Lorel grinned. Kyri-thing grumbled a lot these days.
After several minutes’ walk, she found the perfect spot. White water frothed at the center of the stream, but the current slowed nearer the shore. Trout territory!
She sat on a boulder and pulled the roll of twine out her pocket. She tied one end to the handle of her pole, and wound more string around its length, tying several knots along the way. She measured off another twenty feet, cut the twine and tied a slipknot.
Handling the barbs gingerly, she eased the fishhook loose from her collar and tied it onto her line. She better not lose it; the kid would strangle her. There were only two left, though she’d bet he had another stash somewhere.
Now for bait. She laid the pole down in the moss and stalked uphill, into the grass. She studied the area before pouncing on a yellow and green grasshopper.
If the critter helped her catch a fish, it was more precious than a nugget of gold. Gold weren’t worth nothing out here beyond nowhere.
Grasshopper held high, she trotted back to the stream and picked up the fishing hook.
“It’s you or me, buddy, and I’m hungrier.” She gored the hook through the wiggly hopper’s yellow waistcoat. Sour green blood squirted onto her fingers. Yuck.
But she was ready for action. She grabbed the pole off the moss, whipped the tip back and cast out into the deep part of the creek.
The grasshopper plopped on the surface of the water. It floated downstream for a few seconds. And sank.
Would a fish eat it that quick? She tugged up the pole.
Green legs dangled at the end of the twine. Even from this distance, the grasshopper looked sorta limp. She hadn’t thought hoppers could look limp.
Maybe she’d caught the wrong kind of bait.
Back when Ahm-Layel tried to teach her, she’d tried and tried, but she never could catch nothing. Trouble was, the only bait critter she ever nabbed was a grasshopper.
She was certain trout didn’t like worms. Well, pretty certain. Maybe she needed to use some kind of fly? That sounded familiar. Flies were thread-snipping hard to catch, though. Maybe a butterfly? She’d seen a scrawny butterfly earlier.
Time to go bait hunting again. She wedged the pole upright between some big stones and trudged back toward the meadow.
Rocks clattered behind her.
She turned in time to watch her pole slide into the water. “Hey, come back here!” She dashed back and lunged at it.
Her hands landed on the willow pole, and in the icy stream. “Weaver’s blood, that water is cold.” She wriggled back, dragging the pole with her.
The line stayed taut in the creek – headed upstream.
“Sing to the Weaver! I caught something!” She writhed back farther, sat up, and lifted the pole out of the stream. “A trout! It’s gotta be a trout!”
The tip of the pole bent double.
Before she could lower it, the top third of the pole snapped off. Several feet of twine unraveled and shot upstream.
“Blood in the Weave.” She yanked the pole down to the ground. Two knots left before her pole lost all the line. “I ain’t giving up yet, little scaly.”
The trout leapt out of the water, shimmering in the sun like bronze chain mail before it fell back.
Lorel stared in awe. “You gotta be as long as my forearm,” she whispered. It didn’t look much like the trout Ahm-Layel caught, but it was way too pretty to complain about. And it was big enough to feed Tsai and her until they were both full.
The pole jerked in her hands. She nearly lost hold of it.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” She staggered to her feet and worked the pole backwards until she felt the line in her fingers. She wrapped a couple of loops of twine around the base of her pole, and a few more around her hand.
The fish tugged on the line, struggling to get farther upstream.
Twine slid around the fishing pole. The loops around her hand tightened and started to cut into her palm.
“Toss the Weaver’s chamberpot, that hurts!” She tried to slip the line off her fingers, but already her hand was so swollen the twine wouldn’t budge.
This wasn’t one of her better ideas. Time to try something else.
She backed away from the stream until she ran into a willow sapling. She looped some twine around a branch high above the rocks, pulled hard with her free hand, eased the rest off her aching hand, and tied it around the tree.
She strutted the three steps back to the creek.
The fish showed no signs of getting tired. It jumped out of the water again, much closer to the bank.
She had to swallow hard, her mouth watered so much. “You are dinner, little scaly.”
