The Other World: Book Two
Page 17
At a gesture from Tori, Jacob and Kaima stepped back a few feet, allowing her to pull Heln up and to her side. She lifted his arm by the elbow, looked out at the Coiyana, and let her voice fill the meadow with her own long, loud howl.
They all joined in, even Jacob and Kaima, and by the time the cries finally drifted away into the night air, Tori was uncharacteristically confident that she’d made the right decision.
Epilogue
“I think the Coiyana have vastly overestimated our combined physical strength,” Tori muttered to her companions.
Jacob laughed, but Kaima was nodding enthusiastically as they stared at the massive pile of supplies they’d been laden with. There were three large packs stuffed to capacity with whatever foodstuffs the Coiyana had been able to find, plus bows and quivers for Tori and Kaima to match the ones Jacob had been given, coils of ropes, a pile of furs, and three belts hanging with a variety of hunting knives.
Heln chuckled to himself, trying to work out whether it was even possible for the three smaller creatures to carry so much. “Everyone insisted on giving what they could to make your journey easier,” he explained, “but perhaps they may have overdone it.”
Tori raised an eyebrow, but she was smiling. “You think?”
They were trying to find a way to attach the bows, quivers, and rope to their packs when Lira appeared through the trees, carrying a leather bag. “Good,” she said, “You haven’t gone yet.”
“We might never go if we’re crushed by our supplies,” Kaima told her. Before it might have been said with sarcasm and annoyance, but the Maelekanai teen and the Coiyana female had become surprisingly good friends in the time they’d spent together, so it was said as a joke, which made Tori smile.
“I hate to add to your burden,” Lira told Tori with a chuckle, “But I wanted to return these to you in case they are important. I retrieved them from the Colosseum before we left the mountain.”
She handed the bag to Tori, who frowned and looked inside, wondering what it was that could have been left behind. She laughed a little as she pulled out her dirty, damaged hoodie. She examined the rips in the hems and the variety of filth that had been embedded into the material and considered simply tossing it away, but hesitated. It was a useless bit of fabric, practically ruined in every way, but it was also all she really had left from the world she called home. As she was overtaken with a sudden wave of homesickness and sentiment, she offered Lira a sad smile. “Thank you,” she told her new friend. “I really appreciate it.”
Lira offered a short bow and a return smile. “There’s also something in the pocket,” she pointed out. “I’m not sure what it is, but it looked like it could be important.”
She hadn’t finished the sentence before Tori had pulled out the pill bottle. The cap was missing and the crack had gotten worse such that an entire chunk of the plastic was now missing, but she could clearly read the prescription information still attached to the side. She stared hard at the words for a long time while her companions looked on, unaware of what she held or what its meaning was.
Time to move on under my own power and hope for the best. No looking back.
Tori forced a smile and looked up at her strange assortment of companions.
“Oh, this? Don’t worry, this is nothing important.”
And without a further thought for the significance it once held, she tossed the broken, empty bottle over her shoulder.
“Now, let’s see about getting geared up and moving.”
Check out Tracey’s other books on Amazon:
The Other World: Book One
&
Nowhere to Hide
Also find her online at TraceyTobin.Wordpress.com