Under the Willow Root

Chapter 50

I wake up to the smell of roasting meat. Pretty Girl is already awake and begging Luca for scraps. He sits beside a small fire and turns some kind of bird on a spit over the flames while he explains to her exactly why she can't have any. Kirit trots up to Luca with a fat rodent in his mouth, which he drops at Luca's feet.

"Good man," Luca says, gently tugging Kirit's ear. "See, Pretty? You have to help if you want some."

I get up and cautiously approach. This is my Luca--kind, gentle, smiling, and nothing like the hard-eyed stranger from last night. I open my mouth to say...something. Anything. But Luca is already on his feet and turning away.

"I have another snare I want to check," he says, seemingly to air. "That tree cat needs to be skinned. Pretty Girl, come with me."

Tree cat? I look down at the rodent Kirit brought and see that it looks kind of like a brown raccoon or a really chubby ferret. It doesn't look like any animal I've ever seen, but squirrels and chipmunks were pretty much the only wildlife I came into contact with in my old life, so what do I know? What I know is that it's fuzzy and round and utterly adorable. It could be singing and dancing in a Disney movie if it weren't for the little dots of blood congealed on its nose. And Luca wants me to--dismantle it, I guess.

Well, fine. I'm hungry and it's making my palms sweat, so I'll do it. At least, I'll go find Bard and try to get him to do it. If he won't...well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I have to just keep moving and try to ignore the unreasonable panic that sets in whenever my stomach rumbles.

Bard agrees to skin the tree cat, but he makes me watch so I'll know how to do it next time. It's just gross enough to dull my appetite for a few minutes. By the time we're done, Luca has come back and taken the bird off the spit. He puts it on a slab of rock with a "go ahead" gesture that could be meant for me or Bard or both of us.

I shoot an irritable glance at Luca, but he keeps his eyes on the piece of meat in his hand. Apparently we're just going to ignore each other as well as all those little nuggets of conversation fodder we've been racking up. His complete betrayal of my trust, the revelation of my dirty little (enormous) secret, his brother's murder, his sister's "feeling" that I'm important, my hopefully imminent departure from this world...totally inconsequential. We can just sit on those for the rest of trip. That'll be way better.

Sadra and Ismeni join us at the fire and we share a sullen, silent meal. Afterward, I leave to find a place to pee and do my exercises. Ismeni and Luca make a fuss at first about the delay, but Bard shuts them down with just a few words. I bet he had some sort of ritual like mine before he got the Light-thing--the Pall--taken out of his head. I wonder what it was.

We set off late in the afternoon. Bard says we'll go until midnight, then continue on again at dawn. I don't know which is worse--knowing or not knowing. I eventually decide I'm glad Bard told us. Just going and going and not knowing what will happen reminds me too much of those awful weeks in the Cage.

In fact, everything about our little jaunt so far brings back painful, scary memories. Especially being dirty. Ever since Isemeni had me bathed the first time, I've been obsessive about being clean. But now I'm not clean at all and the invisible crust of dried sweat on my neck is going to make my head explode.

"Why is the country called Kingsgarden?" I ask Sadra, trying to distract myself. "Is it because of the city names? The City of Roses, the City of Lilies, the City of Lilacs, the City of Poppies..."

"Or the other way around," Sadra says with a shrug. "But they're not all flowers, you know. I once heard of a town called Cucumber."

"Really?" I ask with a giggle.