Jenny teetered on her tip-toes as she looped the sturdy dark green vine over the eave of the gathering house at the center of Chandan Village. The vine dotted with white trumpet-shaped flowers dangled from her shoulders and arms and wound into her hair. Good thing hathi vela flowers smelled so nice. She wouldn’t need to shower before the festival began.
She leaned further to reach the next roof support, but her arms were too short. She swung the vine out and—success! The white-flowered vine draped beautifully from one support to the next, its sweet-and-earthy fragrance tingling in her nose.
Jenny eyed the next support. Definitely out of reach, but she had great aim.
She held the vine loosely in her fingers and bent for an under-hand toss—and the stool beneath her rocked. The world tilted, blue sky and thatched roofs and tree leaves and hathi vela flowers–
And a solid hand smacked firmly against her lower back, arresting her fall.
“Jenny, what are you doing? Are you trying to break your neck?”
She didn’t need to look to know who it was. Only one person could cram that many words into a single breath and still sound terrifying and overwrought and fond at the same time.
“Meg, don’t be silly.” Jenny rolled her eyes and regained her balance on the stool. “I would never try.”
She grinned down at her older sister as she gathered the vines of hathi vela back into her arms.
“You could have fooled me.” Meg’s eyes narrowed in that special expression she only reserved for dealing with her younger siblings. It was a look solidly between disaster and almost-disaster, like “the pigs are loose in the strawberry field” and “I put too much beet juice in the cake batter.”
The fading sunlight of the early evening shone in the thick coil of Meg’s golden braid, pinned around the crown of her head. She looked nice in her best embroidered blouse and new trousers, but then, she’d had a very special afternoon.
“I thought you were in Terran.” Jenny tilted her head, and the stool rocked again.
Meg reached for her arm. “Would you get down?”
“If you’re so worried, how about helping me?” Jenny waggled the vines in her sister’s face. “There’s still a lot to do before the festival starts.”
Now her expression was more like the time Danny left pickled cabbage on the common room table overnight.
“If it’ll get you on stable footing, yes!” Meg took the vines from her. “Get down. I’ll stand on the stool, and you can hand the vines up.
“Deal!” Jenny released the flowers so Meg could take them and carefully lowered herself down to the seat of the stool before she slid off.
Meg huffed and lifted the stool with one arm, carrying it to the nearest roof support. “Vines.” She shoved them at Jenny.
“Vines!” Jenny chirped with a grin and followed at Meg’s heel.
Meg could be as grouchy as she liked, but now that she was here, the flower hanging would go much faster.
With a sigh, Meg set the stool down on the ground, planted one foot on the first rung, and stepped to the seat as easily as if she were climbing a ladder. The stool tilted slightly with her weight, but she adjusted without pause and reached a hand down for the flowers.
“Vines?”
Jenny handed the coil up to her and watched her carefully loop the vine over the roof beam, the stool rocking with her motion but never tipping over.
“You’re so good at that, Meg.” Jenny beamed.
“At what?” Meg snorted. “Hanging flowers? You’re better than I am.”
“Yeah, but you can do it without falling over!”
Jenny bit her lip and fed the length of the vine to her sister as Meg finished with one roof support and tossed the loop to the next one, just like Jenny had done but with less dramatic flailing.
Meg chuckled and stepped back, her boot finding the rung without even looking, and reached the ground smoothly. She picked up the stool again and moved to the next support beam, Jenny trailing after her.
“Master T’zuman says my balance is horrible,” Meg said. “You should see this latest drill he’s got me and Tzaitel doing. It’s impossible.”
“You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
“You have more confidence than I do.”
“That’s because you don’t believe in yourself.” Jenny handed a coil of vines to her.
Meg frowned at her with a raised eyebrow.
“But that’s okay.” Jenny patted her arm. “I believe in you enough for both of us.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Meg laughed softly and shook her head again, adjusting the stool under the beam with a critical eye. “In the mean time, I either need to grow a tail for extra balance or just give up all together because I don’t think I can actually do what he wants me to do.”
“You’re fine the way you are, Meg,” Jenny mumbled, brushing a stray strand of hair off her sister’s neck.
Meg leaned over and planted a kiss on her brow. “I’m glad you think so.” She mounted the stool with ease.
Jenny glared at her sister’s boots.
Meg’s Andaiku master wasn’t Jenny’s idea of a great teacher. He was surly and cross. Maybe he had really pretty hair and really gorgeous violet eyes, but he had no sense of humor (Hooligan!). Jenny always figured it was because he was so tiny. Master T’zuman wasn’t even four feet tall, and for a warrior, that had to be rough.
Still, it didn’t give him a reason to be cranky all the time. And it totally didn’t excuse the way he treated Meg.
Meg adjusted the flowers over the beam and gathered more up for a toss to the next.
“So?” Jenny started.
