Daywards

by Anthony Eaton

  ‘And Dara?’ Even from outside, Dara could hear a note of hesitation in her brother’s voice.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You know she won’t just accept this. And if she decides to interfere, or doesn’t behave the way we think she will …’

  ‘Jaran, you do your job properly and she won’t be a problem. Just concentrate on the task at hand, leave things here for me and the others to deal with, do what I’ve asked of you and get back as fast as you can, all right?’

  ‘Okay. But I still don’t see why we can’t just let them go. We’re probably better off without them, and we wouldn’t have to listen to all that Earthmother shi, either.’

  Uncle Xani let out a long breath, his patience clearly being tried. ‘It’s like I told you all the other night, Jaran. Da’s instructions were very, very specific. I’m not the scientist he was, so I don’t understand the details, but I do know that there’s absolutely no room for even the slightest error. He made that quite clear. Every single viable kid brings something different to the mix, and so we need Dara just as much as we need you and all of the others. Otherwise it all comes to nothing, right? So let’s stick to the plan.’

  ‘Then why send me off? What’s the point of having …’

  ‘Jaran!’ Xani’s voice grew sharp now. ‘That’s enough. I thought you had more respect than this.’

  ‘I’m not trying to question you, Uncle. I just don’t see why we need to do this. It seems unnecessary. Unscientific.’

  ‘Jaran, this isn’t about science, it’s about power. As soon as this all goes up, the clan will be turned on its head. You understand that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then you realise that anything which helps us sustain our power is vital. I’m confident that when they … when it all happens, things will work out just as Da Janil planned. But in case they don’t, it’s important that we have a little … persuasion … on our side. A bargaining tool, if you prefer. That’s why you need to do this; it’ll give us leverage, in case we need it.’

  At that, the two fell silent for some minutes and then Dara heard footsteps coming her way. She hunched down into the shadows, staying small and silent as Uncle Xani led Jaran back out into the clearing and the door slid closed behind them. As she’d hoped, both of them were blinking against the sudden darkness, and she relaxed, confident that neither would see her. Jaran had a bulky pack strapped to his back, and in the middle of the clearing the two stopped and faced each other. They were almost the same height, Dara noticed. Uncle Xani placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  ‘Stay safe. By the time you get back, everything should be well in motion. Wait up here for me to come and get you. I’ll check every night, okay?’

  Jaran nodded and then, without another word, Uncle Xani turned and strode from the clearing, disappearing into the tangle of the forest along the home trail. Jaran watched him go, and then, to Dara’s surprise, he shrugged off the pack, dropped it to the ground and sat beside it. He remained there, motionless, as though listening to the night.

  Crouched beside the Eye, Dara was aware that with every passing moment her brother’s night-vision was returning and the likelihood of him glancing in her direction and spotting her was increasing.

  There was little she could do about it, though, other than hold her breath.

  Then Jaran pulled the pack towards him and opened it, digging around and pulling out oddly-shaped bits and pieces and examining each one briefly, before replacing them. Finally, he stood up, slung the pack onto his shoulders and crossed to the edge of the clearing.

  Dara, watching, held her breath, willing her brother to continue on, to vanish into the forest, so she could move and follow him. Jaran, though, hesitated, lingering a minute or two longer in the broken shadows of the nearest trees. At one point he looked back towards the Eye, apparently staring directly at her, and Dara’s pulse raced in her ears as she braced herself to run.

  But somehow he didn’t spot her and he turned and marched off into the forest, swallowed quickly by the night.

  She gave him a moment to get clear and out of earshot and then released an enormous sigh of relief. Her first instinct was to rush back down to the caves to wake Ma Saria and tell her everything she’d just overheard.

  But if she did that, Jaran would get away and there was no telling what devious task he’d been dispatched to fulfill. All that talk of power – it left a hard knot in the pit of her stomach.

  I’ll get back as fast as I can, Jaran had said. That didn’t sound good either. Whatever they were planning, was going to happen quickly and soon, by the sound of things.

