Fiction-Extended-Edition 01-11-2012 by Fantasy

Author:Fantasy [Fantasy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE BOAT CAME FASTER than Daybreak would've thought, but the constant stream of assistants helped. So did their stories. Boneoak and the other men were more than happy to tell and retell their tales of lands wide and deep. Daybreak listened with an insatiable hunger (more than once at the expense of the direction of her chisel), asking questions that had no end. Did the wolves in the Red Forest really have saber teeth? Did the snow on Skytouch Peak really never melt? Was there really a lake of floating mountains? How could a mountain spit fire? Was it true that the birds in Jewel Fen could speak like people? The men's answers were as colorful as their tales, ranging from blunt and cryptic to elaborately poetic, and listening to them only made Daybreak's yearning burn hotter. She didn't just want them, she wanted to be them—to be surrounded by them, to wander in spontaneously formed tribes from village to village, chiseling out her essential self with the long blows of the road. Every morning, when whatever Travelers felt the urge waved good-bye and mounted the trail up Boarder Hill, Daybreak's heart cried out after them, sick with envy and imagination and loss, for the conclusions of their stories that she'd never get to hear. Blown like windweeds, they came, thrived, grew a little bit larger, and rushed on, across who knows how many wild and lonely lands before their roots finally came down, in some unknown, exotic soil.

Never had the towering arms of Lion Fjord felt so oppressive.

"You're spending a lot of time with that Traveler Boneoak," said Daybreak's grandmother one morning. "And he's spent a long time in Lionfjord. Are you going to propose?"

Daybreak looked up from the rows of crisp-roots she was weeding. She and Grandma Thunder-within-Sky were crouching in the dirt of the Maiden House's garden. They had been out since sunrise, the Councilor stubbornly rebuking her granddaughter for every vegetable seedling she accidentally pulled up. "I…I don't know."

"You should. That's a crisp-root, child, another crisp-root."

"I'm sorry." Daybreak scrutinized the tiny root for some telltale crisp-root-like quality. Her eyes wandered to the ridge of callouses below her fingers, thickened from her hours of holding a chisel. If only Boneoak hadn't agreed to help muck out the rockhorse stalls this morning, they could be working together on the boat right now.

"Well, are you going to put it back into the ground?"

"I'm sorry." Daybreak sought the crisp-root's native hole.

"Honestly, Daybreak, you aren't even trying." Grandma's voice softened. "You should ask him, you know. He likes you."

Daybreak suppressed a shiver. "I can't get married now, Grandma."

"What? Why in The Mother's name not?"

The west. Aloud, Daybreak said, "Well," and gestured to the battle-scarred crisp-root patch.

"Oh, Daybreak." Grandma raised her creaking bones with a sigh, stepped across the row, and resettled beside her. "You're just a late-bloomer. Keep trying. You'll get it right." Her tone took on a wandering, dreamy quality. "You won't go Traveling, like your older brothers. You'll stay here and get married, and take in a babe of your own.

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