Moon Chosen

by P. C. Cast

  “No, it hasn’t,” she said.

  “Never?”

  “Never,” she assured him.

  “Do you know why?” Dead Eye asked only out of vague curiosity. He didn’t expect a true answer—though she shocked him by giving one.

  “I believe I do know why. Since the day of my birth when the Caretakers brought me to the God to be sacrificed, I have never left this Temple—nor has my skin ever cracked. Nor has it shed.”

  “But surely you have never worn another’s skin?”

  Dove shook her head and her hair moved around her like a gossamer veil. “No. The Watchers would not waste the skin of the Others on me. They said it was too precious—too rare, and that one such as me did not need it.”

  “Have you eaten the flesh of the Others? The last sacrifice was just a few winters ago when we captured several of the Others from that large foraging party. The Watchers did not share that sacrifice with you?”

  “I remember well the last Others that were sacrificed. Their screams lingered in the air for many days. But, no. I was not allowed to eat of the flesh, either. The truth is, I was not allowed to eat meat of any kind.” She paused and changed her voice to that of a waspish old woman. “Seeds, nuts, rice, and plants are good enough for the eyeless one!”

  “Dove, listen! I, too, have never eaten of the Others’ flesh! It has always disgusted me, so I only pretended to partake, though I have taken their flayed flesh and placed it over mine—but my body did not absorb it as it did the stag’s.” Dead Eye felt a great jolt of excitement. “And I choose to make my home in one of the buildings at the very edge of the City, and prefer to hunt from the forest for my table.”

  “The People say you spend an unusual time in the forest,” Dove said.

  “The People are right.”

  “The stag you absorbed. You didn’t find it in the City, did you?”

  “No. The beasts found within the confines of the City are never quite right. Away from here, in the forest, you understand that the animals are stronger. I rarely find the oddities seen here—the missing limbs—the great, bulbous masses growing just beneath their skins—the twisted bodies.” Dead Eye took Dove by the shoulders and spoke fervently. “Dove, that is why I am so drawn to the forest! Because it is clean there—untainted by whatever killed the City, and still kills us.”

  “We must leave this place,” she said.

  “I knew it! I’ve known it since I was a youngling!”

  “And now the People will know it. You truly are our Champion.” She leaned forward and he bent to capture her soft, seeking lips with his own, loving how perfectly Dove fit against his body and thinking, it is good to be a God.

  * * *

  The firepots were lit, filling the newly cleansed Chamber and the God’s balcony with the fragrant scent of cedar. While below in the courtyard Dead Eye gathered the bodies of the Watchers and the odoriferous rubble their lives had become into a great pile atop dead pine boughs, above Dove prepared a huge cauldronful of the vegetable stew she had perfected without the Watchers’ sacrificial meat. When all was ready, Dead Eye lit the pyre and then returned to the balcony with Dove to wait for the People.

  They did not have long to wait.

  The burning pyre drew the People. They crept from the shadows, clutching the rodents and birds they brought as sacrifice to the God. As they reached the pyre, Dead Eye watched them peer into the flames and then recoil in horror when they realized what scented the pine with roasting meat.

  “The People are below,” Dead Eye spoke quietly to Dove. “It is time.”

  With no hesitation she held out her hand. He grasped it, guiding her up to the lip of the balcony. “Be brave,” he whispered. “The ledge is wide, and I am here. I will not let you fall.”

  Her smile flashed in the firelight. “It is easy to be brave with you beside me, my Champion.” Then Dove spread her arms wide. In a strong, pure voice, she called down to the People. “The God has sent me a vision and commanded that I share it with Her People!”

  “Dove is speaking! It is the eyeless one, Dove! She speaks for the God!” The murmurings of the People lifted from below.

  Dove waited for their restlessness to still before continuing. “The God has been displeased!”

  Horrified gasps came from the People. Dove raised her hands and instantly they quieted.

  “Do not fear. The Reaper has sent me a vision to show how the People may regain Her pleasure. Your Champion has already begun to obey Her commands. He has purged the Temple of the infestation known as the Watchers.” Dove pointed below at the flaming pyre. “The old women and their filth are being purified by fire. The God is pleased by this, but the next steps must come from Her People.”