Meg tossed the flowers to the next beam. “So what?”
“How was Terran?”
With a sardonic chuckle, Meg stepped down to the ground again. “How do you think it was? It was Terran.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything, Meg.”
Meg scoffed. “It was full of people and cars and loudness.” She rolled her eyes and moved the stool. “Just like it always is.”
Jenny bustled after her and hovered at her elbow as she climbed the stool again. “But how was it?” She bounced on her toes.
Meg sagged and looked down at her. “Jenny, you’ve been to Terran.”
“Once. Over a month ago. And I got kidnapped, thank you very much. I didn’t exactly get to see much of it.”
Meg grumbled something under her breath.
“You get to go to Terran all the time,” Jenny said, feeding more of the flowered vine to her. “And you never talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Jenny.”
“What about the people?”
“There are too many.”
“What about the food?”
“It’s not as good as ours.”
“What about the buildings and the parks and the ocean—the ocean!”
Meg shook her head and adjusted the vine on the support. “Jenny, you’re being ridiculous.”
“No, I’m not.” Jenny drew back and set her jaw. “Terran is amazing, Meg. You just don’t see it because you’re there all the time.”
Meg climbed down the stool and took the rest of the flowered vines from her. “I am not there all the time. I’m there once or twice a week, Jenny. Don’t exaggerate.”
Jenny rolled her eyes as Meg turned away.
“Don’t make faces behind my back.” Meg moved the stool to the next beam.
“Don’t talk like Velanna to my face then.”
Jenny regretted the words the moment they slipped out. Meg stiffened and set the stool down, but she didn’t turn. And she didn’t speak.
Sighing, Jenny slid up to her sister’s back and wrapped her arms around her. “Sorry.”
Meg didn’t relax, but she did pat the tops of Jenny’s forearms.
“What do you want to know about Terran?” she asked.
Her tone was wrong. Sad. Tired.
Recently, that was the signal to change the subject. That was the cue to announce that Meg didn’t want to talk about it anymore and that pushing would only make matters worse.
It didn’t used to be that way.
But many things had changed in the last month.
It would have been easy to switch topics. There were plenty of things to talk about from home. But Jenny didn’t want to talk about those things. She lived those things. She wanted to hear about the world on the other side of the barrier, the one she’d been born in.
“I want to know about school,” she said.
Meg shifted and turned in her arms, and Jenny loosened her grip so Meg could face her.
“School?”
“Yeah.” Jenny smiled. “It sounds like fun.”
“Fun?”
“Are you actually going to repeat everything like that?”
Meg lowered herself down to the stool seat, eyebrows furrowed. She rubbed the side of her head. “Jenny, school isn’t fun.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“What’s it like? You haven’t said anything about it.”
Meg took a slow, deep breath and sat back on the stool, chin lifted slightly. “It’s—long. And intense. And the expectations are exhausting.”
“But what are you learning?” Jenny took her hand and held it. “Who are you talking to? Are you making friends?”
The sharp edges of Meg’s expression softened slightly. “I’m learning about Terran’s history, but it’s not much more than Velanna already taught me since Barb marked me down as a specialist in medieval history. And I talk to my teachers.”
“And friends?” Jenny threaded her fingers into Meg’s. “Please tell me you aren’t just sitting in a chair and not making friends with the other students?”
Meg scratched the back of her neck.
“Meg.”
“What?”
“You need to make friends.”
“I have friends.” Meg disentangled her fingers.
“Barb and Jim don’t count.” Jenny crossed her arms. “They’re easy to talk to.”
Meg chuckled. “You want me to talk to people who are hard to talk to?”
“I want you to talk to someone.”
“I talk to lots of people.” Meg climbed the stool again and went back to hanging the vines. “Barb and Jim are coming, by the way.”
Jenny smiled at her sister’s lame attempt to change the subject on her own. Meg had never been good at deception. She lacked the subtlety needed for guiding a conversation, which was precisely why she needed to practice.
“So.” Jenny set her hands on her hips. “School is sitting and reading books and not talking to all the people around you.”
“Pretty much.”
“No wonder you’re not having fun.”
Meg groaned softly. “Jenny, I’m not going to school to have fun.”
“No, right, you’re going so you can become a Peregrine agent and kill Phoenix Munroe.”
Meg jolted like she’d been struck by lightning. The stool didn’t topple over, another testament to her sense of balance, but the angle of her shoulders went square.
“We’re not talking about this, Jenny.”
“I’m just saying, if I got to go to school, I would have fun.”
Meg rolled her eyes.
“Who’s making faces now?”
Meg climbed down the stool again and pinned her with a harsh look. “Jenny, we’re not having this conversation again. Not right now.”
The knot of emotion in her chest trembled. “You promised we would talk about it.”
