Morfindel had always been different. Ever since her uncle Belegond, Belegorn’s father, returned from the South twenty-five years ago with one leg less than he had started out with and his infant niece in his arms, she had been distant from the others in the town. Perhaps it was her darker skin, while the other Mantatharins, born and raised in the “sunless” North, had pale complexions. While she wasn’t as dark as the southern Kemeneans, she never fit in with the pale Northerners.

Maybe it was because she pinned up her skirt when she worked outside, showing her dark legs to the knee, while other women, their skirts whipping in the wind around their ankles, watched open-mouthed.

Maybe it was because she never knew her parents. Everyone in Nentathar came from families who had lived there for generations. Belegorn’s mother Eleniel could name her ancestors back centuries. Morfindel was told her parents had gone into Teir En-Daglen in a boat on the River Siranim and never come out.

Every time she looked toward the forest, its shadows seemed to whisper the fate of her parents. A chill would shake her from her shoulders to feet, and she would tell herself again that she would never enter the forest.

She had been born fearing the forest, and she knew she would until she died.