Black Bead: Book One of the Black Bead Chronicles

by J. D. Lakey

  Megan frowned down at her for a moment. Then a long sigh shuddered through her body.

  “How can you forgive so easily?” Megan asked softly.

  “If Hayrald did not love me, it would be harder. But he does, and that makes up for most things.”

  Megan shook her head in disbelief. The ambient became a little less toxic.

  “What hope have our men if their woman are lost?” Cheobawn said, quoting from the holy book. Megan grimaced.

  “You hang around Menolly too much. You are starting to sound like a Priestess,” Megan said roughly, but she wrapped her arms around Cheobawn’s shoulders and pulled her close.

  Cheobawn looked back at Tam.

  “His heart still bleeds. We cannot go on until he is ready,” Cheobawn whispered.

  As if he heard her words, Tam turned his head and stared back at them. Suppressing what looked like a snarl, he returned to them, his boot heels striking the ground with firm purpose.

  Megan spoke first, cutting off anything he might have said.

  “You are the alpha male,” she reminded him calmly, “I can go on, but I need to depend on you. I need you to stay focused. Alright?”

  Tam struggled to say something to them. In desperation, he shot a pleading look at Cheobawn, as if he were about to say words that would add to the hurt already heaped upon her. Cheobawn tasted his turmoil in the ambient. She released the pain in her own heart and let the words he needed to hear fall out of her mouth.

  “This is not about you. Those were Mora’s words. My Da moves his lips and Mora’s voice comes out,” Cheobawn said. “Words meant just for me. Accept your doom, Mora wants me to hear. I cannot be like the others. I cannot pretend that I will ever be normal …”

  Cheobawn shook her head, unable to continue. She licked her lips, tasting blood. Her finger explored the hurt and came away red. Somehow, without knowing it, she’d bitten through her lip. She touched the gory finger to her brow, anointing her skin with the macabre war paint, the pattern much like those that Menolly painted on the faces of the penitents in the Blood Rites on Darkday.

  “I can go back,” she sighed in resignation. “You have the map. You do not need me.”

  Tam brushed her hands away from her face, his own face gone soft, his mind full of resolve that bled through the ambient and eased all the hurt in her heart.

  “Squeaker’s twaddle,” he said, pouring a bit of water from his water skin into the palm of his hand and washing her face and hands with it. “I know what I know. They are wrong. Forget them. Fate has brought us together. The only real thing is our Pack. Nothing else matters. If we stand united against them, they cannot destroy us.”

  Cheobawn stared at him, surprised by his certainty. Tam’s passion was premature at best. They had only just Packed and already this Alpha male had them bound and wed. What did this deeply complicated boy know that she did not?

  Tam pulled a medstick from one of his many pockets. They were used to stop the bleeding of the minor scuffs received in sparring and Cheobawn wondered that he had one handy. Not all the demi-Pack’s battles for rank took place in the safety of the practice rooms. This thought hinted at dark burdens and hidden depths under Tam’s perfect exterior. As he dabbed the astringent end on her wounded lip, she wondered if she and he had more in common than she first thought.

  “No more bleeding,” he scolded her sternly. “It attracts all sorts of nasties.”

  Cheobawn looked up into his eyes, admiring his stubborn determination. Were they Pack and not just a temporary thing? She knew he was wrong but for him she would make herself believe his hopeful words. If she pretended they were true then maybe they would become true. Wrapping the fantasy of her own Pack around her like a warm coat, she smiled.

  “That’s what I want to see!” he said encouragingly, smiling back. He looked up into the worried eyes of the rest of his teammates. “I will take point with Cheobawn. Connor next, then Megan. Al, you take rear guard. Keep a stick’s length apart, no less, no more. Let’s practice our Battle Trail maneuvers. No talking. Come on, everybody. We are going to have some fun!”

  Taking Cheobawn by the hand, he turned and strode down the East Trail, his troop close behind.

