The Dragons of Noor Read Free

running after the wind-blown children; mothers and fathers crying out. One of the children was Tymm’s friend Cilla, a beautiful girl with red curls and a singing laugh. Hanna and Taunier had fought the gusts, climbed a tree, tried to grab Cilla’s flailing skirt as she blew higher and higher. In the end she and the other two were no more than three black dots sweeping east over the sea.
    “Listen to me. The wind came after children and no one else, Tymm. It scoured through the crowd, knocking everyone but those three young ones flat, and it swept them away. You have to stay inside!”
    Tymm resisted a little longer, but when she tried to pick him up and carry him back, he said, “I’m no baby!” His footfall was heavy as they made their way back along the rim of the gorge. If Tymm hadn’t come along, she could have found the deyas in another ten minutes. He was
always
getting in the way, always …
    A little breeze stirred her hair. Hanna trembled. No one knew where the Wind-taken children had gone. Notthe grieving parents nor the rest of the terrified villagers who’d sworn to keep their young children indoors or tethered to their sides if they had to step out of the house.
    “Why didn’t you know that bad wind was going to come ahead of time?” Tymm asked sulkily. “Great-Uncle Enoch told me you can see the future in your dreamwalks.”
    “He told you that?” Hanna gripped his hand tighter. “I can, sometimes, but not always.” She crushed a mushroom underfoot. It had upset her, too. She’d not felt any sense of danger when she’d gone to Brim with Da and Taunier that day. All she’d cared about was whether she could sit next to Taunier in the cart, close enough for her arm to touch his shoulder.
    Taunier was sixteen and strong. He smiled little and talked even less. Still he never called her witch-girl like the other boys in town, never teased her for her strange miscolored eyes. That in itself would have warmed her to him, even without his tall muscled form, his smooth brown skin, dark eyes, and the slightly crooked nose that made his handsome face all the more real. Miles had boasted that he’d been the one who had given him thatcrooked nose in a fight, but she wasn’t sure it was true. Boys down in Brim liked a good fight, too, especially with the outsiders like Miles and Taunier.
    That day in the market, she’d been so preoccupied with delicious thoughts of riding home next to Taunier that she’d had no inkling of the storm. What good were dreamwalks if they didn’t warn her of danger?
    “Wait a moment, Tymm.” She stooped to uproot a few handfuls of long grass. She’d weave a sturdy tether, tie Tymm to her arm, and keep him close to her side.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Making a rope.”
    “I can do that better than you.” Tymm swiped the grass. He would not have been so greedy if he knew what it was for. Still, what good would grass be in such a strong wind? She sighed.
    They were nearly to the fork in the path that led back down to their cottage when the midday mist thinned enough for them to see the water below. Hanna paused and pointed down to the valley floor, at the little island poking out of the water in the center of Garth Lake.
    “Can you see those giant trees?” she asked.
    Tymm glanced up from his braid. “They’re all uglyand burnt up,” he observed, his fingers moving nimbly as he spoke.
    Hanna didn’t blame Tymm for dismissing them. She’d felt the same way the first time the Falconer had brought her here. She smiled at her ignorance now. The Waytrees were likely more than a thousand years old. There were few trees like them in all of Noor, wise enough to bridge the way to the magical world of Oth. More Waytrees grew on the mountain, but none so old as these.
    Only the ancient Waytrees housed deya spirits, who held the wisdom of the two worlds and helped the trees bind Noor and Oth together. The deyas’ magic was strong. She needed their help to find the