He looked down at the stream for a moment before deciding the dragon had disappeared again, leaving him.
He slipped along the edge of the stretch of earth before stepping into the daylight. The sun was bright overhead and a blue sky greeted him. It was rare to have days like this. On a day like this, snow would melt in the village. Streets would become slick with ice, and yet, there would be great celebration. There was something peaceful and relaxing about skies like this.
He searched for any sign of the dragon but found nothing.
Jason checked his bow and quiver and started up the slope. It didn’t take long before he reached the outer edge of the village.
He paused, thinking he’d failed his family. He’d come out to hunt and hadn’t managed to find anything. That meant returning was a mistake. There was enough food left from the last rabbit he’d caught, but they needed to stay on top of things, otherwise they would run out of meat. He didn’t want his family to go hungry. There had been enough days where they’d not had nearly enough food to eat, and he didn’t want to go through that again.
He paused first at his home. The room was warm, and he thought that his mother or sister had been burning far too much dung, but found neither of them here.
Why would they waste heat if they weren’t even here?
He checked the back room, but his mother wasn’t there. There was no sign of anyone, and yet, he thought that they must be somewhere.
Jason left his bow and quiver and headed back out.
On a day like this, there were often more people out in the streets than usual. It didn’t surprise him to come across a group of kids racing through the streets, chasing each other, coats flapping behind them as if unmindful of the cold. They probably didn’t mind the cold. There wasn’t much to it, at least not today.
He meandered, searching for where his mother and sister would’ve gone, but didn’t find any sign of them. He nodded to the few familiar faces, and paused at the local butcher.
Master Erich had been friendlier to Jason since he’d been more successful in hunting, but he still wasn’t willing to trade with him openly. Jason wasn’t a part of the hunting party that would head out of the village, taking the back slope, and because of that, he was treated differently. He wasn’t large enough to go with them, and most felt that he was useless. He’d tried hunting in that direction in the past, but he had to travel farther than the others, and finding a place that wasn’t already overhunted was difficult. It was part of the reason he went down the front face of the mountain. At least that way, anything he might find would be his. It made it more difficult to hunt, but it also left him alone, which was the way he liked it.
He reached the central part of the village, the festival grounds, and paused. There wasn’t much here for him, either, yet he was left with memories. This was where he had worked with his father, learning how to manage the cannon, a cannon he would never be allowed to fire on his own. That wasn’t in his future, though the longer he was around the dragon, the more he wondered what was really going to be in his future.
A familiar face loomed into view. Tessa was lovely. She had dark hair, and she styled it differently than usual today, her black hair tucked underneath a dragonskin hat.
She smiled as he neared, watching him. “Jason. I don’t see you nearly as often as I once did.”
He smiled at her. There was a time when he and Tessa were much closer. He didn’t think his father’s death was the reason they had grown apart, and didn’t blame her for his father’s loss, not the way he once would have. Still, there was a distance now between them.
“I’ve been hunting.”
“Successfully, from what I hear.”
He nodded. “Mostly. It takes me away, but for my sister and my mother…”
Tessa’s face clouded. “And how is your mother?”
“About the same. She doesn’t change much these days.”
“I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do…”
Jason nodded. There was a strange awkwardness between them that hadn’t been there before, but he didn’t blame her for that. He had changed as much as she had after his father’s death.
He still hadn’t mustered the courage to question her and find out what she knew about his father’s death, though he didn’t think she had any significant insight. She had been terrified. All she remembered, at least reportedly, was flames.
It had been Therin. Jason knew that now. If not necessarily Therin directly, then Dragon Souls.
“Thank you.”
She looked as if she wanted to say more, before glancing past him and smiling. “I really should be going.”
Jason nodded, and he moved past her along the street. He heard a familiar voice and headed toward it. He found Kayla talking quickly to two others. When he approached, she cut off, turning toward him.
“What happened to you?”
She grabbed him, checking him over before releasing him. She was almost the same height as him, a typical height for women in the village, and she had deep blue eyes that matched everyone else—other than Jason.
“I got stuck out of the village last night.”
She took a step toward him, and her long bearskin jacket, which draped almost to the snow, dragged through it. “Angus said you decided to stay out. You went after your bow, of all things.”
“I need my bow to hunt.”
“How can you hunt if you lose your life?”
“I didn’t lose my life.”
“You could have.”
Jason shrugged. “I could have many times, but I haven’t.”
Kayla shook her head, and her tight braid swung beneath her hat. “Why do you make us worry about you like that?”
“I wasn’t trying to make you worry about me, I was just—”
“You were just going after your bow.”