  ‘What would Ma want?’ she muttered to herself. Somewhere in the distance, a couple of nightbirds cried their lonely songs into the sky.

  At the edge of the clearing, she took a few steps into the shadows and stopped to let her eyes adjust. She strained to find a little earthwarmth so she could reach out and locate Jaran, but her thoughts were too unfocused and she stopped trying and concentrated instead on simply listening.

  Even in the middle of the night, the forest was never silent. Distant chirps and rustles and the soft, low moan of the breeze through the canopy joined to form a clamour that filled her hearing, but then, just as she was about to give up and trail Uncle Xani back down to the camp, there came one of those brief, transitory lulls – a moment when, for whatever reason, the wind dropped and the whole forest paused in a moment of silent synchronicity.

  And in the middle of that profound quiet, somewhere off the path to her right and north from where she stood, something large rustled through heavy undergrowth.

  The silent moment passed and the sound of her brother’s passage was hidden again by the nightsong of the forest, but it was enough. Knowing where to look, now, it took Dara only a couple of moments to spot the other trail. It was barely more than an overgrown and little-used game path, its entrance tangled and well hidden and all but invisible, branching into the undergrowth just a few metres ahead.

  Smiling, and with one last glance back over her shoulder towards the Eye, Dara slid between the shrubs and fell quickly into hunting walk as she followed her brother into the night.

  Towards dawn, Jaran stopped and rested on a broad, flat rock at the edge of a stand of enormous trees. A few metres away, Dara collapsed with relief, lowering herself carefully and silently and leaning her back against the trunk of a tree.

  Stay awake! she told herself, conscious of an aching weariness in her legs and back. To fall asleep now would be a disaster. Overhead, the grainy light of pre-dawn began to lift the darkness and Dara looked around, curious. She’d never travelled this far north onto the plateau before.

  During the night, the forest around them had changed. Above her head, the canopy still blocked the sky, but below it the undergrowth was no longer thick or tangled as it was back near the top of the escarpment. Here it was more open, the spaces between the trees filled with light leaf litter and small scrub. Carefully, she crept forward until she could see Jaran, crouched on his rock, fiddling with equipment from his pack. She craned her neck to make out what he was doing, but the device he was using – a small wire frame attached to a tiny cylinder – was nothing she’d seen before.

  A minute or two later, the smell of something cooking wafted through the morning air, setting her mouth watering and her tummy growling.

  There was no chance to find something to eat now, though, so all she could do was push the hunger aside.

  The morning grew brighter and eventually she was able to make out her brother more clearly. He’d finished cooking and was sprawled on the earth beside his pack, wolfing down the strange food hungrily, before washing it down with several long swigs from a drinking canteen. From her hidden vantage point, she studied him. He was almost a man now, she realised. And so much like their father, with his long face, square chin, and his eyes. Much darker colouring, of course, like her own, but looking at him, she could almost imagine what their father must have looked
like as a young bloke.

  That kind of thought was dangerous. The past was dangerous. It didn’t pay to dwell too much on those who’d gone. Everybody knew that. Dara pushed the memory away.

  Jaran didn’t appear to be in any hurry to move on. If he was half as tired as she was, Dara could understand why. On top of their sleepless night, he’d set a fast pace through the forest, clearly keen to put as much distance as possible between himself and the camp before daylight. Now though, fed and watered, he removed his hopper-hide moccasins and stretched out, hands behind his head, studying the brightening sky through the tree branches.

  Dara did the same, confident that if her brother started moving again she’d hear him.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, just to rest …

  When she woke, she did so suddenly, startled to find herself in the middle of unfamiliar bush. Then her memory came flooding back and she only just stopped herself from leaping to her feet in alarm. Overhead, the sun was high, already close to its zenith, and it took only a moment to ascertain that, sure enough, her brother had vanished. There was no trace of him or his equipment near the flat rock.

