“Clearly not! I wouldn’t ask anyone to go through the Red Forest at night unless they had a death wish.”
“Cal, you must go through it, or they might find you before you reach Cameron. They are tracking the area right now. I can sense it. You have so much magic, Cal. I don’t think the creatures will try to harm you. But if I’m wrong, this will come in handy.”
I stared at the knife in her hand with a grimace. A knife wouldn’t save me in the forest.
“If you are wrong, I’ll be dead, Grandmother.” She didn’t reply; she only handed me a leather belt. I stared at her and at it uncertainly until she gestured for me to put it on. I let out a breath and wrapped it around my hips and put the knife in the sheath.
“By the time you reach the Red Forest, it should be light, and you will be able to travel safely through. Everyone knows the creatures prefer to hunt at night.”
Trepidation ran down my spine. “They prefer. Maybe they will be too hungry to care what time of day it is,” I said, sarcasm, something much easier to focus on than fear. I slipped the cloak on to distract from my feelings and pulled up the hood. I swallowed nervously. “Do I pass as a man?”
Grandmother gave me the up and down and then frowned. “Not quite. Your breasts are too large. Maybe we should bind them? No, we don’t have time. Hopefully, no one looks more than a glance. Keep your head down.”
I let out a short, bitter laugh. This was a lost cause. And I couldn’t believe I was even contemplating it. I was supposed to ride away from the only home I had ever known on the words of my ageing grandmother? What if that seer who had told her I could open the seal was wrong? What if he wasn’t? I’d be endangering more than myself if I stayed. I couldn’t lose Grandmother. My stomach sank at the thought. She was the only person I had in my life, and I couldn’t bear to bring danger to her door.
“Keep your sleeves over the cuffs; they will create unnecessary attention. If they are seen, some might try to steal them like your darling mother. Stay on the road and be inconspicuous.” She gave me a nod. “Now get on your horse.”
I stalled as the seriousness of this rushed through me like icy water in my veins. It wasn’t as if I had anything here besides Grandmother. Truthfully, she was all I had. The neighborhood girls had grown up, gotten married, and already had children. And I only felt relief in the fact that I didn’t have to marry Braden, the blacksmith’s son. For some reason, I never had any desire for that. I was just waiting for something to happen in my life.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe I’d known this was coming all along.
“Grandmother . . .” I started in my last attempt to make her see reason.
“Cal, I wish it wasn’t so, but I’m telling you the truth. Get on your horse,” she ordered. Her eyes were full of determination, but I heard the crack in her voice.
I wrapped my arms around her slight but sturdy frame. An ache began to settle heavily in my chest, and I hadn’t even left yet.
“Promise you’ll come find me?” I asked, feeling like a little girl again when instead I was a woman who was supposed to be having her own children by now.
“I promise,” she whispered in my ear and gave me a squeeze. “You might not believe all this yet. But you will. Ask the land to show you your magic and it will.”
I nodded with suspicion, and let her go to look at Benji sitting by her side. “You’re a terrible guard dog,” I told him. He blinked his golden eyes at me. I didn’t pet him, because this wasn’t goodbye. That’s what I told myself; truthfully, it would have only made it harder to leave.
With a weight settling on my heart, I mounted my horse. I looked up at the Star of Truth and whispered for it to take me to Cameron City. The horse’s hooves hit the soft ground as I rode away from the comfort of our cottage.
I didn’t look back.
CHAPTER TWO
THE COLOR RED
I was on the outskirts of Alger, the city full of revelry even this late at night. Instead of riding on the hill out in the open, I rode close to town, the wooden buildings’ shadows covering me. We walked at a slow pace, in no hurry to get farther away from home.
As I passed the back of a tavern, the side door flew open, and I heard a feminine scream. My heart jumped, my pulse racing as I watched a woman run out the door and down the alley, her red curls flying untamed behind her like a cape.
A chill went down my spine as I watched the woman glance behind her, her blue dress fluttering in sync with her hair. I stopped my horse in horror as a dark-haired man reached her. He wrapped his sleeveless arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground.
She fought him and squealed until he pushed her against the wall, put his face in her neck and his hand up her skirts.
Then she giggled.
I let out a deep breath of relief and willed my heartbeat to slow down. She had only been playing a game. Thank Alyria, because I couldn’t handle watching a man rape a woman without even making it out of Alger. That would only be a bad omen for the rest of this blasted trip.
I made it past the city with no other distractions. No men followed me; no one even looked at the shadowed rider on the outskirts of town.
The breeze against my face helped to settle the nausea in my stomach. The forest trees creaked as fireflies the size of a fist buzzed by. The soft sounds of an owl hooting and the song of the cicadas served as peace to my inner turmoil; the moon’s light a guide in the dark night.