Jason looked past her, realizing whom she’d been talking to. He nodded to Terrence and Selena, smiling at them. They were a few years older than him, and newly married. Selena came from one of the smaller villages farther down the back face of the mountain, and he didn’t know her as well as he knew Terrence. But then, Jason didn’t know Terrence all that well, either.
“Like I said. I need my bow to hunt.”
“What happens if you freeze? How will we know what happened to you?”
“I wouldn’t have gone after it if I thought I was in any danger.”
“But the storm last night was one of the worst we’ve had in weeks!”
The cave had offered a certain protection from the weather, enough that he hadn’t feared getting caught out in it, and yet, even finding out that the storm had been bad, he hadn’t realized that he was in any danger.
He needed to be careful. He didn’t want his sister worrying for him, and he didn’t need his mother retreating any more than she already had. Both of them already had gone through enough, and it was his job to protect them now. It was the reason he’d remained rather than going with Henry. As much as he might have wanted to understand what it meant to have some potential to become a Dragon Soul, he had to do so carefully.
“At least tell me you caught something?”
He shook his head. “Not this time.”
“We’re getting thin with our stores.”
They still had quite a bit more than they ever had before. Since Jason had managed to bring down the deer, they had been well supplied. It had given him a buffer, time he could hunt and not have to worry about not bringing anything home. He still went out every day, trying to stay ahead, wanting to make sure that they had enough. It was better to have a full belly than to worry about when the next meal might come. In the time since then, he found himself getting stronger. It made hunts go more easily. He was able to climb faster than he had before. It was one thing he hadn’t expected to change so dramatically with a full belly, but he shouldn’t have been surprised by that.
“I’ll go back out tomorrow,” he said before catching himself. “What do you mean w
e’re getting thin?”
Kayla glanced behind her and flashed a smile at Terrence and Selena before turning her attention to him. She twisted so that her back was to them, lowering her voice. “We have one rabbit left.”
“One? When I brought the last one, we still had two squirrels and two rabbits.”
“That was several days ago,” she whispered.
“With that much, it should last a few more days than that.”
She nodded.
“Who’s getting into our supplies?”
A flush of color flashed across Kayla’s cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said.
Stealing was rare in the village, though not unheard of. Finding enough food could be difficult, and there were plenty of people who went hungry, the same way that Jason and his family had been going hungry before he had managed to find the deer.
“I can keep a watch.”
“You need to be out hunting. Mother and I can watch.”
He cocked a brow at her.
“Fine. I can watch.”
“Where is Mother?”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t there when I stopped by our house.”
Kayla frowned, but turned and went racing through the village.
Jason could do nothing other than chase after.
He followed her back to the home, and when he reached it, she had thrown the door open, unmindful of the heat dissipating through the open door. He stepped inside as she was searching through the back room, calling out for their mother.
“She wasn’t here,” he said.
“Where would she have gone?”
“I thought she was with you.”
Kayla shook her head. “When was the last time you remember Mother leaving the house?”
“The last time was before Father…”
He should have been more surprised by his mother’s absence. She had been here ever since his father had been killed, and finding her missing was unusual enough that he should have known something was wrong.
He glanced at the rack along the wall to find that her coat and hat were missing. At least she wouldn’t be out in the weather without any sort of protection, but where would she have gone? He followed Kayla back outside and closed the door tightly behind him, searching through the village with her.
“I’m going to stop at Keva’s place and see if she might know where Mother has gone.”
Jason nodded. The two women had once been close, but since his father had died, his mother had retreated, spending no time with anyone else. She’d been no place other than her bed.
Jason followed his sister, and when he reached the door to Keva’s home, he paused, listening in, but there were no voices coming from the inside.
His sister knocked, and it took a moment for the door to open and the solid woman on the other side to glance at them. “I haven’t seen either of you for quite some time,” she said.
“Is Mother here?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen your mother since your father died.”
Kayla nodded, turning back toward Jason. Her eyes were moist, and she dabbed her knuckle at the corner of her left eye, trying to smear away the tears before they dropped.
Where would their mother have gone? She should not have disappeared like this, not gone out into the village without letting them know, but then again, had she not retreated from the world as she had, it wouldn’t have been all that strange for her to have explored.
“I can help you look,” Keva said.
“That’s all right,” Kayla said.
They went to the village, pausing at several shops, looking inside, and there was no sign of their mother.
They stopped again near the center part of the village, near the festival square where he had first encountered his sister. He glanced over toward the cannon, wondering if perhaps she might have gone there. At least the cannon might be tied to their father, a way of reminiscing, but there was no sign of her there, either.
