“I can, and I most certainly will.”
“I didn’t mean that. What I meant was that it’d be more dangerous for me out there if I’m also looking out for you, rather than just myself. Plus, I need you to protect my friends in my absence. I made a promise to keep them safe, and I intend to keep it.”
Her grandfather looked uncertain and stood his ground.
“This isn’t the end of me,” she said and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I need a home to come back to.” She stepped back and it was clear that she’d said her goodbyes.
Councilor Claudius stepped forward. “Hold out your hands,” he instructed her. Kala complied and he pulled out a pair of shears to cut the bracelet from her wrist. “Kala, you are no longer part of this community. May the God of Chance favor you.”
More like the Goddess of Death, Kala thought, then wheeled and set off to face her fate.
“You can do this,” she said to herself with a conviction that she didn’t feel.
9
Kala
Kala considered herself fortunate that it was still early in the day when she left the village. She didn’t look back as she crossed the tree line. Instead, she steeled her spine and sought the calmness that she’d need to stay alert and alive. She’d overnighted numerous times in these woods, although she could always return to the safety of her home. That was now gone.
“Shelter, water, fire, food,” she said to herself. She knew several places where she’d find water, but first and foremost, Kala needed somewhere to shelter where she could sleep safely. It would have to be up a tree as the scariest predators prowled the ground. She wanted a tall tree, but one not surrounded by others from which a predator could jump to hers. She needed to limit the number of approaches from which she’d face threats. She decided to return to the clearing in which she’d encountered the dire wolves. Despite it being quite a distance, she’d sheltered there before and remembered a tree there that would serve her purpose.
She made as much haste as she dared, ignoring opportunities for game but staying wary of places in which she’d be exposed and could easily become game herself. Councilor Fayre had once told Kala’s class that a long time ago, people were considered the apex predator on her world. It seemed laughable then, and even more so now. She made good time as the sunlight filtering through the canopy provided adequate light to see by.
She made it to the clearing perilously close to dark but took her time setting warning lines around the trunk of the tree she’d chosen to be her home for the foreseeable future. She climbed up into it and pulled out her sling. Lily had sewed it for her, and the memory brought tears to her eyes. It was well past dark as she fumbled around to fasten the sling, which she could at least do with her eyes closed. Secured in her perch, she told herself that she’d take stock of her life tomorrow.
She surprised herself by waking in the morning from a deep sleep that only exhaustion could grant. She shivered at the cold, but at least she was still alive, she thought wryly, and planned to keep it that way. She had enough food to last at least several days, and while she’d drained her waterskin, the second one that she’d acquired from the deceased stranger was still full. Water wasn’t far either, so that wasn’t a priority. She couldn’t very well light a fire in the tree, she thought, so she should get one started on the ground. Even with a flint, it could be hard to start a fire, so keeping one going was the smarter course of action. She’d need wood, preferably hardwood, and lots of it.
She shimmied down the tree, swinging wide around her warning lines so she wouldn’t upset them and need to restring them. Before stepping onto the ground, she listened intently to the sounds of the forest, and judging them non-threatening, she dropped to her feet. She walked to the firepit that she’d used to dry the wolf meat, ward off animals, and keep herself warm. It was largely as she’d left it, although her drying racks lay in a heap. She found a sturdy branch that would suffice as a shovel and dug the firepit deeper and wider. She hunted about for stones to ring it with and found them to be abundant below the rockface. Satisfied with her work, she set about gathering wood, which she stacked near the firepit in a manner that would promote the flow of wind through the stack and hopefully keep it dry. It was well past midday when she judged that she had enough wood to last a couple of days.
She realized that she couldn’t rely on her sling every night for three moons. Her back already ached from the previous night and from hauling wood. She needed to construct a larger living space in her new home. She remembered the stranger’s gear cached in a depression in the cliff. She sought it out and found it undisturbed and no worse for wear since she’d left it. She pulled out his heavy axe. It seemed more suited to battle than forestry, but it was all she had. He had a long coil of rope that would be useful as well. She pulled out those two items and returned the rest.
It took her several days to cut down enough saplings, limb them, drag them to her tree-home, and haul them up. She had to dismantle her warning lines and reset them every night. With every swing of the axe, she had to pause to see if the noise had attracted unwelcome company. She kept the fire burning and stocked with wood, and herself with an ample supply of water. It was a painfully slow process, and it took a tremendous amount of effort. Her muscles cried out, but she couldn’t rest or give into despair.
Her shelter began to take shape. She’d made a rough platform between the widest branches that were still reasonably high off the ground. She’d tied them together in a lattice of rope that looked unpardonably amateurish, but she was pleased with it nevertheless. Above, she had loosely secured more branches, although those weren’t tied together, and covered them with the fronds of giant ferns that grew in the deep shade of the forest. She secured them to the branches with grasses that she used as string. A stiff wind would probably destroy her handiwork, but for now, it would keep light rain off her, and she had to content herself with that.