How had the kid pulled in a fish? She couldn’t remember, exactly. She better pay better attention next time. Once she had him back.
If she ever got him back.
Lorel shook the thought away and concentrated on her fish.
She reached up and grabbed the line, pulled on it.
Bronze lightning zigzagged across the creek.
“Snip my thread. Come back here!” She hauled a few feet of twine to her chest.
The trout darted downstream, yanking the twine through her fingers and knocking her off balance.
“Ouch!” She dropped the line and stumbled backward.
Road burn on her fingers? This was getting ridiculous. No way was she letting a blood-woven fish win this battle. She marched down the bank and glared downstream. She could see the chunky bronze back, not ten feet away. She grabbed the line and eased it toward the bank.
The fish thrashed into shallow water.
Hey, this wasn’t so hard. She pulled steadily, dragging the fish up onto the mossy bank.
The trout flopped and floundered, but it couldn’t reach the water. A good fifteen inches long, it glimmered brassy brown against the moss.
Lorel swaggered back to the sapling and tied the extra line around it. She sat down next to the tree and closed her eyes. Life was good. Finally she’d caught something besides weeds for dinner.
If she could just remember how to cook it. She really didn’t want to ask the toad.
Tsai would know. There were lots of fish in the swamps where the girl grew up. Whole markets full of fish in the cities, for that matter.
A skinny blue finger poked up out of the water and wiggled in her direction.
What on the Loom was that? Didn’t look like a fish or a plant. Weeds never squirmed like a snake. But the fraying thing didn’t have no eyes.
Another one stabbed out of the stream.
Weaver’s cold toes. It looked like the kraken that tried to eat the kid, only lots smaller. A baby kraken?
The first finger-thing – what did the kid call it? A tentacle? Anyway, the first one reached toward her fish.
“You can’t have it, you little monster.” She dashed forward and yanked her fish away from the shore. The trout flopped around, knocking her so off balance she fell flat to the ground. Why couldn’t she stay on her feet today?
She rolled onto her belly, got her feet underneath her, and started to stand up.
Something lunged out of the creek, grabbed her from the ankle to halfway up to her knee, and tugged her leg toward the water. How long was the tentacle on that little thing?
She crashed forward and landed back on the gravel. Pain burst through her knees and hands.
“Miswoven monster.” The situation was more embarrassing than scary. She should’ve paid more attention to the critter, baby or not.
She tossed the wiggly fish higher up the shore. At least dinner was safe now.
“Do monster fingers taste good?” Kraken tasted awful, but it was making the threat that counted.
Of course, this western monster didn’t understand Zedisti. It yanked her closer to the water.
She pivoted on her free knee, yanked the bronze knife from its sheath, and slashed the blue thing.
Or tried to slash it. The dented blade was stuck inside the sheath. S
he wrenched at it again until the knife came free.
Wait. That weren’t no tentacle. Her leg was in the monster’s mouth.
A big, wide, flat mouth with long wiggly whiskers. A catfish? Couldn’t be. The critter was almost as long as she was tall.
What was it doing half out of the water? Looking for lunch, Loom lint. No way was she gonna be some fish’s lunch. She swung the knife at the catfish’s nose.
Blood squirted on her boot, but the slimy skin was too tough to cut deep. Else it was so slimy the knife slid clear off.
It squeezed her ankle and tugged at her again. Its whole body wiggled like a snake’s. Or like an eel’s. It was even swimming backward like an eel.
And it was taking her with it. Her knee skidded on the gravel.
Weaver’s chamberpot. No way was she going into the water with that thing. It would drown her and eat her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Weren’t catfish good tasting? Somebody told her that once. Time to kill the beastie and take it home for Tsai to cook.
She sat back on her butt, braced her free leg, and slashed again at the fish’s head.
More blood splurted up her leg. Catfish must not be very smart. It didn’t even try to duck. It didn’t let go, neither. It did wiggle backwards harder.
She skidded another foot closer to the creek.
