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My breath is shaky and doesn’t come quite like I plan for it too. I count to three, open my lips. Then I close them and count to three again. I can’t say anything. Perhaps I’ll stand like this until Anen is disgusted and leaves me. Will anyone find me if I stand here for days? Or will I die here, and whoever finds me will wonder about the skull and the knuckles.

“Effro.” It feels like someone else is saying it. If I could see what I feel, it would look like a thin wisp of smoke coming out of the skull. And then I am inside.

Sometimes when I dream or even when I read, I guess, I can be the person in the story and myself watching it happen at the same time that’s what it is like now. I am myself, incorporeal and watching from behind and a little to the left, but I am also a girl sitting on a hillside. As far as I can see is purple heather. It is like resting on a purple wave, next to me is a single rowan tree.

At first I am filled with just seeing, feeling the wind blow against me as it ruffles the heather around me, bringing its scent crashing into me like waves. And then I realize that there are things I know. I love this place. I have come here often. Today I am here to say goodbye. Emptiness stretches out farther than I can see. There are years, so many years ahead and I am only on the first day. How can I keep them from crushing my heart with the weight of all those empty years knowing that I will never see this place again?

“Kestrel. Kestrel.”

For a moment I am aware of myself again--the watcher behind the girl on the hill. And then I blink, and I see the creased face of my grandmother, waves of years ride the skin of her face like rolling land covered in heather.

“It was you,” I say, discovering it as I say it. I wipe at my wet cheeks. “Where was that place? How...” I hesitate, not wanting to be rude, but unable to stop my wonder and horror, “how old are you?”

Her hand grips tightly, fingers biting into my shoulder. The nails of her other hand rub against my palm as she scrapes the skull from me. “Once again,” she says, looking upset. “I counted the cost incorrectly. Apparently there are things I fail to learn regardless of all the years I have had in which to learn them. I did not think that you would be able to call up that much. Forgive me. I have trained more than one apprentice, and it always takes a lot of practice even to see the scene clearly. There is much that I don’t know about you, my granddaughter. Be careful of your gifts. Sometimes power that is too easily won is more of a curse than a blessing.”

“Tell me how you are connected to the Outliers. Tell me what they even are.  All I know are stories about revolutionaries who hurt people in order to make a statement to the government. They were never anything I wanted to be a part of.”

Anen pulls out the wooden box and tucks the skull back among the cotton padding before latching the box and stowing it in her skirt pockets again along with the pig’s knuckles. It would seem that the lesson is over.

“There are men that run these worlds,” she says, and the bitterness in her voice slices into my ears, “who are evil. Nothing but evil. They coat their deeds with fine, embroidered words, but what they do is oppression, exploitation, and violence. Kestrel, I do not always want what the Outliers must do--I certainly don’t always condone it--but we must have change. The Archipelago must find freedom or everything will wither and die. I have foreseen it. If I could tell you what I have seen--”

“There you are!” Wren calls over to us from the lane. She walks and runs over to us. Then she stops and puts her hands on her legs, bending over to catch her breath. Of course, Wren is much too lady-like to sit on the grass without a blanket. She might get her dress dirty. That would be very well if she had a dress that was worth keeping clean. But I don’t see why I should worry about grass with a dress that I use to feed chickens and milk a cow.

“What is it?” I ask, as she gulps in air. “Are we in trouble because we won’t have a full hour to dress for dinner?” Anen looks at me sharply, but it’s true. We only dress for dinner when we have company, and when that company is a greenwoman, what’s the point?

Wren shakes her head. “Outliers,” she finally gasps. “Dad says to come home right now, to make sure that you’re safe.” She looks around as if expecting to be attacked any moment. “I didn’t think that I would have to come this far to find you,” she explains. “Otherwise he never would have let me come, but Feld is still helping with dinner.”

“Outliers?” Anen asks, calm and slightly concerned. “But there has been no Outlier activity here for over a year. Is he sure?”

“He’s sure,” Wren says, “Slade Carpenter found a camp in the woods.”

“Was there anyone there?” I ask, not sure if I was worried for Barry or for what Barry could have told about me.

“Something big happened there. He found burned trees and,” she pauses to give her words dramatic weight, “and there was a dead soldier.” She pulls on my hand to get me up, then she helps Anen.

The three of us start back for home without another word. I look at Anen, wondering if I should be running away from the Outliers or toward them.




Continue on to Chapter 3


http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/02/chapter-1.html