Kala was lying on the platform that she’d built when she remembered Skye’s note. She’d forgotten all about it in her preoccupation with simply surviving. She rolled over to pull it out of the pocket she’d stuffed it in. It was pretty worn, and she feared that whatever had been written on it might have rubbed off or become blurred beyond recognition by her perspiration. She unfolded it gingerly and was relieved to see that the writing was still legible.
I’ll come to you, it began. Her breath hitched. She hadn’t realized how alone she felt until the prospect of human contact was dangled in front of her. It took her a moment to compose herself before she read on. If you’re able, I’ll meet you on the morrow of the full moon in the place where I ‘almost’ shot the deer.
‘If you’re able,’ Kala thought. Does that mean, ‘if it’s convenient for you’ or ‘if you’re not yet dead?’ She didn’t want to consider that possibility. She was anxious to see him and added it to her list of reasons to stay alive. She lay there a little longer until she chided herself for wasting the light. She was getting low on food and needed to hunt. Quiet as she tried to be, she was sure that her comings and goings had scared away anything that wouldn’t outright eat her, so she’d need to range farther afield. She grabbed her bow and lowered herself to the ground.
She didn’t have much luck that day, but on the next, she found a berry bush. She hid nearby and waited until she saw a chipmunk approach the bush and eat a few berries. She thought she recalled that the berries weren’t poisonous, but in an unfamiliar part of the forest, many different berries could look similar. She didn’t want to take any chances – if the chipmunk thought they were fine, she’d trust it’s judgment.
She gathered some berries in her cloak and even found some mushrooms on her way back to her tree-home. A diverse diet would help her survive if she lived long enough for that to matter. Her snares caught a few rabbits, which she thanked the gods for, given how hard they were to shoot. She roasted them over her fire, and her stomach stopped complaining.
That night, she woke to the tinkling of bells. So
mething had disturbed her warning lines. She sat up quietly, drew her knife, and waited. It could be just a squirrel, or it could be something much, much worse. She heard something padding around on the ground, and it chilled her blood. She waited and waited, but eventually, the padding stopped, and her bells weren’t disturbed again. She couldn’t relax and didn’t feel like sleeping, so she just sat there, clutching her knife until dawn.
In the morning, Kala concluded that she’d done her best, but she was still too vulnerable in her tree. It was only a matter of time before something climbed up to attack her and simply receiving a little forewarning by the bells would only mean that she’d be awake when she met her end. She climbed down and circled her tree, trying to visualize how a predator might scale it. She identified what she thought was the most likely route and sat down to stare at it while she figured out what to do about it. A rough idea for traps came to her, and she set out to find the necessary materials.
She started by knotting a rope and suspending it from her platform so she could climb up and down away from the tree trunk. It taxed her muscles more than climbing up the branches, but she couldn’t risk falling victim to her own traps, and she didn’t trust her skill at getting safely around them either. She sharpened some stakes and attached them to a long sinewy branch. She connected a trip line to where the branch would swing, pulled it back, and secured it with a loose knot. It took every bit of her ingenuity and strength to find the leverage to pull back the stubborn branch. Finally, she tied the end of the tripwire to the knot and climbed safely higher. Kala didn’t dare test her handiwork because she wasn’t sure she could do it safely, wasn’t sure if the force of the swinging branch would destroy it, and she couldn’t bring herself to recreate it if it did.
Climbing up and down via her rope ladder to get more supplies, she managed to build and set a total of three such traps. She hoped that she’d judged wisely the path that a predator would most likely take to climb the tree. She’d used all of her snare wire and could no longer count on that as a source of food.
Kala sat exhausted on her platform in the tree and even though the light was failing, she lacked the strength to climb back down and up again one more time, so she had to accept that the fire would burn out in the night. She pulled up her rope and lay down. She balled her tunic into a pillow and placed it under her head. The moonlight filtered through the branches, and she gauged that the first full moon wasn’t far off. Hoping that she’d last as long as that, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Lily waited until midnight, the time at which the Goddess would be most inclined to hear her prayers. She rose quietly, dressed warmly, and peeked in on her father to make sure he hadn’t heard her get up. Confirming that he still slept soundly, she snuck out of the house, careful to close the door behind her as quietly as she could.
She made her way by moonlight through the empty streets to the modest building that sufficed as a church to the gods and goddesses whose favor the village sought. She entered, lit a candle, and placed it before the statue of the Goddess of Death, kneeling.
“Mistress,” she began. “I know that I have not called on you often since you collected my mother in your embrace. I was angry and struggled to understand your plan. I struggle still, but I know she’s happy in your kingdom, and I thank you for that.”
Kala was woken by the soft ringing of bells. Something was probing her tree again, and it wasn’t a random squirrel – this was something altogether worse. She pulled out her knife and made herself as small as she could. She heard padding around the tree and another ring of bells. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going away this time. She heard an exhalation of breath and it chilled her that the beast did not feel the need for stealth. She tensed.
Lily beseeched the Goddess, “I have a friend who you are preparing to draw to you. She is alone in the wild, as was my mother was when you came to take her home. I know that I have done nothing to deserve your granting me this request, but please leave her among us a while longer. I will make whatever sacrifice you demand of me.”
