Moon Chosen

by P. C. Cast

“No, that’s okay. I don’t mind. I know people talk about me—talk about it. That I haven’t been chosen and that I’m foolishly fixated on chasing the trail of a pup who’s long gone.”

  “We don’t think you’re foolish. We agree with you,” Crystal said. “I’d never stop looking for Grace, and Sheena would never stop looking for Captain.”

  “Thanks. That means a lot,” Nik said, and then quickly changed the subject. “So, tell me about this new nest you’ll be building.”

  Crystal latched on to the subject like a Shepherd with a hide ball, and soon she and Sheena were having an animated discussion about where their glass-enclosed window should be and whether they wanted a one- or two-story nest. Thankful that he didn’t have to input anything to their conversation, Nik concentrated on paddling and studying the river.

  His mother used to love watching the river. Nik remembered that she talked about it as if it were a living being who kept uncounted secrets, and though she’d respected its might, with the remnants of a dead world hidden beneath the innocent mask of its surface, it intrigued rather than frightened her.

  Silently, Nik had disagreed with her when he was a child, and he still disagreed with her. It didn’t intrigue him. It thoroughly frightened him, though that truth had died with the only person who had known about his fear—his mother. The tribe called the Killum a mystery, one that ended too often in death for those who spent too much time on it. Nik had watched that death be meted out. The first time had been when he’d been so young he shouldn’t have any memory of it, but the image of a clear, summer day and the fishermen kayaking leisurely and casting wide, lazy nets was burned into his mind. Or rather, what was burned into his mind was the memory of the fisherman who had cast his net too close to a semi-submerged log they called a sweeper. The net had caught on the log, and before the fisherman could right it, he’d lost his balance and fallen into the river where the tangled web of currents that eddy around the sweeper pulled him under so that its roots, hidden beneath the murky, spring-swollen water, snagged him, and like a demon lover held him close until he drowned.

  Nik suppressed a shudder at the still vivid memory of the Tribe dragging the sweeper to shore to free the pale, bloated corpse.

  But the truth was it wasn’t the sweepers or the unpredictable currents or the remnants of once mighty ships that had become rusted hulks, capsized and useless, clogging the waterway in the heart of the ruined city that haunted Nik. It was the death traps called bridges that terrified him the most.

  From Tribal archives, and the puzzle-solving skills of the Builders of the Tribe, it was believed that Port City used to boast twelve massive bridges, spanning the wide expanse from one bank of the Willum to the other. Not one of the bridges had survived the death of the City intact, though to varying degrees all had left their footprints on—or beneath—the river.

  “Heads up!” Crystal called from her position at the front of the kayak. “Arch Bridge ahead.”

  Nik set his teeth and wiped his sweating palms, one at a time, on his pants before he began stroking the water with renewed vigor. Since his was the position in the rear of the kayak—the main steering position—he was damned sure not going to let them drift anywhere near the enormous broken green arches that jutted out of the water like the rotting teeth of a drowned giant. He forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly, and repress the panic that was too close to his surface as he followed Sheena’s shouted directions to go more to the left or to the right—faster or slower.

  “Good job, Nik! Almost past it. Steer us closer to the middle. This bridge isn’t bad, but the run-off will suck us in if we’re not careful,” Sheena said.

  Nik bent into the paddling, propelling them to the center of the river and shooting past the deadly run-off. As they passed, well away from it, Nik glanced to his right in time to see a huge sweeper caught in the undertow, upended and tossed around the white-topped rapids like it weighed no more than a Shepherd’s throwing stick, before it was sucked under and disappeared.

  Nik shivered and kept paddling.

  All that remained of the next bridge were oblong-shaped pillars of crumbling stone that tended to break off unexpectedly. Two winters past a Companion and his Shepherd had been killed when they’d paddled too close to one of the edifices, trying to stay away from the run-off current. The slide of stone had buried them so thoroughly that the Tribe was never able to recover their bodies.

  “Let’s hold here,” Sheena said after they’d made it safely past the stone hulks. “We should pass the Triangle as a group.”

