"Narrator Sofia Zervudachi strikes just the right tone - introspective but self-assured - as Rora tells her story" - AudioFile Magazine
A young, orphaned shapeshifter in a world that fears magic must risk everything if she hopes to save her only friend in Elayne Audrey Becker's Forestborn, first in a new fantasy series with a timeless feel.
TO BE BORN OF THE FOREST IS A GIFT AND A CURSE.
Rora is a shifter, as magical as all those born in the wilderness—and as feared. She uses her abilities to spy for the king, traveling under different guises and listening for signs of trouble.
When a magical illness surfaces across the kingdom, Rora uncovers a devastating truth: Finley, the young prince and her best friend, has caught it, too. His only hope is stardust, the rarest of magical elements, found deep in the wilderness where Rora grew up—and to which she swore never to return.
But for her only friend, Rora will face her past and brave the dark, magical wood, journeying with her brother and the obstinate, older prince who insists on coming. Together, they must survive sentient forests and creatures unknown, battling an ever-changing landscape while escaping human pursuers who want them dead. With illness gripping the kingdom and war on the horizon, Finley’s is not the only life that hangs in the balance.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Teen
Release date:
August 31, 2021
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
352
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I find her deep in the Old Forest, facedown in the dirt.
Sharp pain needles my palms where I’ve balled my fists so tight, the nails have carved half-moon marks into the skin. Snaking across the twig-strewn ground, gnarled roots press against my boots like a warning as I roll the young woman onto her back. Best to be sure.
No, she is certainly dead. Cold, stiff, and hungry like the rest; even with forest debris masking much of her shirt, the threadbare cotton dips in unmistakable rivulets across her bony frame. I swallow my disappointment and push her eyelids shut, wanting to spare her kin the sight of those empty, pointless eyes.
“Sorry,” I murmur, sitting back on my heels. “I’m guessing you didn’t deserve this.”
Around us, the trees lean inward and down with ominous uniformity, leaves and branches straining against their holds, drawn to the dead woman as if tethered by ropes. The sway, the humans call it. I ignore the prickling in my belly. They’ll straighten out soon enough when the magic leaves her body.
With a final nod, I push to my feet and wend my way back to the forest’s edge. It’s a close wood, with broad oaks in summer bloom crowding the grassy floor, their leafy canopy admitting shafts of sunlight that glitter like crystal chandeliers. All in all, too peaceful a setting for someone driven to madness to die alone. I breathe it in deep to savor the scent while I can, grateful that, for whatever reason, these trees never seem drawn to the magic in my own blood. I’ve had enough of vengeful wilderness to last a lifetime.
“Well?” Seraline asks, her knuckles nearly white where they clutch the hem of her shirt.
I shake my head. “Dead.”
Her shoulders sink. Though Seraline is sturdy as iron when she’s in her aunt’s tannery shaping leather into draft horses’ yokes, standing a determined two paces behind the tree line now, she seems shakeable as snow.
“Come on,” I say, looking to the stony town just across the open fields. “You’re going to be late.” I don’t ask if she plans to examine the body for herself. Seraline may have insisted on coming as a show of support, but our friendship has many limits, her discomfort with the dead and dying the least of them.
After a brief hesitation, Seraline falls into step at my side, sweeping her seeing stick across the ground in broad strokes. “Poor thing.”
I mumble my assent, my jaw clenched tight.
This time of year, the late summer air hangs heavy even in the early morning, enough that the back of my neck is already slick with sweat. The barley fields remain mercifully empty as we pick our way through the dusty rows, but still I plow forward with my head down and shoulders bent, half from habit and half spurred by the hour. Seraline isn’t the only one who’s running behind.
“Will you not come with us?” she asks, her head tipping to the side as we near the town. “Aren’t you due back in Roanin, anyway?”
“I can’t,” I reply, making it sound like an apology. I’m not really sure why we still play this game when we both know it’s futile. “I have a few things to take care of first.”
“Today of all days,” she snorts.
“You know how it is.” In truth, I’d give my right arm to stay away from the capital today. But there’s no help for it.
“Her husband deserves to know,” Seraline adds after a while. “The two of them were inseparable.”
“He will know. The trail wasn’t hard to follow.”
Seraline is always trying to persuade me to talk to the deceased’s families. She believes I have a softer manner than many in uniform, and once she even called me heartless for refusing. That time hurt the most. But it isn’t my job to report any deaths I uncover to next of kin. Only to the king. And it’s not like she’s stepping up to volunteer, anyway.
Briarwend is a humble farming town that stretches all of three streets, a collection of squared-off stone shops that deal in necessity rather than charm. Its weather-worn residents are the same. When I began seeking intel here four years ago, long days tending the surrounding fields made the people lazy and open over a couple of pints. Lately, they’re just hungry, poor soil and rising taxes leaving gaping holes that only tempers seem to fill.
Each night under dwindling oil lamplight and over stained, sticky tables, the pub dwellers deal out anger and judgment like tossing seeds across the earth. The battered forest walker I helped home last night is not the only magical person I’ve found bleeding on cobbled streets. The humans’ ire is growing fists.
Seraline’s family is fixing their horse’s harness to an old wooden cart when we reach their cottage home. Most locals have long since departed.
“Where have you been?” her mother demands, tightening the leather straps. The roan mare stamps a hoof, ears flicking nervously in my presence. “We should have left hours ago!”
“Lela needed my help. And you’re not ready, anyway.” Seraline shrugs.