“You saw them?”
“Only in your song . . . but . . . it distracted me. I wanted to . . . look. And I forgot I was still dangling in the tree.”
“I made you fall,” she said.
“It was worth it.” He grinned. “They should not be able to fly . . . bees. They are fat and furry! And they have such little wings. They are black and . . . what is that color? Yellow? Yellow,” he said, satisfied he had it right. “Yellow is like gold,” he recited. “Like your hair . . . and grain . . . and the sun . . . and the flowers on the tomato vines and the apples in Tonlis.”
He had his breath back, but he didn’t rise. He was too caught up in his list making.
“I will try to remember not to sing while you are doing something dangerous,” she said, looking down at him and chewing on her lip. “I was not even holding your hand. I didn’t think you would . . . see . . . my song.”
“But I did,” he marveled. “I saw the bees . . . mayhaps not the bees around me . . . but I saw bees.”
“Mayhaps . . . we are getting better at it.”
“Like finding one’s way on a well-trodden path,” he said, agreeing. “Let’s test it. Sing something else. Something simple . . . like the bee song, but not something you’ve sung before.”
She knew a song about changing leaves and harvest dances that she hadn’t shared with him. She remembered her sister laughing and twirling as she sang it, and Ghisla closed her eyes and sang along, swaying with the memory.
“Green and gold and orange and red, here and there and overhead, drifting down to touch the ground. In springtime they’ll grow back again,” she sang, moving like the falling leaves. The dance was one of turns and twists, and Morgana had loved it more than any other. Ghisla hopped and spun and dipped and bowed, and Hod lay at her feet, listening, rapt.
A roar, unlike that of any beast Ghisla had ever heard, broke their dreamy connection. A rustling and cracking accompanied the bellow, and a figure robed in black, his arms flailing and his staff swinging, rushed toward them.
Hod leaped to his feet in front of her, his stance wide, but the enraged figure was already upon them. The figure slapped at Hod’s cheeks, knocking the boy back.
“What is the meaning of this?” the incensed stranger shrieked, the sound rattling her teeth. His cowl fell back, revealing his bald head and beaked nose. A braided white beard hung to his knees, and it bounced like a snake, writhing and wriggling as he struck Hod, who did nothing to defend himself.
“What have you done to my boy, witch?” the man yelled. “What have you done to my boy?”
Hod’s nose was bleeding, and he swiped at it, leaving a streak of red across his hand.
“Arwin?” Hod asked, voice ringing with amazement.
“He does not know his own master!” the man wailed, gripping Hod by the shoulders and shaking him.
“No . . . Er-Arwin. I am f-f-fine. I am well,” Hod stuttered, trying to pull free, and Arwin shoved him aside.
This was Arwin? Hod’s teacher? He was not the wise and gentle figure Ghisla had imagined. When he turned on her, she felt a jolt of the same fear she’d felt when she realized she was not going to follow her family into death. He jabbed at her with his staff, the end punching against her belly, forcing her back against the tree Hod had climbed for his honey.
“Get back, witch.”
She obliged, shrinking against the trunk.
“She is not a witch, Arwin,” Hod protested. “She is a girl. A Songr. When she sings I can see. I can see, Arwin!”
This revelation seemed to horrify the man, and his black eyes widened in his wizened face.
With the sharp end of his stick he scratched a symbol into the dirt, mumbling words that sounded like a curse, and it was Hod’s turn to gasp.
Arwin sliced at his hand, still mumbling, and held his dripping fist over the lines he’d drawn between them. Blood dripped onto the ground. Hod stepped toward her, his hands outstretched, one toward Arwin, one to her, as if to connect and calm them all. But the air sizzled and sparked like a heavy log tossed onto a flame, and Hod froze.
“Master . . . what are you doing?” he moaned.
“I have trapped the wench.”
Ghisla tried to run, but the air crackled again and lightning shot upward from the ground when she took a single step. She fell back, clinging to the trunk of the tree.
“Let me go,” Ghisla demanded.
“She has shown me her thoughts, Master. You have taught me to hear deception. She is afraid, and her heart races. But she has not sought to deceive. She is not a witch or a siren or a fairy. She is a Songr. A child. A girl child.” Hod said girl child like she was a chest filled with treasure.
“She is Loki in disguise, here to trick you, just as he did with your namesake. She is here to destroy you.”
“She is not Loki, Master. She has dwelled with me here for nigh on a week and has done nothing but sing to me.”
Arwin gasped as if that were proof of her perfidy. “It is as Master Ivo said. The keepers will be destroyed. It has begun.”
“Master Ivo? You saw the Highest Keeper?” Hod gasped.
Arwin shook his head, his beard writhing, but he did not answer Hod. Ghisla attempted to run again, darting in a new direction, and was knocked off her feet. Her head bounced off a rock, stunning her, and Hod cried out.
“She seeks to escape,” Arwin howled. “Who sent you, witch?”
His voice wavered like he stood a long way off, and Ghisla’s consciousness flickered. Unfortunately, her pain revived her. She whimpered, rubbing at the back of her head. Her hand came away bloody, and Hod cursed.
“She is bleeding, Master. You have hurt her.”
“Your senses must be returning,” Arwin said, his relief evident. “I have weakened her.”
Hod scraped at the forest floor with the butt of his staff, and Arwin screamed in protest.
“Don’t!”
A moment later, Hod was kneeling beside her, his fingers finding the lump forming on the back of her head.
“Are you all right, Ghisla?” he asked.
She was not all right. She was terrified. She swatted at his hands and staggered to her feet. Whatever barrier Arwin had erected around her was gone, and she lurched forward, temporarily freed, temporarily euphoric, her vision still spinning, and ran headlong into the trunk of another tree.
This time Ghisla succumbed to the deep well of unconsciousness.
When she surfaced again, she found herself on the bed Hod had made her in the cave, but her nest was no longer a sanctuary. Arwin had returned, and Ghisla was not welcome or wanted. Her head throbbed and her stomach rolled, but she didn’t dare move. Hod and his master were in deep conversation, their backs to her. She observed them through the sweep of her lashes and closed her eyes again, not wanting to hear, not wanting to hope. Hod was pleading with his teacher, his voice low and urgent.
“I did not take her deep into the cave. She has stayed with me since I found her on the shore.”
“You cannot see her! How would you know what she has seen, you fool!” Arwin scolded.
“I have not left her side, Master.”
“You are slow. Dulled. She has to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Hod gasped.