Eli insisted that they pack up Mara’s makeshift camp and get moving . His insistence naturally sparked an argument wherein Mara took up the mantle of prudence, which bade them move slowly for the sake of his recovery and Eli took the stance of stubborn refusal to acknowledge that there was anything from which he needed to recover. In the end he won, but not by the strength of his argument. He just played to her curiosity by withholding the story she desperately wanted.
Once they were on their way–Eli with Nick perched happily on his shoulders–he told a sanitized version of what had happened after they parted ways. It was an Order patrol he’d sensed–an entire company, bound for Prosco that had managed to pick up their footprint. When she asked what he did to slow them down, he answered vaguely. Apparently he’d set up on a hilltop and slimmed their numbers down with the bow, then used “a little mass persuasion” to “deal with them” when they split up to surround him.
“I didn’t know you could do mass persuasion,” Mara said, awe leaking into her tone despite her efforts to contain it. Even for strong innate users, mass persuasion wasn’t a common skill. It was an intricate and complex way to use magic–crafting a single persuasive push that would nonetheless influence a broad swath of people with varying motivations and experiences. The sensory pull alone could be overwhelming if one lacked the skill and discipline to organize it into usable information. And turning that information around into a successful push required an absurd degree of both raw power and fine-tuned finesse. For all that her understanding of Eli had shifted, she still hadn’t thought him the kind to practice esoteric magic. Mass persuasion was the realm of sorcerers, not soldiers.
“I didn’t either,” Eli admitted, ducking to avoid a low branch that would’ve knocked Nick off his shoulders. The touch of unmistakable excitement in his voice made him sound almost boyish. “I’ve practiced the sensory pull, but practicing the push was always too risky. I didn’t think it would even work.”
“So what did you do?” she pressed. “How did you get them to leave?”
“I didn’t.”
“What did you persuade them to do, then?”
A heartbeat passed before he answered. “Turn on each other.”
Mara couldn’t find her voice. She stole a glance, half expecting him to have suddenly grown three feet and started glowing or something. But he was still just Eli. Scruffy, dirty, ordinary Eli.
“You know that’s…” A chill raced down her spine. “Eli, how?”
“I don’t know. Honestly.” Their footsteps were all but silent, boots sinking into the thick, soft layer of rich soil and dead leaves. “But as long as we’re on the subject of impossible magical feats, how about you explain yours.”
“I haven’t done any impossible magical feats.”
“You hid yourself. I lost your footprint, but I also couldn’t see you. You know as well as I do, it takes at least a shadowcaster and a persuasive user to lay diversionary wards, and you’re neither.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a diversion. Maybe you just weren’t seeing straight.”
“I was seeing fine. Don’t look at me like that, I was. I searched all around those trees, and I wasn’t so far out of my head I’d have missed you laying there out in the open.”
“I wasn’t out in the open! I picked that shelter carefully, Eli.”
“That’s distressing to hear, but beside the point. Regardless, you hid yourself somehow. With magic. Maybe you didn’t mean to, but you did.”
“I don’t even have innate magic.”
“You’re a physik, though. You can channel.”
“Not particularly well. I was trained by my mother, and her practice is old and diluted, and she was always more about the plants than the ritual. My lessons with you are the most magical instruction I’ve ever received outside of books. I barely even know enough to brew competently.”
“Hm,” he grunted thoughtfully, then tipped his head back to look at Nick. “What do you think, buddy?”
Nick grinned and leaned forward, hooking his hands under Eli’s chin like a bulky bonnet. “Mama did magic with the trees.”
Eli’s eyebrows shot up, and Mara felt her own expression mirror his. “What do you mean, love?” she asked.
“Mama did magic,” Nick repeated, sitting up straight and stretching his hands up toward the canopy. “We were trees.”
Mara looked at Eli. Eli looked at Mara.
“You heard the man,” Eli said, reaching up to brace a hand against Nick’s back as the boy began to sway in a vague approximation of a tree bending with the wind. “Apparently you did magic and turned into trees.”
“I didn’t mean to. I was just sleeping.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t remember.” If only she could explain how odd that was. “Nothing remarkable.”
“What were you doing before you went to sleep?”
Mara struggled to remember. It felt like so long ago–yesterday’s dark, unforgiving woods a product of another age. Now that she thought of it, though…
“I was thinking about the trees,” she said on a breath, looking to Eli. “I thought about how safe they were. How enduring. Do you really think I actually… did something?”
He laughed. “You definitely did something, Mara.” He didn’t sound as shocked as she felt. In fact, the only thing she heard in his voice was amusement. “I’m just surprised this is the first time it’s happened.”
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“What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously proficient at sensing, and you mastered resistance technique in a matter of weeks, when I expected you to just be grasping detection by the time we reached the Enclave. Clearly you’ve got natural aptitude, so it’s not surprising you’ve started channeling. We can practice, but you’ll need to find a proper teacher at the Enclave. I only know the basics.”
Mara’s brain had snagged on something. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That I was learning faster than you expected.”
“You don’t tend take well to compliments. If I said something nice you’d accuse me of coddling your feelings or something.”
“I wouldn’t have–” He cut her off with a sharp look, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, I would’ve. I would’ve. I admit. But from now on, I promise not to give you trouble for saying nice things to me.”
“Wow.” He looked up at Nick. “Did you hear that, Nick? I have permission to be nice to your mama.”
Nick giggled and bounced a little on his seat, flashing Mara a grin bright enough to whither any rubifel growing nearby. “Lili’s always nice to you, Mama.”
