The front door flew open, and Sam stood there with an armful of sylph eggs. He scanned the clearing, breath heaving. “Where are they?”
“They flew away.” The bar of keys on my flute dug into my ribs where I held it too tightly. “We got Cris in trade.”
“Cris.” Sam’s voice slipped, and there was something while the boys looked at each other—something I couldn’t understand.
“Dossam. I heard you were…” Cris shifted his gaze to me. “Then you must be Ana.”
“Yes.”
Awkwardness pulled in all directions: the awkwardness of being me, the newsoul; the sylph that had seemed happy to go away after singing; whatever history Sam and Cris had. Friendship? Hate? Some sort of falling-out? Sam hadn’t talked about Cris much, and everything I’d ever read about or by Cris—mostly gardening notes—made him seem like someone who kept to himself.
“Sorry,” Sam said, coming back to himself. “The sylph are gone?”
I nodded.
“Then we should get inside before they come back. Cris, are you staying?” Sam backed into the cottage and dropped the sylph eggs in a basket, making a metallic clatter. Then he hurried to help me with the blanket and music.
I glanced at Cris, inclining my head toward the door: another invitation. It was his cottage anyway. I didn’t know if he built it specifically for the roses, or if he’d built it long before, but it carried their name.
He grabbed his backpack and followed me up, eyeing the roses as he walked past. “Someone’s been taking care of these.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “You?”
“They didn’t deserve to be abandoned just because they weren’t what you expected.” The words cut out sharper than I intended, and both Cris and Sam winced as we filed inside. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“I’ll make tea.” Sam shut the door. “You still prefer coffee, Cris?”
“Please.” Cris smiled—sort of—and left his backpack by the basket of sylph eggs. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone here.”
“You’ll stay, of course. We’ll work out sleeping arrangements.” Sam took Cris’s jacket and hung it on a peg, while Cris looked between us as though he were reevaluating something. Was he surprised that Sam and I didn’t share a room? A bed?
A few minutes later, Cris had washed up and Sam was in the kitchen, boiling water and preparing mugs. Cris and I sat in the front room, me on the threadbare sofa and him on the chair across the low table. Neither of us said anything, and my thoughts flashed back to the sylph and their strange actions. What had they been doing?
“I thought you’d be bigger,” Cris said.
“What?”
He had the decency to blush. “Sorry. I just meant that you’re the newsoul. Even being away for four years, I’ve still managed to hear the fuss everyone makes. I thought you’d be giant or have tentacles, but you’re not. You’re kind of pretty.”
“Oh. Um.” I wished I had something to do with my hands. Anything. Besides Sam and Sarit, no one had ever said I was pretty. Sam’s friend Stef had called me cute, but that hardly seemed the same thing. “Thanks. I guess.”
“So you’re studying music with Dossam?”
A thrill raced through me, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning at the flutes and music resting on the table. It had always been my dream to study with Dossam. Sam. I’d wanted music from the first moment I heard it, and Sam gave it to me every day. But Cris didn’t need to know that much about me. I just nodded.
“What about the roses? You took care of them, even though you thought no one wanted them.”
“People don’t want a lot of things, but they get them anyway.” Such as newsouls, or roses of indeterminate color. “I liked the roses for what they were.”
Cris offered a dazzling smile, like I’d just said something amazing or profound. “I’m glad someone appreciated them.”
“Hmph.” I wished Sam would hurry with the tea. Then I could pretend to focus on not spilling. “We had things in common, the roses and me. That’s all.” I wanted to kick myself for being rude, but Sam came into the room with a tray of mugs and rescued me from more humiliation. The way he looked at me said he knew it, too.
“Where have you been traveling, Cris?” Sam sat beside me and offered a mug of tea. I wrapped both my hands around it, grateful for the distraction.
“Lots of places. I went across the continent, cataloguing different species of plants, their rate of growth, looking for more edible plants that we might be able to grow in Heart….”
“You walked the whole way?” I asked. “For four years?”
He nodded. “That’s the best way to see plants you might like to eat.”
No wonder he was as thin as a wire. But he looked strong and sharp, like he could walk across the world. I didn’t know much about lands outside Range, but I knew this continent was huge, with mountains, plains, deserts, and marshes. You could walk a thousand leagues from the east to the west and still miss so much. That is, as long as nothing killed you the moment you stepped foot outside of Range.