“Maybe. Or maybe she would have died anyway.” The truth felt cruel but necessary. “Crow takes us in His time, not ours.”
“Crow knows nothing of human feelings.”
“I think He knows everything. I think He suffers with us when someone dies.”
“Then why does He keep taking people? Why not just put an end to death and then no one suffers, least of all Crow?” He shook his head. “I know, it’s stupid. People have to die, or there’d be no room for those being born. Death is part of life. I know all the arguments. But it’s not fair.”
“Of course it’s not fair.”
“And every night I’m reminded. Every night when I can’t see my hand in front of my face even by the light of the full moon, I remember why.”
Of course. She should have made the connection sooner. He hadn’t been ready to become a father when his mate became pregnant; Wolf had punished Marek by perverting his second-phase powers. Rhia had seen similar consequences visited upon young Asermons in the same situation, but never for as long as two years. Once a person accepted the responsibility of raising a child, his or her powers eventually returned to normal. But Crow had robbed Marek of that chance.
She waited a long moment to ask the obvious question: “Why, then, did you make love to me last night? When you’re so afraid of—”
“I don’t know. Part of me never wants to look at you again, wants to forget I have these feelings. The other part wants to know everything about you, so I can figure out why.”
“Why what?”
“Why I needed you—” his teeth gritted “—so much.”
Rhia slid her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. His hands grasped the blanket, then moved to clutch at her back.
They held each other without speaking until Rhia’s stomach interrupted them with an indignant growl.
Marek let her go with a chuckle. “Priorities.”
Once again, his cooking impressed her. She wondered if she would continue to enjoy the privilege after their journey ended.
“Will I live with Coranna in Kalindos?” she asked Marek once she could breathe between bites.
“I believe so.”
“Do you still live with her?”
“No. I have my own home. It’s in the next tree, so if you ever want to visit…” He gave her a grin that did a poor job of faking coyness.
“I think I will.” She scraped the remains of the fish off the leaves in which it had been wrapped. “Will Coranna mind that you and I…” She didn’t yet know how to describe what existed between her and Marek.
“No. In fact, I think she’ll be relieved I’ve—” He broke off his sentence, brow furrowed.
“That you’ve found someone?” she offered.
“Yes.” The phrase seemed to please him. “I’ve found someone.” He brightened. “I want to show you something I think you’ll like.”
They doused the fire and packed the remaining two fish in ice. Soon they were on their way, keeping to the riverbank when the growth of shrubs and reeds would allow them, otherwise heading uphill to continue through the wooded area, always keeping the rushing water within earshot—Marek’s, if not hers.
“We’re getting close,” he said when the water quieted to the point where she barely heard it. “A calm part breaks off from the main flow. It creates a sort of pool.”
“It’s too cold to swim.”
“For humans, yes. Let’s be quiet, so we don’t disturb them.”
She wanted to ask “Disturb what?” but realized that would involve not being quiet. Marek pointed at his own feet, and she watched the way he walked to maintain silence, flexing his knees and first placing weight on the outside edge of his feet before rolling his arches in. She imitated his stride as best as she could, rustling a few leaves here and there, but on the whole much stealthier than before.
Rhia concentrated so hard on avoiding noise that she didn’t notice the sight in front of her until she bumped into Marek.
A large pool of water lay before them, surrounded on three sides by trees and on the fourth side by the influx of river water. A steep muddy bank dove into the pool from the left, its surface slick with water, which Rhia thought odd, since there were no other signs of recent rain.
A quiet splash caught her attention. A face blurped out of the water and examined them with sharp black eyes. Long whiskers twitched. The creature chirped and disappeared under the water again.
Suddenly a lithe brown animal shot out of the water, followed by three smaller ones and a larger one bringing up the rear. Their bodies bobbed and slinked like inchworms as they climbed the bank.
Rhia put a hand to her mouth. “Oh…”
“What’s wrong?” Marek whispered.
“My mother. My mother was Otter.”
He hissed in a breath. “Rhia, I’m sorry. We can leave if you want.”
“No.” She blinked hard. “I haven’t seen one since I was a child.”
One by one the otters descended the slick muddy bank into the water. Two of the kits collided on their way down and rolled over each other the rest of the trip, chattering and scrabbling.
“That was my family.” Rhia chuckled. “She made us play games, especially when we were fighting.”
“Teach me some,” he said.
“Later, I will.”
For now she wanted only to watch the otters and remember.
“Now this next one’s rather silly.”
Marek let out another great laugh that echoed through the forest. “Oh, this one will be silly. Because the last one was deadly serious.”
They sat next to the campfire in the evening’s waning light as the other two fish fried in a small pan. Rhia’s stomach and cheeks ached from laughter. She had demonstrated several of her favorite childhood games, all of which Marek lost with dignity.
“Shh,” she told him. “For this one you need to concentrate.”
“Wait.” He held up a finger. “The sun’s setting.”
The last few rays disappeared past the hill behind her. Rhia turned back to him to ask what was the matter.