She crossed her eyes at him, and he giggled, and Eli changed the subject to inquire about their day without him. She and Nick took turns sharing the parts of their solo adventure that they each found most pertinent. Mara shared that they had gotten along fine and detailed the current state of their food stores. Nick declared that he had been very brave, that the forest was loud, and that Mara showed him too many mushrooms. He also produced a worm from his pocket that he’d apparently found the day before and had been keeping to show Eli. He’d helpfully provided the poor thing with a fistful of wet earth as well, and by that kindness and a minor miracle, the worm survived to be let free after Eli had properly admired it.
As they walked and chatted, Mara discovered that the Smokestacks were significantly less intimidating with company. Or, rather, with company composed of more than her helpless two-year-old son whom she loved with every part of her body and soul, and whose continued survival was imperative not only to her own continued existence but to the integrity of the world through which she walked.
Not that she didn’t care about Eli. But there was a large gap between ‘unexpectedly cherished friendship’ and the kind of love so precious it wove itself into the foundations of the earth.
They made good time, plunging deeper into the forest as they kept steadily north. At times, the tree grew too closely together for them to walk abreast, so they formed a rough single file, picking their way over twisted, twining roots that rose fully up out of the ground and plunged back down like a mass of sea serpents diving in and out of a leafy brown surf.
As usual, they didn’t talk much except to Nick, which Mara didn’t really mind. She’d gotten used to it over the past weeks–the little check-ins throughout the day and otherwise being left to her own world.
She began a walking meditation, breathing in the energy of the forest and sending little bursts of her own into the ground with each footstep. With her breaths, she focused harder on what she was hearing and feeling than what she saw—the rustle and chirp of birds overhead, the damp shuffle of their footsteps, the thick air against her skin. And with each step, she felt more at home, more as if this path she walked was made for her, planned and set forth over centuries with the slow-winding roots and the incremental buildup of loamy soil over hard-packed earth. The trees no longer whispered secrets, but were content simply to be where they were and feel the tread of her feet over ground they had always known she would travel.
Eli called an early stop that evening for supper, and they only walked another half hour after eating before looking for a place to spend the night. Mara picked their campsite in the lee of a massive tree that must once have fallen and then stubbornly kept growing. Its trunk protruded sideways from the earth before curving upward, a tangle of exposed roots arching through the air at its base before diving into the ground.
Eli and Nick set up the tent, and Mara gathered firewood. When she returned, she left Eli to build the fire and prepared Nick for bed. She made sure to brush his teeth and change his socks and shirt–and to check his pockets–before tucking him in. He was half asleep by the time she pulled the blanket over him, hands tucked beneath his cheek and utterly at peace.
When he fell asleep, Mara went to rejoin Eli, who sat beside a crackling fire, staring into the flames.
“No darknight fire?” she asked, sitting beside him.
“No need,” he said absently, tipping his head up to watch the smoke dissipate into the canopy. “Even if someone had a mind to track us in here and found a way to get a sight line above the canopy, they wouldn’t see the smoke with all the fog. It sits right above the treetops all night. I should’ve told you that before I sent you in here.” He dropped his head and looked to her. “I’m sorry, by the way.”
Mara drew her knees up and propped her chin at them, hugging her legs to her chest. “Sorry for what?”
“For sending you in here alone, and for failing to adequately prepare you. I should have anticipated something like this happening, and you asked outright for me to teach you more fieldcraft. I should’ve–”
“Eli.”
He poked needlessly at the fire. “Yes, Mara?”
“Stop inventing things to feel guilty about. If you need something to do, go get some sleep. That rejuvenative is going to rebound if you don’t take care of yourself for the next few days.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her in silent challenge.
“Don’t make that face at me,” she said, lifting her chin with a sharp shake of her head. “You forfeited your right to mind yourself when you stumbled into my campsite with stage four burnout. Clearly you need assistance defining your limits.”
“How long do you plan to use that against me?”
“As long as I need to. Would you like help preparing your bed, or–”
“I need to finish with the water,” he said, gesturing at the pot he’d set the boil and the flasks that still needed filling.”
“I think I can manage to boil the water. Would you like help preparing your–”
“We need to sleep in shifts. I’m not worried about an ambush, but the fire needs to stay lit to keep the wildlife away.”
“Okay. Would you like help preparing–”
He glared at her, the intensity of the expression offset by the firelight dancing languidly in his eyes. “You will wake me for my shift at midnight.”
“I will.” She held his gaze, until he heaved a great, melodramatic sigh and set about his usual evening routine.
By the time the water boiled, he lay atop his sleeping roll beside the fire, his back to both her and the flames. “If you let me sleep through my shift, I’ll put worms in your pockets tomorrow,” he grumbled to the woods once he’d settled.
Mara laughed, using a stick to lift the pot from the fire and set it away from the flames to cool. “I shudder to think what other innocent creatures have been smothered to death in that child’s pockets.”
“Hm,” he grunted, voice already heavy with sleep. “Davy used to collect beetles. Every day. Pocketful of beetles. Mum finally lost her patience. Cut out his pockets over it.”
It was hard to imagine Davy young enough to stuff his pockets full of treasured objects. It was equally hard to imagine his mother–the great matriarch of the rebellion–exacting such a silly, ordinary punishment. Mara had built the Linharts into legend in her mind. Even Davy, outside the sacred humanity of their marriage, was more myth than mortal. Try as she might, she couldn’t picture him with dirt on his face, stuffing hapless insects into his pockets. And that felt like as great a loss as any of it.
“What other mischief did he get into?”
Slow, steady breathing answered her, and she sighed and set another stick on the fire before turning her attention to the forest.
She’d just have to ask again tomorrow.