by Raine Thomas
Somehow, she found the strength to stay conscious. It was almost as though she could hear the cantankerous male from her dream ordering her to shrug it off. Strangely, that helped her feel less alone…even if it probably meant she was losing her mind.
As her breathing steadied, she knelt and cupped her hands. She brought forth fresh water with her Kynzesti power and drank until her thirst was slaked.
Then she picked up her stick and got to her feet to scan her new environment. The trees were fairly thick here. There was a notable rise to the ground ahead, as well. It appeared she would be walking uphill for a while. Not bothering to hold back another moan, she adjusted the skirt around her neck and took one of her nunchucks from its holster to hold in her free hand. Although she didn’t sense anything around her and couldn’t hear anything nearby, she didn’t want to proceed without caution.
Lord, she was hungry. And exhausted. And hurting.
And getting rather stinky again.
Swallowing hard against her self-pity and misery, she started walking. Her gaze moved side to side and up and down as she sought something to eat or something to hone her weapon so that she could hunt for food. The trees were quite tall here, bearing very few low branches.
The fruit and leaves she came across in the shaded woods were either poisonous or had been well foraged by animals getting ready to hibernate for the approaching winter. Still, she managed to find a few elderberries and ate them, even though she ran the risk of getting sick by doing so. They were so bitter in their raw state that she couldn’t stomach more than a handful. She figured it was better than nothing.
Pine needles and leaves blanketed the ground, making it impossible for her to move quietly. Every step crunched. After another thirty minutes of steady walking, she came across some more shrubbery that caught her interest. She moved closer to examine the leaves.
She was almost positive it was a slayer bush. She hadn’t ever actually seen one, but her Aunt Olivia had taught her about them. The Scultresti had created the bushes to help control the overabundant peryton population. The half-stag, half-bird creatures that had transitioned with the Estilorians to this plane had become a nuisance on the mainland. Because Estilorians couldn’t eat peryton meat and the creatures had the ability to reproduce, their numbers grew out of control. They invaded Estilorian gardens all around the mainland and ate flowers, shrubs and vegetables. They trampled vegetation that other animals relied on to survive and even slaughtered pets and livestock if they got hungry enough.
To help counter the problem, the Scultresti created the slayer bushes. Crafted to look, smell and taste like the snake plant, the peryton’s favorite meal, slayer bushes had long, creeping, vertical leaves. Unlike their natural counterpart, however, the slayer bush had light green-tipped leaves. Perytons couldn’t detect the subtle difference in coloration because their color vision was limited, but it was enough of a warning to knowledgeable Estilorians.
Once the plant was eaten, the difference made itself known. The slayer bush’s leaves were designed to chemically transform once in the peryton’s system, ultimately sterilizing the creature. One side effect of the plant in its natural state was that it turned into metal if it came into contact with a combination of water and animal-based material. Estilorians and animals on the mainland had been known to lose appendages when being too careless around slayer grass.
Despite the slightly gruesome nature of the plant, it brought a wide smile to Tate’s face. She put her nunchuck in its holster and set the stick on the ground. Then she removed her skirt-cloak and used it to protect her hand so she could gather some leaves from the bush. Once she had her stash safely within the layers of the skirt, she bundled it all up and tucked it under her arm. Then she picked the stick back up and continued walking.
Pangs of continuing hunger and cramps that she’d induced by eating the berries all but doubled her over by the time she finally reached a stream. She hadn’t come across any other edible leaves or berries, and thanks to the season, there had been little active wildlife, something that worried her quite a bit. The sight of the stream actually brought tears to her eyes.
Hurrying up to it, she was thrilled to notice that the deeper parts away from the shore held a number of darting, silvery fish.
“Okay, Tate,” she said with a nod. “Time to prove you are your mother’s daughter.”
For the first eighteen years of her existence, her mother had grown up on the human plane in Kodiak Island, Alaska. Although she’d been a tribal dancer, she’d also had a weekend job to earn some extra money. She’d worked at the local market preparing fresh fish for sale, becoming rather handy with a fillet knife. And her mother’s adopted family had been in the fishing industry, as well, so she had occasionally ventured out on boats to participate in fishing expeditions. Tate and her cousins and siblings had gone fishing several times with her mother as their guide. In the process, Tate had learned quite a bit about the practice.
Drawing on her usually bottomless stores of energy, Tate sat on the bank of the stream as the sunlight slowly faded from brilliant gold to a more subdued amber and laid her skirt beside her. After shaking the slayer plant’s leaves onto the ground, she used her teeth to start a tear in one of the layers of the skirt’s fabric and then ripped off a strip that ran the circumference of the garment. The length of fabric she had left was decent enough. She tied one end of it to the stick and let the rest dangle.
Setting that aside, she turned to the leaves she had left on the ground. Slayer plants were quite unpredictable. If she wasn’t careful, she could lose a finger. After some serious internal debate, she decided she didn’t have much choice. Using her hunger as motivation, she gathered her resolve and took one of the leaves as well as her fishing pole over to the edge of the stream.
