Shadow Weaver (Back on Wattpad 2020!)

Chapter 3 (Part II)

The night poachers snatched Asmine from the bed we shared, I had woken terrified and gone to lie with my parents. I told them I'd had a nightmare. Ma let me crawl in beside her and cuddled me back to sleep. But now as I lie in the darkness, pain pulsing in my skull, I realise I didn't dream the ominous presence surrounding our tent all those years ago. I had sensed the men who stole my four-year-old friend. The mist berries cloak minds, but once a person is close enough, faint impressions reach through the veil, vague and distorted, like rocks or bushes under a thick winter blanket.

Not so faint in the case of the bounty hunter who attacked Pa and whose rage was a blinding flash of blood and fists on my inner-eye. I've never encountered a mind like it: crystal clear when it comes, yet so well protected.

Pa! I roll onto my side coughing up the snow I've been suffocating in. Colours sparkle at the edge of my vision. It's as though I'm seven again and my glitter-eyes are back, but I can actually see the dazzle in my own irises. I grow aware of the weight of the knife handle in my hand and close my fist around it.

'Pa?'

'Mirra!' My mother's voice is a soft, startled cry. I try to tilt my head, but it sends electric light shooting through my skull. Footsteps approach. My mother collapses beside me. 'Oh Mirra, you're alive!' she sobs. The neck of her lute dangles on her hip. Bits of wood and gut strings hang from the smashed concave body.

'Where's Kel?' I croak. 'Where's Pa?'

'Gone, both gone.'

I force myself to sit up. Ma is more of a hinder than a help, picking and pulling at the fur of my parka. Blood trickles down my arm. I slide a hand down the neckline of my inner and outer parkas, beneath my cotton shirt, and press the injury. I am lucky. The arrow that hit me glided the skin's surface and the cold has constricted the bleeding. I reach for my father's presence, knowing he cannot have fallen far.

Timelessness, wildness, vastness. His mind is a harsh and beautiful winter land; it reminds me of a herd of giant deer prancing through a river, shaking themselves off on the other side, blooms of spray like diamonds raining down on Ederiss.

'Ma,' I say. She moans. 'Ma...' In the snow-reflected starlight, her hair glows pale gold as it whips out behind her. 'Pa's alive and I sense Kel. He's not far. We need to help Pa. Fetch my pack.' She raises her head. I can only make out the edges of her cheek-bones, the curve of her high forehead. She tilts a little, revealing the glassy sheen in her eyes. She nods, but it's as though she's not here, drowning in the shock. Up on her feet, she sways, searches about, returns with a heavy load.

'In the inside pocket, wrapped in skin, are the cotton pads.' I shout to be heard above the blow and howl of the wind.

'Cotton pads?' She rummages frantically. She has no idea what I'm talking about. Every year since I was twelve and old enough to hunt, Pa has left us from anywhere between ten days to two weeks. He travels to the closest boarder settlements to trade the deer skin boots and coats Ma makes, in exchange for metal pans, medicine, grain and gifts for us all. Ma doesn't care much about the rest of what he brings back, as long as she has her threads and needles for sewing, a pretty comb or a new necklace.

The seconds slip away, but I don't hurry her. She is shaken and panicked enough as it is. Finally, she waves the skin-wrapped wad in front of me.

'That's it.' I use my good arm to push to my feet, hold still for a moment, waiting for the spinning to settle. 'Follow me,' I say. We plough through snow and wind, exposed on this forlorn plateau, each step compounding the throbbing in my body. 'Don't let go of those!' I look back and notice by some miracle, she is also dragging my rucksack.