  “Tell us what we must do! Tell us how we regain the God’s pleasure!” the People cried with one voice.

  “Behold your Champion! He knows the God’s will,” Dove said, gesturing to him with a graceful flourish of her smooth, white arm.

  Dead Eye leaped onto the lip of the balcony beside her.

  “Hear the will of the God!” he shouted. “She commands Her People no longer eat of the beasts they find in the City. She commands Her People no longer eat of the flesh of the Others. She commands Her People live a purer life.”

  “How? Where do we find food? Where do we find sacrifice? How do we hope to renew our skins?”

  The voices of the People verged on hysteria. Dead Eye waited patiently for them to still. When they were finally silent, all with upturned, listening faces, he spoke.

  “Know that the Reaper has spoken to me though Her Oracle, Dove. I asked the God how to lead Her People to find strength again, and She has answered! Our God tells us it is our right to have more because for so long we have had so little.” He pointed toward the distant hills filled with the deep, verdant green of the thriving pine forest that protected the Others. “Why are they better than us?” Dead Eye paused to let the excited whisperings beneath him grow, and then his voice silenced their murmurings. “They are not better unless they can hold what they have! The Reaper reminds Her People through their Champion that might is right, and compassion is best found on the triple points of a three-edged sword.” His wide gesture took in the distant city in the trees. “In the land of the Others the People will find new life!”

  Into shocked silence the old man’s voice was a rusty blade. “Leave our City? The City of the God? Perhaps that is your way, but it is not the way of the Reaper’s People!”

  Dead Eye found the speaker easily. It was, of course, Turtle Man. He had stepped forward from the clustering group of People and was glaring up. Dead Eye thought of rebutting his archaic statement with fact—the same facts he and Dove had discovered between them—but no. The People were used to the reality of death and sacrifice. With no further hesitation, Dead Eye grasped the trident spear used to burn the God’s mark into the flesh of younglings, and flung it down, skewering Turtle Man in the middle of his chest.

  The old man collapsed like his bones had gone to mush, stumbling and falling onto the pyre so that his body fed the flames into a roaring frenzy.

  The People remained very quiet, their eyes all upturned toward Dead Eye and Dove.

  “You killed him?” Dove whispered.

  “I did.”

  Dove lifted her arms again. “Thus our Champion culls dissension from the People.”

  As if speaking on cue, Dead Eye added, “Who wishes to move into a new future? A future a strong, mighty People deserve?”

  With no hesitation a young Harvester known as Iron Fist stepped forward. “I wish that!”

  There was only a small pause, and then another and another of the People moved forward to join Iron Fist, each shouting their affirmations. Dead Eye saw that far from all of the People stepped forward—that many of them faded back into the shadows and rubble of the City. So be it. They are dead to me. Soon I will send them to be with their dead God. But for now it was enough to focus on the People who waited below.

&nb
sp; “Come to me!” Dead Eye shouted joyfully. “All Harvesters and Hunters join me on the God’s balcony.”

  As if finishing his thought, Dove added, “And women of the People, join me in the Chamber that is no longer the Watchers’, but now belongs to the People!”

  As the People entered the Temple, Dead Eye lifted Dove from the balcony ledge and kissed her fiercely.

  “It is all coming to pass, my Champion,” she murmured against his chest. “The women and I will feed you and your Hunters and Harvesters.”

  “And I will explain the new will of the God to them.”

  “Yes, my Champion. Yes!” She kissed him again, only moving reluctantly from his arms when the footsteps of the People sounded outside the Chamber. “Welcome them,” Dove said, smiling up at Dead Eye as if he truly was her God. “This night marks the beginning of your new life.”

  “Our new life.” He corrected her, gently stroking her smooth cheek and kissing her soft lips once more before he strode to the entrance of the Chamber to greet his People.

  26

  “Nik, I’m telling you—there are no new tracks. No new signs. Nothing,” Davis said. “I’m sorry, man. I know you have to leave with the foraging team tomorrow, and I wanted to send you off with some good news, but there’s nothing here that even hints at your pup or a girl. We just keep finding sign of those big, crazy Scratcher males and the destruction they’re leaving behind them. No women’s tracks. No canine tracks.”