  Chapter Five

  Tam’s pace was measured, his strides wide. His legs ate the distance effortlessly. Cheobawn reviewed what she knew about Battle Trail. It was a more complicated form of Dancing Molly – follow the leader, doing what they do, stepping where they step. Add complete silence and you got Battle Trail. You could still talk but you had to do it using fingersign and forest sounds. She knew fingersign better than most girls her age. Da had been teaching her since before she could remember. It was something they did to pass the time while waiting for Mora and the Coven to stop being busy and notice them.

  They left the cultivated fields and orchards behind and entered the forest. The trees blocked the sky and closed in behind them, casting a perpetual twilight on the forest floor.

  As Cheobawn’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom, details revealed themselves. Birds and insects and treehoppers of every kind buzzed and chittered softly in the canopy high above their heads. Croakers called from their hiding places under the ferns and squeakers sang from the miniature pools inside watercups clinging like great green insects to the tree trunks. Cheobawn tried to see everything, thrilled at each new sight. This was so much better than the photos and videos she studied in class.

  It was hard to see everything she wanted to see and still keep up with Tam. Cheobawn, being more than a head shorter than her leader, managed to match his pace but she had to take three steps for his two. It took all her concentration and most of her energy. She did not protest. Tam’s plan called for speed. She did not want to be the one to slow them down. But more importantly, she did not want Tam to regret his decision to let her join them. This was her problem. She would solve it.

  She listened to her body. She listened to the ambient. She watched Tam’s rhythms and there she found a solution. She let her body feel his as if it were her own, matching his heartbeat and breathing. She set her legs to mimic his every step, pushing her stride wider, letting him pick the best places on the trail to put their feet. After that it was just a matter of getting out of the way and letting the process of walking take over. She smiled, pleased at her own ingenuity. Turning her attention back to the scenery, she reveled in the feeling of being truly free in a place of profound beauty for the very first time in her life.

  She listened to the trees. Each one seemed different from the next, like a single voice in a choir. One could focus on a solitary tree but the true beauty came in their harmonies. Together they were one organism draped like a living skin on the land from the edge of the snowfields high on the mountains all the way down to the infinite cliffs of the Escarpment to the south.

  Cheobawn wanted to hold her breath so she could hear the trees talking to each other but her laboring heart brought her out of her reverie. Borrowing rhythm and pattern from Tam was one thing. Borrowing energy was another problem. By the time they reached the fork in the road and turned up the lesser traveled North Fork Trail, the strain of trying to match Tam’s bigger strides was turning her legs to jelly. As the trail rose before her, she struggled for a moment, determined to keep up. It was becoming a point of personal pride that she not be the first to break under the relentless pace.

  Merely sucking more air into her lungs was not enough. She needed more than air. She listened to the forest around her. Life infused everything, filling the ambient with energy that hung in a heavy cloud just off the edge of seeing. She drew it in like air, breathing it into her heart and her legs and her lungs, filling herself up with it, using what she needed before letting the excess run back into the ground through her boot heels. The pain and fatigue disappeared immediately. It took no more than a dozen steps to set the rhythm of this energy flow in her head. She had no difficulty matching Tam step for step with this borrowed vigor after that.

  The more she l
istened to the forest the more it became solid and real in her mind. Everything glowed. Trotting on, she watched this overlay of light as it played out around the trees and the ferns. Buzzers left trails of light in their wake. She could tell where the hoppers hid in their burrows by the bright spots they made in the ambient above their dens.

  She grinned in delight. It did not take much of a leap of imagination to pretend that the stones of the mountain under her feet were the bones of some monstrously huge bear and that all the living things in the forest were part of its living pelt.

  Cheobawn thought about what it must be like to be this bear. Did the fall of her boots upon stone tickle his furry sides? She danced behind Tam, daring it to wake.

  With her mind full, she ran blind, trusting Tam to guide her feet, her connection to his mind her lifeline, while her eyes flitted from one amazing sight to the next. Sunlight broke through the dense canopy in random places, making columns of golden light in the humid air. Flutterflies and gnats and buzzing nasties danced through the light like falling stars. The blooms of the parasitic sugarsips hanging off the lowest branches, garish in their yellow and pink displays, were the only thing to relieve the constant theme of greenery. A bit of sweet nectar lay at the base of each flower. Cheobawn eyed them longingly. Perhaps on the way back, she could sample their liquor.

