River Secrets (22 page)

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Book of Bayern

Forest Born

Chapter 1

Rin sat on the Forest floor, covered her face with her arms, and tried to exhale away the tight feeling in her chest. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the trees leaning in, their shadows thick as wool. The whole world felt crowded, hostile, too dense to breathe. It was summer, but she shook.

“Rin! Rinna!”

She straightened up as her nephew Incher came hurtling her way. He stopped running when he saw her, his dirty face wrinkling in awkward confusion.

“What’re you doing, Rin? You crying?”

Rin shook her head, then wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, just in case she was.

“Well, Da wants a hand with the roofing,” he said, standing on his toes and twisting around as he spoke. “Said he’d give me first go at the stewpot tonight if I found you. And I found you. Want to watch me climb that tree?”

“Later, all right?”

Incher nodded and hopped away, expecting no more from his aunt. As soon as he was out of sight, she ran.

She ran over dead pine needles that snapped underfoot and moss that hushed under her soft boots. She zigzagged and changed paths and bolted through sunny clearings and back into cool shade, and still she felt that itchy wrongness, that loud stillness that told her she was not home. All her life, if ever she was lonely or anxious or afraid, all she had to do was climb a tree and lay herself down, spine to branch, and let in the calm that all trees breathe out. But she had not sought that comfort in months. The pines, firs, and aspen that had been like extensions of her own family stood in woody silence now, as lifeless as tossed bones.

Sometimes the anxious itch inside her made her want to keep running fast and far until she passed the last Forest tree, until the whole world was left behind; sometimes it made her want to curl up and disappear.

When she got to the clearing of the Homestead, she rested her hands on her knees, waiting for her breathing to slow. There stood her ma’s house, one room built of wood, shutters wide open in the summer afternoon, fir boughs turning brown on the roof. Dotting the small clearing were five other houses, built by her big brothers for their own families. Everywhere, children ran. Rin had twenty-two nieces and nephews, several of them older than she.

Happy shrieks pricked the air as a line of children fled an older child who was hooting like an owl. Two children were wrestling in the dirt while a third waited her turn. Three little girls sat on the ground weaving intricate crowns from green pine needles. When another boy tried to wrest a crown from one of their hands, one of the girls punched him in the jaw, sending him off yowling. The whole place thrummed with activity, the motion constant, the family like a huge beast with a thousand parts. Rin tried to smile at the scene, but it felt like lying.

She shivered once, then looked around for sign of a bright red headscarf. She might have been fifteen years old and nearly a woman, but just then, all she wanted was her mother.

She spotted Ma across the clearing, carrying a sobbing grandchild with one arm while still gripping the long wooden spoon that was her near constant companion. Rin’s mother was nearly as wide as she was tall and looked sturdy enough to face down a root-ripping storm. She had a lot of dark hair that frizzed around her face, continually breaking free from her Forest woman’s headwrap, and a voice that somehow sounded warm and loving even as she berated everyone she passed.

“Brun,” she called, pointing the wooden spoon at her eldest son as he chopped wood. “Your Lila there is making a ruckus that’ll scare the squirrels into winter. See to her or I will. Gren, don’t you knock over that pot I just filled if you want to live to supper!” As she passed behind her son Jef, who sat on the ground leaning back, his hat half over his eyes, she swatted him on the back of the head with her spoon. “Get up, you sack of bones. I didn’t raise you to nap like an overfed piglet. Look at you children—what pretty necklaces you made! Don’t go scratching each others’ eyeballs now. Tabi, let go of your brother! He’s not a branch to swing from.”

Rin made herself Ma’s shadow, following her through the clearing and into the little house, waiting beside her as Ma hefted the sobbing grandchild higher on her hip and stirred the enormous pot hanging over the fire. Rin shuffled her feet. At the sound, Ma turned with a relieved smile.

“Rin, there’s my girl, only sensible person for miles. Come stir the stew while I patch up Yuli’s knee. I can’t think what those children meant by—now wait just a minute.” Ma peered at Rin’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Rin shook her head.

Ma sat Yuli on the table and put a hand under Rin’s jaw. “You sure? You’ve been quiet lately—well…” She paused to laugh at her own joke. “Maybe it’s not so much the quiet as something inside the quiet.”

Rin shrugged casually, though her insides were turning to ice. Had Ma noticed how often Rin ran off lately? Could Ma see that she was broken and shaking inside? Would she speak the words, would she pronounce the problem and then make it all right?

Ma felt her forehead and her cheeks, made her stick out her tongue, prodded her belly, listened to her elbows for creaks, pulled her earflaps down to look for rash. “Seem fine. You not feeling fine?”

Rin shrugged again. She’d never bothered anyone about the little spiny things in her heart, the piercing disquiet. It did not seem right to complain, especially not to Ma, who was working from the moment her eyes opened until she groaned as she lay down at night. Maybe everyone felt all knotted once they grew up, and no one talked about it because it just was not done. Or maybe only Rin was all wrong. If so, she’d never speak it. She had first learned to crawl on moss and walk on pine needles, and by the age of five could climb a fir as easily as falling into bed. How could she even explain, let alone think, that she felt wrong under the Forest canopy?

“Could you…” Rin stopped.

“Ask me, Rinna.” Her mother rarely told her what to do. Rin was the child who never needed scolding, who cleaned her plate before being asked, who heard what her mother wanted before she’d even finished speaking. But Ma commanded her now, with fists on hips and eyes almost angry, daring her daughter to stay quiet now. “Ask me.”

And so Rin was surprised into saying exactly what she was thinking. “Could you hug me?”

Without hesitation, Ma pulled her in tight, hugged her as if she were a tiny baby scared to be out in the open world. Rin’s head pressed into her mother’s warm, soft shoulder as she smelled wood smoke and the juniper berries Ma loved to chew. Rin sighed a very tiny sigh.

“Oh, my girl,” Ma mumbled against her daughter’s head. “My treasure. My perfect girl. How I love you and love you.”

There inside her mother’s arms, something tight inside Rin eased a bit, but the knotted unease did not untangle. Rin had not really thought that one embrace might be enough to fix what was wrong, but she’d hoped enough to try.

“Thanks,” she whispered, the cue to let her mother know that was enough. Ma hugged her a bit tighter still and smattered her head with kisses before letting go and returning to Yuli, who had begun to cry again.

“Anytime you want a hug, my treasure, you just blink,” Ma said over her shoulder as she took care of Yuli. “Can’t think what’s wrong with me if my little girl has to ask for some Ma love. Just isn’t right.”

Rin did not answer, and Ma did not expect it. Rin returned to the stew, scraping the bottom of the pot to keep it from burning, and stared into the fire. But her mind refused to relax. Again and again she kept thinking,
there’s
something wrong with you. You’re not who they think you are; you don’t
belong in this big, wild family; you don’t fit in the Forest; you’ve got to
go away, away.

But where could she go?

Shannon Hale

is the Newbery Honor–winning author of
Princess Academy
,
Book of a Thousand Days
, and the highly acclaimed and award-winning Books of Bayern:
The Goose Girl
,
Enna Burning
, and
River Secrets
. She has also written a novel for adults,
Austenland
, and a graphic novel with her husband,
Rapunzel’s Revenge
. She lives with her husband and two young children near Salt Lake City, Utah.