Chapter 4
This Is Rose
Little Rose couldn’t have been more than six. The scrap bucket was almost bigger than she was, and she moved it as if it were an extension of her body. Every piece of food and broken bowl went into the bucket as fast as Hamal could blink, and he realized he was just about to lose her to the corner again.
“Rosy!” he called, sliding off the bench. He sat down on the floor—close, but not too close, to her.
She froze, head down, one small hand gripping the bucket’s edge.
“Rosy, my name is Hamal. I’m a healer,” he said in his kindest voice. “Are you sick? Do you not feel well? I would like to put my hand on your shoulder, if that is all right?”
It was not all right. The thin shoulder jerked away before he could even get his arm lifted.
“Wait, Rosy! Don’t go away. I’m not going to hurt you—”
Her head came up. She stared at him with red eyes.
Hamal froze, his arm outstretched, his fingers inches from her shoulder.
The color in her eyes seemed to sway like fire. For a moment, he thought he could see actual flames in her irises, and his mind paused on that point: She has fire in her eyes.
She blinked.
Her eyes were brown.
Hamal nearly reached up to rub his face, but at the last moment, he didn’t, suspecting that if he looked away even for an instant, she would vanish back to her corner. He leaned forward slowly, repeating, “I am a healer. I am going to make you feel better. You don’t need to do anything. I’m not going to hurt you. Just sit there, just like that. Good girl. You’re a very good girl. I can tell.”
His fingertips touched her shoulder lightly. One little touch.
Emotion swamped him, to the point that he nearly gasped. The rush was so swift and so strong that he almost pulled his hand away. Her bones were weeping. That’s what it felt like as they told him how all the people she once had known had died or left her without a reason. She was alone now, and she was scared. Her bones couldn’t tell him what she feared, but over and over again, they said she was afraid, she had lost everything, and she was alone. Bones were the history keepers of the body, and that was her history—that she had lost everyone and she was all by herself.
And her blood was sick.
He tilted his head as his gift examined her blood and the strange thing growing in her chest, near her heart. A tumor, but an unusual one. Hamal felt like he had stepped into a conversation that had been going on for a long time. Her blood knew about the tumor and knew it shouldn’t be there. It had a lot to say about it. This should not be. Something is wrong. Her blood kept repeating itself.
What an odd thing, Hamal thought. No wonder the innkeeper said she was sickly.
As quickly as he could, he removed the growth. It dissolved at the touch of his gift, and he rebuilt the inside of the child’s chest, so her bones and her heart and all the other pieces of her could operate the way they were supposed to. He washed her blood so it could think and act properly, and he also found an old break in her wrist that needed healing. The body had tried to heal by itself, but it had done a poor job. So he fixed the bone too.
All in all, healing her small body took about one minute. She sat quietly for him the entire time, staring at him.
“There you are,” he said and pulled his hand away. “Now you will feel better.”
Not a sound. Just dark eyes that studied him. He decided he must have imagined the fire eyes from before.
Rosy picked up her bucket and scrambled back to her corner, where she situated herself in the shadows and watched him through the table legs. Hamal stared at her from across the room until his eyes began to sting. They were on a mission for the king. They had a job to do, but how could they possibly leave this child here, in this terrible place with an innkeeper who didn’t care about her? He wanted to tell Rosy’s blood everything was all right now. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to be alone anymore.
He ended up sitting on the floor for twice as long as it had taken to heal her. Then he sighed deeply and returned to the table he shared with his friends.
As he slid onto the bench, he told the others, “She had a growth in her chest. It was trying to kill her and poison her blood, but she is all better now. She was in a lot of pain. I don’t know for how long.”
No one said anything.
Hamal realized how quiet the table was, and he looked up to find his companions watching him. Cale, Masly, Gregory, and Rhyan all stared at him.
“What is it?” he asked.
Masly spoke first. “Did you not see what we saw?”
“With Rosy?” Then he straightened up excitedly. “You mean the fire eyes? Aye, I saw the fire eyes!”
