The carriage house, from where the children and Southshore left, was a hive of noise and activity, and by the time they were on the road, both children felt like they had weathered a storm.
They had both been awoken at first light, which wasn't unusual, but they had gotten out of the habit since they had landed on shore, and now, as the sun was finally staking its claim to the sky, they both felt sleepy and battered.
Southshore had set everything up, busying them along chatting incomprehensibly and incessantly as he did.
They were in for a long journey.
-
The first couple of hours on the road were calm, if not quiet. They all ate their breakfast on their laps and slowly recovered from their early start.
After the first twenty minutes though, Southshore got bored. And when he was bored, he talked.
And talked.
And talked some more.
In between bouts of talking, he invented stupid games, but that wasn't so bad. The one they ended up playing for a few hours was some sort of guessing game. He was thinking of a word, something in the carriage or outside that he'd seen, and they had to guess what the word was.
Language barriers did not make it easy, but as it went on, they had managed to teach Southshore almost as much of their language as he had of his. None of it useful, mind, but it was something, and he was an enthusiastic student.
Once he bored of the games, and the two of them became too tired to continue, he crawled outside to annoy the driver, leaving Health and Pearl alone to recuperate.
Health leaned back, staring out of the side, into the passing trees. "You ever seen so many trees before?"
Pearl shook her head. They had come from the same village, so the question was mostly rhetorical, "They're so tall." She whispered, "Like, I thought the mountains were the tallest thing I'd ever see, now I'm not so sure."
Health nodded. They weren't comparable to mountains, not really, but distance always made mountains look smaller than they were. The trees here were all-consuming, stretching far up into the sky, a dark ceiling somewhere far, far above.
Pearl laid one hand on the wall of the carriage, "Wish I could go out there and touch 'em, how Blanketweaving showed me on the ship. I bet they're so old that they're all full up on magic."
"I bet," Health murmured, and stared out of the window again for a time.
The trees passed by in a sort of green-brown blur, as they worked themselves up, preparing to speak.
"Feels like we're just being dragged from place to place," they finally said, not moving their gaze from the passing trees. "Ever since we got sent onto the island, we've just been dragged from place to place."
Pearl was silent, also watching the trees.
Eventually, she spoke with a soft voice. "Is that such a bad thing?"
"I mean-" she continued, "we don't even speak the language here. We're learnin', a bit more every day, but it's gonna take a while."
She kept looking out of the window, and the silence stretched between them.
"We're just kids, Health."
They didn't respond, watching the trees pass by.
They heard her sigh, and a moment later she laid a small hand on their knee. "We could jump out the carriage, if you want?" She offered.
She let out a quiet laugh, "We could go live in the woods. I know how to start a fire, you can hunt for food, we'll live off berries and-" she fell off, "I dunno, rabbits?"
She rattled at the door handle, "c'mon then, let's go, make our own destinies, we should have enough in the travel packs to-"
"That's enough," Health turned and glared at her, "You don't have to mock me, you know I didn't mean that."
She moved backwards, taking her hand off their knee and glaring back, "Well what did you mean then?! You can't complain about our lack of doin' stuff for ourselves and then come up with no solutions!
"We got out of our village, we got all the way to here, away from anyone who might find us. We're learnin' the language, we're on our way to some sort of big fancy house in the woods. We got us a guardian, we have like, options for the future, but we're just kids, Health!"
"I don't know!" They squeezed their eyes shut, trying not to cry, "I don't know what I want. I don't wanna fight with you, you're my best friend. You're strong and brave, I just get scared that we're gonna get trapped again, that it's gonna be like…"
They trailed off, eyes tightly shut to ward off the tears, but there was still a tremble in their voice. "Promise me we're not gonna get trapped again?"
Pearl sighed and reached in to give them a hug, which they reluctantly returned, burying their face in her shoulder.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"I won't let that happen." Her voice was firm, "Not that I think it even could, they're different about stuff here, but if we gotta run away again, fine. We can do that. It'll be easier the second time."
She patted them gently, and then moved back to her seat on the opposite bench. "Gods this view is boring."
-
They travelled for a while, the noise of the creaking carriage and the quiet chatter of Southshore and the driver filtering in from outside.
The view never changed, only more endless greenery. "It must've been quite something," Health offered, as a sort of truce from earlier, "when they built this road. Think of it, how they had to cut all the trees down."
Pearl frowned, biting her lip, "That seems like a lotta work. Maybe they made it before the trees were grown?"
Health shook their head, "I think the trees've been here since… Forever! Since before people."
She thought about this, frowning with one eye on the window, "was there a time before people?"
"There must've been, right? Although…"
Health shook their head, unable to imagine it. If you thought about a time before people, then there had to be a time before that, and then what did stuff look like, where did it all start?
Pearl watched their thought process travel across their face, and shook her head too, "Wild."
Health nodded in agreement, scrubbing at their cheeks with the back of their sleeve. They hadn't cried earlier, but their cheeks still felt tight and hot, as if they had.
Pearl watched, and then resumed staring out of the window. A moment later she spoke again, her voice even softer than earlier, "You know…"
A pause.
"If you wanna be a boy here, proper, I dun think anyone would say no?"