  “Some of the Triangle has shifted again,” Crystal explained as they paused the boat. “Sheena will guide us through it. The others should follow pretty close.”

  “Okay. No problem.” Nik hoped he sounded nonchalant, even though he couldn’t stop wiping his sweating palms on his pants and rolling his shoulders, trying to work some of the tension out of them before they had to continue.

  “The run-offs make my skin crawl, too,” Crystal said.

  “They’re a pain in the ass, and the prime reason the damn river changes so much,” Sheena said.

  “I thought nothing about the Killum ever rattled you river types,” Nik said.

  “Are you kidding? They rattle me!” Crystal said. “They’re unnatural.”

  Sheena laughed. “They’re just water that’s found a strange way to escape.”

  “You know what they remind me of?” Crystal asked Nik, though she didn’t wait for his answer. “It’s like the bridges pierced the skin of the earth, causing it to bleed from underneath the floor of the river. The run-offs are the earth’s cut veins, shooting currents of water and dirt and sweepers and bodies,” Crystal paused to shudder with disgust, “into the land.”

  “I can’t say I disagree with you.” Nik’s gaze found the frothing water that marked the foundation of the next bridge. Even from this distance, he could see the whitecaps spouting off of the river and cutting a swatch of turbulent, flotsam-filled water shooting inland. “I’ve never seen anything like the run-offs in any other part of the river.”

  “They’re just here, at what’s left of Port City’s bridges. I talked with one of the Elders a little over five winters ago when I really got interested in understanding the river. He said the theory is that the run-offs were created during the last of the major earthquakes. He didn’t have a theory for why they’re only here, and only near the bridges,” Sheena said. Then she shrugged. “I see them as just one more problem that needs to be handled when we’re scouting the river.”

  Crystal sent her mate a lingering smile. “It’s Sheena who’s brave about everything.”

  “Just because you’re beside me,” Sheena said.

  Nik looked away while they kissed sweetly and intimately, giving them some small measure of privacy, and wondering what it would be like to be mated to someone who believed he was brave about everything.

  “All caught up and ready to take on the Triangle!” Wilkes called as he led the rest of the group to join them.

  “It’s shifted some, probably during that last big storm,” Sheena said.

  “But Sheena knows how to get us through. Stay right behind us and you’ll be fine,” Crystal said. “Okay, Nik, give us some manpower!”

  “Will do!” Nik bent to the task of paddling, keeping his focus on Sheena and the directions she called out to him. Nik respected and appreciated the confidence with which both women navigated the river, even if he did wish vehemently that he were elsewhere.

  They approached the Triangle with practiced care. There was little left of the original bridge that was visible, but much that waited, just below the surface. It had been named Triangle for the shape of the huge steel fragments that littered the river. Deadly and sharp, they shifted and drifted, as if the shattered bridge was sentient, and it stalked those who dared to pass over its watery den.

  “It’s going to look like we’re getting too close to the run-off,” Sheena shouted over the sound of rushing water. “But
we’re just going to head toward it so we can get around a big piece of metal there, to the left of us. When I say Now, Nik will break and turn us—fast—toward the center of the river. But put your backs into your paddles. Don’t want that run-off to snag any of you.”

  Nik swallowed hard, feeling sick to his stomach.

  “Now, Nik!” Sheena yelled. Nik did exactly as she commanded, and they shot past the sharp edge of the rusted metal as well as the frothing run-off.

  “Well done, Sheena!” Wilkes said after they were all free of the Triangle’s territory. “Take us through the rest of them.”

  “Will do!” Sheena shouted back.

  “That’s my girl!” Crystal smiled and, half asleep still, Captain’s tail thumped, brushing the surface of the water and waking him fully so that, with a start that almost sent him over the side, he tucked his tail up under him, causing the two women to laugh and tease the big Shepherd about being scared of a little water.

  Nik didn’t say anything. He only wiped his palms again and silently agreed with the canine. If he had a tail he’d be keeping it tucked up and away from the seething river, too.

