The Language of Souls by Goldfinch Lena

Author:Goldfinch, Lena [Goldfinch, Lena]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Indigo Road Teen
Published: 2012-11-05T22:00:00+00:00

Four

RUNDAN AWOKE TO darkness and the strangest sense of not being fully himself, as if only his mind were alive—alive in a half dream. He wondered idly if he were dead. But, surely, if he were dead, he’d not only be formless, but he’d be filled with joy and possibility, which he wasn’t. And, more importantly, why couldn’t he move? Where was the bounteous feast of paradise?

As a boy, his father had told him many stories of warriors arriving in paradise and how it required amazing skill with a sword. In the ancient texts, however, the dead simply awoke to new life. This didn’t feel like a new life. So perhaps he wasn’t dead after all. Besides, the air around him stank of soot and damp earth. Paradise was supposed to be filled with the fragrant scent of Kulaeli flowers.

As the drugging, half-awake daze of sleep began to fade and lift away, Rundan turned his head and saw the outlines of a cave. The embers of the campfire barely glowed and the thinnest trail of smoke arose from its ashes. It was still burning, but only just. How long had he been asleep? It felt like forever.

His chest felt unusually heavy, so Rundan raised a hand to explore. He found the girl slumped against him in sleep, with her cheek pressed to his breastbone. When he grunted several times and she still didn’t move, he shook her shoulder. Finally she stirred, first curling deliciously closer to him and then sitting abruptly upright. She looked into his open eyes, blinked several times as if to clear her vision, and then began to weep, not with the loud moans and cries of a funeral mourner, but with a great stillness of both body and soul. Or so it seemed to Rundan. She watched him through her tears, whispering hundreds of incomprehensible words under her breath.

Rundan could only stare at her. As he watched, her face lit with the sunniest of smiles and she threw her arms around him, or tried to since he was lying down. She was hugging him? She was his prisoner, or had been, and now she was hugging him? Not knowing quite what to do, Rundan awkwardly patted her back. When she finally rose to her feet and began to pour what he hoped was a cup of water for him, Rundan gingerly tried to sit up.

She immediately objected—though her words meant nothing to him, her frown and the staying hand gesture were clear—but he simply beckoned her closer. She set the cup against his lips and he drank deeply of water so pure and sweet that he motioned for more. With a weary smile curving her lips, she poured more and helped him drink. As she did so, she kept watching him with an expression of amazement. A little unsettled by her fixed attention, Rundan looked around the cave, searching for anything to draw her attention away from him.

On the ground beside her, he saw her arrangement of medicines and tools, all neatly lined in rows.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.