His boots scuffed against grit and gravel. The wind brushed through, humming around the stones, drawing thin purple clouds off the ocean. Heather clustered on the south sides of a few standing stones, bowing gently in the twilight. Ban reached out to the nearest stone, mottled with coins of black lichen and paler moon lichen. The rock was warm, purring like the wind.
Stepping fully into the half-circle, he tilted his head up. Purple and great swaths of rich indigo crawled across the sky, letting through only the strongest stars. A full moon glowed over the easternmost standing stone. The top was slanted, and Ban walked until the moon was pierced by its higher, sharper tip. This had always been his argument with Errigal and the king as a boy: the patterns Ban saw depended on where he stood. One needed the perspective of the earth to understand the stars.
Errigal had cuffed him and the king explained disgustedly, “A man should stand where he is supposed to stand, and from there see the signs and patterns around him. That is how you read the stars.”
Ban’s brother, Rory, had obediently taken a place beside Lear, grabbing Ban’s skinny wrist and dragging him there, too. “With me,” Rory said, hugging Ban’s shoulders in his arm and putting their faces together. “Look, brother!”
Then, Ban had smiled with Rory, leaned into the embrace. He’d tolerated the lesson so long as Rory had hold of him.
Elia would pace around and around the stones, counting the space, writing down her numbers to later draw a map of the circle. Lear had been proud when his daughter overlaid the stone map with a simple summer star map and showed how clear and smart the ancient star readers had been to lay this circle out just so. See, Ban? The earth itself made into the shape of stars!
Show me, Lear had said, dismissing Ban as irrelevant.
Now, Ban turned his back against the center stone and slid down to crouch at its base. Flattening his hands on the cold ground, Ban whispered, Blessings for Elia Lear, in the language of trees.
The words scratched at his tongue, and the standing stone warmed his back. Ban drew a breath, sinking against the earth and the stone, relaxing his body. His eyes drifted shut. He listened.
Chewing waves tugged out from the island with the vanishing tide. The purr of stones and the beat of his heart. Wind kissing his cheeks, scattering seed husks and dark petals across the gravelly earth here. Distant whispering trees clustered around streams and the thin Duv River that flowed from the northern Mountain of Teeth, through the White Forest, catching on boulders and the roots of ancient oak and ash, slick with spirits. Ban whispered, My name is Ban Errigal. My bones were made here with you.
Ban Errigal, the trees hissed quietly.
The island’s voice should have been stronger. It should have spoken to him last night, even far out on the Summer Seat ramparts. Or perhaps Ban was spoiled by the vibrant, glorious tones of Aremoria.
Innis Lear.
Here he smelled late summer roses and dry grass, salty sea and the tinge of fishy decay. Stone and earth, his own sweat. Maybe his memories of being a boy-witch here were thin; maybe the island always had spoken so tightly.
But no: Ban was certain. Lear had done this. The fool king had weakened the ancient voice of the island when he forbade the rootwaters from flowing. Both earth and stars were needed for magic: roots and blood for power, the stars to align them. Without both, everything was wild, or everything was dead. Here, it was dying.
Ban couldn’t—he wouldn’t let it happen. Not to the trees and wind. Not to this hungry island that birthed him. The only thing in his life to never let him go, to never choose someone else.
Kneeling, Ban drew off his thin jacket and then untucked his linen shirt and removed it, too. Dropped both in a pile beside him.
From a small folded pouch on his belt, he drew a sharp flint triangle and pressed the edge to his chest, over his heart. Blood, he whispered in the language of trees, slicing fast. Blood welled as the sting flared. It dripped a thin, dark line down his chest. Ban allowed it, but caught the stream upon his finger just before it reached the waist of his trousers. There, against his skin, he smeared it into the jagged language of trees, writing Innis Lear with marks like naked winter twigs.
His chest ached with every breath, a low fire heating his skin and heart. Ban pressed his palm to the wound, caught trickling blood, and then clasped his hands together until both palms glinted scarlet.
Here I am, he said to the wind, and leaned forward onto his hands and knees, giving the bloody prints to the earth. My power, and your power.
Ban Errigal, the island trees hissed. Ban the Fox, the Fox, the Fox.
The slice over his heart bled onto the ground, a dull dripping, a narrow thread of life between him and the island.
The puddle shaped itself into a crescent, tips reaching away.
Ban opened his eyes and looked into the crimson pool. He saw a word marked there, something close to promise.
I promise, he whispered tenderly. I swear to you.
Wind flew off the island, a cry of trees, rushing past him, dragging at his hair, and tears pricked suddenly in his eyes. The wind snatched his tears and shrieked off the cliff, crashing down, down, down to the rocks and sea foam.
WELCOME!
Ban smiled.
He leaned back onto his heels, holding his bloody, dusty hands before him. Light, he said.
Five tiny silver baubles of moonlight blossomed over his palms.
He laughed, delighted.
A soft noise echoed in response.
Then a human voice: “You’ve become a wizard.”
Ban lifted his head. Elia Lear stood across from him, part of the violet shadows. He wondered how long she’d been watching. Did she still understand the language of trees?
The moon washed out her eyes and dress and found the reddish glints in her dark chainmail curls. It turned her face into a gold mask like the kind an earth saint would wear: black eyes, slash of mouth, wild ribbons and scraggly moss and vines for hair.
Balancing the tiny stars still in his hands, he stood up slowly, his heart somehow lighter. That had always been her gift to him: she cut through all the angles of his anger and need, to a hidden spark of peace. “Elia,” he said, then, “Princess.”
Elia’s face crumpled, becoming human again, in painful motion. “No more,” she whispered. Her fingers pulled lines into the front of her gown.
Ban went to her and caught up her elbows, leaning in to offer her comfort. The balls of light dropped slow as bubbles, fading just before they hit the earth again. Elia clung to him, despite the blood and dust on his chest and hands. He put his arms full around her, his heart gasping between beats.
“Ban Errigal,” she whispered, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. “I never knew if I’d see you again. I hoped, but no more than hope. It is so good, so very good, to be held by you now.”
“Like the last time,” he said, low in his throat, forcing the words out, “your father made a terrible decision.”
She shuddered against him. Her hair teased his chin and jaw, smelling of spicy flowers still. Elia pulled away, though slid her hands down to his. She lifted one, touching the blood.
“Wormwork,” he said.
“It was beautiful.” She raised her eyes to his.
“The earth has its own constellations.”
Elia touched his chest, and Ban’s entire body stilled. Her finger skimmed above the heart-wound.
He said, “Your father makes wormwork filthy, severs himself and all of you from the island’s heart for nothing but the sake of pure stars and insincere loyalties. It’s hurting the magic. And the island.”
She pushed away from him, going to the nearest standing stone. Elia scratched her fingers down it, hard enough to flake off tiny edges of silver moon lichen. “There have been more poor harvests than good these past years, since you left. I’ve heard of sickness, too, in the forests, and fish dying. Fish! I thought—I thought when Gaela was queen it all would revive. That there was nothing to do but wait. The island does not love him, but we can all survive without love, for a time. All places have bad years, hard seasons. Especially an island like ours.”