He stood. “What, no hug?”
So I wrapped my arms around him, gratitude flowing down my cheeks. I brushed the tears away with one hand. “Thanks.”
He rubbed my back in a slow circle with one hand as he squeezed me tightly. “Nothing to it. Figured if you were going to do me in, it would have been when I filched the cheese from your plate.”
Do him in . . . was that how my siblings thought of me? As a rampant killer out to annihilate my own family? I didn’t realize I was out of the kitchen until I was on the stairs that led up and out of the Spiral, my emotions and Raven’s words chasing me like hounds on a fox.
Peta swayed on my shoulder. “Where are we going? To see Bella?”
Much as I wanted to see my sister and have her reassure me, I needed to be strong.
“To the Enders Barracks. You’re right about Bella. She’s doing her job and I have to do mine; I don’t need to bother her with silly insecurities.” I stepped out of the Spiral and looked into the swaying branches of the redwoods around us. Filtering between the trees, the morning fog rolled in as if a living entity. This was home, and no matter how far I went, no matter how long I was forced away, my heart belonged here. Hopefully the search for Father would be the last excursion I had for a long while.
“Did you mean what you said to Raven about finding your father?” she asked.
“I promised Bella I would go after him,” I said as I trotted down the steps, “and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
CHAPTER 2
gaggle of children ran by me, laughing and squealing as they chased one another. Peta’s eyes followed them. “What I would give to be oblivious to the responsibilities of the world and be a kitten once more.”
Her words triggered a thought that had been burrowing for some time in my brain. I had responsibilities I needed to check in on.
I was in the possession of not one, but two precious stone rings. Long before I’d ever been born, the Elementals had been a bit naughty. To remind them of their place, the mother goddess went to the five nations of man. For each, she fashioned a powerful stone to be held in times of need to help rule a portion of the elemental world and keep humans safe. The humans with the stones helped keep the world in balance.
Those stones were supposed to be legend, yet I’d found four of the five. They weren’t all rings, but they were all powerful. The two I still had in my possession controlled Spirit and Air. I’d hidden them away so those who would abuse their power would not get their hands on them. And I needed to make sure both stones were hidden still.
I couldn’t allow that much power to fall into the wrong hands.
Twisting on my heel, I changed direction and headed out to the Planters’ fields. As early as it was, the Planters were already doing their job, tending to the seedlings, bringing water from the ravine and working the soil for late fall planting.
I’d spent most of my life here, struggling to make a plant even sprout. For so long I’d been blocked from my connection to the earth, but the Planters, for the most part, had accepted me as one of their own. Yet as I walked past them, not one lifted their eyes to me. I looked for Simmy, my old friend, and saw her one daughter. Waving, I caught her attention.
“Petal, where is your mother?”
“She died when the lung burrowers spread,” she said, her tone more than a little frosty.
I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer to the mother goddess for Simmy’s soul. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
I was more than a little dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”
“I said you should be.” She poked at my chest with her hard, soil-blackened finger. “Cassava wouldn’t have done that with them burrowers if there was no interference. She would have been a strong queen. And now what do we have? A king who’s gone on a walkabout with no one to rule but his useless wife, or worse, his untested, pregnant daughter. Pregnant with an Undine’s baby. Yet another half-breed to pollute our world.”
I took a step back. Not out of fear. At least not in the conventional sense. I was afraid I’d wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze until either she retracted her venomous words or she stopped speaking altogether. “That is your soon to be queen. I’d watch your tongue if I were you.”
“I doubt it, half-breed.” She spat at my feet.
Peta’s tail flicked around my neck and her cold, damp nose shoved into my ear, hiding the fact she spoke. “You can do nothing right now, and fighting would only prove them right. Ignore them and keep walking, Dirt Girl.”
Forcing my feet to move, I walked toward Petal, forcing her either to step out of my way or get trampled.