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
...more