  She did not see the large root that Tam jumped over until almost too late. She got over it, but only just, her heel skidding down the opposite side, making her lurch and stumble. Somehow Tam sensed it. He spun on one toe and shot out a hand, catching her outstretched arm, keeping her on her feet.

  He held up his fist, and the Pack, alert to his signals, stopped.

  Alright? Tam fingersigned while his eyes sized up her condition.

  Trying not to breath hard, Cheobawn nodded stoically then thought better of it. Drink? she asked. Even here, in the shade, the heat of high summer found them and turned the damp rising from the dead leaves into steam. Tam nodded and signaled the same to the others.

  Cheobawn pulled her waterskin off her belt and took a long drink. Tam touched her hand.

  Slow. A little bit. Too much gets you sick, he signed. She nodded.

  A sound, deep and ominous, like the groan of a giant, filtered through the canopy above her head. Cheobawn jumped, her head still full of giant sleeping bears. She looked around, wide eyed, trying to sense the danger in the ambient as her heart pounded in her chest. No one else seemed to be alarmed, not the birds, or the treehoppers or the croakers or the buzzy bugs. Not even her Pack.

  Tam touched her shoulder to get her attention. Trees, his fingers said. She frowned and made the query sign.

  Watch me, he signed. He pointed the fingers of both hands at the sky and waved his arms back and forth, blowing on them. Trees in the wind. She frowned, not quite understanding how that would make such a noise. Tam blew harder and his tree hands bent against each other, the fingers locking and rubbing together. She cocked her head, puzzled. Living wood, he signed. Then he rubbed his two index fingers together.

  The sound came again and suddenly it made sense. She stared up at the canopy, enchanted. The trees had voices, only they needed a neighbor to help them speak. Trees, it seemed, needed friends as much as humans. Tam touched her shoulder again.

  Understand? his fingers asked.

  Cheobawn nodded happily. Tree Packs make tree songs, she signed.

  Tam opened his mouth to laugh but stopped himself. Connor snorted. Tam snapped a quiet sign at him. Cheobawn glanced back at the others, smiling.

  Connor’s fingers flashed the symbols for new cub just opening eyes.

  Cheobawn stuck her tongue out at him, returning with fenelk hindquarter.

  Megan scowled fiercely at her.

  Stop! the older girl signed, in no uncertain terms. Cheobawn reconsidered the fun of starting a sign argument with Connor and turned around to find Tam with his arms folded, tapping his fingers for effect.

  Cheobawn smiled up at him innocently.

  Ready? he queried with a stern look. He did not wait for a reply. With a shake of his head, he turned and continued jogging up the trail, but at a slightly slower pace, shortening his stride so Cheobawn did not have to work so hard to keep up.

  The trees thinned as they climbed, needletrees replacing the cedars and blackoaks. The thick blanket of dead leaves thinned to let grasses and sedges grow in the sunny places between stands of longpines. A golden furred treehopper scolded them from the safety of its perch, high above their heads. Tam stopped to point out tracks that crossed the trail heading up-slope. Sharp three-toed hooves had left deep marks in the soft clay. Grunter, Tam signed, touching a print. Overlaid atop the grunter’s prints was the mark of a large cat. The paw prints were twice the size of her hand and crossed the trail, heading up the mountain in the same direction as the herd of tusked grazers. Cheobawn scanned the branches overhead, fearful of an ambush, but Tam tugged at her ear to catch her attention.

  Old spoor. Edges crumbling. More than a day. Long gone. We are safe, he signed with a smile. She checked the ambient. Nothing hunted them there. She grinned sheepishly at Tam, feeling foolish. She had forgotten, for a moment, that she was anything but an ordinary girl taking a stroll in a strange forest and that part of her job as Ear was to keep watch in the ambient. Tam returned her smile and then turned and led them on.

  Somewhere well past the two click mark on the map in Cheobawn’s head, the trail curved upwards to follow the edge of a ravine that cut deeply into the side of the mountain. Tam paused and pulled out the map to check their location. Satisfied, he stepped off the path and jogged down a ridge line, taking care where he placed his feet on this unfamiliar and uneven ground. She noted his care and mimicked it. The mountain had no patience for the careless and the unwary, all the teachers said. Carelessness led to injury. Injury, this far from the dome, could become almost certain death.

