by DM Fike
My heart warmed, remembering how vulnerable he had felt back at the lesion. “I promise I’ll be super careful. Catch ya in a few.” Then I hung up.
Callum attempted to back away from me even though he couldn’t move from the spot. “How do you know that cop?”
I threw my hands up in the air, unable to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Game wardens are cops in Oregon. They work in the Fish and Wildlife division.”
“But he’s still a cop, and you’re going to keep him informed of where we’re going.”
“I get your distrust, I really do, but Vincent is a good guy. I didn’t trust him at first either, but he’s proven himself to me several times over. He’s not going to turn you over to anyone.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“You don’t. But I see things other people don’t see.” I leaned in conspiratorially. “You know what I’m talking about, right? Weird animals like the purple owl.”
He hesitated. “Mr. Haskin said I was making up stuff to get attention.”
I straightened. “All you have to know is that I believe the things you see are real, and I’m trying to help you. Don’t you want to learn about that?”
He tucked his hands inside his armpits. “You can’t make me go.”
Even if I wanted to (which I didn’t), I knew I couldn’t drag him back to the homestead. Sighing, I released the dirt around his feet. “You’re right, I can’t.”
He shuffled out of the hole. Within seconds, he was fleeing toward the trees without so much as a backward glance. I supposed if he escaped, I’d come back here with Sipho and see if we could find him again. It would waste time, but that seemed to be the story of my life recently.
I decided to give him one last chance, not really thinking it would work. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious about your powers?”
To my surprise, he paused in mid-stride. “What are you talking about?”
Might as well go all in. “You’re gifted, as in superhero powers. You could probably do some pretty crazy things with a little training.”
He laughed without mirth. “I’m not a superhero. Get real.”
“So, you’re saying everyone can do this?” I lit a fingerflame on the edge of my nail and showed it to him.
I had his attention. He fully turned around. “You think I could do that?”
“Maybe. But you’ll never know unless you come with me.” I hated how I sounded like some sci-fi cliché, but I wasn’t below using any bait I could.
I motioned Callum forward, but he backed away, wary again. “I don’t know.”
I probably would have lost him then, but right at that moment, out of nowhere, a dove flitted down from the sky. She landed on my shoulder, cooing happily into my ear like I was some sort of fairytale princess.
Callum’s jaw dropped. “Is th-that the dove that brought me here?”
Good ol’ Nasci. She does work in mysterious ways.
“Probably.” I then patted the dove, addressing the goddess that summoned her just when I needed her. “Now if you could only make finding the fox dryant just as easy, I’d be really appreciative.”
The dove answered by taking off again, disappearing into the canopy.
“Thanks for nothing!” I yelled after her.
Callum stood frozen, his poor pubescent mind fighting between his instinct to run and his fascination with the obvious magic before him.
Time to close this deal. I sauntered off in the opposite direction. “I don’t have all day. Either come with me or not. The choice is yours.”
I refused to look behind me, the very picture of a badass movie protagonist. It was only when the sound of crunching grass issued behind me that I knew Callum followed.
I mentally cheered. Finally, fate had given me a break.
CHAPTER 15
WE NAVIGATED A few more wisp channels on the way back to the homestead. Callum was intrigued that I knew so many of them, since he’d only ever found the one he’d tried to escape through. I almost told him there was a vast network of them all over the Talol Wilds but stopped myself in time. Callum wasn’t an official follower of Nasci, and until he was, the less he knew the better.
That didn’t keep him from asking questions, though. For being a sullen teenager before, he burst with questions now. How many ‘spells’ could I cast? How did I manage the magical energy he sensed swirling in my body? Why did the charms on my necklace emit the same aura? Even though I deflected everything by saying it wasn’t up for me to tell him, he continued attacking my ears with a steady stream of chatter.
Annoying as it was, it helped me get to know him better. He’d apparently been the child of drug addicts. He couldn’t remember his dad at all, and his mom often neglected him, leaving him home alone for days at a time. She finally lost custody of him in the 4th grade, and he hadn’t seen her since. He bounced around from foster home to foster home, never staying anywhere for very long. He had a self-proclaimed habit of ‘running off’ into the woods, and most foster parents gave up on him after the third or fourth disappearing act.
“The forest just calls out to me.” He trekked through the bramble. “Like I was meant to be here and not sitting in a desk at school.”
I knew exactly what he meant. I’d gone through a similar experience in college, and from what I’d heard from other shepherds, they had too. A call from Nasci herself to join them.
By the time we emerged from the last wisp channel not far from Sipho’s, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains. It would be hours until nightfall, but the valley lay in complete shade. Overheated and exhausted, I felt grateful for the cooler temperatures.
As we walked the final stretch before crossing over the invisible homestead boundary, I didn’t notice Callum stop in his tracks behind me. I did, however, realize he’d stopped talking.
I paused and turned around. “Something wrong?”
Callum had become frozen in mid-step, as if struck by a cockatrice gaze. He stared off into some tall light-colored grass not far away.
“Don’t move,” he squeaked.
I pooled fire pith into my palms, hands raised to draw sigils. “What is it?”
