Rowe had carried the glowing staff of Mistfall for six years without once being told what it actually did, only that it had chosen him — lifted itself from its resting place at the base of the falls the day his own teacher died, and simply waited on the cliff’s edge until Rowe worked up the nerve to pick it up.
Tonight, for the first time, it answered him back.
“You’ve never asked,” the staff said, its light pulsing gently in rhythm with his held breath. “Six years, and you’ve never once asked what I’m for.”
“I was afraid of the answer,” Rowe admitted, standing at the cliff’s edge above the roaring falls, mist rising around him like the whole jungle was breathing. “My teacher never explained. I thought maybe that meant I wasn’t supposed to know.”
“Or it meant she trusted you to find out honestly, rather than being told. I am not a weapon, though you’ve swung me like one twice. I am not a key, though you’ve searched for a lock I could fit. I am a question, Rowe — carried by whoever is brave enough to keep asking it instead of demanding an answer.”
“What question?”
“Whatever the jungle below needs asked next. You’ve been standing on this cliff for six years waiting for me to tell you your purpose. Perhaps it’s time you climbed down and asked the valley what it needs, instead of waiting for the staff to hand you meaning.”
Rowe looked down at the mist-wrapped jungle below, alive with a hundred small troubles he’d spent six years too cautious to go looking for, and understood, finally, what his teacher had actually trusted him to become. Not an answer. A question, carried carefully, into whatever needed asking next.