Chosen

Chapter Nine

"Have you written anything lately?" she asked as we walked arm in arm down the road.

"A few lines," was my automatic answer. It was a lie. "But I did read some great poems while I was cataloging the books." There. That was the truth.

"Did you?" she asked, sounding half-interested. She waved to a guy pulling a cart loaded down with sacks of flour, and he returned her greeting with a bow of his head and a quick, "Milady."

"Mmm hmmm. One reminded me of you. By Lord Byron."

"Oh, I've read some of his work. We have several volumes of his, don't we?"

I nodded. "Three." At the marble fountain, we turned down the small path descending down the back of the mountain. The same one I'd seen on the day I'd gone exploring. I'd wondered what where it led. Guess I was finally going to find out. The gravel path was too narrow to walk two across, so Gwenyth took the lead while I followed behind. I started in on the poem:

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."

"That's lovely," she said when I finished. "Maybe you'll write something like that one day."

"Maybe," I answered, but I really thought, "No way."The path curved left and wound down to meet another. Together they were wider and took us down path a crop of wooden shacks. Smoke billowed out of the top of one. The smell of animals wafted from others. In front of one of the last on the row, a boy stood lopping the heads off of fish and throwing them into a pile on the ground. Here was the dirty work they kept away from the rest of the village. Gwenyth greeted all the workers that she saw by name, and gave each their own wave and benevolent smile. In return, they all seemed genuinely happy to see her. But the main difference that I noticed was that at the back of town, no one greeted me with any hostility.

We kept walking until we came to another narrow path."Here," Gwenyth said, diverting off of the main trail. We followed it as it wound up the slope and around jutting rocks. Finally, it ended in a span of flat rock crusted in soft green moss. A single skinny tree shot out of its far end, casting shade beneath. Gwenyth set the basket by its trunk, pulled out a blanket, and spread it in the shady spot. She waved me over to sit beside her. In silence, we looked out at the dark stretch of ocean framed by the angles of mountain rock and an impossibly blue sky. I'd seen the view before from the library window, but without the glass pane between it and myself, everything looked brighter and bigger than I could have imagined.

I reached for her hand and closed my fingers around it. Gwenyth sucked in a sharp breath. "Something's come up. I'm going to have to leave for a while," she said.

"Oh, like last time?" I ask.

"No, for longer. I can't say how long I'll be gone, actually. I won't know until I get there and assess the situation."

My heart dropped into my stomach. "When...when are you leaving?"

"I'm not sure of that either. As soon as arrangements can be made."

"Couldn't you just use your magic? Or send someone else?"

"I'm afraid it isn't like that," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her way of talking about it worried me. She made it sound like she could be gone for months. A year, even. I swallowed down a lump that had formed in my throat. I didn't know the right words to respond to her or how to deal with my own growing sadness, so I said nothing.

Gwenyth broke the silence. "I'll miss you." She tightened her grip on my hand.

"I'll miss you too," I mumbled back.