Kara sighed then slid the bag back onto her shoulders. She could not stay. She had not made it nearly far enough into the forest to remain hidden from the Enforcers when they came looking for her. She remained crouched over the fire, leaning against the massive bulk of the tree next to her, until the flames dwindled and died.
Then, turning up the flame on the lamp, she stood, holding the lamp high as she looked off in the three directions that the forest spread out into, and wondered which would be the best course to take.
It was then that she first noticed the faint glimmer of a pair of red eyes that blinked at her from the darkness.
Chapter Four
Taking advantage of an agility that she did not know she possessed, Kara turned and shimmied quickly up the nearest sapling. It was difficult to do with the lamp held in one hand and the heavy bag upon her back trying to pull her back down to the ground, but fear made her stronger and faster than normal, and she quickly climbed as high as the thin tree would allow.
She’d chosen a narrow, young tree to climb because it had been easy to get her arms around and the branches grew low to the ground giving her footholds, but now, she wished she’d have tried harder to climb one of the more massive, taller trees that surrounded her. The tree she was in didn’t seem high enough to put a safe distance between her and the set of glowing red eyes that now hovered at the base of the tree.
Kara whimpered in fear as a scrabbling noise came from below her, as if the creature below was clawing at the tree she had just climbed. Fear made her careless, and she almost dropped her precious lamp as she tried to scrabble higher into the young tree even though she could feel the top of the tree beginning to bow sideways under her slight weight. Taking several deep breaths in order to calm herself, she began to recite a passage from the Book that her mother had always read to her when she’d felt scared or had needed encouragement for some hard, but inescapable, task ahead of her, of which there had been many after her father’s death. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil…
The familiar litany of the words, and their meaning, calmed Kara slightly. She looked down at the glowing red eyes of the creature below, which didn’t seem able to climb up the tree after her, and realized that she’d trapped herself there in the sapling until the creature left.
Trembling, she blew the lamp out, deciding not to waste the precious oil after all, and settled herself to wait it out, knowing that, come morning, the Enforcers would easily find her if she remained in the tree.
The minutes passed slowly, and Kara became aware of the soreness of her muscles as she was forced to hug the tree in order to remain in her precarious position, half sitting against a slim branch, half dangling in the flimsy, see-sawing tree. She wasn’t surprised as her muscles began to stiffen and throb, for the morning of the most wretched day of her young life so far had started as it normally had, with chores at the cottage followed by her many laborious tasks for Mrs. Malmont, followed by her flight from the settlement and then the hard run into the wilderness. It was no wonder her muscles were spent and feeling like over-stretched leather.
She glanced toward at the ground, longing to climb down and stretch her muscles, but the red eyes were still below, staring up at her, following the position of her body as it swayed slightly with the motion of the wind in the tree’s branches.
Kara’s own eyes felt gritty with exhaustion as she stared back at the eyes that were staring at her. What was the creature that waited so patiently for her to come down out of the tree? Surely it was a predator, waiting to make a meal of her, for no herbivore would wait so patiently beneath the tree when there was no promise of a reward for its patience.
The stars glittered in the sky above, twinkling merrily in their velvety blanket as if, below them, the world was not a wreckage of destruction, wildness and horror. Kara glared up at them, watching them blur as tears of hopelessness filled her eyes.
She stared up at the stars as the tears dripped silently across her cheeks. Both of her hands were engaged with holding onto the tree, so she couldn’t even wipe the salty droplets away as they trickled across her face.
Sighing, she dropped her face from the cheery lights above and pressed it into the rough bark of the tree. What had she done? How had she thought that the wilderness would be a better choice than life in the House? Had she let Maude’s madness claim her mind as well?
But no, she’d been right to flee. Recalling only a few of the tales that her mother had brought home from her forced service in the House, Kara knew that life as a Stray in the Sovereign’s House would no doubt be just as miserable, or more so, than being consumed by beasts in the wilderness. At least Kara would have hope of survival. The Strays in the House had none, or so her mother had said. Unless, by some turn of fortune, they managed to reach their age of maturity – when they could become an Enforcer or be apprenticed in a trade if a master tradesman would agree to take them – they had no hope at all of a better life. A Stray was disposable. Worthless. Useless. A burden upon the society of the settlement, fit only for servitude to the Sovereign. Dirty, wretched, discarded creatures.
Kara knew that, deep down, she was none of those things. She knew because the Words in the Book had told her so, and so had her mother. The Word told her that she was the beloved creation of a King. She sniffed, rubbing her face on her fabric covered shoulder to clean the tears away, and tried to bolster her determination.
What would a King’s daughter do now? Certainly, she would not sit sniveling in a tree.
Kara checked the ground below her again, looking to see if the red eyes still watched her. They were plainly visible, and, to her horror, another pair had joined them.
She stared at the eyes as they watched her, and thought that she could hear a soft, unintelligible guttural conversation pass between the two creatures. One of the sets of red eyes moved, and claws again scrabbled for purchase against the tree, but the eyes drew no closer.
