The Untold Tale (The Accidental Turn Series Book 1) by J.M. Frey

Author:J.M. Frey [Frey, J.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: REUTS Publications, LLC.
Published: 2015-12-08T08:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

“One of the greatest pleasures of spending the night, you know, is getting to cook in the morning,” Pip says from the other side of the campfire, where she is rolling up our sleeping accoutrements and packing our things in our saddlebags while I get clean. “I miss it.”

“The campfire is right there,” I say, as I pour a bit of our precious drinking water over my head. I am crouched on the other side of our little clearing, bent over to spare my clothing, though I suspect I will be damp enough from the plumes of mist when we reach the bottom of the waterfall. But Pip is right, the smell of dirty hair is off-putting. As soon as we have this cup, I’m putting us on the road to the nearest town large enough to have an inn, and I don’t care how many days out of our way it makes us. “You could warm up some of that travel stew.”

“I miss actual cooking,” Pip corrects. “With an oven, and a microwave, and a dishwasher. Bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes. Or, yeah, wai po’s Nigbo Tang Yuan. Yummers.”

“You do realize that when you speak like that, I don’t actually understand the things to which you are referring, don’t you?”

Pip laughs. “And what do you miss?”

“Home,” I say simply, and the word is nearly too small to encompass all that I feel. “I do not regret the privacy of traveling just with you, the intimacy of your being the only other human with which to interact and converse—”

“Oh, you old romantic, you.”

“—for whom to care,” I amend. “But I miss Sheriff Pointe and his terrible footwork, and worse jokes. I miss his wife’s seed-cakes and his son’s unreluctant giggles. I miss the usefulness of Velshi and Cook’s terrible attempts to get me to eat more vegetables, and how Keriens has no ability at all to retain a professional distance and teases me. I miss walking into town and being known to everyone, knowing everyone. I even miss the Shadow’s Men, always hanging about underfoot after providing their reports, telling lovely lies about being travelers passing through or farmers coming by to pay their tithes, flattering Cook into giving up some of her famous rabbit pies. But not half so much as I would miss you, if you were to—” I stop myself before I can continue because it hits me, right then, like an ogre’s club to the side of the head, that I am going to miss Pip.

Because she is going to leave.

The whole point of this little adventure of ours is that she is going to leave. That is the endgame.

“Oh,” I say, feeling too dazed by the realization to say much more, and sit on the ground.

Pip appears beside me, kneeling on the deadfall to meet my eyes. “Forsyth,” she says, a low tone of urgency on her lips. “Forsyth, you did know.”

“I did,” I admit. “I just . . . forgot. I suppose.” I grope for her hand, and she lets me take it.

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