by P. C. Cast
“Before I begin the naming of my apprentice I want to honor these four young Clanswomen.” Leda smiled warmly at each girl. “All have potential. All have talent. I will name only one to train and to eventually take over my responsibilities, but any of the four of you could mature into a wonderful Moon Woman. If I do not name you, you are free to look to another Clan and to set your name forth as one who wishes to apprentice. Do you understand?”
The four young women nodded together. Mari thought three of the four looked nervous. Sora looked like Sora—beautiful and utterly sure of herself.
“Isabel, I see you and acknowledge your willingness to serve your Clan,” Leda began. “Though I do not name you as my heir, I ask the Great Mother to bless you with strength and safety.”
“Thank you, Moon Woman.” The girl named Isabel bowed again to Leda before hurrying with obvious relief back to her place among the Clan.
“Danita, I see you and acknowledge your willingness to serve your Clan. Though I do not name you as my heir, I ask the Great Mother to bless you with health and happiness.”
Danita didn’t look as relieved as had Isabel, but she bowed deeply and smiled at Leda before rejoining her mother and sister on nearby logs.
Though Mari knew her mother was going to name Sora as her heir, she could feel the Clan’s excitement and expectation as the two young, gray-eyed women waited silently for Leda to continue.
They don’t know, Mari realized as she studied the people. Then her gaze went to Sora, who was staring at Leda with such intensity that even from her vantage point above them Mari could feel her desire. Mama hasn’t told any of them that she’s choosing Sora, not even Sora herself. With a jolt Mari understood why. She really did want to name me her heir, and it was only nine days ago that she truly gave up hope of doing so. Mari stifled a sob and put her arm around Rigel. The pup leaned into her, lending her comfort and strength. Mari whispered into Rigel’s ear, “I’ll never be sorry you found me, but I wish it was possible to be both—your Companion and Mama’s heir.” Rigel crawled into her lap. Mari wiped her eyes and kept watching the scene unfold below them.
“Eunice, I see you and acknowledge your willingness to serve your Clan. Though I do not name you as my heir, I ask the Great Mother to bless you with love and laughter.”
Mari didn’t watch Eunice bow and retreat to the clan. Her attention was focused on Sora. Standing before Leda, the girl seemed to blaze with a fierceness that boarded on predatory. She had been born the same fall as had Mari, so they were of an age—but age is where their resemblance ended. Mari was tall, with a body more slender and graceful than was normal for an Earth Walker. Sora was shorter even than petite Leda, but her body was lush with a fullness to her breasts and hips that signaled to Mari that, unlike the rest of the woman of the Clan, the girl did little work.
Is Sora already accepting the tribute due only to a Moon Woman? Mari made an irritated mental note at the thought of a Clanswoman doing something so disrespectful. She’d bring up the subject with her mother. Perhaps a good part of Sora’s apprenticeship should involve hard physical labor.
“Sora, I see you and acknowledge your willingness to serve your Clan. I hereby name you Moon Woman of the Weaver Clan, and my official heir. Do you accept my naming?”
“I do!” The excitement in Sora’s voice shouted above Leda’s.
Leda turned a complete circle as she asked, “Women of the Clan, do you accept my naming of Sora as Moon Woman?”
“We do,” came the Clanswomen’s joined cry. Mari thought it was interesting to note that the women seemed less exuberant in their response than the men, who stood and clapped and whistled.
“So I have proclaimed, and so the Clanswomen have agreed. Sora is my apprentice. Hereafter, the mystery of the moon’s power will reveal itself to her so that the Clan may continue to be Washed of the madness and misery that comes with Night Fever.” Leda, moving more stiffly than Mari liked to see, bowed to Sora as the girl seemed to glow with pleasure.
Mari was thinking about how much she would like to wipe the smug, victorious look from Sora’s face when Rigel’s body turned to stone.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Rigel’s ears were pricked forward, as if he was still watching Leda, but as Mari studied him more closely she saw that his gaze was focused into the distance behind the gathered clan. Completely silent, Rigel moved out of Mari’s lap. He stepped forward, pressing against the holly boundary. His tail lifted, and as it did, all of the fur along his neck and back raised. He turned his head and met her concerned gaze, and Mari was filled with an overwhelming desire to run away—back in the direction they had come—back to hide in the safety of their burrow.
