One of the trees at the north side of the meadow shivered. It was so slight, so quiet a sound, Elia knew anyone else would not find him.
She leapt up, dashed to the alder, and put her hands on the grayish trunk, rubbing her fingers along the tiny horizontal markings on the bark, so like the written language of trees. Down the middle a fold pressed together, nearly four feet tall. Open up, she whispered, and the bark shivered, giggling at her wishes. Elia kissed it, and again. Open up, please! Though there was no true word for please in the language of trees.
Elia!
It wasn’t the tree complaining, but Ban.
She laughed. “Come out! I’ve not seen you in so long. Are you taller?”
The tree shivered again, and the fold opened like arms, revealing a triangle of a hollow between two wide roots, and there she spied him half crouched in the darkness.
He grimaced at her, wiping mud from his cheeks. But she leaned in too fast, and fell against him with a little laugh. They crushed together in the musty hollow, laughter echoing up to the tree’s heart. All the branches shook as they tickled the tree from the inside. Elia held tight around Ban’s neck, and he lifted her to her toes and dragged them both out.
They collapsed into the meadow, knocking elbows and knees, quite breathless. Ban smiled because sunlight found Elia’s horn-black eyes, making them shine, and she smiled because she had her hands on his tawny cheeks. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said back, rather gruff for a boy.
Elia sat. Petals and dandelion seeds fell out of her hair. “Why didn’t you come see me? How long have you been near?”
Ban absently caught the leavings as they drifted from her hair. His own was long and rough, knotted in places from old braids he never untied, greasy as young men without parents are so skilled at maintaining. His fingers were already talented, though, and they danced as he wove petals and seeds into a wide ring with a strand of wind.
“Ban,” she said softly, touching the corner of his mouth with one finger. She pushed it gently up.
“My father told me to be more proper and keep my distance from the king’s daughters.”
“And you obeyed?” Horrified, Elia could only laugh again.
A slow smile crept across his face, showing off sharp little teeth. He tossed the ring of wind and petals at her, and it looped around her nimbus of hair. “If you’re to have petals in your hair, my lady, they should be a crown.”
She stood, then curtsied. Spreading her arms, she tipped her head back and asked the wind to bring her shadows and flicks of stars. Wind ruffled the canopy, and shadows collected in her palms. She clapped them together, and they exploded into a spiky circlet of wavering, reaching gray fingers. With a laugh, she snapped with one hand, and there sparked to life tiny white ghost lights, which she dotted about the crown like diamonds. Then she set it gently upon Ban’s unruly hair. “My lord,” she murmured, holding out her hand for his.
Accepting, Ban stood with her. He was a breath taller, and his rangy little-boy shoulders had broadened beyond hers. The plain linen shirt hung open at his chest, and Elia admired the soft line of his collarbone. She touched the point of the open shirt, skimming her hand up his sternum to flatten it over his heart. Ban cupped her elbow and slid his other arm around her waist.
The meadow hummed, and the bluebirds and sparrows and a few mourning doves chirped and sang.
Elia Lear and Ban Errigal danced. Slow, and with a rhythm none but those who heard the language of trees would recognize. Stops and starts, careful spinning, a pause and a turn, then looping a spiral out and out to the edges of the meadow; back again, the opposite way, and their quiet feet stamped words into the grass and sparflowers, knocking seeds into the air, and spinning through layers of light and shadow and light again.
Breathless at the end, Elia wrapped her arms around his ribs, laying her body against his. Her small beginning breasts flattened on his chest, and he lovingly touched her hair, fluffing it and caressing the ends before finding her bare neck and drawing her closer to him.
Elia’s heart beat fast as a rabbit’s, and she saw all the colors of the forest in Ban’s eyes, just before they drifted shut and their mouths touched, dry and hot.
His pulse floundered, too, where she felt it through his back, in the sensitive palms of her hands.
As they kissed, tasting with lips and only the tips of tongues, sweet and lapping like kittens, the forest sighed. Her crown of petals and wind dissolved; so too did his circlet of shadow and light.
Strands of wormwork and the thin light of daytime stars sparkled as they reached for each other, but fell short and dropped instead to the ground. Little imaginary flowers, born of bruised hearts and silly hopes, blossomed for just a few brief moments, lifted in pairs like the wings of tiny moths, then sank home to the earth and died.
ELIA
ELIA KNELT BEFORE a tower of white roses and breathed a gentle sigh onto the nearest fat-faced flower. It bobbed back at her, and she whispered, I am Elia the daughter of the king of Innis Lear, in the language of trees.
She’d been practicing every day, for the week and some since Rory arrived in Aremoria. So her tongue might be ready when the time came to go home, at Midwinter. If only she could return now, before the crowning, and solicit the opinions of the trees and wind and perhaps even the birds—but she did not know what ramifications would follow if she defied her sisters so directly. Elia would not ask those unfeeling stars that awaited her nightly.
Not yet.
Sunlight transformed the garden into a brilliant cluster of jewels, heating her until sweat prickled her scalp. A red skirt flared around her legs, a pool of contrast against perfectly cut emerald grass, and the bodice attached kept her from slouching, with all its stiff embroidery. The collar clung to the edges of her shoulders, and tight sleeves ended at her elbows in ribbons. It was simple, but beautiful, the compromise she’d found these past weeks with Aefa, who would have Elia dolled up in impressive, elaborate costumes if she could.
Amber beads gleamed from her braids, which she’d allowed Aefa to add after the girl begged her to think of the king. At least let me rope in amber so Morimaros might admire the flare of fire.
But Elia had no idea when he would return, and besides, she’d come here to this garden to be left alone, asking that the gate be locked behind her until she was finished. Nearly a week ago, Elia had written to Errigal in defense of his second-born son. To Ban, she’d written and rewritten, as unsure of her words as she was his motives. She tried telling him the truth: that knowing he’d been here in Aremoria before her made her less lonely. Then a half-truth: that she wished she’d not wasted their time together on grief and rage. That she wished she had asked him of his experiences since they’d last met, what he’d accomplished in Aremoria and what friends he’d made and whom he had grown to love. And then, a lie: that she could not believe he had betrayed his own brother, just to prove something to a woman he no longer knew.
In the end, she had written, Do not keep promises by causing more pain, and nothing more.
Her sisters had not replied, though surely they would have received her previous missives.
There still was time, Elia told herself, to avoid war, though she could not help but worry. Gaela and Regan would never agree to any path that offered succor or forgiveness to Lear. They’d never allow him to retire here in Aremoria, even if it meant they could rule the island without him or her or the threat of invasion or rebellion. They wanted Lear close, to witness his decline, to watch him suffer and die. His penance, for presumed transgressions. She supposed their familial drama would not be so terrible, except that they sat at the center of an entire kingdom. Most families did not have to worry about their passions and arguments rippling out into war and famine and disease.