“Is your friend a Wanderer?”
Mara’s thighs burned as she joined Eli at the crest of a hill overlooking the destination they’d been searching for two nights in a row, which appeared to be a nomadic homestead. Not that she’d ever seen one, but she’d seen paintings–the iconic hexagonal tents, crafted of hide, the horses, ranging free among other livestock.
“Half,” Eli said, swiping at his forehead with the back of his hand. “On her father’s side.”
Mara’s mind stuttered for a moment, as it did every time Eli reminded her this friend of his was a woman. For some reason, when he’d mentioned a friend in the plains who would give them horses, Mara’s mind had conjured up a grizzled horse charmer with a bushy mustache and one those felt hats with the broad brims. She’d seen them from time to time, usually at the equinox fairs, leading massive, muscular horse about by a piece of rope that didn’t seem up to the task. She’d never seen a woman horse charmer.
“The Order lets her observe Wanderer customs?” she asked, peering down at the three white tents, glowing pink and shadowed with the rising sun.
“They look the other way. Her warhorses are exceptional, and she keeps to herself out here. They’re not worried about her spreading the lifestyle, and antagonizing her isn’t worth losing her business.”
“Huh.” For some reason, all Mara could think was that this half-Wanderer friend of his could probably have swum across the Great Ribbon on her own. “Does she know we’re coming?”
“No, but she won’t be surprised to see us.”
“More vague nonsense, courtesy of Eli,” she sighed, putting some extra drama into the breath so he’d know she was kidding.
“You like the vague nonsense,” he said, taking Nick’s hand and heading down the steep slope of the hill. “It gives you somewhere to put your brain while we walk so you don’t get distracted by plants.”
With an indignant sound, she skidded through the first few steps downhill to catch up with them. “That’s awfully presumptuous. I can occupy my own brain, you know..”
“Can you?”
“Yes!”
“Because every time I turn around you’ve darted off to stick your head down a badger hole, looking for mushrooms.”
Nick giggled, and they both looked down at him, shocked. He didn’t usually react to the conversations they had around him. He was in an ‘understands, but only when it’s about me’ phase of language development.
“Was that funny, Nicky?” Mara asked, leaning down and swinging him up into her arms. “Does mama like to put her head in gopher holes?”
“Yeah!” he said sweetly, hand fisting in the collar of her shirt. “Mama always looks for mushrooms.”
Mara stopped, staring at her son. At his smiling mouth, pink cheeks, and the serious slash of his little eyebrows, drawn down in thought.
“You said a sentence,” she said, trying to sound calm and failing miserably. Her voice broke at the end. “You said a whole sentence.” She looked over his head at Eli, who had also stopped. “Eli, he said a whole sentence.”
Eli smiled, hooking a thumb in the strap of his pack. “He did.”
“A whole sentence!”
“Five words.”
“Perfect grammar!”
“Questionable diction.”
“A whole sentence!”
“I said a whole sentence,” Nick cut in, and she burst into tears. Happy, bubbly tears she thought she’d forgotten how to cry. She had been so worried, for so long, that something was wrong with her son. He spoke so little–just a word here or there–and what vocabulary he did demonstrate had come late compared to other children.
But Davy had told her not to fret. He’d spoken late too, so he’d promised her. “He understands us. He knows the words. He’s just waiting to share them until he can put them all together. This is normal for a Linhart kid. You’ll see.”
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With a few deep breaths, Mara stemmed the flood, gave her son a kiss on the cheek, and let him down out of her arms before she traumatized him out of speaking again. Giggling, he set back off down the hill, promptly tripping over a rock and sprawling on his face.
“You okay, Nicky?” Eli asked as they caught up to him.
“Yeah.”
“Come hold my hand, bud.”
“No!”
“Nick,” Mara said sternly, but he was already off.
“No!”
“That wasn’t a sentence,” Eli drawled.
Mara gasped out a laugh. “Nope.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, swiping at a fresh tear before it could fall. “I’ve just been so worried about it, for so long I don’t think I even felt the worry anymore. So when it lifted it was just… a lot. He didn’t even start babbling until nearly ten months, did Davy tell you?”
“That’s pretty normal for a Linhart kid.”
She nearly choked on another laugh. “That’s exactly what Davy used to say. I think that’s why I started crying. He was right.”
