutted from the earth.

Do birds and trees have ghosts? I wondered. In Yanjing and Gyongxe, everything human has ghosts. That's what I was raised to believe. Were there bird ghosts here? And wouldn't Rosethorn believe that plants have ghosts? Plants are her people, just as stones are Luvo's people, and mine.

"Briar told me to look after you. I could see you were shivering." I answered her in a whisper. I didn't want the attention of bird or plant ghosts. "What killed them, Rosethorn?"

She gathered some dead limbs and leaves, gently cutting them from bushes and saplings with her belt knife. I wasn't going to say that if they were dead, they couldn't feel the cutting. "If I knew that, we might be able to go home." Raising her voice, she said, "Stop rolling your eyes and sighing, Myrrhtide. If there's anything I hate, it's a person who rolls his eyes and sighs when he's impatient. It just makes me move that much slower." Under her breath she added, "Twitterwitted Water temple bleat-brain."

I grinned. She learned "bleat-brain" from Briar.

I put the dead stuff in her workbasket while she mounted up again. Then I got on my own horse. "I'm sorry about all this getting on and off," I told the horse. "It seems to be that kind of day."

"You are always hopping about, Evumeimei." Luvo was still in his sling, hung from my horse's saddle horn. "I was telling Jayatin and Oswin about our travels in the East."

I wrinkled my nose as we rode on. "Not the nasty parts, I hope. Nobody needs to remember those."

"Only that there was fighting, and that we were caught in it."

"He was describing the temple of the Great Green Man," Jayat explained. "I can't even imagine a solid jade statue over a hundred feet tall."

"It was wonderful" I said. "The jade was the color of that grass over there. It sang to my magic. Alabaster the color of the moon. Some rubies, though they weren't very good. It was hung with ropes of pearls, too. They're well enough in their way. Briar really liked the blue and pink pearls, the ones as big as his thumb. He said you could get very good prices for those in the markets in Sotat and Emelan."

"But you weren't impressed." Jayat sounded like he was laughing at me.

"Well, they're pearls. They're just fake stones, you know. Cheats. They're dirt an oyster puts around grit to keep it from itching. You'd think there'd be a law against trying to cheat people with fake stones like that. Now, jade—the Green Man statue had it carved all kinds of ways, so it sang back to you in different tones."

We talked