by BC Powell
Sash lets go of my arm. I scuff a foot over the grass and then raise my eyes to Larn.
“After we got our count at the flats,” I say, “we were heading back to the Delta. Tela saw something strange, so we stopped. A tree had its branches tied by rope and spikes were stuck in the trunk with tubes leading to a transport. While we were looking at it, a bunch of Murkovin attacked us.
“We got away,” I continue, “but Tela went over the side of a cliff. She was too badly injured to make it back to the Delta. I didn’t even think she’d live. I found a hidden cavern and stole the transport from the Murkovin. I was able to heal her, but we survived on wild sap.”
“Where is she now?” Larn asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer, immediately deciding to lie about what happened. “We got separated on the way back. A few Murkovin were chasing us, so we split up. They didn’t go after her, but stayed on me. I thought she’d be back by now.”
I glance at Sash. From the accusing look in her eyes, I’m sure she knows I’m lying.
“What was your path?” Larn asks.
“The cave we were in is about ten thousand miles north of the flats. I aimed straight for the Delta. Tela talked about going far north of the Delta and coming back down the river to avoid them, so maybe it’s taking her longer. We have to go find her.”
“You look terrible, Chase,” Sash says to me. “You need to get the wild sap out of your body before you do anything else.”
“We have to find Tela!” I argue.
“You’re in no shape to go back to the Barrens,” Larn counters. “I’ll summon the other Travelers so we can search for her.”
“Let’s get you to our habitat,” Sash says to me.
“I want to see Aven first.”
“She’s at Home,” Sash replies. “I don’t want her to see you this way.”
“That’s not for you to decide!” I blurt out.
Sash kneels to the ground and lays her hand on the grass. “Kyra, please have Aven sleep at Home. I’ll pick her up on the morrow.”
“I want to see my daughter!” I shout.
Glaring at me, Sash stands up. “You need healthy sap and rest before you do anything else.”
“She’s right, Chase,” Larn says. “If you could see what you look like and realize how you’re behaving, you wouldn’t want Aven anywhere near you.”
I glance back and forth between Sash and Larn. Daughter and father are obviously conspiring against me so that I never see Aven again. As my heart races faster and faster, the veins in my neck bulge from my skin. I aim my eyes at Sash.
“You always have to be in control, don’t you? Little miss fucking know-it-all.”
“Please stop, Chase,” she pleads. “You don’t know what you’re saying right now.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying!” I yell, taking a step towards her. “Everything always has to be your way. It’s my turn now. I want to see Aven!”
Larn slides between us and looks down at my face. “You should hold your tongue before you say something you can’t take back.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I snarl, shoving him away from me.
When I turn towards Sash, Larn pummels his fist against the side of my head so hard that I collapse to my knees. With darkness filling my eyes, I fall face-first to the grass. For the second time in one morrow, someone knocks me out cold.
Chapter 22
Shaking like a junkie in need of a fix, I open my eyes. The ceiling of our habitat gradually comes into focus. I’m lying on my back on our bed with my arms pinned underneath me. I try to jump to my feet, but rope cuts into my wrists and ankles. I tumble to the floor.
While I struggle against the restraints, Sash walks across the cavern with a cup in one hand and a pitcher in the other. After setting them down on the floor, she grabs me by the front of my shirt and heaves me back onto the bed. Kneeling in front of me, she pulls me up to a sitting position and then picks up the cup.
“Drink,” she orders, holding the cup to my lips.
After all the energy I spent outrunning the Murkovin, not to mention being cold-cocked twice in one morrow, my craving for sap verges on the maniacal. I don’t want to give in to Sash right now, but my lips clamp to the steel like a leech on warm flesh. Sash tilts the cup up and I swallow everything inside.
“I want to see Aven!” I spew as she pulls the cup away from my lips.
Instead of answering me, Sash refills the cup and pushes it against my mouth again. I drain the second cup and then jerk my face away. The pace of my breathing increases until I’m almost hyperventilating.
“I want to see my daughter!” I demand.
“Two more cups,” she says. “Then you can see Aven.”
Somewhat calmed by Sash’s acquiescence, I guzzle two more cups. When I finish the second one, Sash stands up and returns to the table. With her back to me, she sets down the pitcher and cup.
“You said I could see Aven,” I say.
She turns to me. “After you sleep.”
“You lied to me!” I growl.
I try to rip my hands out of the rope. The more it digs into my skin, the more outraged I become.
“I want to see my daughter right now!” I shriek.
“Go to sleep,” Sash says. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
Sash stampedes across the room, crouches in front of me, and grabs me by the shoulders. “Go to sleep unless you want me to knock you out again.”
She hurls me down on my side. I roll over so that I’m facing away from her and stare at my blurry reflection in the wall. I should never have come back to the Delta.
Unable to believe how gullible I’ve been, I close my eyes. Why didn’t I recognize the truth sooner? No one in Krymzyn wants me here. Sash just blatantly lied to my face and has no intention of letting me anywhere near my daughter. As soon as I can get to Aven, I’m taking her with me and heading back to the Barrens. Far away from the deception of the Delta, I’ll raise her on my own and teach her how to take care of herself in the wild.