She kept looking out of the window, diffusion through lack of eye contact something, "I reckon we could even Change you, if I just learn a bit more. Blanketweaving said I can't screw it up, like they said I would back home. He showed me…" She paused and licked her lips in thought, "They lied to me a lot."
She paused for a heartbeat, thinking, "to us, I mean."
"I dunno if they lied," Health whispered, also not making eye contact, staring at the ceiling of the carriage, "I think they didn't know. There wasn' anyone with magic nearby, not even in the other villages. How could they."
She shook her head, "Maybe not, but what if that was a lie too."
Health looked down. Her cheeks were flushed but her face was serious as she stared through the passing trees.
"They wouldn' have told the other villages about me, so who would tell me about them. Just… Make me into a Grower and pretend I couldn' be anything else. Make me useful, make me into a tool and trap me there."
She sounded angry, and she had every right to be. It was an old wound, and one which had been inflicted on her when she was very young. "If you hadn' made friends with me, I dunno where I'd be now."
Health gave a quiet laugh, "hey, same for me. Most likely still back at home being shouted at by my da, and hating every minute of it."
She nodded, and they resumed their silent journey.
-
They overnighted in a small village, with a room to themselves on the upper floor. Most houses back home had been one story, and the sizes of things here were a wonder. Having their own space was a novelty. On board the ship it had been too crowded for that sort of thing, and even on-shore they hadn't thought about it, staying in the bunk house with the other sailors, a corner to themselves all they needed.
They snuggled into their shared bed and whispered by the light of a fading candle.
"What do you think it'll be like, at Southshore's house?" Pearl murmured, half asleep.
Health knew this game, and played along, also almost out themselves.
"I reckon," their voice was drowsy with sleep, "that it'll have ten rooms, all connected, one to the other."
They yawned and snuggled down into the bedding, "the main room will have the biggest hearth you've ever seen. The floor will be made from fine wood, and will be heated from underneath, like in the bathhouse we went too…"
They trailed off, face deep in the pillow, and Pearl nudged them on, "The walls will be made of… Of the rarest of woods, and even the outside'll be plastered, so you can't see none of the bricks."
Their voice became lower as they drifted off, "the roof will be made of the finest tiles…"
And then, it was morning. And they were ready to go again.
-
It was scheduled to rain that afternoon, so they stopped in another small village to wait it out.
Neither of them felt like staying indoors after the previous day of confinement, so they changed into some old clothes and ventured out into the rain, leaving the adults indoors with their drinks and their chatter.
The village was built in a circular fashion with the road running through it, and in the direct centre was one huge tree, even bigger than those on the road. The road split in two to go around it, which was wild, it had been perfectly straight up until this point.
The two of them sheltered beneath the tree and watched the rain.
"You should try using your magic," Pearl suggested, "you just gotta stop tellin' yourself that you can't. That's most people's problem."
Health made a non-commital noise, and then thought better of it, and shrugged with one shoulder, "I guess if I'm gonna try any time, in the rain is best."
They hesitated, and then put one hand out in front of themselves, unsure.
Pearl laughed, "what're you doing?"
Health glared at her, "Well you do it then miss fancy, you know what you're doin' with this stuff, I ain't got the head for it."
She rolled her eyes and placed her hand in theirs. "You can't just will Change onto the whole world, you gotta direct it at somethin', something that wants to be changed."
They stared at their hand for a moment, and then looked around. "Ok, so," they frowned, "you know anythin here that wants to be changed? How do I tell? Does it have like, an aura?"
She shrugged, "Most things don't really wanna change much, but here," she grabbed a clump of dried leaves that had been nestled in the roots of the tree, "try these, they look pretty old, so they probably wanna be soil already."
Health nodded and laid their hand over the leaves, trying to hear whatever she did within them. Maybe there were tiny voices or… Whatever, colours, sounds, a yearning to be soil.
"What if I can't understand the voices 'cause I can't speak the language," he muttered, concentrating.
Pearl didn't answer, but she didn't need to. Somewhere them, inside the magic stirred, gathering to a point in their heart, before all at once, the dam burst, and it flooded out of them, like the first rain after the harvest down open terraces.
Out it washed, nature itself spilling out through their hand and into the pile of leaves.
A single corner of one leaf crumbled to dust, and they looked down at it in disappointment.
Pearl clapped, "hey, you did it!"
He sniffed, "it felt like so much though, and that was all it did?"
She shrugged, "you probably weakened them in a way we can't see," she reached over and nudged the pile, and it crumbled a little in his hands, "there, see?"
He nodded, and brightened up a little, "but hey, I did magic, look at that!"
He grinned, "What my da would say to that I reckon. Now to get real good at it, so if I ever get dragged home again and they try and make work in the fields, I can turn it all to mush beneath their feet!"
She laughed, "that's the spirit!"
They watched the rain for a minute longer, and then Health shook their head, "nah, doesn't feel right. Not right now."
They leant back against the tree, staring up into the branches. The canopy was so thick that only the occasional drop of rain reached them, and the ground around them was dry and dusty.
The magic was still there inside them, a small intense bead of raw potential. It hadn't been diminished in any way by their use of it and would come when they called now. It was theirs, and nothing could take it away.
Five minutes rest, and then they'd try again.