Time to put a stop to this hogwash. Lorel leaned forward and stabbed at the miswoven fish’s back. The knife slid off, leaving only a shallow cut. Her hand slid across its top fin.
Something stabbed into her little finger. “Coward crap!” Pain shot up her arm. Blood squirted down her hand. Her blood. Did catfish have knives on their backs? Poisoned knives? The tiny cut hurt worse than a huge wound.
The fish dragged her closer to the water.
Her boot dipped all the way into the creek. Icy water lapped over the top. “Weaver’s cold toes! No, my cold toes. Let go, you blood-woven monster!”
It wasn’t listening to her. She could fix that.
She pulled her free foot under her, lunged forward, and stabbed the fish square in the ribs.
This time the stupid fish noticed.
Cold water splashed all over her. If she’d thought the monster was wiggly before, it proved her wrong. It thrashed around so hard it threw them both up onto the shore.
“About time.” She grabbed it by a fin and dragged it farther inland.
Spikes drove into her hand. Pain rushed up her arm. Maybe the blood-woven fish did have poisoned knives hidden in its fins.
She’d have to kill it for sure now, just to find out.
Loom bust a Thread, she sounded as bad as the kid trying to find out stuff. She laughed at herself and dragged the overgrown catfish higher up the rocks.
Slime coated her hands, oozed up her arms, smeared her clothes. How weird that the more slime she got on her, the less she bled. The cuts couldn’t be very deep if a little slime sealed them up.
It seemed to take forever to the fish to quit thrashing. She washed her bloody hand – the cuts didn’t look too deep – and took apart her fishing pole while she waited.
Her hand started bleeding again. It still hurt like she’d stabbed herself with a dull knife.
The wet string went into her wetter pocket, the mangled hook she slid back into her soggy collar. Who’d’ve thought a fishing hook could get all bent up like that? Something else she hoped Tsai could fix.
After a while the catfish went limp. She nudged it. It didn’t bother to flap a fin at her. Finally she could get back to camp.
She tossed the fish over one shoulder, getting slime all over her again. She gotta wash her clothes before they moved on. No way was she gonna travel with stinky crap oozing through the cloth. The goo already made her skin creep. At least her hand had mostly stopped bleeding.
Blast, the beastie was heavy. Must weigh a hundred pounds. They’d eat good for a week.
She scooped up her gorgeous trout by the gills and limped back to camp.
The limp worried her a little. She didn’t remember it hurting while the catfish was chewing on her. No blood on her leg, sing to the Weaver, and the fish didn’t have no teeth. Bruised her up, maybe.
Boots full of soggy socks gave her more trouble. She’d have blisters for sure.
Tsai dashed out to meet her as soon as she made it to the meadow. “Let me help.” She took the trout off her fingers. “What a great catch! But why’d you bring the monster?”
“It tried to eat me. Don’t catfish taste good?”
“They taste awful once they get big.” Tsai patted her arm. “We can use it as bait, though.”
Lorel sighed and dumped the catfish corpse at the edge of the trees. “Not worth the trouble of hauling the slimy thing around. Catching grasshoppers is easy enough.” She wandered close to the cook fire. The heat felt good after being wet so long.
Tsai laid the trout away from the fire’s heat, grabbed Lorel’s sliced-up hand, and inspected the cuts. “These could turn nasty. Go wash them, get rid of all the slime. I’ll ask Kyri to help me make a poultice.”
Hardly worth the trouble of listening to the toad scold her. But the kid lost his foot over a tiny scorpion sting, so maybe she better play along.
By the time she got back from washing herself and her clothes in the creek, Tsai and the legless lizard were sitting next to the fire.
Izzy cuddled against Tsai’s back. The little critter was gonna win the girl over yet, if it didn’t scare her to death first. Ten to one, her friend hadn’t noticed the rat-dog yet.
Tsai stirred a bowl filled with smelly green crap a few more times. “Sit down next to me.”
The girl was getting as bossy as the kid.
Might as well sit down and get it over with. The girl could be as stubborn as the kid, too.
Tsai hauled the wooden spoon out of the bowl and smeared stinky green crap all over her wounded hand.