  ‘Shi!’ Dara swore out loud. Abandoning any pretence at stealth, she marched over to where she’d last seen him. Nothing. To the north, the trail they’d been following continued, tending off in a nightwards direction towards a distant range of hills. On the other side of the clearing, though, a wider path disappeared daywards. Dara examined the ground at both trailheads closely, looking for a telltale footprint or crushed leaves, but there was no indication of Jaran’s direction and eventually she gave up and flopped angrily on the flat rock.

  Her stomach grumbled and, without thinking, she pulled up earthwarmth into herself and reached, searching out something to eat – just a coldblood would do. With no firestarting kit she’d have to eat it raw. And water – she’d need to find a drink before much longer.

  Here and there a few sparks glimmered, but nothing suitable. A family of large hoppers were asleep in the thicket of trees behind her, but without a spear and a thrower there was no hope of catching one. She wouldn’t have been able to gut or skin it, anyway.

  Frustrated, she pushed down further into the Earthmother – no restraint or control, just an angry, petulant shove.

  The result caught her by surprise. Suddenly she was part of the forest. A swamping rush of life and sensation rolled over her, so powerful in its indifference that she almost lost herself into it. It was nothing compared with the reaching she’d done through Ma Saria, but still so much more sweeping, much deeper, than anything she’d managed before. Effortlessly, her horizons unrolled. She’d somehow managed to punch through an invisible barrier in her mind and now a whole new distance and detail were open to her.

  And there in the middle of it, plodding nightwards, was Jaran, his familiar dull spark winding along the northern trail, several hours ahead at least.

  Smiling, Dara retreated back into herself, feeling unaccountably dizzy.

  ‘Wow!’

  She wished Eyna could have been there, or Ma Saria, or just anyone to share the moment.

  But she didn’t have time to waste with daydreams and so, her belly still grumbling, she set off north, following her brother’s path towards the hills.

  Through the lengthening shadows of the afternoon, she followed, stopping once or twice to drink from small streams and on one occasion to dig out a couple of nut-roots to chew on. The woody flesh was hard and bitter, but it filled her somewhat and without the distraction of hunger she could concentrate on walking.

  Occasionally, she’d stop and reach, checking on her brother. Pushing through that invisible barrier became easier each time she did it. Sometimes it seemed as if she was catching up to him, at others as though he’d pulled ahead. It didn’t matter, though. She knew where he was and could follow him regardless. That was the important thing.

  The path wound into the foothills of the range. All day the hills had been nothing more than a series of dark hummocks across the north horizon. Now, though, they began to loom, the bare, grey granite of their upper slopes rising in a series of cracked, broken terraces. From an eyrie high overhead, a large bird leapt into the sky and wheeled effortlessly above her, screeching occasionally.

  Following its grey shape against the blue, Dara experienced an odd sensation, as if her brother was watching her. But when she dragged her eyes back to the ground, and carefully scanned the landscape and path ahead, Jaran was nowhere to be seen and so she pushed the feeling aside and trudged onwards.

  It was late afternoon, the sun already well hidden by the hills, when the trail sloped sharply uphill towards a low saddle between two granite peaks. Dara looked around. The path had been climbing gradually but steadily for several hours, and the forest had given way to sparse shrub, often punctuated by enormous slabs of bare, flat stone. Here in the foothills there were no real trees, only a few scraggly specimens that had managed to wedge their shallow roots stubbornly into cracks in the rock. The cold wind, unobstructed by forest, howled up the slope from the south.

  Sitting on one of the large rock slabs, Dara thought about her options. Her feet and legs throbbed with fatigue and the cold was already making her shiver. The night ahead promised to be long and she toyed with the idea of giving up and returning home to warn Ma Saria that Uncle Xani had something brewing. Crossing through the saddleback pass would take several hours, and, with darkness approaching, the thought of being exposed up there in the icy wind on unfamiliar land held little appeal.