Kara squinted in the darkness, straining her eyes to see in the gloom. She caught the faint outline of the bulky head and flattened snout of one of the creatures, and a gasp of surprise escaped her. Were those Fidgets down there?
She’d hoped never to see a live Fidget, and had been relieved, when shown pictures of them in a book by her tutor, that they were said to be extinct, like many of the rest of the animals in the world. Apparently, her tutor, or the book, or both, had been very wrong.
Knowing that, if they truly were Fidgets, they would not budge from their place beneath the tree until morning, Kara used one hand to maneuver her bag around so that it rested against her side, then felt around inside it and pulled out her mother’s shawl. Carefully, so as not to dislodge herself from the tree, she scooted more solidly onto the branch that she’d had her right hip balanced upon, and used the shawl to tie herself tightly to the tree. When she was sure she was firmly bound in place, she wiggled around until she could hug the tree and rest her cheek against her arm. Then she closed her gritty eyes and tried to find a few moments of sleep while she waited for the chance to flee again in the morning.
Chapter Five
Kara awoke with a start, jerking so hard that she scratched her cheek against the rough surface of the tree bark that she’d been using as a pillow. The echo of a sharp yowl still hung in the pre-dawn air. The sound was what had awakened her from her fretful, nightmare-filled sleep.
If not for the shawl knotted about her torso, she’d have fallen off of the branch she perched on when she’d jerked awake. She blinked her sleepy, gritty eyes and squinted into the darkness below, grateful to see that the two sets of red eyes were now gone.
She began to untie the shawl, taking her time, carefully stuffing it back into her bag with one arm as she clung to the tree with the other arm. She pulled a bladder of water from her bag and took a long drink, then another quick sip, knowing that she’d have to ration her water until she found another source. After reluctantly putting the water bladder back in
her bag, she rummaged around inside it one-handed until she could remove a thin slice of smoked, dried goat jerky from the oiled leather sack she’d stored it in. She put the goat jerky between her teeth and held it carefully there while she made sure that her bag was securely closed, then she gnawed on the tough meat as she looked out over the still dark forest.
The two sets of glowing red eyes were gone, but she had no desire to climb down from the tree just yet. Knowing that there were still Fidgets alive had made her rethink ever travelling after dark again.
She would have to risk waiting for dawn’s light, and the approach of the Enforcers, before she climbed down the tree again. From her tree’s vantage point, she could see the first faint tinges of lavender brightening the Eastern sky, and realized that she’d slept much longer than she’d intended to while she’d been tied to the tree.
She worried the tough, salty jerky between her teeth, attempting to soften it, as she wondered what had created the inhuman yowl that had awoken her. Then she wondered if that yowl had scared off the Fidgets. A shiver ran up her back at the thought. What creature was fearsome enough to scare a Fidget? A Fidget had plenty of defenses – long claws and a mouth full of sharp predator’s teeth made for tearing and eating flesh. Anything that scared them was most certainly something that Kara needed to be afraid of too. And she was. She was very afraid of everything in the dark forest just then.
As the sky lightened by almost imperceptible increments, Kara tried to line out a plan of survival in her mind, keeping mentally busy in order to think of something other than the fear. She needed to find a place to shelter. She needed to find food. She needed to find water. She needed a way to defend herself.
She needed her mother. The thought lanced through her with painful force, and she knew it for the truth that it was. She did need her mother. Her mother had always protected Kara as best she could after Kara’s father had died, and before, when he’d been alive, her mother had been a playmate of sorts in their beautiful, comfortable house, a loving nurturer who told wonderful carefree stories, read to her from the Book, taught her the difference between right and wrong, showed her how to bake her father’s favorite cookies and never missed an opportunity to tell Kara how much she was loved.
Kara wondered how a Tracken had gotten near her mother, when the Tracken were supposed to be kept in the stables – except those who directly served the Sovereign – and her mother was supposed to work in the kitchens, baking treats that might please the Sovereign’s palate. How had a Tracken gotten into the kitchen? Or how had her mother gotten near one of the Sovereign’s ‘pets’? She had not thought to ask Maude at the time, and now it was too late. She would likely never know.
Kara looked up at the sky again, hoping to see the cheerfully twinkling starry sky again, but now pink strands licked across the expanse of heavens above her head and she realized that it was bright enough for her to clearly see the forest floor below. She finished the rest of her goat quickly, chewing unthinkingly at the tough meat as the sky brightened still more overhead.
Carefully, keeping an eye on the ground, Kara began to descend the tree. Every step down onto the branch below brought her closer and closer to danger, but she knew that she could not stay in the tree. The Enforcers would surely find her there. The tree was not tall, and didn’t have enough leafy branches to hide her presence from them. No, she’d have to be brave and venture further into the forest if she hoped to survive.
She heard another long yowl echo through the forest just as her feet touched the ground and, for a moment, she thought of scurrying back up the tree that she’d just left. Shaking her head at her own cowardice, she forced herself to let go of the last low hanging branch and start her trek through the forest again.