“Where else would she have gone?” Kayla asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Would she have gone to her shop?”
There was an element of hope in her voice. Jason didn’t want to squash it, but at the same time, their mother hadn’t been to her shop since before their father died.
“We can check,” he said.
She started off and he followed, trailing after his sister, and they meandered toward the northern edge of the village. The shop was little more than a hut, a building that had been abandoned for the last year, and he expected to find no sign of anyone near it, but as he approached, he saw footprints in the snow.
That was unusual. Could someone have taken over the shop? The village certainly needed healers, and with his mother disappearing the way she had, there wasn’t anyone else, but he didn’t think anyone else had the necessary skill. His mother had trained for a long time in order to serve, and she had taken on that role, willingly working with anyone, and because of that, she had become a vital part of the village.
Smoke drifted from the chimney of the shop.
Jason paused, knocking.
When no answer came, he pushed the door open.
On the other side, he found his mother.
He froze, unable to do much of anything other than stare.
Her coat hung over a chair and she was dressed in a tattered dress. Her hair was pulled back, tied behind her head, and her cheeks were rosy. Sweat dripped down her forehead.
She was busy cleaning. She swept the floor, heat radiating from the small stove off to the side and filling the tiny hut. She’d already cleaned off the cot and prepared it for anyone who might need it.
“Oh, good. You’re both here. You can help me clean up.”
“Mother?” Jason asked.
“What is it? There’s quite a bit to do.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
Kayla stood near the door, letting the cold air in.
Jason shot her a look. She shuffled off to the side, pushing the door closed behind her.
“I’m feeling wonderful. We need to get everything cleaned up.”
“I just haven’t seen you out of bed in a while.”
His mother paused, glancing up at him. “I think it’s about time I change that, don’t you?”
Jason paused before nodding. “I guess I do.”
He nodded to Kayla, and the two of them began to join their mother, helping, neither of them saying anything.
3
Jason looked around the inside of the hut, marveling at how clean it was. It had taken them the better part of the day to get it back into order, but now that it was, there was a sense of calm hanging over everything. Some of it came from the work they’d done to get everything back into place, but some of it came from the fact that his mother had returned to them.
He still couldn’t believe it. He had no idea what had changed for her, or why she would have suddenly stepped out of whatever fugue she’d been in, but he was thankful that she was seemingly back to herself.
More than just back to herself. She had energy she hadn’t before. Her face remained gaunt, a reminder of what she’d gone through, and yet there was a spark to her he hadn’t seen since before his father died.
Kayla sat in a chair near the door, watching his mother, saying nothing. Neither of them really knew what to say.
“I’m going out for supplies,” their mother said, grabbing her coat off the chair and flipping it on. She nodded to Kayla before turning to Jason. “Will you two finish up?”
He nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.
When she stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her, Kayla jumped to her feet, looking over at him. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, she’s been basically unresponsive for the last year. I had to force-feed her so many times, I can’t even keep it straight.”
Kayla had borne the brunt of caring for their mother, and Jason had borne
the brunt of trying to feed them both, but this was unexpected.
“Have you been giving her any different medicine?”
“Not that I can think of. Besides, she didn’t want me to give her any different medicine. She was aware of anything that I might give her.”
He thought about everything they had done, and other than feeding her regularly, he couldn’t think of what might have caused this shift.
The only other thing that had changed, other than an improvement in food, was the way he’d taken to heating water. Using the dragon pearl, Jason had begun heating it differently, using power rather than wasting dung for something so simple. Most of the time, Kayla wasn’t even aware that he had done so. That was the way he wanted it. It was better to keep that ability hidden.
Could it be that?
The dragon pearl had power. He’d seen that himself, and he’d used it often enough, but he wouldn’t have expected it to have healed his mother.
And there wasn’t really anything to have healed her of. It was a matter of moving past what happened, of finding strength within herself that she otherwise had neglected. The dragon pearl wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that, would it?
He and his sister continued to work, cleaning the hut. Neither said anything more, and as he worked, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he might have been responsible for helping his mother.
When she returned, she nodded, looking around. “I think everything is back in order.” She set a stack of jars on the counter, and Jason frowned.
“Where did you get the money to pay for that?”
“I traded services,” she said.
“What services did you trade?”
His mother frowned. “Honestly, Jason. You should know there are various ways of bartering.”
When it came to his ability to barter, Jason was limited. He didn’t have much to offer anyone. He could hunt, but that depended on catching something. Otherwise he had to beg for help.
Iron Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 2) Page 3
