The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge

Author:Caitlin Kittredge
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: SteamPunk, Fantasy, Fantasy & Magic, Fiction
ISBN: 9780385738293
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

The Mist-Wrought Ring

IN THE DAWN, I decided to go walking. I needed to leave the confines of Graystone and shake off the lingering touch of the dream.

The wardrobe yielded a wool skirt and jumper, as old and out of fashion as the red dress, but I added them to my boots and cape to ward against the morning chill.

No one else was awake, except Bethina cooking breakfast in the kitchen, so I left by the main door and walked around the foundation of the house.

Graystone’s estate was larger than I’d imagined, the stone walls of the borderlands disappearing to the vanishing point in every direction as I left the house behind and started down the long slope of the back garden. Oak trees bent over the path, their twisted limbs black against the dove-wing sky.

Mist was my constant companion. It wandered among the trees, slithered over the ground, wrapped the day in solitude and silence.

The path ended a few hundred yards from the rear of the house, at one of the swaybacked stone walls that veined the landscape. I climbed over the boundary of a forgotten farm field, a ley line traced in moss and rock.

An abandoned orchard crouched beyond the wall, hunched shapes of apple trees writhing in the light wind sweeping up from the valley.

Late fruit crunched under my feet as I walked, putting the scent of cider in the air. Crows flew overhead, their wings and my footsteps the only sounds.

Here, I could forget about the dream, about Conrad telling me to go home and stop looking for him.

Dream-Conrad didn’t know anything. He was my fear. He was trying to make me turn back, when I’d finally gotten close enough to rescue my brother. My madness was not going to sway me from my course, not now. Not when I’d promised Dean that I’d find out if I did possess the Weird, and Conrad—the real one—that I’d find him.

I walked in no particular direction, except away from Graystone. I didn’t want to be around other people, to have to make pleasant conversation, because I had nothing to talk about. Either I had a gift that no one on the planet was supposed to possess, or I was crazy. One or the other.

It didn’t make for an easy mind as I walked, and I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling fragile, like everything I’d managed to do since I left the Academy would shatter at any moment. Until I could regain my resolve, and the strength that I’d found when I ran across the Night Bridge with Dean and Cal, I would walk.

The fog was seductive, and it kissed my skin with cold and jeweled my untidy braid with droplets. It pulled me deeper into the orchard, until I lost sight of even the jagged weather vanes at the top of Graystone’s spires. I felt that I could walk and wander until I found a new path, one that led away from the life of Aoife Grayson and into the land of mists, where, Nerissa had once said, lost souls wandered, wakeful and unclaimed.

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