Once there, she settled the fishing pole between her feet, keeping the fabric line nearby, and then used the edge of the slayer bush leaf to slice her finger. As soon as her blood touched it, half of the plant’s properties were activated. Carefully curling the part of the leaf that contained her blood so it resembled a hook, she leaned over the water and lowered the leaf into it.
The plant’s fibers hardened to metal as soon as the water hit them. Tate’s eyes again filled, and tears trailed down her cheeks. She said a silent and passionate thank-you to her Aunt Olivia for forcing her to pay attention to the many lessons she’d taught about plant life on the Estilorian plane. If it hadn’t been for her, Tate was certain she wouldn’t have been able to survive this.
Excited about her progress, she removed the newly created hook from the water and tied it to the length of fabric. Then she set the pole aside and wondered what she could possibly use for bait.
After a bit of consideration, she started digging in the mud of the river bank. Hopefully she could find some worms, or—totally gross—bugs that would work well. In truth, she had no idea what kind of fish were in this stream and what would best lure them. She wasn’t even sure if they were edible, but she certainly wasn’t going to dwell on that thought.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself as her initial digging resulted in nothing more than a heap of mud next to her knees. “Just one stinking worm!”
Her digging grew in desperation as her stomach continued its relentless assault and the fish enjoyed their mindless, taunting swimming just feet away. She moved along the bank, looking both in and out of the water for bait. How was it possible that a thriving stream yielded her absolutely nothing for her efforts?
As the sky began to fade to indigo and a chill crept into the air, her movements became frantic. Her thoughts grew more disjointed. Primal sounds left her throat. She had to get food. She wouldn’t starve to death out here in the middle of holy-light-knew-where and prove her family right about her lack of abilities. She could do this.
No, she couldn’t, she decided twenty minutes later as she sank to the muddy bank next to her fishing pole and sobbed in defeat. She was an epic failure who deserved to—
/> A voice interrupted her meltdown.
“Having a rough time of it, are you?”
Chapter 18
Zachariah watched the female jerk in surprise and turn to look at him. Her face was lined with sweat, mud and tears, somehow making her all the more appealing. He’d be damned if he could understand that reaction on his part, but there it was.
He wasn’t actually there. What she saw was a reflection of himself that he managed to project to her through meditation. It was an effort he had highly doubted would work, so his surprise at being there was almost as great as hers.
The fact that it had worked was a relief, as well. His unexpected connection to her had proven highly distracting during his journey with Nyx that afternoon. The godforsaken chest pains had caused him to stop more than once in an effort to ward them off. He knew that the pains weren’t really his, but they sure as hell felt like they were.
And then there was the hunger. At first, he’d addressed the ravenous need to eat in the traditional way: with food. He’d set up a small camp with Nyx and ate a meal of fruit, nuts and dried venison that normally would have satisfied him. Upon finishing the meal, he’d set back off without a thought.
Within minutes, the gnawing sense of hunger was at him again. And he finally understood that he was experiencing her hunger rather than his own.
Still, he could have borne those phantom physical ailments. He was no stranger to pain and he could easily tell himself that these aches weren’t real. No, it was the nearly crippling feelings she projected to him that literally brought him to his knees.
The fear. The loneliness. The desperation. The hopelessness.
He hadn’t understood it at first. All he knew was that even the idea of moving one more step felt like too much. Only when he consciously opened the bizarre connection to the female in order to better understand what was happening did he learn that she was experiencing what she thought of as emotions.
Unable to take it anymore, he’d found the spot he thought would work for his home for the next short while and sat in the quiet. Nyx settled across from him, laying her long-snouted head on the ground just feet from him. He’d used her diamond eyes as his focal point and allowed himself to slip into the meditative state. With the feathers and beads in his hand to strengthen the connection, he soon found himself standing on the edge of a stream and watching the female flounder on the bank.
He’d watched her without speaking at first, trying to learn more about her. The fact that she was wallowing in the mud on all fours took him by surprise. For some reason that he’d never quite understood, most females disliked getting dirty.
Her vibrant hair bounced around her head as she moved along the bank. When she shifted and turned in search of another spot to dig, he noticed a mark on the back of her neck. It was a sun with a deep blue-green circle at the center and six different-colored flames coming out of it. This drew his curiosity, as did the deep blue-green cinquefoil symbols he had noticed around her eyes that indicated she had a second power. The five-leafed blossoms gave her an even more feminine appearance. The fact that the symbols around her eyes and on her neck didn’t match puzzled him.
She was diligent in her search for whatever it was she sought, he would give her that. When she finally gave up and the significant emotion she experienced also surged through him, he decided to make himself known.
Anything to stop it.
“Oh, great,” she said in an aggrieved voice when she heard and spotted him. “Not only do I have a breakdown, but I have some uncaring stranger around to witness it. Could this possibly be any worse?”
“You have a highly developed sense of the dramatic,” he responded after a moment.