Weaver’s chamberpot, that crap hurt worse’n the catfish poison! Lorel clenched her teeth and forced her twitchy arm to hold still. A real warrior never whined about a little sting. But blood in the Weave, that green crap hurt. The stupid snake probably put stuff in it to get back at her.
She’d fix the legless lizard. She wouldn’t never show it hurt. She just had to distract herself from the slithering toad’s revenge. So what was going on around her?
Not much.
Mosquitoes buzzed around her ears. A couple of big flies zapped across the camp. One hovered over Kyri-thing, but as usual the stupid snake ignored it.
On the ground near the wagon, a thin, flat board the kid was saving for who-knows-what had curved chunks carved out of it. “Whatcha making?”
“A scabbard for the bog-rotted scimitar.” Tsai scooped another load of green stuff onto the wooden spoon. “Maybe getting it sheathed will make it stop wandering.”
Lorel swallowed hard to keep from yelping. That blood-woven crap sent pain up her arm all the way down to her belly button.
“This one doubts the implementation will be efficacious.” Kyri-thing slithered closer and peered at her leg. “Has the anchor compromised the epidermis of its posterior tibia-fibular region?”
If she ever understood the stupid snake, she’d fall over in a dead faint. “Little words, toad.”
It blinked at her. “Is the anchor’s nether limb injured?”
Injured? Oh, her leg. The legless lizard must’ve seen her limping. “The fraying catfish bit me. I’m having more trouble from wet socks, though.”
Tsai shook the green-stained spoon at her. “Take off your socks, frog brain. And show me your leg.”
“It’s just bruised.” But it hurt worse than it ought to when she tugged her soggy boot and socks off. She eased her wet trouser leg up.
A purple-and-blue bruise covered her leg from knee to just above her ankle, showing even against her dark skin. Tooth marks the size of her littlest fingernail stood out in bright pink.
“I didn’t even notice it had teeth.” Lorel poked at on
e pink blotch.
Tsai slapped her hand away and smeared green crap all over her leg. “And I thought I’d made too much. There’s not enough!”
Kyri-thing inspected her leg closely. “The corium is not ruptured. Septicity is improbable.”
“I got the ‘not’ part.” Lorel leaned back and let Tsai stain her leg green. At least this time it didn’t sting. “How long do I gotta sit here?”
“On your leg? Until the poultice dries.” Tsai jumped up and headed for the wagon door. “Don’t move until I find bandages for your hand.”
Weaver’s cold toes. Everybody was babying her today. She had to admit, it was kinda nice. Nobody’d made such a fuss over her since she fell down the cliff, ages ago, and conked herself silly. Back then the kid made her ride inside the wagon for days. She’d nearly died of boredom.
No more riding inside for her. She’d be driving the miswoven wagon herself tomorrow. Nothing was gonna stop her from rescuing the kid.
Tsai climbed out of the wagon with a handful of rags and tied her hand up. “Now you look like a war veteran.”
Lorel snorted. “I look like a boy-child who cut his own hand shaving for the first time.” Both of her brothers had managed to cut their hands, somehow. How could she be related to that pair of clumsy noodle brains? “Quit poking at me and go finish that scabbard.”
Tsai laughed, bowed, and picked up her carving tools.
“Can I help?” A scabbard couldn’t be that different from an instrument case.
“Not until we see how your hand heals up.” Tsai’s nimble fingers slid a smoothing knife over the wood. “Tomorrow you can pick out a serdil hide to cover it. I want this scabbard to look like it belongs to a magicked weapon.”
Tomorrow, tomorrow. Today was boring. As usual. The only thing Tsai let her do was watch the fraying bugs buzz around.
The sun slid behind the trees. More mosquitos came out to chew on her, but most of the flies went wherever pesky bugs went.
One big, gray, red-eyed fly continued to hover over the legless lizard. After thinking about it way too long, the fly landed on the snake’s back. And bit down hard.
Kyri-thing yelped and said a filthy word in Nashidran.
Dragon's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 4) Page 16