  “Cuz, I know you don’t want to hear this. Hell, I don’t want to say it. But I think we’ve run into a dead end,” O’Bryan said. “And it’s not that Davis and I don’t believe you. We know you saw that mutated Scratcher girl somehow start a fire. We know that the pup is alive—or at least he was a couple of weeks ago. The three of us found his tracks. But they led to nothing. Went nowhere. I know it’s still early today, but I think—well, I think it might be time to call it quits.”

  Nik thought he’d be ready to hear that Davis and O’Bryan wanted to quit searching for the pup and the girl, but the reality of it hit him hard—right in the gut. He swallowed past the knot of frustration that had threatened to choke him for the past two weeks, and with a supreme effort kept his voice calm. He pulled out the skin of fresh water he’d filled at the last stream they’d crossed and tossed it to O’Bryan, then nodded for him to share it with Davis. Taking collard rolls filled with nut paste, rice, and vegetables from his pack he passed them to the two men, giving Davis extra for the hardworking, always hungry Cameron, he motioned for them to join him on a fallen log.

  “I hear you. I hear both of you. Do we all agree that something strange has happened with the Scratcher males?”

  O’Bryan and Davis nodded as they chewed their makeshift meal.

  “Yeah, something real weird is going on,” Davis spoke around a mouthful of roll. “I know I’m new at this, but I’ve never seen or heard of signs like we’ve been finding.”

  “Hey, I’m not a Hunter, but, Nik, you know I’ve been tracking since I was barely old enough to leave the nests, and I’m telling you—whatever’s going on with the Scratchers isn’t good. It’s changed things, and not for the better,” O’Bryan said.

  “I’ve been thinking about this. A lot, during the past week especially,” Nik said, careful to begin by agreeing with his two friends. “I want to take a shot in the dark. Just one. Just today. If we still don’t find anything I’ll reevaluate while I’m with the team in Port City.”

  Nik watched O’Bryan and Davis share a glance. Davis shrugged and O’Bryan smiled, though Nik was pretty sure it was forced.

  “What’s your plan, Cuz?”

  “Okay, we’ve searched patterns on the Tribe side of the Scratcher creek, expanding out from where we found the new tracks of the pup two weeks ago.” The two men nodded in agreement. Nik continued, “And we searched the same pattern expanding out from the holly bush on the opposite side of the creek, as well as around the area where the wolf spiders attacked and we killed the male Scratcher that night.” Jenna’s father, Nik added, but only silently.

  “Yeah, and the same thing happened over and over,” Davis said. “The sign just stopped.”

  “Exactly!” Nik said. “It’s strange, don’t you think?”

  “It’s frustrating, that’s for sure,” O’Bryan said as Davis took another bite of roll and nodded. “Maybe what’s going on with the Scratcher males has something to do with it.”

  “Well, I suppose that could be, but what if the signs stopped purposely?” Nik said.

  The two men sent him questioning looks.

  “Hear me out,” Nik said quickly. “We’re looking for a girl who is unusual—who, for whatever bizarre reason, has some vestige of Tribal power, correct?”

  “Maybe. I mean, none of us know for sure. Not even you, Nik, and you’re the only one who saw what she did,” Davis said.

  “You’re right. This is just supposition, but if she’s special, and if the pup is with her we’ve got to at least consider the possibility that she could be intelligent enough to hide the pup’s tracks and be trying to throw us off their trail.”

  O’Bryan and Davis stared at him dumbfounded. Nik hastily added. “I know it seems crazy, but the whole thing is crazy.”

  “It is that,” Davis said.

  “So what do you propose?” O’Bryan asked.

  “Let’s change the way we’re thinking about tracking them,” Nik said.

  “What do you mean?” Davis said.

  “Up until now we’ve been assuming we’re tracking a Scratcher and a pup. Maybe together. Maybe not. But certainly not anyone who could be covering their trail and making any concerted attempt to confuse us. What if we think of tracking her, and the pup, as if they’re part of the Tribe?”