Marek faded from view.
“No!” She grabbed his arm.
“That won’t help,” he said with a wistful smile that vanished with the rest of him.
She slid next to him so that their shoulders touched, then laced her fingers with his, both hands.
“Now how will we eat?” He loosened one hand and put his arm around her. “I’m here, even if you can’t see me.”
“This may sound crazy, after having spent three days alone in the forest, but I don’t like the dark.”
“A Crow afraid of the dark?”
“Not afraid,” she said. “Just not preferring it.”
“Ah.” He placed a quick kiss on her temple. “Now I see what I’m meant to teach you.”
“Besides how to not be ticklish?”
“That could take months. But this I think we can do in one night.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“First, eat.” A levitating stick poked the fish from the fire, and an unseen hand unwrapped them. “Careful—hot.”
Though she had learned to live with hunger during her fast, the smell of fresh food made her stomach yearn. She broke up the fish’s flesh to cool it, but still burned her mouth in her impatience to eat.
“Why are you afraid of the dark?” Marek corrected himself. “Sorry, why do you not, er, prefer the dark? Was that the word you used?”
“I am afraid. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s instinct. Humans are made to live in the day—our eyes only work well with lots of light. If your Guardian Spirit were a night animal, like mine, it’d be easier for you. Or if it were a day creature who never needed the dark to do her magic. Crow dwells in a different kind of darkness. But to work there, you need to stop fearing the darkness of this world.” He stopped, and Rhia heard chewing sounds. “Am I making any sense at all?”
She sighed. “I understand
what I need to do. I just don’t know how to get there.”
“What’s so dangerous in the dark, in your mind?”
“Anything.”
“Specifically. When you close your eyes and feel the fear, what do you imagine? Is it something real, like a wild animal, or is it some unnameable force?”
“Both.” She hesitated. “When it comes to beasts, I imagine wolves.”
“I thought so.”
“But after meeting that old wolf in the forest—”
“And after meeting me.”
“And you. You’re not what I expected, either of you.”
“We’re not crazed, bloodthirsty killers. We hunt to take care of our family, to do our part. That’s the role of Wolves in Kalindos, to provide meat for our people.”
Relief flooded her. “You’re not a warrior, then?”
He laughed. “No. If an enemy bothered to invade Kalindos, we Wolves would act as scouts. During the actual battles, though, we’d stay in the village as a last line of protection. It suits me fine. I’ve no craving for glory.” More chewing sounds. “Hmm, somehow we started talking about me. Clever Crow. What else are you afraid of in the dark? Besides us fierce, slobbering wolves.”
“You said, ‘us.’ Are there many Wolves in Kalindos?”
“Several. End of discussion again. What are you afraid of in the dark?”
Rhia sat back and tried to focus on her fears. “The unnameable. How can I explain? It’s a not-thing. A void with no presence of its own. I feel like it will suck me into itself and turn me into nothing.”
Marek spoke softly. “You could never be nothing, Rhia.”
She didn’t respond, instead choosing to finish the last portion of her fish.
“Maybe what you fear isn’t losing yourself,” he said, “but losing your old ways.”
“No, I welcome my transformation, my entrance into—into a new way of seeing the world, of relating to others and to the Spirits. I embrace my new way of being.”
“Who taught you to recite that?”
Rhia was glad the darkness hid her blush. “My mentor. It’s not a recitation, just something he said would happen.”
“And it will. Close your eyes.”
She cast a skeptical look in his direction, but hearing no response, she obliged. “Now what?”
“Now you stay that way.”
“How long?”
“Until I tell you to open them.”
“When will that be?”
He sighed. “When I think you’re ready.”
“I think I’m ready now.”
He let go of her and stood up. “I need to hang up the rest of the food before it gets too dark for me to see.”
“Wait!” She reached out for him. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’ll be right here, but you won’t be able to hear me unless I speak. I can’t stop the stealth at night, remember.”
Rhia bit her lip. She wanted to open her eyes to scan the campsite for signs of Marek—the rising pack of food, the shifting of the campfire logs. But she knew he was watching.
“And I am watching,” he said, “so no peeking.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, ostensibly to keep warm but more to reassure herself that she was still there.
The forest lay mute around her. It was too early in the season for bullfrogs, swallows, and spring peepers to fill the twilight with their cacophonous chorus.
There was nothing outside of her.
Rhia’s heart thumped against her breastbone, and her breath quickened, shallowed. She felt her hands grow cold and damp. Thoughts raced, too fast for her conscious mind to register. A whimper formed in her throat, but she didn’t let it escape.
Just breathe.
Her body finally obeyed.
Her thoughts quieted, and she heard nothing but her own breath, which slowed and steadied as she listened. Her heartbeat joined the rhythm inside her ear and lulled her into a near-trance.
With nothing to see and little to hear, her sense of touch magnified. Her skin prickled, and the darkness pressed in—not smothering or oppressive, but with a caress that both soothed her wariness and demanded her attention.
