Fall Far from the Tree Preview

Chapter One: Rohesia

I'd lived only five winters the first time I saw an infant drowned.

Father's hand lay lightly on my shoulder as the horse jostled us slightly, shaking her head and whipping the tips of her silky black mane across my eyes. Father noticed the instinct that took over, the mere moment my eyelids closed despite how hard I'd fought to keep them open. "Watch, Rohesia. Burn the moment into your mind."

The shrieking woman held aloft by two soldiers kicked her legs, sending her skirt upward. I noticed the mud that collected along the hem, the strands of straw-colored hair that escaped her kerchief and swung wildly across her mouth. The hair blew with each shriek like curtains in the breeze, the skirt a gale that tore through a field of wheat, the woman the only source of movement beyond the scuffing hooves of the horses beside me.

"The child, Rohesia. Not the mother."

The soldier by the river tossed the tattered cloth that had wrapped the baby to the ground and held the crying infant as far out in front of him as his stocky arms would allow. One gauntlet supported the baby's head and neck, the other gripped the child's body loosely, and I saw one impossibly small leg kick upward vainly.

The horse tossed her mane again, whipping the black hair across my eyes, but I leaned sideways and turned my head away so I wouldn't close them. Father let go of the reins with one hand and ran his fingers through the horse's mane gently, his voice almost a whisper. "Settle down, Sunset." He placed the same fingers atop my head, patting my scalp as he tugged on Sunset's reins, leading her sideways so my gaze was forced again to fall upon the soldier and the infant at the side of the river. "Can you see? Can you see the child?"

I tried to speak, but my voice caught in my throat. I swallowed and forced the sound out, the word I knew he wanted to hear. "Yes." I did not say that Sunset's ears flickered across my view, sometimes blocking what the soldier held in his hands. I wasn't allowed to be comforted by such a thing.

"What do you see?"

I clenched my teeth. There could only be one answer. "Black hair. Golden skin." I took a deep breath. "The eyes..." I couldn't see them clearly from Sunset's back, but there could be no other reason Father would show me the scene.

"Black," Father finished for me. He pulled too hard on my hair, causing my scalp to twinge slightly. He didn't say the rest, what I knew he would only imply: Like yours. Hair, skin and eyes that you and no one else on this island shares. You and no one else but that baby.

"Please! Have mercy! She's just a child!" The woman still kicked, forcing the words out between shrieks.

From behind me, Father's composed voice answered the woman. "There is no mercy for traitors." He spoke louder. "Send the outsider back where it came from."

I couldn't blink, but part of me prayed that Sunset would whip her mane across my face to shield me, to comfort me. But I learned long ago there was no one who would ever comfort me. No one but Father. That's what he told me. That's what I knew.

The soldier bent to the river and placed the screaming bundle atop it. The current tore the bundle from his gauntlets, and I watched as the mess of black hair floated further and further away, as if the river were as eager to rid our isle of the child as Father was. For a moment, I thought perhaps it would make its way back home. The child was too far for me to hear its screaming. Perhaps it kept crying. Perhaps it would cry all the way home. But it was the kicking leg, the tiny kicking leg that brought me back to the truth of what I'd witnessed. Just as the baby reached the horizon, just as I was sure it would drown far beyond where I could ever see it, the tiny leg stopped and faltered, descended and vanished from view.