Isra hadn’t known her mother, and her father never spoke much of the old days. They had both been from Tarbin though, had escaped, in her father’s words, and back there, they had been people of some means and education, which Isra had been slow to understand as she got older. Isra’s father had trained her and taught her, and sometimes it felt like that was the only way for them to relate to each other. Her father had been somewhat short on affection, at least in comparison with what she saw from some of the children in Pucklechurch.
Yet even as she got older, Isra hadn’t felt a longing for other children or a keen loneliness that she sometimes read of people having in stories. A party was, in some sense, unwelcome, as was the channel, having people able to speak into her head at their whim. She enjoyed being solitary, and whatever it was she found disagreeable about living her life as she had over the last five years, she was fairly sure that joining a party was not the cure. That was especially so when the party had these particular four other people in it. Hannah spoke too much, and Mizuki had the wrong kind of energy, and while Verity had a grace and poise that Isra could appreciate, there was something alien about her, perhaps because she, like Alfric, was from the city.
Isra did like Alfric though, or at least had come to appreciate the way he operated. He was very direct and straightforward. He hadn’t made any comments on her appearance nor asked about her headscarf, and he exuded a competence and professionalism that the others did not. With Alfric, there was little in the way of frippery or filler. He hadn’t lied to her about obvious things, in the way that people sometimes did.
There was wildlife all around them as they walked, especially as the
farmland became less prominent. Alfric, like most people, pretended not
to see or feel it. A family of long-legged skinks hid beneath a hedge, a
stub-necked squirrel raced up a tree, and a flock of night birds sat
motionless on a tree, waiting for the sun to fall. Isra looked at the
plants too, trying to see if there was anything they didn’t have in
Pucklechurch. Most of the trees were the usual mix of ash, larch, birch,
and aspen, but there were a small handful of the migrant trees that
moved a foot a day, and some of the wild puckleberries and burstberries
were of different varieties. Isra thought about what Alfric had said,
about druids being able to see the world. But if she
“Do you want to talk about the fact that you might be a druid?” asked Alfric, several miles later.
“You said that it happened only when a woman birthed a child alone in the woods,” said Isra. “My father was with us.”
“Yes, I was thinking about that,” said Alfric. “But I don’t know enough to know whether that’s only the typical case, or if there might not be some other ways for it to happen. We’d have to find someone knowledgeable to discuss it with. Perhaps if there’s only a single parent, that’s enough.”
“Perhaps,” said Isra. The exact methods to produce a druid did not interest her at all. “You think I should find another druid.”
“I do,” said Alfric. “They’re the subject-matter experts. They would be able to tell if you really were a druid, or if you might be something else, and they could give you some insights into how to increase your power. Though…”
“Yes?” asked Isra.
“Druids aren’t usually,” he paused, “hunters.”
“No?” asked Isra.
“They’re typically vegetarians, I think,” said Alfric. “I’m not sure why. Of all the people with some kind of aetheric talent, druids are probably the ones I know the least about. For obvious reasons, they’re rare within the city. I don’t know how far you’d have to be from Dondrian to be able to be a mile away from another person, which I think I read was the minimum.”
It sounded horrible to Isra. She often spent some time in Pucklechurch on market days once she was done selling what she had, visiting either the temple to make her prayers, or the library for a fresh book, or the stores to pick up things she couldn’t make herself, especially anything metal. Even that small amount of people sometimes felt suffocating by the time the day was through. Once, Isra had come into town during one of the large regional celebrations and been immediately overwhelmed by the crowds of people from who-knew-where. She’d lasted thirty minutes before stalking back off into the woods.
That was what she imagined Dondrian being, all of the time, only bigger, more crowded, noisier, and with buildings that towered above her like large cliffs.
“Did you enjoy living in the city?” asked Isra, after another of their periodic bouts of silence. They had started up the hill at the hex border, having to go through a long, winding path to get to the inconvenient edge.
