6 – 3

My echo of Agnes is the last word spoken. The sounds of Valdenwood-in-daytime filter in to fill the silence: hammers and saws, wheels and axles, and the lake. Always, the lake. The distant cry of the gulls above its shore. The endless crest and crash of its waves. The bobbing drum of boats drifting at anchor. Above all these, within all these, is the wind. Warm in the sun, cool in its shadow, and cold when it touches me. I trace the shape of it where it's embroidered in the ragged scrap of cloth, following the loops and whorls with my fingertips. Clarke sits pressed to my side. Her arm is warm and solid around my waist, her hand a grounding curl on the curve of my hip. “Zira?” She prompts.

She's worried. I look up, and she's close. Her eyes are so blue, so beautifully blue, like the open sky. I could lose myself in them. I could forget the icy curl in my belly. “Hm?” She sighs, in the warmth of her breath on my face is something soft and perhaps, a little sad.

“Are you well?” is all she asks. She isn't answered right away. In part, I'm triumphant. Flush with success and victory. I found what I was bade to seek, with no idea what I was looking for or where to find it! I have it, O spirit! That part of me wants to shout. The prize is here, beneath my hand! I don't, because the prize is all I have. I am beginning to think my need for answers will never be sated. Again, I'm left with more questions than answers for them! Frustration's time has passed. Now there is a spark of anger in my heart. It's a small thing, a mere glowing ember.

For now.

There, above it all, is the icy curl in my belly. The cold, clinging grip of dread that hearing and speaking a name has taken on me. I don't know why it's caused me to feel so strongly. Perhaps it comes from seeing someone I thought unshakeable to be so thoroughly shaken. Perhaps it is from the spirit, a warning given without word. Perhaps I am a fool, a stupid girl overreacting to the name of a band long gone. There is something like how I feel in Edith's steel-gray eyes, so I think the last is unlikely. In this case, at least.

“I...” I say, and try to find the words to tell her what I feel. She is so very close to me, and her touch is as much distraction as comfort. Agnes' presence looms behind me, her silence oppressive. Edith, distanced by the table between us and here nonetheless. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do.” I answer, and it is honest.

Clarke hums, empathy in the sound and her eyes. It's Edith, though, who says, “Well, ye founds it. That's ye done, as far's as I'm concerned.”

Agnes asks, “What's this, now's?” and I leave the explanation to her granddaughter. Perhaps unwise of me, given Edith's feeling on this whole endeavor, but her words have set me back on my heel. Is she right? Am I done? If so, it follows that the spirit's reason for tasking me was to make me aware of Those Who Run Before the Wind. I'm grateful, for I'd rather travel aware of danger than blunder around in ignorance. An echo of black-lined pain travels from my heel to my calf. I should think I've done enough of the latter.

I cannot help but think it's not that simple. There's more to this, in some way and place I can't see. The ragged scrap of blue flutters beneath my fingers as a strong gust chills my dampened clothes. Gooseflesh breaks out across my arms, legs, and the back of my neck. That curl of chilling dread is still in my belly. It's made smaller and weaker by the presence of Edith and Agnes, and the warm, comforting wrap of Clarke's arm around me, but it's still there.

It's from that unmelting shard that a question rises to mind. For the first time, I think I can answer it myself. For the first time, I find I'd rather not. Edith's explanation comes to its sodden, strange conclusion. I feel the weight of her grandmother's steel-gray eyes on the back of my head. I dare not turn to look back, for fear of what I'll see.

The question is: If Agnes is right, and the Windrunners are nothing but a haunting, distant memory, why give warning about them?

“Nothin',” Agnes says, as her hand comes to lay heavily on my shoulder. For a moment, I don't know her meaning, but then, “That's what's yer supposed to do: nothin'. Ye founds it, eh? Did what's the thing wanted ye to, eh? My girl's right, that's ye done.”

Now, I turn to look, and see a fierce determination in the lines of her face. It's a desire to protect; her granddaughter, the local magi she's taken up with, and the Royah girl that came in from the winding road. There is still the haunting in the shadow of her eyes, the memory of what terrors the Windrunners visited on the Lakeshore towns, but above that and before it is this.

