Ei útan petiar che oue bamita.

How would I ever learn what the book said if Gaudrel’s own people didn’t know? The Tribe of Gaudrel. Why had I never heard of this book before? To us they had been only vagabonds, rootless people with no history, but they clearly had one the Scholar wanted hidden. I closed the book and stood, brushing bits of grass from my skirt, watching the meadow go from green to gold as a last sliver of sun dropped behind a mountain.

A haunting silence pressed down on me. Here.

I closed my eyes, feeling a familiar ache. A bitter need swelled inside. I felt like a child again, staring into a black starlit sky, everything I wanted beyond my reach.

“So you think you have the gift.”

I whirled and found myself looking into the deeply lined face of the old woman, Dihara. I blinked, catching my breath. “Who told you that?”

She shrugged. “The stories … they travel.” She carried a spinning wheel and a burlap sack hung over her shoulder. She walked past me, the tall grass shivering in her wake as she carried the wheel to where the meadow met the river. She faced one direction then the other, as if listening for something, and set the wheel down in a clearing where the grass was shorter. She pulled the sack from her shoulder and dropped it to the ground.

I ambled closer but still kept some distance, unsure if she’d welcome my observations. I stared at her back, noticing that her long silver braids almost touched the ground when she sat.

“You may come near,” she said. “The wheel will not bite. Nor will I.”

For an old woman, she had very good hearing.

I sat on the ground a few paces away. How did she know about my supposed gift? Had Finch or Griz told her about me? “What do you know of the gift?” I asked.

She grunted. “That you know little of it.”

She didn’t get that information from Griz or Finch, since they were thoroughly convinced of my abilities, but I couldn’t argue with her conclusion. I sighed.

“It’s not your fault,” she said as her foot pushed the treadle of the wheel. “The walled in, they starve it just as the Ancients did.”

“The walled in? What do you mean?”

Her foot paused on the treadle, and she turned to look at me. “Your kind. You’re surrounded by the noise of your own making, and you attend only to what you can see, but that’s not the way of the gift.”

I looked into her sunken eyes, blue irises so faded that they were nearly white. “You have the gift?” I questioned.

“Don’t be surprised. The gift’s not so magical or rare.”

I shrugged, not wanting to argue with an old woman but knowing otherwise from the teachings of Morrighan and my own experience. It was magical, a gift from the gods to the chosen Remnant and their descendants. That included many of the Lesser Kingdoms, but not the rootless vagabonds.

She raised one eyebrow, scrutinizing me. She stood, stepping away from her wheel, and turned to face the camp. “Stand up,” she ordered. “Look over there. What do you see?”

I did as she instructed and saw Eben playfully wrestling with the wolves. “The wolves don’t take to others the way they do Eben,” she said. “His need is deep, and there is a knowing between them. He nurtures it even now, making it stronger, but it is a way that has no name. It is a way of trust. It is mysterious but not magical.”

I stared at Eben, trying to understand what she was saying.

“There are many such ways that can only be seen or heard with a different kind of eye and ear. The gift, as you would call it, is a way like the way of Eben.”

She went back to her work, as if her explanation was complete, though it was still a puzzle to me. She pulled raw uncarded wool from her bag, and then something with longer straight fibers.

“What do you spin?” I asked.

“The wool of sheep, the fur of llama, the flax of the field. The gifts of the world. They come in many colors and strengths. Close your eyes. Listen.”

“Listen to you spin?”

She shrugged.

Here.

The last arm of sunlight had disappeared, and the sky above the mountains tinged purple. I closed my eyes and listened to her spin, to the whir of wheel, the click of treadle, the rustle of grass, the gurgle of brook, the low hum of wind through pine, and that was all. It was peaceful, but not profound and I became impatient. I opened my eyes.

“You said stories travel. Do you expect me to believe that my story traveled here to you?”

“I expect that you’ll believe what you will. I’m only an old woman who needs to return to her spinning.” She hummed, turning her face toward the wind.

“If you believe in such ways and my story traveled true, then you know it was the truth when I said I was brought here against my will. You’re not Vendan. Will you help me escape from them?”

She looked over her shoulder, back at the camp and the children playing outside a wagon. The shadows of twilight deepened the lines of her face. “You’re right, I’m not Vendan, but neither am I Morrighese,” she said. “Would you have me interfere in the wars of men and bring about the young ones’ deaths?” She nodded her head toward the children. “That is how we survive. We have no armies, and our few weapons are only for hunting. We’re left alone because we don’t take sides but welcome all with food and drink and a warm fire. I cannot give you what you ask.”

I was grateful for the food and clean clothes, but I was still hoping for more. I needed more. I wasn’t simply a traveler on a long journey. I was a prisoner. I pulled my shoulders back and turned to leave. “Then your ways are not useful to me.”