Danger was coming to the Clan, Mari was absolutely certain of it.
She didn’t hesitate. Within her mind she sketched a picture of their home with Rigel sitting before the entrance to the briar patch. “Go home, Rigel! Now!” she said.
Rigel trembled and whined softly, but he didn’t leave her.
Mari held the image in her mind, adding herself and her mother to the sketch. “Go home! Now! Mama and I will be right behind you!”
With one last, miserable look at her, Rigel turned and crawled out of the concealing holly, sprinting back through the brush, retracing the way they had come. Mari made sure he was out of sight before she pushed through the prickly bush the opposite direction. Before she’d actually considered what she was going to say, Mari was already starting to pick her way down the treacherous bank. She squinted and stared into the grove of cherry trees behind the Gathering Site, trying to see through the fading light and catch sight of whatever danger Rigel had sensed.
A movement at the edge of her vision drew her attention. Mari paused, concentrating. Behind the Clan, just before the grove of cherry trees began, there was a thick patch of mature ferns that had begun to shake, as if a sudden gust of wind had blown through them.
But the wind had stilled until there was not even the slightest of breezes. As Mari watched in horror, the ferns burst apart so that men—tall and blond and carrying crossbows notched at the ready—sprinted forward, descending on the gathering.
Mari cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Companions are coming! Run!”
Her mother’s head whipped up, and her eyes instantly found her daughter. “Mari?”
“Behind you, Mama!” She pointed over her mother’s head and repeated, “Run!”
Leda hesitated not a moment longer. “Earth Walkers, let night’s madness fuel your flight. Flee to find safety!”
The Clan exploded into movement. There was no breath wasted on screams or cries of terror. Children ran silently to their mothers, and just as silently their mothers lifted them and raced off, fleet as clever deer, into the forest. Some men turned to face the intruders. Some men sprinted into the darkening forest.
Mari was sliding halfway down the bank when the first arrow struck through the neck of one of the Clansmen who had chosen to stay and face the Companions. His death cry gurgled through blood and he fell, twitching, not far from Leda.
“Mama! Hurry!” Mari cried, motioning for her mother to come to her. We can hide in the holly. They won’t expect any of us to stay that close. They’ll pass by—they’ll pass by! Mari’s mind worked frantically as her mother rushed into the creek, trudging laboriously through swift, thigh-deep water toward her.
A blond man jumped over a moss-covered log, saw Leda, and headed into the water. Close behind him another man paused long enough to yell, “Don’t waste time with the old one. Get the girl on the other bank!” before he followed a mother and her infant daughter into the brush.
Girl on the other bank? He means me! Panic deadened Mari’s reaction, and her body didn’t seem to remember how to move.
The first man grunted in agreement with his friend, and plowed through the water past Leda. “No!” her mother cried. “Not my daughter!” With a thunderbolt of fear, Mari watched her mother grab at the man’s clot
hing. She caught his shirt and pulled, causing him to pause in his headlong rush—but only long enough for him to backhand Leda so that she fell heavily, hitting her head against a rock. Leda crumpled and the swiftly flowing water lifted her, carrying her lifelessly downstream.
“Mama!” Mari cried. Her panicked freeze shattered. Shrieking rage and fear, she pulled the slingshot and a handful of rocks from her pouch. With a graceful, practiced motion, she sighted, whipped her arm back, and hurled the sling. The rock hit the man in his face, smashing his cheekbone and causing him to stumble so that he fell onto the steep bank only feet away from Mari.
Then Mari ran. Along the bank she rushed, keeping a loaded slingshot in her hand and dividing her focus between her mother’s floating body, and the danger that searched the forest around her for captives.
Mari fought through the thickening underbrush, tripping over felled logs, her leaden feet finding leaf-filled holes in the forest floor that were camouflaged by dusk and her need to get to her mother before she drowned.