Gregory reached into one of his many pockets and removed a book, thumbing through the pages.
Lord Rhyan cleared his throat. “Why would a little child have fire in her eyes? That can happen with a flamemaker, but this child is not a flamemaker. I would have been able to feel her gift, and I did not. A child without fire, yet she somehow has fire in her eyes?” He grimaced. “I have never heard of such a thing, and I would like to think, considering my gift, that I’ve heard of most things involving fire—”
“Here we are,” Gregory announced and slapped his book on the table, spreading out the pages with his fingers. “The child is a gift called an oracle.”
Everyone leaned forward.
Gregory’s book didn’t have any words. It had pictures instead. Staring back at them was a sketch of a beautiful lady with long hair and red eyes. The entire picture was black and white, except for the eyes. The artist had carefully filled them with crimson paint. They looked as if they were made of fire.
Hamal took a quick breath in surprise. Many years had passed since he’d seen this face, and he wasn’t expecting to see it on this journey, and the sight of it made him smile. “I say, Cale—”
Gregory didn’t seem to hear him. “This is Hellan,” the reader stated. “She was the last oracle. Two hundred years ago, she helped bring an end to the Barrow Wars.”
“An oracle,” Masly repeated. His silver eyes narrowed. “I keep discovering gifts I didn’t know existed. It’s quite vexing.” He glanced at Hamal, but there was no malice in his gaze.
“Yes, sir. It is an incredibly rare gift that does not follow the bloodline. It appears at random, a quality it shares with the seer gift, but unlike the seer gift, the oracle does not simply bypass multiple generations in a row. It is genuinely random. A decision made by the gods.”
Masly frowned. “You’re certain she isn’t just a thiever? A thiever could deceive this way.”
A flicker of annoyance went across Gregory’s face, but quickly his expression returned to one of calm. “Yes, sir. With the exception of the flamemaker gift, the oracle is the only gift that produces color saturation in the eyes to the extent that the irises appear to be made of fire. It is not actual fire, as it would be with flamemakers, but it has the appearance of fire. The oracle is related to the seer gift. It is a type of seer, but its realm is vastly different. With only one exception, all Court Gifts are marked by their eyes. The seer has silver. The prophet has gold.” He paused. “And the oracle, also a Court Gift, has fire—but only when the gift is in operation.”
“What’s the possibility we would walk into an inn in a miserable town in the North Territory and find one of the Court Gifts?” Rhyan murmured.
Gregory, who knew many things, replied, “None. The gift is ridiculously rare—even more so than that of sage. Every historian who has studied the gifts in depth has an opinion on oracles, but their rarity is not questioned. In fact, they all agree that the oracle gift is impossible to find.”
“Well,” Masly said, “you’re saying we found one, so impossible seems like a strong word.”
Again, faint annoyance twitched through Gregory’s expression. He bowed his head politely. “They say it is impossible to find—unless one is meant to find it. If an oracle stumbles across your path, it is purposefully done. It is the will of the gods.”
“Lovely,” Lord Rhyan muttered and sat back on the bench. “Just what we need on this venture. An interfering god.”
Gregory smiled slightly as delight filled his eyes. “An interfering god is not always a detriment.” He flipped to the next page in his book of pictures.
When he saw yet another familiar face staring back at him, Hamal started laughing. “You brought my grandfather on the trip with us! I didn’t realize you were going to bring him—who else do you have hidden in the folds of your cloak?”
Though his eyes still twinkled, Gregory did not laugh. “Your grandfather acted as a guide for Hellan, the last oracle. He escorted her to our city, where she played a significant role in stopping the Barrow Wars. Oracles require wisdom because their gift enables them to see what the gods or a specific god is doing. They are then able to mirror that god’s actions. It is vital for the oracle to mirror a god who is interested in the welfare of men.” Gregory’s look grew pointed. “Hamal, what do you know about the oracle gift?”