He talked out of the corner of his mouth, voice a whisper. “Mountain lion.”
My hands fell back to my sides. “Hey!” I called into the brush. “It’s me!”
The grass stirred and out stepped Kam, her dark fur a rippling shadow in the reeds. She stalked low to the ground, a predator after prey. Her feline eyes pierced Callum, who trembled as she crouched toward him.
“Oh, stop it!” I yelled, annoyed. When she refused to give up her territorial posturing, I flung a spray of water in her direction. The droplets caused her to flip sideways in the ungraceful way cats avoid obstacles in the air. She landed firmly enough on her paws, though, tongue immediately stroking her back as if she’d meant to groom all along.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry about her. She won’t hurt you.”
Callum didn’t move, still awkwardly balancing on one foot. “How do you know?”
“Because she would have attacked you by now if she thought you were a threat. You would have never seen it coming.”
I kept moving toward the homestead, my back to Callum and a wicked grin spread on my face. Yeah, I knew what I was doing to the poor kid. Figured it couldn’t hurt to let him know who was boss around here, and also, the petrified look on his face was hilarious. He’d either never move from that spot again, or he’d scurry after me as if his life depended on it.
He chose the latter, keeping to my heels so tightly I could feel the moisture from his ragged breathing. It probably didn’t help that Kam chose to follow us as well, keeping a safe, but still threatening, distance as she sauntered in the rear.
We walked through the magic barrier that protected the homestead from outsiders. Callum didn’t so much as flinch, so I knew he also didn’t see the fake rock façade that people without ken saw. I texted Vincent to let him kn
ow we made it before I forgot. He texted back a brief confirmation.
If Kam noticed us approach, it made sense Nur would have also spotted our unusual visitor. That’s why, as we approached the forge, it didn’t surprise me that Nur led a wary Sipho out of the lantern-lit doorway. She wore a dirty tunic, indicating she’d probably just returned from farm chores.
“Ina!” she cried, hands on her hips. “What is the meaning of this?”
I gestured toward a suddenly shy Callum. “Hey, Sipho. This is Callum. I met him out in the woods and—”
“Strangers do not belong on the homestead,” she cut me off. “You can’t just bring visitors here.”
I knew this was going to be a tough conversation, one better without extra ears. I marched up to Sipho. “Can we discuss this in private?”
She glared at me before snapping her fingers. “Nur! Kam! Sit with this boy while Ina tries to talk her way out of this one.”
The cats dutifully complied, sauntering in a lazy wide circle around a terrified Callum. “What am I supposed to do now?” he peeped.
“Just give us a minute, okay?” I called cheerfully at his wide-eyed expression. Then I pulled Sipho back to the double open doors.
Once inside the forge, Sipho rounded on me. “This really tops all of your normal stunts. How do you justify bringing a stranger here?”
“He’s got ken.”
“How do you know?”
I threw my hands up in the air. “He walked right through your barrier. You know, the one that keeps people without ken out?”
She opened her mouth to argue but reconsidered. “All right,” she grumbled. “But why bring him here? Only augurs are supposed to assess potential eyases.”
“Because he’s sensing something strange back at the crevasse.” I wrung my hands. “You know the one full of magma that Rafe threw me in.”
Sipho stiffened. “He felt pith at a lesion? That’s impossible. We sealed them up weeks ago.”
“I know. I can’t feel it either, but he claims he can. And I know he’s telling the truth because he’s been hanging around not only Whitaker Creek, but the crevasse near Noti. He’s seen both me and Darby fighting vaetturs in those areas, vaetturs that are acting tougher than they should be.”
“Even if what you say is true, which seems unlikely, it does not warrant bringing the boy here. You should have waited for Guntram to return so he could evaluate the situation.”
I couldn’t hide my irritation. “We don’t have time for the chain of command. The vaetturs feel the lesions too, I know it. There’s no other explanation for why there’s been so many attacks against Tabitha’s kidama lately.” I explained to her both Vincent’s first poaching case outside Noti and the one I’d seen. “Something big and nasty is killing the black-tailed deer around lesions. I couldn’t just leave a helpless teenager out in the woods as bait to find out what it is.”
Sipho rubbed her chin for a long time, much like the way I’d seen her mull over a charm design many times. “I cannot tell you what kind of vaettur is out there,” she said after a long pause. “But I do have a theory about the lesions.”
“And that is?”
She clasped her hands in front of her. “We have never sealed a lesion created by a shepherd before. It is not natural. It could be deeper and more difficult than we anticipated. If so, the lesions could be leaking small amounts of pith, which would explain why Tabitha’s former kidama and vaetturs can sense it.”
She made sense except for one detail. “But I can’t as a shepherd?”
“If the amounts are small enough, perhaps not a shepherd.” She straightened. “But a forger might.”
I blinked. “How is that?”
“We’re more sensitive to pith than shepherds. We can move pith from object to object, never wielding it ourselves. That makes us more attuned to its occurrence in nature.”
I tried to wrap my mind around this idea. “That means Callum might not be an eyas, but a forger?”
“An apprentice,” Sipho corrected.
We were in completely new territory for me. “So, what now?”
