Yuila is greeted as she returns home, and Edvard has questions.
If you’re just joining this story, you may want to start from the beginning. Read into the world of shadows and mirrors.
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It took two hours to tend to breakfast and wrap Edvard's injuries and break camp. Yuila had been full of advice, and gratitude, and been helpful to the point of becoming a nuisance. When they finally got back on the road it was mid-morning, and the day was heating up.
Mina walked beside the gelding with Edvard on the horse's other side, practicing not limping. Yuila was behind, tugging at Makka when he lagged, despite the fact that he was tied to Neito's saddle.
Mina's foot was nearly healed, only an occasional pain when she stepped on an uneven part or rock in the single trek of road. It was no more than a line now, a wide footpath leading across the warm stretch of grassland. The palm trees had given way to grass with only spurts of tall ferny clumps along the way.
She looked over to Edvard, observing his profile carefully. Whatever she thought she'd saw the day before was gone, and she wondered if she'd saw anything at all. Maybe a latent twinge of something, but nothing now. Nothing she could remember.
They mounted the animals an hour later and spent the next three hours inching closer to the blue and white mountains in the distance. Yuila had grown cautious as they closed the gap.
"Is that snow?" the girl asked, pulling Makka up to Neito's saddle. Her purple eyes moved over the range in the distance.
Edvard nodded. "But we're not going over the top. According to the map, there's a pass much lower, along," he pointed to a ridge of brown and green running diagonally through the blue-green trees, "those trees. It should only take a day and night."
"We have to be in the mountains, in the snow, at dark?" Yuila gripped the mule's reins tighter.
"It's the lowest place to cross. If we take the pass you probably took when you followed your father out," he said accusingly, "It'll take us four more days."
"Oh."
Mina moved her hand from Edvard's ribs in front of her to rest on the material at his side. She wasn't sure where to hang on anymore, but was quite certain she wasn't ready to ride freehand. "How're you feeling?"
He nodded, his hand taking hers tighter from his side to his waist. Her fingers latched onto the shirt there as she watched Yuila's eyes follow the movement. For a moment the younger girl studied Edvard, here eyes narrowing, and then going to Mina.
The older girl returned her look, and Yuila looked back to the mule in front of her.
Mina dearly wished the young Crone had developed her mind abilities at a later time.
Yuila’s gaze was moving along the thick line of trees that skirted the mountain base. She nodded as if counting them, and then turned excitedly in her saddle to Mina and Edvard. “I see it! I know it! We can go there instead!”
Edvard frowned at her. “See what?”
She pointed to the trees, finger jerking. “That’s the way we took out! When my father led the group out, we took that way.” She beamed at them. “We won’t have to go over. It’s a shortcut.”
Now Edvard was interested. “A shortcut?” He studied the trees in the distance. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
Yuila’s lips curled in a pout. “I wasn’t sure if I could find it. I didn’t see it from this way; only the other side, when we left.”
It made sense to Mina, and slowly, Edvard nodded in understanding.
“Can you lead us there?” he asked.
Yuila nodded quickly, smiling widely.
Mina felt Edvard’s posture straighten. Cutting out several days of travel sounded very good—if it was possible.
His gaze rested on the yet-to-be-seen shortcut. “Show us where, Yuila.”
For once, Yuila’s insights were well-founded. Within three hours, they had reached the base of the mountain’s treed border and discovered the sliver of break in them. The sound of rushing water sifted through the trail leading through the nearly jungle-like trail.
Edvard kept the lead, but Yuila followed at Neito’s side on the mule, her smile only half as bright now.
The girl didn’t have to speak her mind and Mina needed no mind reading abilities to guess what she was thinking.
Homecoming had arrived.
Now they would see indeed how warm Edvard’s welcome would be, and how much Yuila had been missed.
The pass took only a few hours to meander through the tropical, buggy crack in the mountain. It led left, then made a severe turn to the right, and then, like waking after an unsettling dream, the sound of the ocean grew louder and the trees and vegetation fell back.
A sandy white beach opened before them, the aquamarine waters lapping at the peach-colored pebbles as the tide played and rolled.
Mina stopped breathing at the sight.
The shock brought Edvard to a halt, too.
Both Neito and Makka stopped without command, ears pricking forward at the smells and brightness of the water and beach.
“We’re here,” Yuila breathed, smiling as the sun washed over her face, making her hair especially luminescent. “We’re home.”
For a long moment they just watched the water of the forbidden Crone lands, enjoying the free feeling of the air that held water that wasn’t rain or fog. Mina looked to the far right where boulders surrounded the shoreline, raising several stories overhead like a natural enclosure. Above the stony bank, plumes of smoke wafted into the air from the other side, streaming finely as from chimney fires.
Edvard had seen them, too. He looked to Yuila. “Is that your home?”
She nodded. “Just on the other side. There’s a passage through the boulders.”
Mina felt Edvard’s back tense as his gaze went over the rocky embankment. She felt he was going to say something when they both realized that part of the gray stones seemed to be moving. A moment of watching made them see it more clearly.
The stones weren’t moving, but a man on a gray horse was walking toward them, his gray clothing and cloak camouflaging him against the boulders. He moved steadily, facing them, becoming more visible.
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