The land cracks open, giant boulders marking the murky descent into Blackfoot forest. My knotted hair, crusted with ice whips against my face. My legs tremble and my dry throat hurts when I swallow.
I crouch down, cut a piece of snow with my knife to suck on, then check my position in relation to the Bright Star which resides faithfully over Jade Sword peak. From the direction the men have taken, my guess is they are returning to the river where they have set up camp. I shave off a second lump of snow and hold it to my swollen cheekbone and bruised temple. My arm throbs, but my head is worse. It pounds like I'm being struck over and over.
In my mind, I call up those last moments with Ma and Pa so that Kel knows Pa's alive and I'm coming. The mind-world ripples with his answer: running through the forest, hearing the startling bark of the wolf dog, peering down between snow-tipped pine needles while I racked my bow to shoot. I feel a small glimmer of relief. He is conscious and not wrapped so tight into himself with fear I cannot reach him.
I sheath my knife, telling myself I've gained enough on them now to carry on at a good walking pace. But the truth is I can't continue jogging. The adrenaline drained, fatigue has settled over me so that my muscles and bones ache.
Trees. Nothing but pine and spruce and fir. They grow taller, denser, blocking the starlight. I trip and stumble many times, unable to see the ground, and every time, it's harder to get up.
To fill the bleakness in my heart and the rolling blackness before my eyes, I consider whether Kel was trying to tell me something with his memories of the wolf dog. If the men have not given the hound nightshade to subdue its pain, nor killed it, my chances of cutting Kel free and the two of us escaping without waking the hunters are zero. And I cannot take on either of the men. Even uninjured it would be pure idiocy to try.
But if I cannot steal Kel from their camp, how long can I follow in the shadows? With my injured arm I cannot build shelter, or wield fire with my fire board. Besides, I could not risk them seeing the smoke.
I strain to make out the trees in the darkness. I am beginning to lose my sense of direction and time. The thick canopy of pine branches obliterates the sky, but even if the heavens could guide me, I wouldn't stop to look up - I would never get going again.
I reach for the soft, feathery shape of Kel's mind to orientate myself. Luminously bright and as gentle as blowballs. I have always loved the feel of it. Light and airy and bright. So bright! My wandering thoughts snap to attention. So bright because he has stopped moving and I am not far from him. So bright, because the bounty hunters' minds are sunless and dull in comparison, though I can sense them again. The effects of the mist berries wane.
They have reached their camp. It takes every fragment of will I possess not to collapse to my knees and rest for a few minutes. Sit down and you will fall asleep and freeze to death. Even bundled in my one fur, if I sleep without shelter or fire, I will die from the cold.
I slump against a tree, pack pressing into the muscle knots that riddle my shoulders. I am exhausted and I can't focus. My mind feels like dirty sludge. After a brief pause, I force my eyes open, shake off my pack carefully so as not to pull on my arm sling, and fumble inside for the skin with the chickweed and white root. I take a root and chew on it while thinking.
Staying outside all night, totally exposed is not an option. Nor is returning to Ma and Pa without Kel. Could I find my way back to our old camp? It must be less than an hours walk from here. Yesterday we dug banks from the snowdrifts which had formed in the clearing. I could burrow into one. But it would be too far to sense Kel's mind. And if the men woke and set off before me, I would lose them.
Have I passed a snowdrift recently? My mind seems foggy as I try to remember any slopes in the land where the wind might have blown in enough snow to dig out a man-sized hole. I mentally retrace my steps. Apart from dips and bumps the forest has been flat and dense for at least twenty minutes.
I crouch and sag forward, leaning my forehead against the pine trunk. Bark scratches my skin. I'm too tired to cry, but my distress at being so close to Kel, yet so far, is unbearable.
I wonder how he is holding up. It has been some time since he last attempted to communicate through the mind-world. Perhaps he is sleeping. Mentally, I reach for the luminous softness of his mind.
Entering a mind is not the same as seeing memories that echo in the now-time. It requires concentration and energy, and finding what you want is an art I am unpracticed in. There are minds that drag you under like the great surf of an ocean, minds that disorientate as though you're walking through woods but whatever direction you take, you end up back where you started. Kel's mind is as beautiful and light inside as out. I slip in easily, searching close to the edges for a recent memory.
