Chapter 1

By the time the sun, a hot ball of butter, had slipped below the horizon, the channels and courtyards of the city had become awash with people — the city’s people, who knew the streets, and those who had travelled, who knew the roads.

They chattered and sang; they scolded and hawked their wares. There were musicians tuning their lutes and testing their drums; there were country families preparing their stands, little children playing underfoot. The air was warm — humid — and smelled like beer, smoke, and water-lilies: the delicate fuschia flowers that adorned the braids of passersby and the garlands threading the air above.

It was a strange mix, but expected. This was the first night of the Day Festival, named Leysday after the patron wanderer, Leyslo, who had, according to myth, found the sun sitting on the water of a holy pond that had slaked their thirst after a long journey.

The glass lanterns swinging, yellow, in the summer wind, would be pulled down and packed again after three more nights, this one excluded. It was easier on Ira’s eye to watch the dancing lanterns than the people.

He sat on the stoop of the apothecary, content for the moment to exist unobserved in the shadows. He was not often one for thick crowds, and truthfully would have been much more eager to kick a ball around in the dark fields, as he’d used to when he was younger, or climb up to the top of Orin’s Mountain and gaze at the stars, spilled like milk in the night sky.

“Hey!” exclaimed Susanna, pushing her way out of the crowd and jogging up to the stoop. “Ira, don’t you want to join us? Timothy and Foy and I just found a warer’s booth — a stall — with beautiful cheeses and soaps and so many different colors of beeswax for, you know, melting into candles. And there’s a vendor right next to it selling sweet dumplings, too. I brought you one. Here!”

From the pocket of her best dress, she pulled a little package, neatly wrapped in wax paper, and handed it to him with a grin. It was warm, and he unwrapped it to find that it was made of squishy rice dough, with an edible stamp on the top in a language he didn’t recognize.

“Thank you, Sue,” he replied, and bit into it. “Oh! It’s peach!”

“It’s so good, isn’t it?” she asked. “Things always taste better to me on Leysday. It’s like people waited to share the best of everything until tonight.” She gave her skirt a twirl, then flashed him another brilliant smile. “C’mon!”

She rocked on the balls of her feet until he stood, chewing rice and boiled, cinnamony peach, then cackled, turned on her bare heel, and shot into the crowd.

Rice dough fell out of Ira’s mouth. “You—!” he cried, before shaking his head with a laugh and taking off in hot pursuit of his friend.

Though he was fast, the immense crowds quickly hid Susanna’s lacy dress from his sight. By the time he’d finished saying, “Excuse me; pardon me; excuse me…,” she was long gone. She was a quick runner, too.

Okay, he thought to himself. Okay. She was headed over there. Let’s find a vantage point. Staying focused and determined kept him calm. Taking a deep breath, his peach dumpling clutched in his hand, he moved himself carefully and nimbly through the labyrinth of people.

A sliver of tarp above the heads of the crowd in the distance caught his eye. Traders, he thought. All right, good! That must be where the beeswax vendor is.

And that was the moment when a sprinting somebody barrelled into his shoulder, slamming their skull into his, and spilling a jar of bitterly cold something all over him.

Ira wasn’t sure who had cursed first, just that both of them had. The liquid, icy and thick, sank slowly into his clothing, waiting for the moment it took him to realize what had happened — and, then, it began to hiss, like oil on a hot pan. And then it began to burn.

Ira let loose a shocked and howling scream of pain. He tugged wildly at the collar of his tunic until he ripped it away entirely, and flung it to the ground, kicking it away with his feet. He fell to the cobblestones and screamed again, louder — it felt like acid eating away the skin of his cheek, his shoulder, his scalp, his ear.

He heard the last drops of liquid fall from the empty jar that the person held, sizzling against stone. They dropped it, and it shattered, making an agonizing glass noise to his ears. “Hold still!” they shouted.

Ira writhed on his knees, clutching his arm, shirt gone, weeping. It was like a thousand crackling bolts of lightning shooting through his skin. It was worse than the time he’d caught buzz from a snakebite. He felt himself slipping away, into the darkness, and welcomed it.

They grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, but he rooted himself into the stones and screamed for help, the wind scraping his throat, half-delirious. He felt their broad hand slip over his eyes, the other, over his mouth; then the world went black, and he knew no more.

---

The air smelled of dawn, and there were rich trills of small birds greeting the sun. Dawn smelled like fresh dew on the waking grass; like upturned soil, and the stars slowly being painted over in the sky by creamy yellows and soft roses and deep reds.

Dawn for dawn’s morning, he thought, half awake, his eyes still closed. But that didn’t make sense. Yesterday had been Leysday, Dawn’s day — the day of the discovery of the Sun — and today was, now, the Festival day of Hillight — the day of the Sun rising over the mountains for the first time. There would be lots of dried fruits, and he would tap a bead of oil onto the head of every new person he met.

Ira reached, blindly, for the bottle of oil that every city-person kept, this week, in a necklace that fell to their ribs.

It was not there. The necklace was gone.

And where was his tunic? He never slept without a tunic. All he wore were his breeches, and they were strangely cold, and wet. He felt the cool air of morning chilling his skin. Maybe a window was open.

He slid his heels sleepily across the bed, expecting the tug of his sheets and the scratch of the cot below him. But his feet were bare, too, and the ground below them was no cot at all.

He paused for a moment of dread, then, without breathing, or daring to open his eyes, pushed his toes into the ground. It gave way. Crumbled slowly, darkly, against his feet.

This was soil.

Tenderly, fearfully, he reached the pads of his fingertips to his cheek. He knew exactly what to expect. Rawness. Fragile blisters. Heat of brown infection. He’d seen the dances of burns before. And there was almost no pain to be found in his body. Dear Amma, dear Amma, dear Amma, his mind gasped. Nerve damage. Nerve death. Oh — I’m almost gone.

But before his fingers reached his skin, they reached strands of tiny, cool leaves. How green the air smelled. What? he thought. They were ferns.

Unwillingly, he opened his eyes.

He was laying in a clearing. The trees he saw peripherally, and recognized by sight but not by name. They were long-reaching, gnarled and carved by time. Their green foliage spoke in hushing murmurs, tossed by the morning wind.

A few sparrows bickered with each other in the sky above him. The ground smelled like rain, and the gentle lick of the wind told that there might be more to come.

Oh, good, Ira thought. I’m still alive.

Reality felt like a sudden slap in the face. Why wouldn’t I be alive? he realized, indignantly.

It was then that he fully remembered what had been brought to him the night before. Not just the burning acid that had eaten into him, but the jar that had held it, breaking into shards, and his poisoner, whose face he either hadn’t seen or didn’t remember, but whose hands were broad and strong. The glimpse of a white lace skirt through the crowds.

There was a stale, syrupy taste of cinnamon in his mouth. Peaches.

If I’m here, he thought, slow and solemn, I was brought here. If I was brought here, someone carried me. The woods are not a long walk from the city.

I am not going to pay time guessing why they brought me out here, he decided, firmly. He was so frightened that his hands were shaking, and he focused for a moment on breathing the fear out of his body, as the herbalist had taught him to do.

He hadn’t yet dared to turn his head, but from what he could see, he was surrounded by ferns; deep green, curling fronds that waved gently in the breeze. Opening my eyes to the world is just as dangerous as not, he thought. If they’re here, and they see me, I’ll fight them like a she-lion. If not, I’ll run faster than hell.

Alright. Alright. He heard the blood thudding in his ears. He slowly, slowly began to turn his head to the right — and stopped.

There had come a small ripping sound as he moved his head, as if he were detaching from the soil. It was akin to the sound created when a lob of wild onions was pulled from the earth. The sound of roots, stretching. For some reason there came a sudden sting in his neck.

He could see more now. He saw his shoulder, his bare arm, and where he knew he had been splashed with the acid. But where he knew burn marks should have been, thin, white roots were knitted. The roots of the ferns were wrapped around the affected skin in intricate, thick whorls. And, as he watched, they slowly, slowly moved. Below his skin, and above.

The ferns were not only growing around him. They were growing from him. From his neck, his cheek, his chest.

