Page 2 of Earthbound

That’s what Farhan was for.

‘Do you think he’s noticed we’ve stopped?’ She jutted her chin in the fae’s direction.

Alder grimaced as Farhan continued walking up the trail, his slender frame an echo of the conifers that surrounded them. ‘No, definitely not.’

‘Farhan!’ Lettle called.

The fae’s obeah turned before he did. No matter how many times Lettle caught sight of an obeah, her heart would always stutter. Her father had been a hunter, so she was raised to regard them solely for the potency of magic in their skin.

Now she saw them for what they were, and that unsettled her more. With the body of a black leopard and the antlers of a stag, they had the agility to both climb the tallest trees and navigate between the roots of the forest ground. Those bound to a fae had fur as black as a midnight sky. Their tails were adorned with a longer pelt, more akin to a fox’s.

But it didn’t matter what they looked like on the outside–their souls were the colour of bronze. Like Alder, they were human.

‘Shera,’ Lettle said, a little more quietly. The obeah’s ears could hear much more than Farhan’s. ‘Tell Farhan to turn around, we’re going to camp here for the night.’

Shera’s horns were wider than any other obeah’s Lettle had ever seen, so when she dipped her head in acknowledgement, Lettle wondered at the weight of them.

Finally Farhan stopped and turned. His wide face was a mask of surprise as he saw both Lettle and Alder sitting on the ground some twenty paces behind him.

Lettle had never met a person with fewer thoughts in their head.

Or perhaps he has too many thoughts and thus cannot follow the trail of one without getting distracted by another.

They had lost him countless times. No matter how much Alder stressed the dangers of the terrain, somehow Farhan would go astray. Once, when bathing in a stream, he had decided to ‘watch the sky for a few moments’ and found that the currents had floated him half a league downriver.

‘He is solely responsible for at least two extra weeks of delays,’ Lettle muttered to Alder.

‘At least,’ Alder replied. ‘But we need him.’

‘We need Shera, you mean.’

‘And Farhan–he’s the one who tells her what I say in my sleep. Without him we would never know.’

Lettle ground her teeth. It frustrated her that she hadn’t been able to figure out the human language Alder spoke during the night. She’d learned fae in less time, and that was renowned to be difficult–so difficult that they didn’t even teach it in schools.

‘I know, I’m just irritable and tired.’

‘When are you not?’ Alder said with a wry smile, but she didn’t have it in her to return it.

‘Do you ever regret leaving Mosima?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I can’t think like that. We’ve come too far. If we don’t find out anything then that’s fine, but to leave that question mark there? Never knowing if we could have helped end the curse?’ He shook his head firmly. ‘No, I would not change it.’

Lettle nodded. There is no point looking back. I am here now, and there is no other way but forward.

But even though she told herself that, she felt her mind blurring like the edges of the snow clouds, until her thoughts turned to memories and she was back in the room where her quest was born.

—

Lettle threw open the doors to the royal chambers. Yeeran stood on the other side, her hand held aloft as though she were about to open the door herself.

‘Alder spoke to—’

‘The obeah were—’

Words burst out of both of them, drowning the other out as they each sought to share what they’d learned. Their earlier quarrel was now an inconsequential thing of the past.

Yeeran’s eyes were wide, her grin toothy as she crackled with excitement. But Lettle couldn’t fathom any news could be as important as hers, so she kept talking, saying over and over again, ‘Obeah were once humans. Obeah were once humans.’