Mari was going to save her mother—she had to save her mother. Mari couldn’t allow even the possibility of Leda’s death to seep, poison-like, into her reality or her heart would crack and break and her legs would stop carrying her. Finally, the creek took a sharp right-handed turn, catching Leda’s body in a jam of water-swollen logs and boulders. Mari half ran, half fell down the bank, leaping into the water and struggling against the current to her mother.
Leda lay, faceup, clothes and hair tangled in the water debris. Mari reached her and began wiping long hair and blood from her face, feeling frantically for a pulse in her neck. When she found the beat of her mother’s heart, she sobbed in relief. “Mama! Mama! Wake up—talk to me!” Mari ran her hands over her mother’s neck and arms, taking note of the hand-shaped bruise that was already darkening her cheek and the cut slowly weeping blood down her forehead. Mari forced herself to take deep, calming breaths as she began assessing her mother’s injuries and pulling her free of the flotsam jam.
Leda moaned and began shivering, her eyelids fluttering. “Mari … Mari…” the Moon Woman murmured her daughter’s name even before she was fully conscious.
“Shhh, I’m here, Mama, but we have to be quiet. I don’t know where they are or how many of them there are,” Mari whispered.
Leda’s eyes opened. She tried to sit up and cried out, falling back into the water and clutching her side. “Ribs. Cracked or broken.” Leda gasped and spoke quietly and quickly. “My head, too. Hit a rock in the water. My vision is blurred. Get me into the underbrush. I’ll hide. You run for home.”
“I will not leave you.”
“Mari, do as I say.”
“Leda, for once I don’t care what you say. I will not leave you!” Mari enunciated each word carefully. “Now, stop talking and help me get you out of this water before you freeze.” As gently as she could, she put Leda’s arm around her shoulder and, grasping her mother’s waist, began helping her wade through the water to the steep far bank.
“The other bank is closer and not as steep,” Leda spoke between gasps of pain and chattering teeth.
“The other bank is also the direction they came from. The far bank is steeper, but it has more rocks and logs and places to hide. The underbrush is so thick I almost couldn’t get through it to you. It held me up; it’ll hold them up as well,” Mari said grimly.
Leda didn’t waste breath agreeing with her daughter—she just nodded and pressed her hand more firmly against her side, biting her lip to keep herself from crying out in pain. When they reached the rocky bank, Leda collapsed, trembling and trying to catch her breath in short, painful gasps.
“Just up there and a little way back I saw a dead cedar, choked by vines so that it still looks green—almost alive. I think it will hide us,” Mari said.
Hand still pressed to her side, Leda lay against the damp, leaf-covered ground. “I can’t. I’m too dizzy. I’ll get sick if I move.”
“Then we stay here and hope none of the Companions come this way.”
“W-when did you become so stubborn?” Leda gasped, shaking her head at her daughter.
“I’m not sure, but I think I get it from my mother.” Mari crouched beside Leda. “I can’t lose you, Mama.”
“Then it looks like I must make it up the bank to that dead tree.”
Mari grasped her mother’s hand and pulled her to her feet. Leda stood for a moment, only swaying slightly, and Mari thought it was going to be okay—and then the sickly white tinge of Leda’s skin blanched almost colorless and a painful shiver skittered through her body, bringing with it a flush of silver gray.
“Oh, no,” Mari murmured, looking frantically to the west, as if she could will the sun to stay in the sky.
“It’s no use. Night comes, and with it more pain…” Leda shuddered again before her eyes rolled to show only whites and she crumpled slowly, almost gracefully, to the ground.
“I’m here, Mama. I’ll help you. I’ll always help you,” Mari said. She gathered her mother into her arms and lifted her, so that as she began climbing up the bank she carried her mother close to her heart, thinking she was so light that it was as if her bones were hollow, and Mari was cradling a wounded bird.
Partway up a scream of pure terror had Mari freezing. Somewhere behind them in the distance, branches cracked and underbrush broke as careless feet trampled the delicate moss and ferns and the sacred idols of the Great Mother.