Ira was not proud of how he shrieked, then, but he had not been spared time to think. He screamed, shrilly, and yanked himself away from the ground like a mad dog — or would have, if doing so had not suddenly sent deep spasms of pain skidding across his body. He gasped, and thudded back to the ground, his chest heaving. His vision swam with broken stars.

“You fool!” a harsh voice cried, and he jumped, startled, ending another wave of shock through his body. Two feet came hurtling toward him, and their owner fell in a crouch above his head.

Through his tears, Ira saw a boy, his age or a bit older, slim and muscular, with almond-colored skin, thick brown hair in a long braid. He struggled once more against the ferns, and the boy pressed his shoulders to the ground with his hands. He knelt toward Ira until their noses nearly met. “Moving now would cost you much more than staying still,” he said.

“Get. Them. Out. Of me,” Ira hissed, heart racing.

The boy’s grip relaxed a bit. “No,” he replied, simply. “They are aiding you. I expect you are unused to this, but it is very important.” His dark eyes flashed. “In fact, it is vital. I’m doing this out of necessity. Your body is in need of healing.”

Ira felt roots moving beneath his skin. “I’m going to throw up.”

“To throw up?”

“To be sick. You know!” Then, with realization, “Get away from me!”

The boy pulled away and backwards with the agility of a cat. “Do what you must,” he shrugged. “If you yank yourself from the ground, you will surely die of shock. Do you eat?”

Ira turned his head to the right, ignoring the tight pains that the movement caused, and vomited onto the ferns that grew around him, heaving until there was no more to come.

“Ah,” he heard the boy say.

His vision blurred.

Through the haze he saw the boy rushing toward him again, and then his head was lifted by a strong hand, and he felt the slip of roots pulling from him.

But it did not pain him.

He coughed, and something scratchy, like a cotton towel, wiped the mess away from his face.

“Do you eat?” the boy repeated, gently lowering Ira’s fern-released head into his lap.

Ira groaned. “What do you think that was?” he answered, his eyes shut. Then, after a beat, he added, “I drink. Water. Please. Why would you ask that?”

The boy disregarded his question. Ira felt his warm hands skimming down his shoulders, sweeping across his abdomen, down his waist and his legs, all the way to his feet. It was strange. Where the boy touched, the roots began, slowly, to pull out.

“But you do not eat? Only drink?”

“I do both.” He realized, abruptly, how weary his body was. As soon as the ferns had left it, exhaustion seemed to have entered. “Why were there ferns coming from my head?” he asked, “And my body, my arms, and my chest? How did they get into me?” Then, in apprehension — “How long have I been asleep?”

The boy lowered Ira’s head back onto the grass and knelt beside him, waiting a few moments before he spoke. He seemed to be thinking about how to respond.

“Well…,” he began. “Hm. Well.”

“And who are you?” Ira added, in sudden indignation. Grunting, he tried to sit up, and the boy pushed him back down to the earth.

“I assumed you’d be asleep for much longer,” the boy said. “You slept for one night’s passing. I expected two or three. Perhaps they work more quickly than I expected.” He gestured to the ferns. “They were very kind. And they expect no gratitude. Following their example is a difficult task.” He exhaled, furrowing his brow.

“And your name?”

“It is strange!” the boy said. “I have no name, but you expect one. I heal you, and you snap at my fingers, like a fox in a trap. How presumptuous you have been… but there is your fear at reckoning there, too. I expect no apology. That wouldn’t be necessary in one of your situations.” He lifted his gaze to meet Ira’s. “You may call me Guy.”

Ah. For some reason, being given the name felt like being given a gift.

Ira felt the adrenaline slowly draining. He pulled himself upright slowly, leaning on his arms for support. Guy’s handsome eyes, dark black and solemn, did not leave his own, and there came a strange, floating, hot feeling to his body, something that he sharply recognized. The last time he’d felt that, he had been in class two months ago, turning backwards in his seat to catch an unexpected wink from Oriole Henry, that tall, gangly boy who flirted with anything alive.

Ira shoved that feeling deep down into himself. “Can I have some water, please, if you have any?” he croaked.