While planning my escape, I drift off to sleep. When I open my eyes again, I don’t know if I was out for five minutes, five hours, or five morrows. I flop over and glance around the cavern. Still keeping watch over me, Sash is sitting at the table.
“Your veins look a little better,” she says flatly. “Some of the blue has returned to your hair. Your eyes are still purple, but not as close to red as they were.”
“How long was I out?” I ask.
“It’s the next morrow,” she answers.
“Will you untie me now?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “What will you do if I do?”
“I won’t do anything.”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” she tells me.
“I think I’m past that,” I say.
She stands up from the stool and steps to the side of the bed. “One more morrow, and you would have been a Murkovin.”
“I know. Did they find Tela?”
“Not yet,” she answers. “A few of the Travelers went up the river to the north. They just got back a little while ago. The others are still out with Larn. They’re trying to follow the path you described.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know where she could be. We need to help them search for her.”
“You need more healthy sap first.”
She walks to the table, returns with a cup and pitcher, and sets them on the floor in front of me. After helping me sit up, she unties the rope from my feet and hands. As soon as I’m free, she jumps away from me and clenches her hands into fists. I ignore the cup, grab the pitcher, and swallow gulp after gulp. When the pitcher is empty, I set it on the floor.
“I’m sorry for the way I behaved,” I say. “I didn’t mean any of it.”
Probably deciding that I’m no longer a threat, she relaxes her muscles. “If you said the words, there must have been some truth in them.”
“There
wasn’t,” I reply. “From the moment I started drinking the wild sap, every thought in my mind became distorted. We can talk more about it later. I want to see Aven first. Then we need to help find Tela.”
“We will.” She pauses for a moment. “After you tell me what really happened in the Barrens.”
Numbing with shame, I lower my eyes to the floor. So many of the thoughts I had after drinking the wild sap, the false accusations of Sash betraying me, were all lies from inside my mind. As much as I never want to hurt her, I have to tell her the truth.
“Tela was so badly injured,” I say, looking up at her, “that if I tried to carry her back to the Delta, she would have died. I found a cavern and then stole the sap transport that I told you and Larn about. The Murkovin were looking for us, so I didn’t want to leave Tela alone in the cave. I couldn’t come back for help.
“She was in a lot of pain most of the time and just slept for the first few morrows. By the time she felt strong enough to move, my traveling speed had slowed from the wild sap. I didn’t think I could outrun the Murkovin if I carried her. Tela and I talked about what to do. We both agreed that it was best to wait until she could travel.
“Every morrow that passed, my thoughts became darker and darker. I convinced myself of some horrible things that weren’t true. But they seemed real while I was out there.”
“Like what?” she asks.
“Did I make a mistake by leaving Earth?” I pause for a moment. “And did you use me just so you could understand all the Earth emotions you feel?”
She folds her arms in front of her. “How could you ever think that?”
“Have you ever had wild sap?” I ask.
“No,” she answers. “We’re taught as children that it’s impossible to control the extreme emotions after a few morrows.”
“Tela couldn’t control them,” I say. “I could, but only sometimes. It took me a while to get it under control.”
Trying to figure out how to explain the rest of what happened between Tela and me, I rub the back of my head.
“Is that it?” Sash asks, unfolding her arms.
“No,” I say. “We were getting ready to come back to the Delta when Darkness fell. Everything about the wild sap is stronger during Darkness. A lot of physical desires that are hard to control are released.
“There’s a small waterfall in the cavern we stayed in. Tela wanted to clean off before we left. After she got out of the fall, we kissed each other and hugged. It didn’t last long because I came to my senses and stopped us before it went any farther. She got mad that I pushed her away, hit me in the head with a rock, and knocked me out. I haven’t seen her since.”
Sash stares at me in disbelief. “You kissed Tela?”
“It was the wild sap,” I say. “I stopped almost as soon as it started. She didn’t know what she was doing. The wild sap was in complete control of her. I told her that you’re the only person I can be with that way.”
Sash’s eyes redden. “If she just got out of the fall, did she have clothes on when you hugged her?”
“No,” I answer.
“Did you?”
“I had my pants on.”
Sash turns away from me and steps to the table. I stand up from the bed and cross the cavern to her. I rest my hand on her shoulder, but she immediately shrugs away.
“Don’t!” she snaps.
Although it’s not as strong as the prior morrow, I still feel the effects of the wild sap. I bite the insides of my cheeks while trying to suppress the hostility swelling inside me. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down enough to speak in a steady voice.
“When you don’t understand an emotion from my world,” I say, “it takes you a while to learn how to control it. That’s what it’s like with the wild sap, except ten times stronger. I think the only reason I could get it under control sometimes is because the feelings the wild sap releases are common in my world. I had trouble most of the time. I still feel it now, but it’s a lot weaker than it was.”