Everything seemed to frighten her as she crept along, the harsh yowl still echoing in her mind and the remembered sight of the red eyes urging her to find shelter quickly.
Kara tried to think of all the things she knew about surviving the wilderness, but there hadn’t been much that her tutor had taught her on the subject, and her lessons with him had been cut short after her father died and there had been no money to pay the man.
She did remember, quite clearly, the Botany book that he’d had her study, the one with the edible and inedible plants, and their detailed pictures, which he’d called photographs. Photographs were from the time before the Fall, and so books containing them were very precious and scarce, and Kara had felt fortunate at the time that she’d gotten to look at the brightly colored images which provided as much detail as if she was seeing the plant with her own eyes. Then, when she’d been so young, she’d dreamed of becoming a gatherer for the settlement, which she’d thought would be an adventure. Gatherers went out to the wilderness during the brightest part of the day, accompanied by a group of Enforcers to keep the beasts at bay, and found edible wild plants to bring back to the settlement.
With this goal in mind, Kara had studied the book carefully, learning the different types of plants that bore edible fruits, nuts, leaves, stems and roots, and those which were deadly. Her tutor had also shown her hand drawn images of plants that had been mutated by the Fall, or shortly thereafter when the poison clouds had hung over the whole world. These were plants that could heal, or kill, depending upon their mutation. Kara had studied these as well, because Gatherers who brought back medicinal plants were valued and esteemed in the settlement, and Kara had wanted to make her parents proud.
Now, she was so very glad that she had studied so hard to become a Gatherer. The knowledge might just be enough to save her life. As the dawn turned into day overhead, she was able to pick out a few of the plants that she’d seen in the book from her surroundings, and whenever she passed an edible variety, she gathered some and poked it into her bag.
She made her way forward through the forest in this manner all day, never stopping to rest, meandering this way and that while she tried to maintain a Westerly direction, which would take her away from GateWide, while she looked for a suitable shelter where she could hide from the Enforcers and the beasts in the night.
Several hours after the sun had reached its zenith in the sky above, and had begun its descent back to the horizon, Kara thought she heard the sounds of horses far back in the distance. According to her tutor, few horses existed in the wilderness, so the sound of them could only mean that the Enforcers were in the forest behind her, looking for her so that they could drag her back to GateWide to face the Sovereign’s anger.
Kara began to search for a hiding place in earnest after that, but she found nothing suitable, and began to feel desperate as the sun fell further and further toward the horizon.
When she couldn’t find a shelter on the ground, she began to try to scout out the highest, broadest tree that she could find, one that had enough of a canopy of leafy branches to hide her should anyone be looking up into it from the ground. After several more hours, her legs aching, and her back tired from carrying the heavy bag, Kara picked out an ancient, enormous oak tree. At its base, it was twice as wide as Kara was tall. The broad branches spread out far, far above her head, some of them doubly as wide as her slender hips were, growing almost horizontally out of the thick, old trunk. Finding exactly the sort of tree she’d been looking for, Kara now wondered how she was going to climb the behemoth.
Chapter Six
Climbing the tree had been a battle, and her fingers still ached from clinging so tightly to the ridges and knobs of the tree’s trunk as she had pulled herself inch by inch up the side of it. It was a good thing that she was both small and strong, because otherwise, she wasn’t certain she would have made it.
Midway to the top of the tree, she’d found the perfect branch to spend the night on. It was wide enough to hide her body, yet it grew almost horizontally from the tree, providing a resting spot where she could lie down.
With her back aching fiercely from the weight of the bag, she was happy to do so. She tried to use her mother’s shawl to tie herself to the
tree again, but the branch that she rested upon was too thick, and the shawl would not go around it and Kara both, so Kara did not feel comfortable falling asleep upon the branch for fear she’d roll off of it. After twisting and turning upon the branch to try to get into a comfortable position, Kara finally decided that she would get no rest that night, and lay there looking up through the thick canopy of leaves at the stars in the sky. After several moments of staring through the leafy shield, she realized that the tree was full of acorns - and acorns could be eaten, if they were properly soaked and boiled first. She made a mental note to gather as many as she could after dawn arrived, and to try to remember the location of the huge tree should she need to come back to it later to gather more.
Listening to the sounds of the forest was frightening. Every sound, even the soughing of the wind through the branches of the trees, was foreign to her. No trees grew behind the massive wall in GateWide, and she’d never been outside the wall before, so she hadn’t realized that they made noise when the wind touched their branches. The creaking and sighing were only mildly frightening though. The forest was also filled with a myriad of sounds that, she guessed, were from animals, both big and small, that prowled the forest floor. It was the sound of those beasts that caused her the most anxiety. She could not see them from her perch in the tree, but she could hear them as they moved around below, and some of them sounded quite large as they passed, crunching branches and swishing noisily through the bushes.
Several times, she was sure she heard the hooting of an owl in the night, the distinctive who-who sound which had been described in detail in the book that she’d read that had said they had gone extinct after the Fall of the days of Tech.
After the Fall (The Narrow Gate Book 1) Page 2