There was another ring of bells, higher in the tree this time, but Kala couldn’t judge how much higher. She heard another exhalation of breath, and it sounded as though it was right in her ear. There was a snap, followed by a terrifying roar. The tree shook with a violent thrashing below her. Fern fronds rained down on her from her loosely tied-together ceiling. There was a crash and two more snaps in quick succession and angry howling that made Kala huddle tighter into herself. It went on seemingly forever, then stopped abruptly.
The candle blew out, and Lily had to content herself that that was all the response the Goddess would grant. She thanked Her for listening to her prayers, rose, and exited.
Kala waited for any sound, but the forest was entirely silent. Nothing stirred save the wind. She caught the metallic scent of blood on the wind and felt along her body for any wounds that she might have missed in her panic. She was damp from sweat but wasn’t bleeding anywhere. She waited out the morning.
The dawn revealed her tree-home in shambles. Her roof was largely gone and peering below the platform on which she crouched, she saw that her carefully-laid warning lines were torn or missing, and all three of her traps were sprung and virtually destroyed. Shimmying down the tree, as it was now safe to do, she saw bright blood on the spikes of two of her traps. A trail of blood led off from the base of her tree.
She pulled out her bow, notched an arrow, and against every instinct in her body, set off following the trail of blood. Her traps were ruined, and she had no more wire to reset them. If the beast returned to finish her off, there would be nothing she could do to stop it. She needed to finish it off now, while it was wounded, or die trying. She advanced slowly, cautiously.
The trail went on for quite a distance into the woods, but it meandered. It ended at a dense thicket. Not daring to follow the trail of blood into the thicket, she circumnavigated it as quietly as she could manage. She didn’t see the trail of blood re-emerge. The wounded creature must still be within the thicket. Kala glanced about for a stone and finding only fallen pinecones, she lobbed one into the thicket and braced herself. Nothing stirred. She tossed a few more, then heaved a heavy branch into the air and sent it crashing into the bushes. Still nothing.
She placed her bow and quiver against a tree. They’d get caught in the thicket’s dense branches and would be useless in close quarters anyway. She pulled out her knife and advanced to where fresh blood was smeared on several branches. She looked about for an opening, but failing to find one, she bent to her hands and knees and squeezed between the branches, knife at the ready. She wriggled through the dense brush until she saw a small open patch in front of her. On the ground, its back to her, lay a gigantic leopard, its fur as black as night. She froze and watched. It didn’t stir. Its chest didn’t seem to rise and fall. She waited. She recognized the folly of trying to finish off such a big cat and edged backward. A branch snapped back into place, and Kala froze. The leopard didn’t stir. She snapped a twig intentionally. Nothing. She girded herself and crawled forward. Knife in hand, she readied herself for having her head taken off, and poked the cat’s hind leg with the knifepoint. The cat didn’t move. Kala breathed out. It truly was dead. She could see her wire tangled around its torso.
Kala was in a quandary. The leopard was wedged in the thicket. She desperately wanted its meat, but she couldn’t see how she could drag out its body or even butcher it where it lay. If she left it, it would surely attract scavengers, and many of them were as dangerous as it had been. She should probably repair her traps and warning lines now that she recognized their value, but her precious wire was wrapped around the leopard’s body, and it would take all day to repair them, even if she had the wire back, if she could at all.
She made up her mind to deal with the leopard and leave the repair of her shelter until later. It was a gamble, but she relied on the relative closeness of the leopard’s lair to her tree. If this cat was as ferocious a predator as
it seemed, it would have a vast territory and may well have cleared it of competition. She was only guessing, but it made her feel better about her decision to postpone repairing her security.
She pushed herself back out of the thicket, which proved much more difficult than pulling herself into it, but eventually, she freed herself. She dashed back to her tree, sacrificing caution for speed. She fetched the axe and returned to hack at the thicket. The bush wasn’t sturdy enough to part easily for the axe, but she made steady progress. Eventually, she made herself an opening and set the axe down beside her bow. She pulled out her knife and returned to skin the beast and cut strips of meat to dry. It was a struggle due to the cramped quarters and because she could barely move the creature, given its size and weight.
Working slowly and methodically, she eventually had it skinned and had cut off a fair bit of meat – not as much as she’d have liked, but the day was getting on. She carried the cat’s pelt back to her tree and laid it over a high branch. She returned several times to ferry meat back to her fire. She reassembled her drying rack and hung the meat. She fed the fire and hoped that she’d made it big enough to ward off scavengers who would smell the meat. She accomplished as much as she could before the light failed.
She climbed up her tree, now bereft of defenses, and settled onto her platform. She wasn’t able to sleep, but she rested and climbed down every so often to tend the fire. Sometime in the night, she heard a terrible clash coming from where the remains of the leopard still lay, and she shuddered involuntarily.
Morning greeted her, and she was exhausted. She couldn’t believe that the leopard hadn’t killed her that last time she spent days here tending to the stranger’s wounds. Had the fire kept it away? She doubted very much that it had. Was it prowling elsewhere in its territory, and that’s why the wolves felt bold enough to venture so close to its lair? Which predator deferred to which? Her head hurt thinking about it, so she gave up.
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