For a moment, Galen thought Danto might shout back at Brin or perhaps throw up his hands in disgust and walk away.

But a heaviness crept into the air. It reminded Galen of the constant watching presence he’d been feeling since their last adventure together, except Galen couldn’t feel it as clearly. Danto’s expression fell from irritation to a smooth absence of any emotion.

He knows something happened. Even if he doesn’t really remember it. He knows.

Then Danto sighed and rolled his eyes and shrugged. The tension gathering in the air released. “All right. Fine. Teach me how not to die.”

For another half an hour, Brin drilled them on how to defend themselves. No rolls happened, and the physical exertion felt very real. By the time the sun rose in earnest, Galen was winded and sweaty. They broke fast, gathered their bedrolls and packs, and collected their horses from the stable. For the second day, they took once more to the northbound road.

On the road that day, they encountered the same sparse traffic as the day before—a few farmer’s carts, a few travelers on foot, but nothing as heavy as during harvest season. To either side of the road, grasslands and fields and scattered denser green thickets rolled past. With them continued the sense of curious watching Galen was becoming accustomed to.

That night there was no village or tavern. They stopped at a traveler’s rest—a lean-to, a ring of stones and cleared dirt for building a fire, a rain barrel, and hitching rings and troughs for horses. To the west, the setting sun painted the day’s blue sky with shades of deepening purple and red.

Having spent the day under the sun’s beating heat, Galen welcomed the hint of sap-scented cool which touched the air. He took the horses while Danto gathered wood and Brin made a fire. The warm stink of horse sweat and dust mingled with wood smoke, and the crackle and hiss of the cookfire soon underscored the huff and stomp of the horses. Galen tended them efficiently and joined the others around that fire.

“So, what have you been learning?” Brin asked the question as if picking up a conversation they’d just been having and raised her eyebrow at Danto. “Reading, writing. Not battlecraft. The weeds and flowers bit, though? Medicine craft?”

There was, from what Galen understood, some magic involved in becoming a Novice, but nothing that sounded as straightforward as a healer class that just cast spells. Novices learned a few simple rituals, in addition to the more practical skills they learned about medicinal plants and poultices and Galen wasn’t sure what all else. Bandaging people?

Danto frowned and looked down at the hard tack in his hand. He gnawed off a corner and chewed before answering. “I’m still learning the herbs and what they do. Basic rituals for easing pain and mending small wounds. It’s a lot of memorizing boring things.”

“Boring to you, maybe,” Galen murmured. “People you’re helping might think it’s pretty clever stuff.”

Danto blinked at Galen, just as if he’d never given a thought to that part of it. “I guess. Sure. The reading and writing, that’s so I can start learning the higher rituals. I’ve learned a few of the more basic prayers.”

“Did you have a knack?” Brin asked. “Or are you having to learn it all from scratch?”

Danto frowned and chewed another corner off the square of hard tack before answering. “If you’d asked me that before we were called out to Gastusad Manor, I’d have said from scratch.”

Galen had lifted a scrap of jerky toward his mouth while he listened. Now, he slowly lowered the dried meat again without taking a bite. To his right across the fire, Brin sat up straighter. She glanced toward Galen before speaking to Danto.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“But?”

Danto lowered the hard tack, rested his hands in his lap, and stared down at them.

“Tender Hent brings in animals, sometimes. For us to practice on—not the medicinal herbs part, because animals are too different from people. But for the rituals. And there was this cat.”

A deeper furrow drew across Danto’s forehead.

“We chanted a few prayers over it, just for practice. But magic can only do so much. It can’t reverse nature’s course altogether.”

Galen’s throat tightened. But Danto spoke so cautiously that Galen didn’t want to interrupt.

“That cat was too far gone when they brought it in, and it was dying. It should have died. Even Tender Hent thought it was as good as dead already. But I just felt so bad for it, the way everyone had already given up on it. And I felt something inside me. Like me but not me, a voice but not a voice. And it was saying to just touch the cat. Not to pray over it, just to touch it. So I put my hand on its head and petted it. Just that. Scratched behind its ears and ran my fingers down its back. Mostly I just wanted to maybe make it feel comforted. Less scared.”

Moments ticked past.

“And?” Brin whispered.

“And it purred. And it licked my hand.” Danto shifted uncomfortably and shook his head. “I felt something go out through my hand. It was just… warm, sort of. And something came back into me, from the cat.”

Brin leaned forward, her eyes big. “Something like what?”

“It was… I don’t know how to describe it. Cold. Shadowy, like some thick purple-gray smoke, sort of. I mean, I couldn’t see any smoke. But that was how it felt.”

Danto looked up then, not at Brin but directly into Galen’s eyes. His brows lifted, and his wide eyes were like that of a child pleading to be reassured that whatever had frightened him wasn’t real.

“That cat was as good as dead. And then it wasn’t.”

And what do you know about that?

“Something happened,” Galen started to say. “When we went into the woods after the raiders that day.”

“The Shining One.” Brin spoke over the top of Galen. “Galen’s been having strange experiences, too. You both heard the Shining One. That has to be the connection.”

Galen frowned toward Brin. Her expression was every bit as pleading as Danto’s.

“I’m sorry,” Brin said. “I guess you told me those things in confidence. I probably shouldn’t have said anything about them.”

“No. I mean, it’s fine.” But Galen was sifting through the things Brin wasn’t saying and trying to read what her face was trying to tell him.

Danto died. But he doesn’t know that he did.

They had tried to tell Danto, and he hadn’t wanted to hear it. Maybe Brin was afraid that telling him the whole truth would still be too much for him.

Would it? If you had died, would you want to know?

What a loaded question that was.

“What kind of strange experiences?” Danto leaned further forward. On the far side of the heat rising from the fire, his features seemed to melt and run and rearrange themselves.

Galen glanced at Brin one more time. Her eyes pleaded.

“I can sort of hear the earth.” Galen spoke without conviction. It sounded dumb anytime he tried to put the entirety of what he was experiencing into something as small as words. “And I feel like I’m being watched, sometimes, by plants maybe—shrubs, trees.”

And then Galen just sat there, feeling stupid. Danto gaped at him for a long moment.

And then Danto laughed, but it wasn’t a disbelieving or ridiculing laugh. Air rushed from his lungs in a long sound of relief.

“Oh, wow. Me too. I mean, not exactly like that. But well, I mean, I’ve been working with plants for a while now. But I’ve never really felt anything from it. Except boredom. But now it’s like I can see the whole life cycle of the plants I touch, all the way from seed to sprout and even back to leaves falling and decaying into compost. It’s made harvesting herbs more than a little unnerving.”

Galen and Brin both stared at Danto, then. Eventually, Brin laughed, much like Danto had, with relief more than amusement. “The Shining One, then. That’s what it has to be.”

Danto grinned and nodded, just as if that had resolved his every concern. Galen thought about what Danto had said about purple smoke and cold shadows and felt like the truth might be more complicated than just that. But Danto was laughing and Brin was laughing, and the sound of Galen’s friends feeling less burdened made him feel that much lighter, as well. He didn’t laugh, but he managed a smile.

The next day was as hot as the day before. By mid-morning, both Galen and his horse were sweating. Traffic grew gradually heavier, coming and going with more regularity from side roads and dirt paths. To the road’s west, individual copses thickened into an unbroken line of dark green forest, speckled with early reds and golds. But the wood remained distant from the road, with a buffer of cleared farmland in between.

Shortly before noon, they reached the tiny village of Fairhome.