Shadows in the Trees: Book 1

Chapter 53

Freya paced the length of the small room that had become her prison, little puffs of dust clouding around her feet. 

Yulen pushed through the hide hung across her door. The blue light reflected off of his pale hair. 

"For the love of -- would you please stop pacing," he said. "You are so loud. I cannot sleep!" 

"It can't be that loud," she said, rolling her eyes. 

"I can hear your angry little stomps, boom boom boom," he complained. "Just go to sleep already." 

"I haven't left this stupid hut in days. Where is Malik? Where is Hadrian?" she demanded, crossing her arms and facing him. 

Yulen sighed. "Your friend is . . . alive. Hadrian also has not left his hut in days." 

"Why? Because of my mother? If he loved her so much, why didn't he just stay with her? He can't abandon her and then be devastated over her death." 

"When you love someone," Yulen began. "When you truly love someone, you do what will make them happiest. And what makes them happiest is not always you." Her face fell, the anger leaving her. "Hadrian was going to leave everything behind for her. He was going to leave his people to die in these woods, for her. He did not want to leave her. Or you. But he knew that was what he needed to do." 

Freya sank down onto her bed. "I'll go to sleep now. I'm sorry I woke you up." 

"I never actually went to sleep," Yulen said lamely. After a lengthy silence, he made his way to the door. "Goodnight, Freya." 

She didn't reply. Once he had left, she added one more log to the fire before tucking herself in. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she wiped them away. 

She rolled onto her back, wishing she could see the stars. Her mother had taught her the constellations when she was young. She remembered looking for constellations in her mother's freckles and naming them, much to her mother's amusement.  

She wished she had told her. Maybe they could have come here, been happy together. Admittedly, she couldn't imagine her mother in a place like this, but maybe with her, and Hadrian, things could have been different. 

The tears fell faster now as buried memories of her mother came flooding back. For one awful moment, she wished she had died in the plague instead of her. Or at least died with her. She realized Malik was really the only person who had gotten her through her mother's death. The look of horror when he realized what she was flashed behind her eyelids. Now she had lost him too.

She sobbed as quietly as she could, not wanting to bother Yulen again. Eventually she exhausted herself enough to fall asleep. 

Freya woke suddenly. Sunshine, warm and bright, beamed down on her face. She blocked her eyes and sat up.

She was sitting in a meadow that stretched as far as she could see, dotted with wildflowers and a few trees. Its tall, green grass brushed her arms, as soft as silk. A brook babbled nearby, the clear water sparkling in the sunshine. An enormous tree with rough, brown bark draped over the brook, its green leaves waving in the breeze. 

Just as she was starting to realize she was in a dream, she noticed an old woman crouched by the brook, a washing basket next to her. Her body rattled as she scrubbed, interrupting the peaceful melodies of the meadow. As she stood to hang the washing on a branch of the tree, she saw Freya. 

Freya felt her blood run cold. But the hag merely smiled and turned back to the brook, tossing more laundry into the water. A story that her mother had told her once nagged at the back of her mind, just out of reach.