  “How so?” Davis sat up straighter, intrigued.

  Nik explained. “Let’s pretend like the girl and the pup are Companions, and they’ve run away from the Tribe.”

  “Run away from the Tribe? That’s crazy,” O’Bryan said.

  “Yep, it is. But we’ve already said this whole thing is crazy, right?” Davis said. “Go on, Nik. You may be on to something.”

  Feeling relieved that the Hunter was willing to listen to his odd idea, Nik spoke quickly. “Well, the question is what would you change about the way we’ve been searching if you knew that the person and canine you’re tracking were actively trying to mislead you?”

  Davis leaned back, chewing thoughtfully before answering. “Well, I’d stop chasing their tracks, because they were left only to throw Cammy and me off. Instead I’d try to think like whoever was misleading me, and then I’d head in the direction my mind told me to search instead of the direction the tracks were misleading me to go.”

  “That’s what we have to do!” Nik said, clapping Davis on the back and causing Cammy to jump around them in excitement. “I think it’s pretty easy to narrow down where we shouldn’t look anymore.” He opened his pack again and took out the map they’d been following. The two men huddled around him, pointing as they spoke.

  “You mean no more looking on the Tribe side of the creek,” O’Bryan said.

  “Also no more looking south along the creek at all, even heading into Scratcher territory,” Davis said. “We only found just a few tracks there, mostly in and out of the creek. If we’re imagining that the girl’s trying to mislead us, I’d say those tracks were made to try to draw us in the wrong direction.”

  “Now you’re thinking!” Nik said.

  “I’d say the same about the tracks going north,” Davis said.

  “How so?” Nik asked.

  “We found a lot of very concentrated signs around the area of the attack, and then—zip—gone. Nothing at all. Following your supposition, I’d say from the signs that two women were attacked and a pup was with them. They returned and tried to confuse the trail, and us, but they didn’t count on Cammy’s nose.” Davis patted the little blond Terrier fondly. “So when that nose tells us that the trail led north an
d west, and even south after it returned to the creek—I’d say that those are three directions we shouldn’t be searching.”

  “Even though we have been searching those directions for the past two weeks,” O’Bryan said.

  Nik smiled. “I like the way you two are thinking. That leaves east. The one area we found no sign at all. And no need to run a circle pattern. We’ve already done that. Let’s just go out past the eastern edge of our search area and then start zigzagging.”

  “We’ll need to do this quickly, Nik. We can’t get caught out here anywhere near dusk. Not with whatever’s going on with the Scratchers,” Davis said.

  “Agreed,” Nik said. “Then let’s move and move fast.”

  They finished their rolls as they headed east, going through a section of the forest so filled with maidenhair ferns that Nik thought it looked like it had been covered with the delicate lace the artisans crocheted from sheep penned on Farm Island, but lovingly tended only by members of the Tribe.

  “I never cared much for Scratcher territory,” Davis said. “The pines aren’t mighty enough, and there’s too much mud and scrub and rot. But this section is pretty. We should pull up some of these ferns on the way back. If they’re planted near one of our waterways they might take and spread like they do here.”

  “It’s damn wet. That’s why the maidenhairs grow so well here in this mess,” O’Bryan said, grimacing as he knocked sticky black muck off his boot. “Scratchers love these lowlands, though I don’t know why.”

  “I do,” Nik said. “They love them because we hate them.”

  “Guess that does make sense,” Davis said. “As far as I’m concerned they can have them. Do you smell that? Something really stinks.”

  “Probably the damned mud.” O’Bryan sounded unusually grumbly. “Cuz, I love you and all, but you’re going to owe me a new pair of boots after this.”

  “Done,” Nik said. “But that doesn’t smell like mud.”

  “Cammy’s on it,” Davis said, pointing at the Terrier’s blond butt as it disappeared into the ferns.

  The men jogged after the little canine. Coming over the crest of a ridge in the lowlands, they peered down at a stream, running through a cedar grove. The breeze shifted and increased, wafting up to them an odor so thick and fetid it almost made Nik gag. Excited barking also drifted up to them.