She gaped at him. “Drama? Oh, you want drama?”
She stormed to her feet, all signs of defeat fading from her face as anger replaced it. He watched without expression as she approached. He told himself he wasn’t affected by the impatient swipes that she gave the tears on her cheeks or the resulting streaks of mud that marred her skin and made her look even more vulnerable.
“I have no idea where I am,” she said heatedly as she neared him. “I have no clothes besides the ones I’m wearing, which are filthy and essentially rags. I have no food, no map, no healing supplies. I was stabbed through the chest or something and I’m in constant pain. And to top it all off, I’ve lost my mind and I’m now communicating with a hallucination.”
“You have a very strange manner of speech,” he couldn’t help but observe. When her lip curled on a retort, he went on, “And why is it you cannot link to your Lekwuesti for your needs? Can you not fly to a platform and make your way to the stronghold for aid?”
“If I could do any of those things, don’t you think I’d have done so by now?” she asked with an impatient waving of her arms. “Geez—for a hallucination, you’re not very bright.”
“I am not a hallucination.”
She reached out as if to touch him and her hand passed right through him. Snorting, she shook her head and mumbled something unintelligible as she walked back to the bank of the stream.
“I am a projection,” he clarified, following her closer to the water. “What you see is merely a—what is that?”
She had lifted a pole that contained a long length of fabric that ended in what appeared to be a metal hook.
“It’s my absolute failure to catch any fish, is what it is,” she snapped.
“Where did you get a hook?” he wondered.
After issuing an annoyed sigh, she replied, “Slayer grass. For the fat lot of good it’s done me. I can’t find a thing for bait.”
He looked at the slayer grass leaves on the ground, not having noticed them before. “Slayer grass?” He considered that for a moment. “Well…that is bloody brilliant, actually. You know, you could—”
“You could try not to sound so surprised, Sparky,” she interrupted crossly as she straightened the fabric on the fishing pole.
“Now I am ‘Sparky?’” he asked, growing irritated despite himself. He was trying to aid her and she was being difficult.
“Yeah,” she said, giving him a tart look. “It’s called sarcasm, Sparky. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”
Clenching his jaw briefly, he replied, “I know very well what sarcasm is, Beautiful.” He deliberately accented the last word, then regretted it when he watched the harsh statement hit her while she was already down.
“Touché,” she said in a quiet voice, all signs of anger gone. “Look, you’re right, whoever you are. I’m having a rough time. Just let me have my personal collapse in private, okay?”
It was a request he couldn’t ignore, as it too closely aligned with how he’d feel in her place. Before he honored her request, though, he had to offer her something. He’d never get any peace, otherwise.
“You have all the lure you need right here,” he said. When she looked over at him, he pointed a finger to his head.
Then he made himself leave her.
“‘You have all the lure you need right here,’” Tate mimicked snarkily when her phantom stalker vanished.
She brought a hand to her head in an exaggerated gesture to further mock him. When she did, she knocked a feather loose. Staring at it as it floated to the ground, her temper instantly abated.
“Damn,” she said as realization hit her. “I’ll have to eat the hugest pile of crow after this.”
She got to work removing the shiniest beads and a few feathers from her hair. Her mother had told her about some of the lures she and her family used on the human plane when fishing for trout. That memory made her think that could be the kind of fish in this stream. Even if that wasn’t the case, these fish could still be attracted to a similar lure.
One of the lures her mom described, called an in-line spinner, consisted of some combination of metal, shiny beads and feathering. Carefully crafting a piece of the green slayer grass so that it was rounded and contained a hole at one end, Tate again sliced herself with it and used the
blood and water to create a small oval to serve as a weight and dangler. Making a piece of thread from the fabric of her skirt, she threaded two shiny beads through it, then the metal disc, and finally a dark feather that she frayed out at the tip. Hiding the hook as much as possible within the lure, she was ready to give it a try.
Her boots were already pretty trashed, but she took them off and set them on the bank. Her socks went next. Then she rolled up her pants so they were above her knees. Finally, she waded into the water so that she was closer to the teeming fish, hoping there were no leeches.
She cast her line. Although she knew fishing required patience, that was a resource of which she was in short supply. So she silently issued prayers for dumb and hungry fish.
When her line caught, indicating a bite, she let out a little whimper and fought the urge to yank the pole and line out of the water. As she eased the tension a bit, the line caught harder, and she knew she had one hooked. Unable to help herself, she jumped a bit in feverish delight even as she backed toward the bank, bringing her catch along with her.
At long, long last, she pulled her prize onto the shore. The trout flopped around on the muddy bank in a desperate bid to get back into the water. Tate yanked mercilessly on the line to get it all the way on shore and far enough from the water that it couldn’t possibly get back in.
The mere thought of taking more time before eating when her meal was right in front of her made her want to scream in frustration. But her mother had warned her that raw trout might contain parasites that could harm her. Eating something only to have it kill her because of her own impatience was decidedly stupid.
