“What I want will always be different from what everyone else wants for me,” I said, knotting the thread.
“You’re talented enough, if you really do want it,” North said. “You could support yourself if you settled in a city.”
I shook my head, surprised at the prick of anger inside me. He could flit in and out of towns and cities at will. I should never have brought the old woman up in the first place, but every time I looked at the blanket, I could feel her soft, wrinkled palms as she had brushed the dirt from my cheeks.
“Would you leave,” he asked, “if you could?”
“It’s not my choice,” I said. “It must be nice to go wherever you want. Have you decided how you’re getting to Provincia?”
He shrugged. “I’m taking the most direct route possible, cutting straight through the center of the country. There are a few cities like Dellark and Fairwell along the way, but I’ll be spending most of my time outdoors. You could start over, buy yourself a new, bigger loom—”
“Never,” I said. “That’s my loom, and it’s the only one I want to use.”
The loom had been with me since I was a little girl, watching my grandmother weave her own blankets and stories into it. It was an extension of me, as familiar as the face of my father. It had always been an escape—from drought and from every painful emotion.
I handed him the yellow cloak, watching as he turned it over in his hands, inspecting my work.
“Your father wasn’t lying,” he said. “But now comes the real test.”
He threw the yellow cloak into the air, and it disappeared from sight. Impossibly, a strong breeze blew past us. It shook the hanging blankets and sent my mass of red curls up around my face. A moment later, the yellow cloak reappeared in front of the wizard, floating gently back into his hands.
The wizard turned his face toward me, his dark eyes studying me with a mixture of shock and fascination. His pale face was drained of what little color it had possessed before, and he twisted the yellow fabric so roughly between his fists that I thought it might tear. He didn’t move—he looked to be barely breathing.
“You…,” he began, his voice low with disbelief. “You’re really…”
I waited for him to continue, but the words never came and his eyes never left mine.
“Sleep well,” I said, standing. “Let me know if you need something. There’s a basin in the corner if you’d like to wash up before praying.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?” I said incredulously. “Don’t pray?”
He lowered his eyes.
“Sydelle?” he said, just as I was about to step through the doorway. He was still holding the yellow cloak in his hands. “I know you were listening to what I told your father. If you can find the courage to leave, then you need to go soon…before things are set in motion.”
“Then the war…” I almost couldn’t get the words out. “Then it’ll really happen?”
“It’s happening now,” he said. “Your village must prepare for the worst. Saldorra is Auster’s western ally. It’s only a matter of time before they reach you.”
“Astraea will protect us,” I said. “We trade with Saldorra. They’d never—”
“It would be better if you could protect yourself,” he said, and blew out the candle.
Hours later, as I turned restlessly on a blanket on my parents’ floor, his words returned, until I was sure that they would be burned there forever, that they would follow me into sleep every night. It would be better if you could protect yourself.
I listened to the rain and wondered.
CHAPTER TWO
I was still awake when the temple’s bells began to ring out in an unfamiliar pattern, and my mother began to cry loudly, brokenly, from somewhere deep inside her chest.
“Now?” she moaned. “Now?”
“Up, Sydelle!” my father said, dragging me from the tangled bedding. “Put on your dress and your boots.”
“What’s happening?” I choked out. The wizard was waiting in the main room, far more alert than he had been the night before. He was holding my disassembled loom.
My mother took me, wild-eyed and frantic, into my room and began to pack dresses and yarn into a small leather bag.
“What’s happening?” I cried. “Tell me what’s going on!”
My mother placed the bag over my shoulder, and I was sure I felt her warm tears drip onto my neck.
“Be a brave girl,” she said. “I know you have it in you.”
My father reappeared in the doorway, his face flushed. “Hurry—move quickly!”
“Tell me what’s going on!” I said. “Tell me!”
“Those soldiers you saw before in the canyon are here now,” North said from the other room. “You’re coming with me.”
“I offered Mr. North a reward for breaking the drought,” my father explained, “and he’s chosen you. Do you understand?”
I was the one crying now, and I couldn’t tell my anger from my fear.
“Sydelle, tell me you understand,” Father begged, and Mother only cried harder. “You’ll help him get to the capital, you’ll do whatever he asks, you won’t look back.”
“Do I have no choice in this?” I cried, as the wizard appeared behind my father. The smile on his face was small, but it was still there.
He thought he was helping me, did he? He thought that he was doing me some sort of favor. A prisoner of my village or a prisoner of a wizard. What was the difference when you could not decide your own path?
The sound of bells died out, only to be replaced by the sound of a hundred villagers emerging into the early-morning sky.
“They’re here.” North was suddenly right beside me, taking my arm. I turned toward him wildly, hearing the sound of rolling thunder, of hooves.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “What—?”
“Sooner than expected,” my father said. He patted my shoulder twice, as he would a complete stranger. “Go before they find you here.”
“No!” I said. “I don’t want to leave, not now!”
North held my things as my father pulled me outside. He had a bag of his own, one I hadn’t noticed before. A fine mist of rain and fog cooled the flushed skin of my cheeks. I watched my mother, still expecting her to speak. She only looked away.