Starside novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Orchard of Lanterns

The second trial was an orchard, and every tree in it was hung with lanterns.

They were small and round, with white flames that didn't flicker, and they bent the branches low so we had to duck beneath them.

"Don't touch the glass," Dain said, walking a pace to my left. "Each lantern shows you someone. Look if you must. Don't reach."

"Why?"

"Because of what answers when you do."

Thirty-one of us had come this far, Tilda told me in a whisper.

She had counted the fallen stars on her fingers and run out of fingers.

She walked close on my right, with her silent Warden behind her.

Ahead of us, other challengers drifted among the trees, and each one had stopped at a lantern and gone quiet.

A man in a sailor's coat stood stroking the glass with one finger and murmuring a woman's name.

"Tilda," I said. "Eyes on the ground."

"I can't," she whispered. "It's my mother. She's in the kitchen, and she's well."

Her voice was shaking.

I took her by the shoulders and turned her away from it.

"She's not there," I told her. "It's only a light. Walk."

She walked.

I did not follow my own advice.

The lantern in front of me hung at the height of my face, and in it a young man stood in a forge with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He was twenty-four and tall and laughing, with soot on his chin.

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