Moving past the stair, she led them through the trees and across two more vine bridges to a larger building circling the broad trunk of a massive oak. Entering a small, wedge-shaped room on the south side of the building, Sheyl indicated a set of empty rocking chairs in a cozy sitting area. “Please, have a seat.” She went to the windows and pulled the curtains closed before walking to a small connecting door on the eastern wall. “Wait here. I’ll only be a moment. The Feyreisa may remove her blindfold.”

Sheyl slipped through the door and returned a few chimes later with another woman clad in a serviceable green woolen dress with a tan apron tied around her waist. The other woman was older, clearly mortal. Her curling brown hair was streaked with silver and tied back in an untidy bun, and her bright, inquisitive brown eyes were crinkled at the corners with deep laugh lines.

“Ellysetta Feyreisa… Rainier Feyreisen… this is the woman I wanted you to meet. She came to us forty years ago as a small child… winded near the village of Dolan for possessing the gift of Fire. We call her Bess… but the name her parents gave her was Bessinita.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Shadowed Path, soothing path,

Choice from pain and sadness.

Aching path, desperate path,

Escape from lonely madness.

Darkened path, forsaken path,

Hide from fear and sorrow.

Lonely path, empty path,

Save me from the ‘morrow.

Dahl’reisen’s Plea,

a song of prayer, by Varian vel Chera

Celieria ~ Dahl’reisen Village

Ellysetta stared with burning eyes at the sister Mama had loved and believed long dead. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

The woman named Bess clasped her hands before her waist. “Sheyl explained to me about your mother. Clearly, I must be that Bess your mother loved, but I don’t remember anything from that life before.”

“Of course, you don’t. You were a baby… a precious baby who should never have been thrown away because of your gift.” She remembered the sadness in Papa’s eyes when he’d told her the story and told her how that one moment, that one loss, had changed Mama’s life forever.

She gulped past the growing knot in her throat. “You should know that my mother found me in the forest of Great-wood,” she told Bess. “My birth parents had put a glamour on me to make me look mortal. So when she found me, she assumed I’d been winded like you, for some dreadful, dangerous magic. She knew I was magic—she feared it more than she feared anything else in the world—but she took me in anyway and loved me in spite of her fear. She did that because of you… because she couldn’t bear the thought of what had happened to you happening to another child.” Ellysetta blinked back tears. “You don’t remember her, but she never forgot you. She would want you to know that. She would want you to know she loved you very much.”

“She must have been a very special woman,” Bess said “She was.” Tears welled in her eyes as the memory of her mother’s death and the horrible ache of her loss punched deep. The grief was still too fresh—never more than a memory away. “I loved her very much, and I miss her every day.”

Bess’s eyes softened with compassion. “I’m sorry for your loss. All of us here in the village know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

“Thank you.” Ellysetta wiped away her tears, but more just took their place. “I know she’s just a stranger to you, but may I—may I… share her with you?” She held out her hands, palms up.

Bessinita hesitated, then placed her hands in Ellysetta’s.

Ellysetta’s mouth curved in a trembling smile. “Her name was Lauriana. She married a man named Sol Baristani—my papa—a woodcarver and a wonderful man whom she loved very much. They have two other daughters. Twins named Lillis and Lorelle…”

Through the touch of their joined hands, she gave Bess the memories of her mother and their family and the deep love they had shared. Little scenes of their life that Ellysetta treasured. Mama laughing over some silly joke. Mama holding Ellie close… kneeling beside her bed to say evening devotions. Mama delivering a stern lecture when the twins got into some sort of mischief, and Papa teasing her out of a mood with kisses and a pot of tea by the fire. Mama could be stern and fierce, but, like the tairen defending her kits, that fierceness was her way of protecting her young—of protecting Ellie and the twins the way she hadn’t been able to protect her sister Bess.

When she was done, Bess had tears in her eyes as well, and a melancholy smile on her face. “Beylah vo. Thank you for giving me this gift.”

“Nei, it’s you who’ve given me the gift. Sometimes it’s hard to remember all the good in the world in the face of so much bad.” Ellysetta stepped back and reached for Rain’s hand, squeezing tight and letting the vast comfort of his love wash away her remnant sorrow. All this time, Mama’s sister had been alive… saved by the dahl’reisen… raised by them… loved by them. How could dahl’reisen walk the Shadowed Path yet still have wrought such obvious good?

The white-haired hearth witch cleared her throat. “There’s something else I have to show you and a favor I must ask of you, before I take you to Farel. Would you both, please, come this way?” Sheyl walked to the door Bess had come through. “We are a private people. Our survival has depended on our discretion and our ability to keep our existence a secret, but the time for that has passed.” Sheyl lifted the latch and pulled open the door to reveal a long, curving room that wound around the giant tree trunk.