Sarya woke before sunrise, though "woke" wasn't quite accurate since she had barely slept at all. She lay still for a while in the grey dark of her room, replaying the fraction of a second when the hidden bridge had held its shape long enough for her to see it — the trees, the water she'd only heard, the figure beneath the great tree who hadn't turned.
Not fear kept her awake. Something closer to recognition, the same feeling that had rooted her to the ground when she first heard the returned traveler's voice days ago. She understood, lying there, that something fundamental in her relationship to this whole unfolding mystery had changed.
For nearly two years she had been the one chasing answers, following threads back through history, asking questions of grass and notebooks and patient ancient men. Now, for the first time, she had the distinct and unsettling sense that the mystery was no longer ahead of her. It was waiting for her to arrive.