  It took a few strides to adjust her pace to the soft earth littered with stones and low growing sedges that wanted to catch at an unwary foot. Tam paused and glanced back. She grinned at him. He returned her smile, obviously pleased that he did not have to remind her to take care.

  Not long after, a fernhen clucked in annoyance and fluttered, broken-winged, into a thicket. Cheobawn stopped to watch the mother fowl’s ruse. This was the same ploy used by the little pipers who nested under the melon leaves around Home Dome. Somewhere, probably very nearly under their feet, a nest full of eggs lay hidden. Cheobawn marked the place in her head for their return trip. Fernhen eggs were a precious delicacy. The Mothers on kitchen duty would be pleased.

  At the bottom of the slope, a wall of tubegrass stopped them. This was not the tame stuff grown in the hedgerows inside the dome. The wild stands grew as high as four grown men and became so densely packed that one would be hard pressed to squeeze a hand through the stalks. Tam pulled out his map again, perhaps trying to find the best way around it. The rest of the Pack stopped and sipped from their waterskins.

  They were very nearly there. Cheobawn could feel it. The happy bubbly feeling beckoned her onward. It was close. Very close. She felt more than heard the sound of trickling water coming from somewhere inside the dense copse. They needed to get inside the stand of tubegrass.

  She touched the back of Tam’s hand and motioned him to follow. He raised his brows but then shrugged and motioned her on.

  Chapter Six

  Cheobawn let the feelings in the ambient lead her off to the right and a little downhill. She did not check to see if anyone followed but was reassured by the sound of footfalls behind her. The feelings in the ambient drew her on.

  The stand of grass was immense, at least a quarter of the size of the village dome. Half way around it she found what she was looking for. A tiny brook fought free of the thirsty tubegrass, trickling around a barricade of boulders and stalks in a dozen places before rejoining in a deep pool before continuing its journey down the mountain. The tubegrass roots could find no good purchase among the lar
ge stones, creating a tunnel through the tangle. Cheobawn stepped into the water and followed the flow uphill.

  It was not an easy path. She found herself clinging to the overhanging foliage to steady herself as she navigated her way over slippery stones and around moss-covered boulders. The undergrowth closed in over their heads, shutting out the sound of the forest beyond. The labored breathing of the children filled that silence.

  Cheobawn was small but even she had trouble in spots. She pulled her hooked stick off her belt and hacked at the small stalks that blocked her way. The bigger children had a harder time of it. The sound of their bladed sticks rang as they enlarged the tunnel through which they crawled.

  Eventually, the stream, along with all the rocks and boulders, disappeared under a deep blanket of gravel deposited by some ancient flood. Nothing but moss grew on this unstable ground. Cheobawn paused to stare in wonder at the protected glade that had formed inside the depths of the wild grass. She rose from her stooped crawl and stepped out into the open, smiling up at the blue sky overhead.

  The ambient beckoned. She went exploring. The tubegrass would not grow in the gravel but other things flourished in the wet ground. A stand of gorgeberry bushes, laden with fruit, grew between the walls of grass. There were so many ripe berries, the smell saturated the air with their sweet perfume.

  Cheobawn approached the closest bush cautiously. It seemed to be unnaturally animated. As she drew near, she could see why. Buzzy things of every description hovered in a thick cloud around the large bushes. Some skipped from berry to berry lapping up the sweet juice that oozed from bruised and crushed fruit, jousting for room at the best spots. Others clung to the leaves and twigs, exhausted from their feasting. Dozens of groggy birds – chikchiks, gnat catchers, blackbirds and more that Cheobawn did not recognize – roosted on the branches, heads tucked under their wings. Some, too exhausted to even cling to a branch, littered the moss under the trees. They flapped feebly and waddled away slowly as Cheobawn approached, chittering grumpily at being forced to move. She laughed, for it reminded her of the complaints of the oldmas reluctant to move out of their chairs when the evening bells rang reminding them that it was time to move to their beds.