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What do you know of us?
I felt as though this was an odd time to broach such a topic, given the ship was still in jeopardy and the ghisting should be attending to its hull andsuch—whateverghistings did. But Harpy’s gaze was so intense, I had to reply.
“I know you begin as trees in the Wold,” I said. “Or a Wold, not necessarily Aeadine’s. You grow first in the Other, and sometimes your branches reach through the barrier between worlds and become our ghisten trees. Not always, but sometimes. If a Mother Tree is present.”
Harpy nodded slowly, liquidly.That is true. I myself entered this world through Aeadine’s Wold.
This admission, this similarity between us, struck me. I struggled to stand straighter, but the tilting of the deck didn’t allow it. “That’s where I’m from.”
I glimpsed Harpy’s smile again, quick and fleeting.In a way, she hedged.I grew there long before your arrival. Very long. A hundred years or more.
“Do you miss it?” I asked, because the question felt natural.
I do. Do you?
“Always.”
Harpy made a sympathetic sound and slipped closer.As do I. We’re both far from home.
“Do you wish you could go back?” I worried that the question was insensitive, given how she was bound to the ship, but I truly wanted to know the answer.
Harpy didn’t reply for a long moment, full of the creaking of timbers. I wondered if her attention was somewhere else entirely, then she said,No. And yes. I was never content in theforest—Iwanted the world. When the Foresters came, searching for a ghisting to harvest, I drew them to myself.
That shocked me. “Ithought…”
Ghistings are always prisoners, like you?Harpy finished for me.There was a time when the people of Aeadine remembered that we were allies instead of servants. Butnow…perhapsmost have simply forgotten.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I didn’t speak, sensing she had more to say.
She selected another fan with absent fingers.Much has been forgotten.
“Like what?” I asked.
She lifted the new fan to her face and opened it. Before I could see what was on it she transformed from coy beauty to a twisted, bent woman with pointed teeth and a cavernous smile.
It was so grotesque, so unexpected, that I gave a startled shout.
Harpy vanished back into the bulkhead. I slapped a hand over my mouth, stifling myself before someone heard and came running.
Too late. A sodden, ice-rimed Demery opened the door, looming in the half-light, stance broad and hands braced to either side of the frame. The ship rocked again, and I just managed to keep my feet.
The captain surveyed me with haggard eyes. “What is it? Why are you screaming?”
“The ghisting.” I pushed loose hair from my eyes. “She startled me.”
“She likes to do that. Don’t encourage her.” Demery spoke the words in an off-handed way, as if his thoughts were already past the topic. “Did you still the wind?”
“Yes,” I replied, loosening the tension in my shoulders.
The captain’s stance also eased, but his scrutiny did not. “Good,” he decided. “We’d have lost more than a sail or two if you hadn’t come through.”
I almost grinned. “Thank you.”
Demery glanced upwards as the ship rolled again, then stuck a hand towards me. “Come above, Stormsinger. The night’s not over yet.”
TWENTY
Brothers