I already have a mother. She may be far from this place, but she is mine. It spurs me to say, “If this,” I wave the ragged blue scrap, torn edge fluttering. “is real, if they are back or –”

Agnes interrupts, “They're not.”

I have to bite down on an spark of irritation before I continue, “– or born again...I don't think 'nothing' is what we should do.”

“Someone needs to be told,” Clarke says, soft and sure, her fingers flexing where they curl against my hip.

Edith nods. “Sure,” she says, “someone's. Who?”

- - -

Agnes' hand falls away from me as I shrug in helpless ignorance. I look back to the tabletop, where my prized find lays dampened and wrinkled. Back or born again, I should think it doesn't matter. The evidence of their existence is here beneath my fingers. It's also all around us; in every charred timber hauled away and every empty space in which a home once stood. Someone did this, Windrunner or not. What do I know of the Lakeshore Towns, their histories, and their duties to each other? Little, I find, and less that is helpful.

Hadn't Agnes said something about knights, just a moment ago? She had, and her words come to mind with ease. I take in the pensive faces of Clarke beside me and Edith across the table, her grandmother at my back. “What about –” I start, then stop to clear my throat. “Agnes, you said something about knights, that they had kept the Windrunners in their place once. Could they not do it again?”

Agnes circles around to stand at her granddaughter's side. Edith leans into her, drawing comfort from what I found heavy and unwelcome. “No,” she corrects with a shake of her head, “What I said's was that it took all's they had to keeps them from running wilds. Said's they had to bring up fighters from Cobalts to brings them down for good.” She seems calmer now, distanced from the haunting of memory and what strong feeling it roused in her. “But,” she seems to concede, “if anyone's needs telling, probably it's them.”

What I know of Fort Tanner is this: it is in the north of the Timberland, away from the shore of the lake. It is also the evident base from which a group of knights operate. It is also in the exact opposite direction of where I mean to travel. Port Viara, and the Royah encampment at its outskirts, is the only destination upon my road that I must visit. I don't know how long they've been there, nor how long they intend to remain. It may well be that if I go north, with my scrap of cloth and its warning, that they'll be gone by the time I reach them.

Is this a test? I sit beneath a clear and cloudless sky, where the eye of the goddess is never more keen. Does She mean for me to choose what I hold in the least regard; the tradition of my people or a spirit-given task?

Is this what it means to be grown?

“The fire alone should be enough to garner their interest,” Clarke says, earning a grunt of agreement from Edith. I wonder what she'll think of me, should I choose tradition over task. I wonder what she'll think if it's the opposite. Will those growing seeds of interest be soured by my action and die? I've no want to find out, but fear that I will, and soon.

I trace the loops and whorls of the wind embroidered upon this torn-ragged cloth, following its path as it rises above cresting waves. It seems taunting, somehow. Boastful of its freedom to do as it pleases. “So we send word, then's,” Edith says, watching the path of my fingers in an idly thoughtful manner. “with that scraps alongside. Outs of our hands, then.”

It would be, and thus I wonder: will it be enough to convince these knights that something, Windrunner or not, is occuring? The people of Valdenwood stand on winter's doorstep, with a full third of them having nowhere to shelter from it. It is, I believe, a miracle that the fire took no lives. It will take another for winter to do the same.

I am being tested. To what end or purpose, I don't know. In this moment, I am of two hearts. In the first, I want to honor the tradition of my people, the lessons and love I was given by Mother, the guidance and knowledge I was given by Father. I want my brothers to feel pride when they think of me, and neither shame nor sorrow.

In the other, I want to carry the message myself. Words on a page may hold a power, but they are more easily ignored than a strident voice. I should think I would tell them everything, from the elk to the dream, and make them listen, make them act. I don't care if they believe the Windrunners have returned or been resurrected, so long as they act.

In this moment, I am of two hearts, and I know not which one beats true.