  She’d almost convinced herself that turning back was the only sensible course when she glanced uphill one last time. The sunset beyond the pass seemed to hang there, framed by the rock which was painted black in the dying light, more a part of the sky than the earth.

  Then, against the brightness of the sunset, just on the other side of the saddleback, she noticed a dark smear against the blood-red clouds. A thin column of smoke rose a short way into the air before the wind, whistling through the pass, swept it away to the north.

  Jaran.

  Dara tried to estimate the distance, but in the twilight it was difficult to judge. Two things were certain, though. If he’d lit a fire, Jaran must be settling down for the night and clearly he had no idea she was following. A hint of a smile crept into the corners of Dara’s mouth.

  ‘Gotcha!’ she muttered and then set off, suddenly invigorated despite her weariness.

  The trail up to the saddleback, foreshortened in the gathering night, proved a lot longer than she’d anticipated, and the better part of an hour passed before Dara scrambled up a narrow section of loose scree and stopped in the curve of the pass. On either side black, rocky peaks angled up steeply into the darkness.

  Ahead, the nightwards horizon was lost in a hummocked tangle of fractured earth. Clearly this pass was just the first of many, these hills the vanguard of a much larger range extending north into the night. The jutting peaks were barely visible against the final burst of sunset.

  ‘Shi!’ Dara cursed, and hugged her thin top tightly around her shoulders. Here in the pass the wind was focused and vicious. Worse, there was no sign now of Jaran, his firesmoke lost in the dark.

  Dara tried reaching, but for some reason – perhaps the cold, perhaps exhaustion, or perhaps because all afternoon she’d been pushing herself further and further into the Earthmother – she couldn’t manage to draw up more than a vague tingle of earthwarmth.

  ‘Nothing for it,’ she muttered and started down into the dark, broken land ahead. She’d find a place to hole up for the night, hopefully out of the wind. In the morning she could find her brother.

  The trail dropped rapidly from the pass and the effect of the wind lessened somewhat. The ridge provided at least a little shelter. The path, though, grew increasingly treacherous underfoot, loose stones occasionally slipping out under her in the darkness. Several times she had to throw her hands out, catching herself painfully on the rocky ground to prevent herself from falling and
possibly tumbling all the way down, however far that turned out to be.

  For a torturous hour or so, she clambered slowly and awkwardly down, aware the whole time that if she slipped and broke a leg or an arm it would be the end of her. Eventually, though, the angle of the slope began to decrease and the path levelled out. It was fully dark now, the only illumination from the soft starlight overhead. No moon had risen. Pausing to catch her breath, Dara looked around. She appeared to be in the bottom of a long valley, running parallel to the ridge. The trail veered left along the valley floor and disappeared into a stand of trees ahead.

  The faint gurgle of water reached her ears from down the trail. Wearily she plodded on and, sure enough, just beyond the trees, a narrow creek ran down the far wall of the valley, pooling briefly before turning down the valley floor.

  All thoughts of Jaran temporarily pushed from her mind, Dara fell to the ground and drank long and deeply. The water tasted sweet and she gulped it greedily, ignoring the cold spill of it down the front of her top.

  Her thirst sated, she sat up and took stock of the situation. Jaran was somewhere nearby, she knew that. Another quick attempt at reaching met with the same result as the last, so clearly something was wrong there. She bit her lip, thoughtful. There was no point blundering along in the darkness – and after that treacherous climb down from the pass, there was certainly no future in going back the way she’d come.

  All she could do, Dara decided, was find somewhere nearby to sleep. At least she had water here. In the morning she’d see what she could do about reaching, find a little more food, or perhaps even her brother.

  Her decision made, Dara stood up. She’d spotted a likely looking overhang in the valley wall just near the treeline and determined to check it out more closely.

  Before she’d taken more than a couple of steps, however, a figure detached itself from the shadow of a nearby tree. Dara froze, her eyes locked onto the dark shape, its features cloaked in night.

  ‘Hey, sis. Took you long enough. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever get down.’