  The next bridge had broken apart in huge steel plates the color of old blood. The only ones that had not sunk to the bottom of the river were the two that had been caught on the hull of a ship, capsized against what was left of an enormous stone column. As they glided past, Nik thought he’d be eternally grateful that those who’d come before him had long since scavenged anything of use from the rusted corpses of all the ships in the Port City waterway.

  They were entering what was considered the heart of the ruined city and as Sheena had him slow the pace so that the others could keep up with them more easily, Nik’s gaze roamed over what was left of Port City.

  A thick, living blanket of green covered everything. Storytellers still told tales about the ancients and their cities of glass and concrete and metal. It was known that Port City had been different—or at least different enough for the ancients to note. It was an accepted fact that those who built the city, and the people who had lived there, had at least some measure of appreciation for the forest, so that they included in their world of metal and glass and concrete trees and green space within the city itself. The Elders even agreed that the first Tribe members had, indeed, come from Port City, fleeing into the forests because they believed the trees could succor them.

  Nik studied the city. Once in a while he caught a flash of sunlight on something that could be glass or metal, but mostly all that was left of Port City was great mounds of rubble that had been shrouded by plant life. Nik shivered again. The verdant vines and overgrown ferns, brambles, and trees were like sweepers in the river. Beneath them held countless ways to die, and not simply from the ruins under the plants and the mutated beings who chose to live there. In the city, the plants themselves were changed. Much like the treacherous run-offs, they were deadly and unnatural.

  “All right, everyone ready to move on?” Sheena called.

  “We’ll be right behind you,” Wilkes said.

  Nik bent to his paddle and readied himself as the Steel Bridge loomed before them. It was the bridge that had survived the most fully intact. The only section that was entirely missing was from the center of the thing. Its two towers had fallen sideways, severing one side of it from the other so that dark water lapped around black metal trusses, looking like a diabolical mouth missing front teeth. It made Nik’s skin shiver, but it was the safest bridge to pass, as all he had to do was to keep the kayak centered in the middle of those missing teeth, and they glided easily by the sucking run-offs.

  Too soon afterward, they approached the next bridge. It had been near the ruins of the railroad and the building that ten winters before had provided such a wealth of loot that the Tribe still told stories about it. This bridge was completely gone, leaving only thick, square columns of stone above the water, though Nik knew that below were steel girders waiting to hook anything that dared to trespass too far beneath the lapping surface. As they passed between two of the enormous columns and entered the part of the river that was choked by the rusted bodies of ships, Nik felt a prickling of the flesh up and down his spine, as if behind him were the stone guardians of a watery graveyard, waiting only for one small misstep on his part to close and seal their escape route.

  Only one remaining bridge still had life above the water—and Nik’s gaze, as if on its own, turned upward to the towers that jutted more than one hundred feet above the river. Attached to the towers were thick steel cables—some had snapped, twisted, and half fallen with the center of the bridge, giving the thing the macabre but graceful look of the skeletal ribs of a dancer who had collapsed centuries before after one too many failed pirouettes.

  “Strange that this one’s still white, isn’t it?” Crystal spoke in a hushed voice, as if she was afraid of waking the dead.

  “It always looks like bones to me,” Sheena said.

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Nik agreed.

  “The run-off for this one isn’t too bad, but stay sharp. Just around this next bend is the last bridge and then we get to the site of the find,” Sheena said. “And even though there’s next to nothing much left of the bridge, the run-off is almost as bad as the Triangle. Don’t let the curve of the river draw us too near the bank or we’ll be sucked in.”

  “Did you hear that, Wilkes?” Crystal called.

  “Got it!” Wilkes replied. “We’re right behind you.”

  Nik ignored everything except Sheena’s directions, so he was surprised when Crystal turned around and, with laughing eyes, said, “Okay, okay, we’re past all of it now. You’re going to paddle us all the way to the falls if you don’t slow down.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Nik said, trying to relax his white-knuckled grip.

