News of Mara and the map moved faster than she did. It threaded through the market and the chapel and into the hush of kitchens. People gathered by the road to watch her enter the trees, to see if she would emerge as others had — gaunt, emptied, or never at all.
Let’s start with the obvious. does not appear in any standard dictionary. The most probable scenario is that it is a keyboard-smash or auto-correct failure combining three separate intended phrases: be grove cursed new
There were fifty of them. They stood with their backs to the trunk, their eyes open but unseeing. They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. They looked like statues carved from wax. News of Mara and the map moved faster than she did