“I can’t believe you kissed Tela,” she says with her back to me. “You should have been watching out for her. Even though she’s been a Traveler longer than you have, she’s younger than you. She looks up to you.”
“I know she does. She’s my friend—nothing more. I did watch out for her, but I should have been stronger. I just couldn’t control it all of the time.”
Sash finally turns to me. “No matter what made it happen, it still hurts.”
“What can I do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I need time.”
I nod my head to her. “I want to clean off and see Aven. After that, will you help search for Tela?”
“Of course,” she replies. “I care about her just as much as you do.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I walk past Sash towards the waterfall cavern.
“Chase,” she says from behind me. “What do I do that makes you think I’m so controlling.”
I stop and look at her. “I didn’t mean it, Sash. It was the wild sap talking.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t want to do this right now,” I say. “I don’t think it will help anything.”
“Tell me!”
“Fine!” I belt out, unable to keep the anger out of my voice any longer. “You always insist on taking Aven to Home if Darkness falls. Even if I’m already with her, you come and get her. You know how fast I am and that I can protect her. It makes me feel like you don’t trust me with her.”
Pressing her lips tightly together, she narrows her eyes at me. “Is that all?”
“And the way you made Tela try to blend her light when she was young.”
“She was thrilled to do it!”
“I know she was,” I say. “But you made her keep trying until it happened, and she ended up breaking both of her legs. You wouldn’t take no for an answer. You never do.”
“I wanted her to know that she could do it. She needed to be pushed.”
I point my finger at her. “You wanted. You pushed. You’re that way with everyone.”
As I lower my arm, she flattens both of her hands on the top of the table and looks down at the steel surface. “You don’t know hard it is to have the gifts I have—to be so powerful, to see the future even when I don’t want to. What good is it to have those things if I don’t use them to help others?”
“You do help them,” I say in a much less combative tone. “But you get so caught up in what you think is best that you don’t take into consideration what other people might want.”
Still fuming, she pops her face up. “When have I done that?”
“When you got pregnant,” I answer. “I wanted to talk to you about how Aven should be raised, but you didn’t want to hear it. You decided how things should be. The subject was closed until that Darkness at Ovin’s tree. It made me feel like you didn’t care what I was going through.”
“I explained that to you,” she says. “I was feeling the same way. I decided it would make it worse for both of us if I told you because I knew there was nothing we could do about it.”
“You decided.”
She lowers her chin to her chest and looks at the tabletop. “Clean up. I’ll let Kyra know we’re coming to see Aven.”
Chapter 23
“Two Travelers stumbled upon a camp in the southwest,” says the tallest Murkovin the woman has ever known. “After a fight with our men, they were trapped in the Barrens for several morrows. The male Traveler eventually made it back to the Delta, but a young woman fled to the eastern wasteland.”
The woman studies the tall Murkovin’s eyes. Over the time she’d known him, he’d gained her trust in a way that no person other than her Ovì ever had. The two had forged an unbreakable bond since their first meeting long ago. Over the time that had passed, her feelings for him had grown to what she imagined she would have felt for her Mür had she known him.
“Do you know why the female Traveler stayed?�
� the woman asks.
“No one knows,” he answers. “She was severely injured in a crash while traveling. After the other Traveler stole a transport full of sap from the camp, they disappeared. Even though our men searched the area, they never found them.
“A few morrows later,” he continues, “two of our men spotted the male Traveler on his way back to the Delta. Although they gave chase, they were unable to catch him. On the same morrow, a commander at another camp caught sight of the female near the Stone Crossing. She had a transport with her, so he followed her trail to the east. After he told me about her, I went to the area to see if I could locate her.”
“Did you?” the woman asks.
“I know where she is. I wanted to talk with you before doing anything else.”
Knowing that there’s no one better at tracking a person in the Barrens than the man in front of her, the woman nods her head. “Can you describe her to me?”
“She’s young—shorter than you with a medium build. Legs fit enough to outpace most of our kind. Her hair hangs well over her shoulders, but the blue is now gone. She looks like one of us.”
The curious young Traveler I encountered once before, the woman thinks to herself. The wild sap must have freed her mind from the restraints of the Delta. But despite her strength and speed, she doesn’t know how to survive in the Barrens. A fate worse than she could ever imagine might await her.
Remembering how close she once came to suffering that same type of horror, the woman looks up at the clouds. If not for the man standing in front of her, in the best of scenarios, she would have been killed. She didn’t want to consider the other possibilities.
She was still young when it happened, her body still developing. Curves had found their way into her chest and hips, but she wasn’t fully mature yet. It was only a few hundred morrows after her Ovì’s death, long before she met the Watcher who became the Mür of her child.
As she often did after she learned to travel, she sped one morrow through the wasteland to the west. When she reached the hills where the dirt speckled with red, she found a high crest. Far enough from the edge of the Schorachnia’s domain that they wouldn’t harm her, but close enough that she could hear the music rising from the Eternal Canyon, she sat alone in thought.