Forest Born (The Books of Bayern, #4)

by Shannon Hale

Rin hesitated but did not think she should follow if they did not call. She felt forgotten, alone and left with the night. It was what she had been dreading. Nothing to distract her now. Just beyond the road, a wood beckoned. These were not the trees of her home—their shapes were almost disturbing in their unfamiliarity. She ducked between trees and felt a subtle relief wash over her, brief and distant. For the moment, she just felt glad to be near living things that demanded nothing of her. She placed a hand on the bark, longing to feel more than pale relief. Her heart cramped with homesickness for that calm that used to root her drifting soul. But the memory of the elm stopped her—no peace, no relief, just a nauseating wash of slick black hopelessness. She moved her hand away, afraid to try, and sat on the ground. The air changed with the nearness of night, blowing damp and cool, as if the oncoming darkness were a wave rolling in from Kel’s ocean. Rin shivered and tried to take comfort in the fact that good things like night still existed. Alone, aimless, her thoughts tumbled around her. What did she want? To be all right with her own heart. To lose the dread and disquiet that gnawed at her chest. To go home to her ma and play with her nieces and nephews, and eat bread hot from the oven pit and roast pine nuts and just lie back and feel home again.

I’m the sheen on water, Rin thought. I’m a looking glass. I’m not real. But she seemed to have no choice—she had to keep moving. Was it the tree-speaking that made her feel so wrong? Or perhaps the peace that had once come with tree-speaking had temporarily numbed the truth—that Rin herself was rotten at the core, bug-eaten and damaged, a diseased tree with shallow roots, a hollowed trunk with yellowing leaves. Rin kept listening to the girls, her eyes on Isi, studying how to be wise, noble, unafraid. How to be less like Rin. She watched, but the lump of hopelessness hardened inside her. On they walked. And Rin felt farther and farther away from herself.

Autumn was young, breathing freshness into every gust. Instead of feeling bone-frozen and homesick for sunshine, Rin was enlivened by the weather. It made her shiver and remember that she was alive.