Forest Born Read Online Free PDF Page A

join in, let her voice rise up to the treetops and crack the sky. She nearly said, “Never mind. I’ll stay and everything will be normal.” Maybe it was for the best that she struggled to speak in crowds.
    What good was she to her family broken? She could not keep pretending to be the same Rin, the never-fail Rin, the helpful Rin, not when she was about to break apart like burned-through wood. The trees had changed for some reason, and she was no longer welcome in the Forest.
    So at last Rin shouldered her pack, met her mother’s eyes, and said under the hubbub, “Bye, Ma.”
    Rin turned and walked away before she could cry. The protests silenced behind her. Razo and Dasha soon outpaced Rin, her steps slowing. She needed to shut herself in that moment. Hurting was the least she could do for the offense of leaving her Ma.
    She glanced back once, and a few members of her family lifted their hands in halfhearted waves. Her mother had not moved, her hands still clasped together, her weight on one foot, her face nearly expressionless. But when she caught Rin’s eyes she sprinted forward, and her blue headwrap slipped, setting free loads of kinky black and white hair. Rin waited, her heart squeezing painfully.
    Ma seized Rin and squeezed her, pulling in her arms and her head, as if afraid the girl would fall apart. The whole world became Ma’s warmth, her hands, the smell of juniper, the thud of her heart.
    She released Rin to look her in the eyes, anxiously smoothing her daughter’s dark hair away from her brow, straightening her tunic. “I never thought you’d leave. Of course you might, but I just never thought . . . Razo’s always had half his mind elsewhere, so that boy coming and going feels as natural as the turning of the seasons. But not my Rinna-girl, not my baby girl.” She took Rin’s hands, rubbing them between her own. “You’ve not been yourself of late. And I know if you’d wanted me to know why, you would have talked to me about it long ago, so I don’t ask. But I tell you this—go out there and find whatever’s floated out of you and then come back to us right quick. Some folk is made for wandering and being in the open world, but you’re a Forest girl, Rinna. I can’t help thinking that the longer you’re away from your family and your trees, the more you just might wither away. So come on back and be my sweet-eyed tender girl home in her Forest again. Right quick. You hear me?”
    “I will, Ma. I’m sorry. I’m really—”
    Rin shut up, her voice hooked to tears now. Her mother was right about the withering. She already felt dried-up and half-dead, and it hurt so much she actually looked to see if her limbs were splitting.
    “I’ll miss you every moment until then. My baby girl, my peaceful Rin. Go on and catch up with Razo, I won’t keep you. Just you know I’ll be hoping for you each day.”
    Rin nodded. She had not intended to run, but when she turned her back on her mother, her body wanted to collapse, and running seemed the only way to stay upright. Dasha glanced at her when she caught up with them, but she did not ask why Rin had been fleeing as if for her life. They walked in silence for a time. And Rin did not look back again.
    It was good she was going. It was. Living with her family, letting them believe she was her ma’s shadow, that was a lie, and the kind that would build into a storm to blow her down. It was good that she was leaving, so why did she feel like a straw doll that had lost all its straw?
    They traveled for two days, the hum and click of the Forest sweeping past Rin in a blur of green. Emerging from under the canopy to join a main road, Rin had to gasp at a sky that grew bigger and bigger till she thought it might swallow the whole world. Eventually she had to admit the sky was greater than the Forest, a thing she had never before imagined.
    An escort waited at the city gates with two spare horses for Lady Dasha and her chief personal guard. Rin rode on