“Well, it is just a theory. We need to confirm he’s even a candidate for such training.”
“And how do we do that?”
Sipho crossed the room to grab her walking stick. “By determining if the lesions are, in fact, leaking pith. You must take us back to where you found the slain deer.”
CHAPTER 16
I’D NEVER TRAVELED off the homestead with Sipho before. Kam and Nur stayed behind on guard duty. Given that she always carried that knobby stick around whenever she traveled, I expected her to set a more leisurely pace.
I was completely wrong. Her long legs zipped over the late summer wildflowers. Callum had to powerwalk to keep up with her, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Shorter than both of them by a wide margin, I had to outright jog to bring up the caboose.
After exiting the second wisp channel, I barely saw them camouflaging into a copse of trees. I raced forward so I wouldn’t lose them.
“Hey, Sipho!” I called once I could see her braids again. “Where’s the fire?”
She paused. “Excuse me?”
Panting, I stopped to catch my breath. “You’re acting like we’re running away from a forest fire.”
“My apologies. I did not realize you couldn’t keep up,” she said matter-of-factly.
I balked against the implication that I was dragging everyone down. I spent my days running around the entire Pacific Northwest. I had stamina enviable by collegiate athletes.
And yet, Sipho wasn’t wrong.
“How can you travel so fast after farming all day?” The question came out more as a whine than I intended.
A wide grin spread across Sipho’s face. “I could tell you it’s the natural consequence of hard work and effort.” Then she lifted her walking stick. “But the truth is, I’ve carved sigils into my staff that increase the flow of pith inside my body.”
“Huh?” Callum asked, not understanding the terminology.
But I understood. “Whoa. So that means your stick constantly refreshes your pith, like being immersed in hot spring water?”
“An apt analogy.”
I eyed her walking stick. “You should make more of those for the rest of us.”
“It would, unfortunately, interfere with the storage capacity of your charm necklaces. The walking stick’s energy would want to flow through the individual charms and render them useless. Forging objects requires a delicate eye to detail while also being aware of the greater impact you have on whole systems.”
“I never thought about that,” I admitted.
“There are many intricacies to forging that only those of us with the calling understand. But come.” She motioned us forward, moving the stick to her dominant hand. “Night draws near, and I would like to examine both lesions as soon as possible.”
Sipho drifted away. I moved to follow, but Callum held me back with questioning eyes. “What are you two talking about?”
“Magic,” I answered. “If you’re worthy, you’ll understand soon enough.” Then I walked forward, the gangly teen not far behind.
Since we’d run part of the way, we made it back to Whittaker Creek in no time. The deer corpses remained, a few shadowy scavengers scattering back into the brush on our approach. The stench had kicked up a few levels, the telltale hum of flies more intense than before. Hooray for the circle of life.
Sipho skidded to a halt, scanning this way and that.
I perked up. “What do you feel?”
But it was Callum, not Sipho, who answered. “The bad mojo.”
Sipho glanced at him. “Yes. Vaettur energy.” She flowed among the deer bodies, frowning as she surveyed a doe. A little yellow numbered marker lay next to her head. “What is that?”
“Just a tag,” I said. Probably so Vincent could take pictures of them for his report, but I didn’t mention his name aloud. I still had some common sense.
Si
pho thrust her walking stick into Callum’s startled hands. Then she crouched, fingers hovering over the doe’s chest. She worked over the body like she would anything in her forge, sensing for pith.
She paused as she came over the wound. “Something’s wrong here.”
I couldn’t help myself. “You mean the big gaping hole?”
She glared at me. “Something more serious than that.” Without warning, she plunged her bare fingers into the flesh.
“Ew,” Callum said. I agreed, but then again, I’d done the same thing.
Sipho rooted around for a while before extracting goopy fingers. “I found something. Ina, would you clean it off?”
She held something hard and flat in between her index and middle finger. Scrunching my nose at the bloody mess, I placed my hand palm down above hers and gathered water pith into it. I drew Vs with a few dots underneath, and a gentle, faucet-like spray of water washed over Sipho’s hand, clearing away the gore.
Callum watched my simple magic with wide eyes. “Whoa.”
Once clean, Sipho stood up and showed us the triangle-shaped bit. It looked almost like a piece of dark plastic, chipped away from the source. She thrust it toward Callum. “Do you feel that?”
He recoiled backward. “Yeah.”
Sipho passed it to me. “How about you?”
I held the shard in my hand. It was lightweight with a faint texture to it, making me rethink the whole plastic thing. I tried to absorb pith from it but got nothing.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said. “What is it?”
“Probably a piece of our vaettur,” Sipho said. “Broke off in the attack. The piece is emitting its usual Letum-based aura but intermingled with…” She hesitated. “Something else.”
“Over here,” Callum called. He waved the stick toward a barren patch of earth, cut like a scar across the otherwise weedy earth.
I shoved the vaettur piece into my hoodie pouch as we approached the spot. Even though I couldn’t feel what lie underneath, my memory conjured up an image of a jagged crack of earth, a fiery glow emitting from within. Rafe’s horrible face twisted in satisfaction as I fell.