“Hm.” The ensuing pause was so long and thoughtful, she knew whatever followed would be both wise and soothing. “Would it help if I was smug about it on his behalf?”
“To the Depths, Eli,” she gasped, wiping at a fresh flood of inexplicable tears. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m already crying. If I laugh I’ll look hysterical, and I want your horse wrangler friend to like me.”
“Well don’t waste energy there. Tiff is slow to warm with anything that walks on two legs.”
Ahead of them, Nick tripped again, this time apparently over his own feet, landing hard in the dirt. Mara sighed. “At least she’ll like Nick.”
Eli stooped and plucked her son off the ground, propping him on a hip and taking his hands one by one, turning them over to inspect the palms for scrapes. Mara had to admit it was handy having a healer on call for all the little scrapes and bruises. But part of her also worried that having all his hurts soothed immediately away was giving Nick a false sense of invincibility. Not that she’d tell him to stop. What kind of mother said, “No, go ahead and let him hurt. It’s good for his character.”
A good one, probably.
“He’s fine,” Eli said, handing her son over as they reached the bottom of the hill and started walking toward the tents. “She’ll have seen us coming, but let me go ahead a bit from here out. And make sure to keep hold of Nick. She’s got dogs.”
With a nod, Mara slowed and let the distance between them grow, stopping to crouch and show Nick the delicate purple blossoms of a Siklo bush. “They only come out at dawn,” she told him, touching a finger to one of the petals. His brows pulled down and he mimicked her soft touch.
“They’re purple.”
“Yes, they’re purple! But they’re very poisonous.”
“Yuck.”
“Yes. Yuck. Exactly. Never eat purple flowers. Can you say that for me?”
“Never eat purple flowers,” he rattled off, and was it really that easy? Eli was right–Davy would be unbearably smug if he was here. She’d refused to listen to him, too devoted to her fears to believe his claim that it really was normal, that every remembered generation in the Linhart line had been slow to speak, including Davy himself. She wanted to lay down right here and take a nap just so she could see him, have his reaction in proximity to the event. Even if all he said was that he’d told her so.
Pushing to her feet before a fresh flood of tears could come, she followed after Eli who had shrunk into the distance and was beginning to pass through the scattered livestock. Sure enough, she heard the barking of dogs and slowed almost to a stop, watching from afar.
Eli stopped walking as three dark shapes bounded up to him, and just when she was lifting her hand to cover Nick’s eyes and shield him from the sight of their protector being shredded alive by angry hounds, the fierce, deep barking rose in pitch to happy yowls. Eli knelt, and Mara lost sight of him as the dogs converged in a writhing, tail-wagging mass.
A woman emerged from the door of the flap of the largest tent. A tall, lean woman in leather pants and a baggy white shirt, hair tied up in a colorful scarf. Even from a distance, Mara could make out that her features were immaculate, carved into striking, angular lines. She started walking toward Eli, and maybe it was just the context, but Mara thought she moved like a particularly powerful horse—slow and purposeful with a hint of lethality. I could cave in your sternum, but I’m going to meander gracefully instead. “She could definitely swim the Great Ribbon,” Mara told Nick, cautiously resuming her approach.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she expected of the meeting between Tiff—half-Wanderer horse charmer, and Eli–stoic rescuer of imperiled widows and children. A few stern words, perhaps. A crisp, competent nod of the chin.
Whatever she expected, it must not have been that Tiff’s stride would lengthen as she got closer, that her eerily beautiful face would collapse into an expression of anguish as she broke into a run. She definitely wouldn’t have predicted the full body hug. The arms twined around his neck, face buried in his shoulder, body sagging against his.
“This is starting to get ridiculous,” she told Nick absently as they began sidling past tawny cattle and dirty white sheep. The dogs’ ears perked up, eyes turning her way, but a muffled word from Tiff—whose face was still pressed to Eli’s shoulder—had them sitting, tails thumping idly against the dirt.
Tiff pulled away from the hug just as Mara reached them, brushing tears from her face as her eyes darted from Mara to Eli and back to Mara.
“Mara, this is Tiff,” Eli said as she drew to a stop. “Tiff, as I was saying, this is Mara, Davy’s wife. And his son.”
“Right,” the woman said, wobbly lips turning up into a smile. Eli must have filled her in some during that hug, because she didn’t mention Davy’s death, though she clearly knew.
“Come in, then.” She turned, leading the way back to the tent. “You all must be tired.”