Free The Farwalker's Quest by Joni Sensel

last son. And then I think he felt he had to make all the other tests hard, too.”
    Ariel looked up from her bread crust. “Did Madeleine fail, too?”
    Not sure what she wanted to hear, Zeke gnawed his lip. “No. She came back just before dark. She spent all day looking and calling. I even saw her trying to talk to the horse to figure out where he’d gone. She captured only two birds, but another flew by itself to her coop.”
    Ariel gazed at him sadly, trying to imagine Madeleine’s day. It was tempting to want company in failure, but she would never wish her own roiling shame on somebody else, least of all gentle Madeleine. Ariel managed a shallow smile.
    â€œShe’s lucky,” she said. “I think her test was the hardest. It’s not your fault, though, Zeke. I just—” She shuddered. She couldn’t bear to revisit it yet again. “I goofed up something awful,” she said instead. “I guess this is the second bad thing that was going to happen.”
    Zeke sighed. “I’m not too sure about that.”
    Unable to imagine anything worse, Ariel just blinked at him and let blankness fill her head. It was so much easier than thinking about what he’d just said.
    â€œWhat was buried under the tree, anyway?” she asked, changing the subject.
    Zeke shared the high points of his test. He hadn’t bothered trying to catch the sycamore’s attention. Instead he’d walked to his maple, sung her a few songs he thought she would like, and asked if she could help him. Although even trees have enemies and allegiances, they rarely hold secrets from one another.After an hour or so, the maple gave him an answer. He returned to tell his father that the thing in the ground was a spoon with a bootlace tied around it. Jeshua dug it up. That was that.
    He made it sound easy. Ariel knew that it wasn’t. Having already done well enough to be a Tree-Singer himself, Zeke would now start as his father’s apprentice. She hugged him and cried. In the part of her that still could feel at all, she was honestly pleased. Yet his success also lit up her failure.
    The second person to shoulder some of Ariel’s pain, the next morning, was Bellam Storian. He didn’t use the word “sorry.” He just came by to ask how she was.
    â€œI feel somewhat responsible for what happened yesterday,” he added. “All that fuss about the telling dart was quite a distraction. I should never have mentioned that two of my students had found it.”
    â€œWhy did you, then?” Ariel grumbled.
    â€œAriel, what manners!” Her mother clicked her tongue.
    Ariel shrugged one shoulder. She thought she had nothing left to lose. Why be polite?
    â€œThat’s all right.” Storian whisked his hands together slowly. He gave Ariel a lopsided look—part amusement, part chagrin. “You haven’t had much experience with Finders, have you? No one but them understands how they work. But those who eat regularly have to be very good at their trade.” He paused, letting Ariel decide that a Finder as big as Elbert must be skilled indeed.
    He cleared his throat, stared out the window, and continued. “You heard them say what they sought—not the dart, but its receiver. They would have found out sooner or later.I thought sooner was better. I thought then they’d just leave. It never occurred to me—” He faltered. “Well, I guess I was wrong.”
    â€œNonsense,” said Luna. “You told the truth and should make no apology for that. I can’t see how it changed yesterday. Some things just don’t turn out as we’d like.”
    Ariel choked on a protest. When she’d first opened her eyes that morning, her waking brain had forgotten, just for an instant, that she was a Fool. Memory had crashed down upon her like a wave crushing a seashell.
    She and Storian now swapped a look of regret. “I’ll