Again, everyone around the table gave Hamal their attention.
“Well,” Hamal said, thinking about it, “I know they’re always girls. And I know she can pick the god she wants to follow. And you’re right—it is very important for an oracle to choose the right god. If you do what the wrong one is doing, it’s bad. Wars and plagues and death—it’s possible for bad gods to do very bad things that hurt people, and the oracle might help them. But if the oracle follows the right god, she can do what the right god is doing, and she can bring life instead of death. If you’re an oracle, you have to know who the right god is.”
“Which is why your grandfather supported Hellan and participated with her gift,” Gregory said, nodding in affirmation. “He gave her wisdom. He was her wisdom, in a sense.”
The only born nobleman among them, Rhyan leaned back on the bench and gave the girl in the corner another brief look. He didn’t sound pleased as he said, “We can’t overlook the presence of an oracle, especially not when we’re here on the king’s behalf. We’ll have to turn around and take her back to the city.”
No one answered. Hamal looked at the others’ faces and decided they all thought Rhyan was right, but they didn’t like it.
Masly glanced through the room. In a low voice, he said, “A lot of learning a little girl would get in a place like this. And none of it good. If this place teaches this child about a god, it surely would not be a god we desire in King’s Barrow.”
“She’s afraid,” Hamal said. “I’ve never seen the movements of gods, but I imagine it could be scary. Especially if you were all alone and needed wisdom and didn’t have any. She’s terrified. Her bones are all marked up with her fears.”
“We have to take her to the king,” Rhyan repeated.
“We are on a specific timeline,” Cale answered. “Oracle or not, I don’t believe Cedrick would have us turn around and go home.”
“We could take her with us,” Hamal suggested.
All four heads swung toward him.
“Hamal,” Cale began. “You know where we’re going. You know what we are likely to confront when we get there. It is no place for a little girl, even if she has a powerful gift.”
Rhyan agreed. “We can’t leave her here, but neither can we take her to the coast. I have no desire to give the king bad news about an oracle. Yes, Sire, we found one, but we accidentally dropped her down a hole in the ground.”
“Well, we don’t have to take her all the way into the mine,” Hamal said.
“Lower your voice,” Masly ordered, voice sharp.
Hamal did as he was told, this time whispering, “We don’t have to take her all the way into that one place. We could just take her to a better place, and she could wait for us there. This is a bad place. We can’t leave a god’s oracle in a place like this, so maybe we can just leave her at a different place instead.”
Cale studied Hamal for a long time.
Hamal began to twitch on the bench.
Eventually Cale sighed and said, “Very well,” which drew quick looks from the other three men. Looks he ignored. “If that is wisdom. But I foresee that our gracious host will smell the scent of gold and refuse to part with the girl immediately. He will demand a price.”
A moment passed as Hamal tried to figure out what Cale meant.
Rhyan muttered a word Hamal had never said in his life. The lord glared at the innkeeper, who stood laughing with a table of patrons on the other side of the room.
The innkeeper wanted money? Why did he want money for Rosy? “But she’s healed now. He doesn’t need money for her anymore.”
“He will call it compensation due to a lack of coin and being forced to care for her himself.” Cale looked at Hamal steadily. “The king gave you a purse for this journey. How much will wisdom offer a cruel man to compensate for the care—the obviously poor care—he has given this child?”
Hamal considered the situation with care, thinking about gods and his grandfather and Hellan, who had once knitted him a sweater and told him how handsome he looked. He wore the sweater every winter for seventy years (he wasn’t certain, but he thought it was that long) and only gave it up when the elbows were gone and a mouse used it for a nest.
But more than those things, Hamal thought about something Gregory had not said.
Oracles appeared only in times of war. How was this a time of war? King’s Barrow was at peace.
I don’t understand, he thought, looking over at Rosy.
She stared at him.
In the shadows, he saw two pools of flame, flickering.
– H –
Author’s note: Happy Independence Day! 250 years! 🎉
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.