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Side A – Yasgrid

Yasgrid wasn’t melting down. The surge of worry which had crashed over her was perfectly reasonable. Somehow, in all the months she and Nia had been together, in all the months Yasgrid had hunted Troubles, in all the months she’d spent becoming a part of the Darkwood and an avatar for its magics, in all that time it had never once occurred to her that she could have been the one responsible for switching Nia into another body so that Nia’s body would be available for someone else to use.

Someone who had been Troubled in exactly the manner which produced magical warping monsters.

Someone who was supposed to be smart enough to notice blatantly obvious things like that.

Unless of course that someone was benefiting from the arrangement so much that she chose to remain willfully ignorant of what she had done.

“See that expression there?” Kyra said, speaking to Margrada who was seated in the one of chairs on the far side of Kyra’s bed from Yasgrid.

“Hmm, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that before,” Margrada said, narrowing her eyes.

“When you knew Yasgrid in…Frost Haven is it?” Kyra asked.

“Frost Harbor, and no, Yasgrid and I weren’t particularly close.” Margrada turned to inspect Nia. “I was thinking of this one. See, like right now. You can see the same tension in their jawlines.”

“How interesting. Do you know I hadn’t really picked up on the likeness between them before?” It was Kyra’s turn to glance back and forth between Nia and Yasgrid, regarding them each with an expression which was frankly warmer and more kindly than Yasgrid felt she deserved.

Glancing at Nia though, Yasgrid saw her old face holding the ghost of very similar waves of worry to the ones she was feeling.

“Should we have them spit out what they’re thinking?” Margrada asked. “Because I’m guessing we both know what it is.”

“They should too,” Kyra said.

“Is it that obvious?” Nia asked. “I mean, how did I miss it till now if it was that obvious?”

“I think it is, and I think I just didn’t want to see it,” Yasgrid confessed, not that confession banished her fears.

“Nope. No. No talking in generalities,” Kyra said. “Yasgrid, why don’t you tell Nia exactly what you think happened.”

Yasgrid paled at the suggestion, but rallied what little courage seemed to remain to her. She glanced at Nia before she started speaking and saw a look of impending dread fixed over Nia’s features like a mask.

Best to get it done with clean and quick, Yasgrid thought.

“I think what happened to us is my fault. I’m holding onto the hearts of the Troubles I hunted, and the only way I could be doing that is if I had a Trouble locked inside me. We’ve seen what the hearts can do, and there’s nothing else we’ve seen that can explain what happened to us.”

It made so much sense when she laid it all out.

So why was Nia shaking her head in disbelief?

Side B – Nia

Yasgrid had clearly lost her mind. Stonelings didn’t have Troubles. Not the kind with a capital “T”.

Nia bit back the first few things that came to her mouth. She knew she needed to get her mind in there, but the urge to shake Yasgrid until all the stupid thoughts in her head were replaced with her usual smart ones was all but overpowering.

After a few moments and silent hand gestures to buy time, Nia forced herself too find a few motes of calm and got her mouth and brain connected once more.

“So. Did it occur to you that you could not have been the source of the Trouble you were just talking about?” Nia asked and was rewarded with a look of confusion on Yasgrid’s face which said, no, Yasgrid had not thought of that.

“Let’s accept your idea that a Trouble had to be involved,” Nia went on. “As a Stoneling, even as a Shatter Drummer, let’s say even if your were Osdora, or Margrada here, do you think you could have played a song that made something like a Trouble?”

Yasgrid began to respond but her words hit the brick wall of acknowledging that, no, Stonelings were not in fact capable of making Troubles. Not even with Shatter Drums. Or at least not Stonelings like Osdora or Margrada who had never encountered such a thing until Nia introduced them to the Darkwood. 

“Part of the essential nature of Trouble is that they’re part of the Darkwood,” Nia said. “They are, or I guess were, a fix the Elven gods put in place to deal with the magic Elves have natural access to, right?”

“Not entirely correct, but close enough,” Kyra answered when Yasgrid’s only response was a frown.

“My point is, that, sure, a Trouble probably did this, but you weren’t the one who was able to make the Trouble,” Nia said and then deflated a bit. “You just inherited the body of the one who did. But I never…”

“Ah, stop!” Kyra said. “You’re right about Troubles being creatures of the Darkwood, but you’re missing something just as obvious as what Yasgrid missed.”

Nia narrowed her eyes.

She was guilty of this.

She knew it. She had to be.

Didn’t she?

“What?” She shouldn’t have been annoyed but she wasn’t happy to learn that everything was her fault, and she couldn’t hold that back entirely.

“What did you just say about Troubles? That they’re intrinsically part of the Darkwood. The Darkwood which rather famously is not found of its constituents leaving its borders?” Kyra glanced from Nia to Margrada as though that was all that needed to be said.

And, apparently, it was.

“A Trouble couldn’t have reached Frost Harbor,” Margrada said as comprehension dawned behind her eyes.

Nia was shocked less by Kyra’s words which held a revelation she hadn’t quite grasped yet and more by the surprise she saw on Margrada’s face.

“It wasn’t a Trouble at all?” Yasgrid asked.

“It’s never been a Trouble,” Kyra said. “Nothing you’ve done has been about using the power of a Trouble.”

“It’s their hearts, the Trouble’s hearts you said. That’s what you’ve sheltered. That’s what did the magic with the Shatter Drums,” Margrada said.

“It’s been surprising that Nia can play as well as she can, right? And even more surprising what Yasgrid has done as the Bearer,” Kyra asked. “But why should it be surprising when they have a heart that beats like a Shatter Drum and sings with the melody of the wood?”

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