“Right now?” Meg gestured around them at the central meeting place of Chandan Village, currently lit with torches and lined with places to sit and tables full of food. “We’re having a Ti’uhara Nishani for Tolan. You think that’s the best time for a conversation about you going to school?”
“He would talk to me about it.” Jenny lifted her chin.
“Tolan talked a lot.” Meg picked up the stool and moved it to the next beam. “Kind of like you.”
“At least I say something.”
Meg ignored her.
Jenny’s lower lip quivered, heat creeping up her face as she watched Meg climb the stool again. Her sister didn’t understand how fortunate she was. She had the most amazing opportunity to visit another world regularly, to see people from every corner of the world, to learn things about different cultures. And she spent it in silence? Alone?
Meg had never made much sense to her, but this was stretching even Jenny’s understanding.
Jenny had been begging for weeks about visiting Terran again. It had started with a request to go to school, since Meg was going to school to test her competency as a potential Peregrine Agent. It only seemed fair. If Meg got to go to school, surely Jenny could too. Danny wasn’t opposed either. He was just as fascinated by Terran as Jenny, but Meg wouldn’t hear it. She wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t even consider it.
“Just because you’re scared of everything now, Meg, doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”
She shouldn’t have said it.
But it needed to be said.
Meg didn’t respond immediately. She finished hanging the vine and climbed down the stool, turning calmly to face Jenny with a blank expression on her face.
If there was one expression Meg had in her arsenal that Jenny hated more than the others, it was that one. It was the look T’zuman had pounded into her over all the years of training. It was the look Velanna always used when she didn’t want to continue speaking about something that upset her. And somewhere along the line, Meg had figured out how to wield it against her siblings.
Jenny hated it.
“It’s not foolish to fear something that’s worthy of it, Jenny.” Meg said in a measured tone. “Going to school in Terran is a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Centaurs are dangerous.” Jenny scoffed. “And we fight them all the time. You don’t keep me from going to the orchards or to the other villages where Centaurs have been.”
“Terran has dangers you can’t see.”
Jenny stepped closer to Meg. “I can take care of myself, Meg.”
“You can’t hang vines without nearly breaking your own neck, Jenny.” Meg’s tone rang harshly even though her voice was soft. “How could you survive in Terran?”
Hot tears welled in Jenny’s eyes and she held her sister’s gaze.
“My job is to protect you,” Meg continued, “and I can’t do that if you’re in Terran.”
“But you can go?”
“I can fight.”
“I can fight too.”
“Your little arrows don’t count,” Meg snapped. “You can’t carry them around in Terran without attracting attention, and that’s exactly what we want to avoid.”
Every word fell like a hammer strike. Each syllable hurt.
Jenny scowled. “So, you’d let me go if I could fight like you?”
The furrows in Meg’s brow deepened. She set the stool down and placed her hands on Jenny’s shoulders gently, the detached expression on her face cracking slightly to let the grief shine through.
“I don’t want you to fight at all.” Meg cupped the side of Jenny’s face. “I just want you to be safe. I need you to be safe.”
Jenny met her eyes and held them. “Meg, nobody’s safe.”
Slowly, like molasses seeping out of a jar, the rest of Meg’s featureless mask slid off, and for one glorious moment, she was herself again. Dark blue eyes clear and focused, though brimming with sorrow and unspeakable loss.
Jenny missed Tolan.
She missed their conversations, ridiculous though they were. She missed his easy laugh, his thirst for adventure, and his warm hugs. He always knew what to say and when to say it. She missed him so much it was easy to forget how everyone else had to miss him too.
Not that Meg would ever admit to it. She wouldn’t allow herself to give voice to the grief. Meg had decided that the weight of responsibility for Tolan’s death belonged on her shoulders. No one agreed, except maybe Tzaitel. But she was mourning too. And even though Velanna didn’t agree, she hadn’t done much to counteract the belief. And Meg didn’t listen to anyone else.
Jenny set her hands on top of Meg’s. “You can’t protect everyone, Meg.”
Meg took a deep breath and began to speak when the cacophonous sound of a crowd arriving through the savaagata gateway of the village rumbled through the air. A quick glance revealed a dozen Josharons—and two humans. One a young woman with flaming red hair, and the other a young man with the longest, most awkward legs ever seen on anyone.
Barb and Jim Taylor.
Instantly, Meg disappeared behind her face again. At least it wasn’t the Velanna-face. This face was the Meg everyone knew, the one they expected, the one who had the answers and always did the right thing and never made mistakes. It was the Meg she wanted everyone else to see, and for the most part, everyone was happy to see that Meg.
But not Jenny.
Meg pulled her close and kissed her forehead again. “We’ll talk about this after the festival. I promise.”
She stepped back and went to greet her friends, and Jenny stayed still, not bothering to dash the hot tears from her reddened cheeks.
“You’ve said that before,” she whispered.