He studied her face carefully, unable to keep the hope from his eyes. “I know you will try, Aunt Grianne.”
She reached out impulsively and hugged the boy. It was something she had seldom done, and it felt awkward, but the boy was quick to hug her back, and that made her feel better about it.
“Be careful,” he whispered.
She broke away, moving slowly down the trail toward the shadows.
“Thank you,” he called after her. “For doing this.”
She gave him a small wave in response, but did not look back.
The afternoon eased toward evening, and the light shifted and began to fade. Pen stood until he grew tired, then sat with his back against an ancient trunk, staring down into the ravine, keeping watch. He listened for sounds he did not care to think of too carefully, but no sounds came. Silence cloaked the ravine and the forest and, for all he knew, the entire world. He watched patterns of light and shadows form and re-form, slow-moving kaleidoscopic images against the earth. He smelled the scents released into air by the forest and the things that lived there. He rubbed the blunted tips of his damaged fingers and remembered how they had gotten that way. He remembered what it had felt like to become joined to the tanequil through the carving of the runes. He remembered night in the island forest and his terrifying encounter with Aphasia Wye.
Mostly, he remembered Cinnaminson. He could picture her face and the way she smiled. He could remember the way she moved. He could hear her voice. She was there, alive and well within his mind, and it made him want to cry for his loss.
But he smiled instead. He knew she was coming back to him. He believed in his aunt Grianne. He had faith in her magic and her skills, in her promise that she would find a way. He loved Cinnaminson, although he had never loved a girl before and had no frame of reference from which to draw a comparison. But love seemed to him to be a state of mind peculiar to each, and there was no set standard by which you could measure its strength. He knew what he felt for Cinnaminson, and if the difference between what he felt when he had her with him and when he did not was an accurate measure, then he could not imagine how love could be any stronger.
Time slipped away, and at last, when no one had appeared and darkness had begun to close about, he found himself wondering what he would do if his aunt failed and Cinnaminson didn’t come back to him.
He dozed then, made sleepy-eyed by the warmth and brightness of the late afternoon sun slanting down through breaks in the branches of the trees. He did not fall deeply asleep, but hovered at the edge of wakefulness, arms about his drawn-up knees, head sunk on his chest.
Eyes closed, he drifted.
Then something stirred him awake—a whisper of sound, a hint of movement, a sense of presence—and he looked up to find Cinnaminson standing before him. She was more ghost than flesh and blood, pale and thin and disheveled in her tattered clothes. He got to his feet slowly and stood looking at her, afraid that he was mistaken, that he might be hallucinating.
“It’s me, Pen,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
He didn’t rush to her, didn’t grasp her and hold her close, although he wanted to do that, to make certain of her. Instead, he walked up to her as if time didn’t matter. He took her hands and held them, studying her face, the spray of freckles and the milky eyes. The musty smell of earth and damp emanated from her body, and tendrils of root ends still clung to her arms. He reached out and touched her face.
“I’m all right,” she said. She touched his face. “I missed you. Even when I was one of them and thought I couldn’t possibly be happier, I remembered you and missed you. I don’t think that ever would have stopped.”
She put her arms around him and held on to him as if she was afraid she would be taken away again, and he could feel her crying against his shoulder. He started to speak, then gave it up and just hugged her, closing his eyes and losing himself in the warmth of her body.
“Who was it who came down for me?” she asked him finally, her voice muffled. She lifted her head from his shoulder put her mouth close to his ear. “I don’t understand it,” she whispered. “Why did she do it? Why did she trade herself for me?”
Pen thought his heart would stop.
The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene