Page 10 of The Shadow Path
Carys couldn’t say Cadell’s face was beaming, but he looked less terrifying than usual. It was strange and somewhat disturbing.
She turned to Laura and made her hands into a heart. “I love you so much, and I owe you so much chocolate.”
“Yes you do, and also you’re the one who has to tell Kiersten that we’re taking a vacation without her,” Laura said. “I have paid time off and she just got back from Iceland, so you know she’s stuck here all summer.”
Carys turned to Cadell. “We’ll let Cadell tell her.”
Cadell’s expressed turned from mildly happy to grim.
“So who isyour Chahta trainer Cadell was talking about? Iniwe?”
Carys looked up at Duncan and smiled. “Jealous?”
“Maybe.” He glanced at her. “I already have to share too much of your attention with other people. I don’t want more.”
She snorted. “So antisocial.”
“I’ve a mind to be plenty social with you.”
They walked along the edge of the forest, the massive trees stretching up into the fog that rolled in from the ocean.
By the afternoon, the fog would burn off and the pearl-grey sky would emerge, but there would be no sun. There was no moon or stars. The Shadowlands—no matter what part of the earth they were in—resided in a dreamy half-world where sun and moon didn’t exist.
The only light that came from the sky was caused by the terrifying and mysterious thunderbirds that occasionally raced across the horizon, their shrieks so loud they made the trees sway, and the flap of their wings created light shows within the clouds.
The forest and the earth around her were alive in a way that Carys could see with new eyes, and she wondered if her mother had seen them the same way.
Tegan Morgan had talked to the trees. She’d sung to the deer and the birds. Carys had always thought her mother was a fanciful artist, but Cadell was convinced that Tegan wasn’t from the Brightlands at all. Carys’s dragon was convinced that the brilliant paintings Tegan had produced in her short life could only have come from seeing the Shadowlands of Briton.
“So.” Duncan spoke again. “Iniwe?”
“Yeah.” Carys grinned. “She’s amazing actually. She’s from… I guess it’s around Mississippi in the Brightlands. Archer. Javelin thrower. All-around badass.”
“Ah.” His face brightened. “So you’ve been learning how to be a nêrys ddraig from an American.”
She smiled. “No such thing as America here, Laird Duncan.”
He nodded. “Right.”
“But the dragons from Chahta…” Carys’s smile grew. “They’re stunning. I mean, they’re kind of like Cadell, but their bodies are a lot longer and they have all different colors. It’s been amazing to learn from her and Minko—that’s her dragon—all the different flying and battle styles, because obviously they don’t have coracles.” She turned to him. “Oh! And feathers. Chahta dragons have these beautiful feathers around their faces, and Iniwe says that the dragons in Aztlán have even more feathers, and of course that would make sense because the mythology and cult of the feathered serpent is so prominent in Mesoamerican history, so?—”
“Carys, you’re rambling.” Duncan stopped and leaned against a massive redwood. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced at her feet. She looked at the dark earth and the verdant-green moss that covered the rocks. She breathed in misty air that smelled of salt and cedar.
“I don’t know where I belong anymore.” She blinked away the tears that wanted to rise. “I don’t know where my family is from. At least, not my mother. If you’d asked me two years ago where my home was, I would say—without a moment of hesitation—that it was Baywood.”
Duncan turned and looked at the village in the distance. “They don’t treat you like a stranger.”
“I know.” She nodded. “They’re wonderful. As soon as Laura realized what Cadell was and what I was, she immediately went to Kere and told her about us. Offered both of us passage. Toldus that the forest was our home too.” She smiled a little bit. “The children all adore Cadell. He’s so good with them, and he takes them flying almost every day if their parents allow it.”
Duncan muttered, “He’s a very confusing dragon.”
“He misses his children.” Carys swallowed the lump in her throat. “And I’m the reason he’s missing them. Because I can’t face the fact that this place isn’t really my home anymore. That it can’t be.”
Duncan walked to her and lifted her chin, his callused finger rough on her skin, but it felt so good. So… real. “You’ll make your home where you want it to be, Carys Morgan. You have to be the one to choose your path. No one else.”
She looked into his brilliant green eyes. “And if I wanted to move to Scotland?”