Three nights ago, the darkness and something within it had chewed up her soul and spit it out again. Even fear had abandoned her by then, leaving only the raw instinct of self-preservation, fighting to prevent the dark thing from annihilating her. Yet the Spirit could not fill her if she had not first become hollow.
The air near her shifted, and without opening her eyes she turned her head to welcome Marek back to her side. He knelt on the ground behind her, then took her hands and opened her arms wide, lining them up with his own so that they were like two birds with wings outstretched.
“What do you feel?” he whispered.
She grew warm with desire, and turned her head to nuzzle him. “I feel you.”
“Beyond that. Stretch out with your mind, with your spirit. Reach for everything beyond me.”
Rhia faced forward again. Within a few moments, she felt a trickle of energy swim through her, with hesitant, unsteady strokes at first, then with more power and assurance, as if she had given it an unconscious signal to pass.
“Let it flow,” he whispered. “Let everything within you uncoil. Feel it course through you.”
“What is it?”
He didn’t reply, and she sensed that the thing had no name. The stream became a river, the energy of the world flowing through their bodies. It was beyond them, and yet not outside them—it was within them, of them, between them. It had existed before the First People, even the First Animals, and it would flow long after they all went to the Other Side.
It moved beyond the earth, to the stars and moon and sun—past them even, to the darkest regions of the Upper World.
The night cradled her, and she understood with a strange certainty that most of existence was shrouded in darkness and mystery. To move within it and help others do the same, she had to embrace it as it had embraced her.
But Crow had said not to let the darkness absorb her.
“Marek?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Promise me something?”
He tensed, almost imperceptibly. “What is it?”
“No matter what happens between us—don’t let me lose myself.”
“I understand.” He intertwined his fingers with hers. “Whatever we become to each other, I promise to keep you in this world.”
“Even if I don’t want to stay.”
“Especially if you don’t want to stay.”
She turned her head to kiss him. The river of energy ran through their lips as it had their hands and soon found other conduits.
As she floated toward sleep hours later with Marek in her arms, Rhia felt connected to everything that had ever lived and ever would live. She knew the moment and the feeling were fragile, and held on to it with the gentlest of grips, lest it crumble or slip away.
Ahead of her, Kalindos held uncertainty, trials and further transformation. Behind her, Asermos held security, but also pain and grief. Here in the forest, on the path between her past and future, lay a dark place of peace. She would dwell within it a little longer.
18
Rhia couldn’t move.
At first she thought Marek’s body was wrapped around hers, but she saw him across the clearing, building a small fire for breakfast. Nothing was holding her down.
Nothing, that is, but her own weakness.
Marek glanced over. “Awake at last. Hope possum’s all right with you. I was too slow and tired to catch a rabbit this morning.” He made no effort to hide his grin. “Your fault, of course.”
She pushed back the blanket, muscles protesting. That was all she could do.
“I’m not going to feed you like a baby bird.” Marek stoked the fire. “If you help me cook it, it’ll taste better.”
“I can’t get up,” she croaked.
He turned to her, startled. “What’s wrong?�
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“I don’t know. I haven’t felt this way since…”
Since she was ill as a child. She began to tremble.
Marek came to her. He brushed the hair out of her eyes, then put a hand to her forehead.
“You have a fever. Not too high.” He sat back on his haunches and contemplated her. “It’s no wonder. You spent three days and four nights without food, then another two nights and a day of walking and—other exhausting things. You need rest.”
“Marek, you don’t understand. When I was a child, I was sick. It wasted away my muscles until I couldn’t walk, could barely breathe. I nearly died.”
A flicker of fear crossed his face, then he shook his head. “Why would Crow bring you through the Bestowing just to take you to the Other Side?”
“I told you, He does things in His time, not ours.”
“But He needs you too much, to do His work in this world.”
Rhia had never considered that idea before, that the Spirit might continue to spare her life for His own purposes. She would have to ask Coranna if Crow people ever died young.
“You’ll recover,” Marek said, “but you have to rest and let me take care of you.” He pulled the blanket back over her, then folded up his own blanket and placed it under her head for a pillow. “We’ll stay until tomorrow. Kalindos isn’t going anywhere.”
With trembling fingers, Rhia tucked the blanket under her chin. She closed her eyes as Marek gently massaged her back, releasing and relieving the familiar pain within.
“My mother used to do this for me,” she said.
Marek’s hands halted for a moment, then continued their soothing pattern. “Sorry I don’t have her healing skills.”
“This feels just as good. But different.” She stretched, causing the large muscle in her lower back to seize up. She flinched and tried to smile at him. “Considering you helped put me in this state, the least you can do is nurse me out of it.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t know casting blame was a fever reducer. One of those little-known healing secrets, I suppose.”
She hated for him to see her like this, hated that she was weak and always would be. Part of her had hoped the Bestowing would grant physical strength as well as spiritual, but it had sapped her reserves instead.
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