He sits crouched near the fire, eyes closed, shivering. Smoke blows in his face and chokes his lungs but he's cold and probably too scared to move. He hunches inward as the crunch of footsteps encroaches.
'Please, please,' he whispers.
For a moment nothing happens, then the man standing beside him wraps a blanket over his shoulders. Still Kel's eyes remain shut. My chest clenches with sadness and anger. He must be beyond terrified!
'Come,' the man says. 'It is warmer in the tent.' He lifts my brother and carries him away from the heat of the fire. Stiff hide brushes Kel's face, then he is placed on a bed of furs. 'Did you eat enough?'
Kel nods. There is a rustle and a wet nose rubs against Kel's neck.
'Her name is Trix. She'll keep you company,' the man says. 'Now try to sleep. The worst is over. You will not be hurt.'
I return to my shivering body and the dark forest in a daze. It is four years since I last mind-travelled. There has never been any reason to enter my brother's mind, and I stopped foraging in Ma and Pa's memories when it began to feel like an invasion of their privacy, and made it harder to accept the everyday shortcomings of our meagre life in Blackfoot forest. I forgot how confusing it is, how you lose your sense of time and place.
I chew on another white root, perplexed by the hunter's behaviour. The man who showed my brother kindness did not have the gruff voice of the brute who snatched him. It must have been the one with the mind shaped like walls inside walls. The one whose physical and mental strength make him the clear leader of the two.
A plan forms in my head, a crazy plan, but now I am sure the dog is conscious, it is all I can think of to stay with Kel and not die in the process: become their captive too. An indiscernible Uru Ana of my sixteen years, not yet enslaved in the tundra goldmines, would fetch a high price on the black market. The Carucans may despise our talents and believe our shadow powers doom us so we may never be re-born after the long-sleep and never escape the memories of the past, but that hasn't stopped them from using us to fulfil their own greedy ends. The men will want me for the gold I can get them. And in the three or four days it will take us to reach one of the towns, I will find a way for Kel and I to escape.
In the vast emptiness of the forest it is hard to believe there is anyone nearby until the smell of smoke drifts on the crisp air followed by a whiff of fish and garlic. A hundred footsteps from their camp, flames flicker between the trees, swelling out in an orange pool across the snow. I try to walk steadily and evenly, hood pulled over my head. The man who was kind to Kel is also the man who stabbed Pa. I hesitate. Perhaps my thoughts are too muddled.
Barking resounds across the clearing. They know I'm here. I steel myself, send up a desperate prayer to my mother's Gods that I will not be harmed, that this is not a mistake, and enter the glade. As their camp comes into view I see the men outside the large skin tent, gathering their weapons. They stretch arrows in their bows. I gulp, a frissons of terror like a sunburst explodes in my chest.
Both hunters are stripped down to their cotton shirts and deer skin trousers, despite the below-freezing temperature. The one with a sleeve rolled up and a dressing on his forearm has dark crisscross markings covering his bald head and face. At first I think some kind of hanging net casts strange shadows, but then I realise the marks are made with staining ink. His appearance is fearsome, but it's the other one I'm worried about.
Tall, broad, unflinching. The tattoos on his face make his lifeless eyes appear slanted and distort his crooked nose and thin mouth to resemble a beast of the forest: a bear or wolf. Shoulder length, wavy hair, folds into his furs to heighten the impression.
'What do you want, boy?' he asks. It is the voice of the man who carried Kel though there is no softness in it now.
Stay strong, Mirra. You did not imagine the way he treated Kel. He is not what he appears to be.
I raise my good arm slowly, showing an empty hand. Then I pull back my hood. The beast-faced hunter does not react to my age or gender though I'm not sure I would recognise emotion in his strange face.
His companion stops scanning the shadows and turns. 'Is that a girl?' he growls, his low voice husky with lust. He steps forward, lips rising in a gruesome smile. A shudder slips down my spine and my whole body shakes.
Thank you so much for reading! All comments, critiques and suggestions welcome... If you enjoyed it and would like to show your support, please press the star. Thank you!