Gritting her teeth, Mari shifted Leda’s weight so that she could climb faster, trying not to hear her mother’s semiconscious moans of pain, and not dwell on the fact that her face had gone from the white of dead fish to the gray of moonlight and shadows.
Mari burst over the top of the bank. Clutching her mother in her arms, she sprinted to the ivy-choked cedar. It was an even better hiding place than she had imagined. The tree had half fallen, and the ivy had completely devoured it.
Another scream came from closer behind them. That and the pounding of feet coming toward them worked like a prod on Mari. She bent her head and, shielding Leda as best she could with her arms, pushed through the curtain of ivy and dead branches—and collided headlong into Xander and Jenna.
“Mari! Leda! You’re—” Jenna’s happy greeting was cut off when her father’s big hand closed over her mouth.
Mari fell to her knees. She pressed a finger to her lips, miming for Jenna to be quiet. The girl and her father stared back and forth from Mari to her unconscious mother with eyes round with fear as heavy steps sounded from just outside their hiding space. Too afraid to move, Mari held her breath while she cradled her wounded mother in her arms.
“I saw a Scratcher run this way,” said a male voice mere feet away from them. “She was the one that broke Miguel’s cheekbone with a rock and knocked him unconscious.”
“Nik, we already caught four Scratcher females. That’s one more than the Farm needed replaced. And grabbing another Scratcher won’t change the fact that Miguel’s skin has been broken. All he can do now is to wait and see if he heals or if he—” The second man was farther away than the first, but his words carried to their hiding place.
“I want the one that hurt Miguel,” insisted Nik, interrupting his friend.
“Look, Nik, that’s not excuse enough to stay out here. The sun is setting. We’ve already gone way outside our usual hunting area because you want to search for the pup. Thaddeus has even less patience than usual, and he isn’t going to allow the Hunt to continue, especially after one of us has been injured. We need to head back.”
“O’Bryan, I want to look just a little more.” Mari was surprised by the desperation in the man’s voice.
“Cuz, have you seen any sign of the pup—a paw print, a tuft of fur, some scat? Anything at all?”
Mari felt the pressure of his words as if they were stones sliding into hidden pockets, weighting her, holding her down, drowning her in fear and worry.
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. We didn’t see any sig
n of this being a Scratcher colony, but we just counted how many, close to one hundred of them? The pup might have been drawn here—might have thought the Scratchers were people.”
“And if he was hanging around the Scratchers we’d have found some sign of him. But really, Nik, think about it logically. This will be the tenth night he’s been gone. He has to be dead.”
“He doesn’t have to be!” Nik’s voice exploded with frustration. “If I had more help—canine help—I could find him.”
“Cuz, Sol had the Terriers, Laru, and Jasmine, the pup’s own mother, search for him the entire day after he went missing, and they found nothing—no trace of him.”
“Because those damn roaches swarmed and destroyed his trail so that there was nothing to find.”
“Or because there was no trail to find because those damn roaches fed off him and left no trace of the pup at all.” O’Bryan’s voice was firm, but kind, and even through her fear and worry Mari noted that there was a very real friendship between the two men. “I’m sorry to say this to you, but the swarm eats everything in its path. You know that, Nik.”
“The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t stop looking for the pup. Not yet, O’Bryan. We had a connection. He almost chose me.”
O’Bryan sighed deeply. “If I ever go missing, I hope you search for me with half of the tenacity you’re using to search for that pup.”
“I will, but don’t go missing,” Nik said.
“All right then. Go ahead and keep looking through some of that deep underbrush along the bank. I’ll make an excuse to Thaddeus, but we’re already out later than we should be, and once he calls for the Hunt to be over, there’s nothing I can—”
“Nik, there you are!” O’Bryan’s words were cut off by an excited third man. “Come quickly! Thaddeus’s Odysseus just alerted on a big holly bush. It looks like there’s a paw print under the foliage—a Shepherd pup’s paw print.”