  “There! Can you see it?” Crystal called, pointing at a place just above the west bank.

  Everyone’s gaze followed Crystal’s finger. Nik spotted the opening easily, but only because there was a flash of brightness that caught his eyes. Once he’d gotten a fix on the glinting light, he could see that it appeared that the vines had imploded, leaving a dark pit in the greenery.

  Like a grave, Nik thought, and the crawling beneath his skin returned.

  “Nik,” Sheena said, gesturing to the western bank of the river. What wasn’t covered with water-loving scrub and choking vines was rocky and littered with tree debris. “Do you see where those reeds and cattails start?”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  “Beach us close to them. The way up to the find is near there.”

  Nik propelled them there swiftly. Though he had no desire to crawl into the hole the others were so eager to explore, he did look forward to getting off the river, even if only for a short reprieve. The other five kayaks slid into place beside them, and the canines jumped eagerly off their mats, fully awake and obviously as happy as Nik to be on firm ground again.

  “Sheena, good job getting us here safely,” Wilkes said. “When we get back I’m going to propose to the Council that your and Crystal’s nest be the first one built.”

  “And I think it should be a two-story nest,” Monroe added. “Especially if your Captain and Grace are going to continue to gift the Tribe with litters.”

  Crystal gave a girlish squeal and hugged Sheena, who grinned happily. “We don’t expect that—we’re just doing our part for the Tribe, like the rest of you,” Sheena said.

  “But we’ll take the two-story nest!” Crystal added quickly, causing the group to laugh.

  “Well, then, let’s get what we need and go home!” Wilkes said. “Weapons up. Especially you, Nik.” He tossed Nik an additional quiver filled with crossbow arrows. “I want everyone else to carry towing ropes. Nik, you keep that bow aimed and those sharp eyes open. Remember, even though Skin Stealers live farther inside the ruins, they do come to the river to fish and forage. Stay alert unless you want one of them to be wearing your skin suit.”

  Crystal shuddered delicatel
y. “Just thinking about them disgusts me.”

  “Did you see any of them while you and Sheena were on recon?” Nik asked her.

  “No, thank the blessed Sun.”

  Nik narrowed his eyes and stared up at the hulking clumps of green that rose like gigantic burial mounds, covering the ruined remnants of what once had been tall buildings all along the waterfront.

  “Wilkes, did any of you see sign of Skin Stealers when you were heading here?” Nik said, rubbing his forearm where his flesh was prickling like a frigid breeze had just blown across it.

  “Nope, can’t say that I did,” Wilkes said. “Any of you see sign of those bastards?” The other men shook their heads. Wilkes smiled and clapped Nik on the shoulder. “See, it’s like I told you—this is a blessed mission.”

  Nik said nothing. Instead he kept studying the area surrounding them.

  “Winston, you and Star stay with the boats and watch our backs. We’ll be in and out as fast as possible,” Wilkes said.

  Winston nodded, holding his crossbow in the crook of his arm. “If you find a pot, any kind of pot, I’d appreciate first dibs on it. My Allison’s birthday is next week, and she would sure love to stop borrowing the boiling pot from her mother.”

  “The first pot found is yours,” Wilkes said.

  “All right, the way in is just over there.” Sheena led the group, picking her way carefully through the rocks and rubble. Each Tribe member, except for Nik, kept his canine close, well aware that their senses would warn them far before human senses could begin to decipher danger. Nik kept his eyes and ears open and his crossbow at the ready as he tried to tell himself that the sick feeling that kept crawling over his skin was due to the close proximity of bridges and run-offs, and nothing else.

  In just a few yards the bank cut sharply inland, with an unnatural slant that had Nik frowning in confusion. Shaped like a long rectangle, the river slashed into the bank. The water was quieter here and brackish, with water reeds choking the area. Coming out of the river were two long, thick strips of rusted metal. River water lapped beneath the rails, reminding Nik too much of another bridge. Though they jutted above the water, they were accessible from the bank by the half-broken remains of metal supports and concrete blocks.