by Janean Worth
Chapter Five
Kara awoke with a start, jerking so hard that she scratched her cheek against the rough surface of the tree bark that she’d been using as a pillow. The echo of a sharp yowl still hung in the pre-dawn air. The sound was what had awakened her from her fretful, nightmare-filled sleep.
If not for the shawl knotted about her torso, she’d have fallen off of the branch she perched on when she’d jerked awake. She blinked her sleepy, gritty eyes and squinted into the darkness below, grateful to see that the two sets of red eyes were now gone.
She began to untie the shawl, taking her time, carefully stuffing it back into her bag with one arm as she clung to the tree with the other arm. She pulled a bladder of water from her bag and took a long drink, then another quick sip, knowing that she’d have to ration her water until she found another source. After reluctantly putting the water bladder back in her bag, she rummaged around inside it one-handed until she could remove a thin slice of smoked, dried goat jerky from the oiled leather sack she’d stored it in. She put the goat jerky between her teeth and held it carefully there while she made sure that her bag was securely closed, then she gnawed on the tough meat as she looked out over the still dark forest.
The two sets of glowing red eyes were gone, but she had no desire to climb down from the tree just yet. Knowing that there were still Fidgets alive had made her rethink ever travelling after dark again.
She would have to risk waiting for dawn’s light, and the approach of the Enforcers, before she climbed down the tree again. From her tree’s vantage point, she could see the first faint tinges of lavender brightening the Eastern sky, and realized that she’d slept much longer than she’d intended to while she’d been tied to the tree.
She worried the tough, salty jerky between her teeth, attempting to soften it, as she wondered what had created the inhuman yowl that had awoken her. Then she wondered if that yowl had scared off the Fidgets. A shiver ran up her back at the thought. What creature was fearsome enough to scare a Fidget? A Fidget had plenty of defenses – long claws and a mouth full of sharp predator’s teeth made for tearing and eating flesh. Anything that scared them was most certainly something that Kara needed to be afraid of too. And she was. She was very afraid of everything in the dark forest just then.
As the sky lightened by almost imperceptible increments, Kara tried to line out a plan of survival in her mind, keeping mentally busy in order to think of something other than the fear. She needed to find a place to shelter. She needed to find food. She needed to find water. She needed a way to defend herself.
She needed her mother. The thought lanced through her with painful force, and she knew it for the truth that it was. She did need her mother. Her mother had always protected Kara as best she could after Kara’s father had died, and before, when he’d been alive, her mother had been a playmate of sorts in their beautiful, comfortable house, a loving nurturer who told wonderful carefree stories, read to her from the Book, taught her the difference between right and wrong, showed her how to bake her father’s favorite cookies and never missed an opportunity to tell Kara how much she was loved.
Kara wondered how a Tracken had gotten near her mother, when the Tracken were supposed to be kept in the stables – except those who directly served the Sovereign – and her mother was supposed to work in the kitchens, baking treats that might please the Sovereign’s palate. How had a Tracken gotten into the kitchen? Or how had her mother gotten near one of the Sovereign’s ‘pets’? She had not thought to ask Maude at the time, and now it was too late. She would likely never know.
Kara looked up at the sky again, hoping to see the cheerfully twinkling starry sky again, but now pink strands licked across the expanse of heavens above her head and she realized that it was bright enough for her to clearly see the forest floor below. She finished the rest of her goat quickly, chewing unthinkingly at the tough meat as the sky brightened still more overhead.
Carefully, keeping an eye on the ground, Kara began to descend the tree. Every step down onto the branch below brought her closer and closer to danger, but she knew that she could not stay in the tree. The Enforcers would surely find her there. The tree was not tall, and didn’t have enough leafy branches to hide her presence from them. No, she’d have to be brave and venture further into the forest if she hoped to survive.
She heard another long yowl echo through the forest just as her feet touched the ground and, for a moment, she thought of scurrying back up the tree that she’d just left. Shaking her head at her own cowardice, she forced herself to let go of the last low hanging branch and start her trek through the forest again.
Everything seemed to frighten her as she crept along, the harsh yowl still echoing in her mind and the remembered sight of the red eyes urging her to find shelter quickly.
Kara tried to think of all the things she knew about surviving the wilderness, but there hadn’t been much that her tutor had taught her on the subject, and her lessons with him had been cut short after her father died and there had been no money to pay the man.
She did remember, quite clearly, the Botany book that he’d had her study, the one with the edible and inedible plants, and their detailed pictures, which he’d called photographs. Photographs were from the time before the Fall, and so books containing them were very precious and scarce, and Kara had felt fortunate at the time that she’d gotten to look at the brightly colored images which provided as much detail as if she was seeing the plant with her own eyes. Then, when she’d been so young, she’d dreamed of becoming a gatherer for the settlement, which she’d thought would be an adventure. Gatherers went out to the wilderness during the brightest part of the day, accompanied by a group of Enforcers to keep the beasts at bay, and found edible wild plants to bring back to the settlement.
With this goal in mind, Kara had studied the book carefully, learning the different types of plants that bore edible fruits, nuts, leaves, stems and roots, and those which were deadly. Her tutor had also shown her hand drawn images of plants that had been mutated by the Fall, or shortly thereafter when the poison clouds had hung over the whole world. These were plants that could heal, or kill, depending upon their mutation. Kara had studied these as well, because Gatherers who brought back medicinal plants were valued and esteemed in the settlement, and Kara had wanted to make her parents proud.
Now, she was so very glad that she had studied so hard to become a Gatherer. The knowledge might just be enough to save her life. As the dawn turned into day overhead, she was able to pick out a few of the plants that she’d seen in the book from her surroundings, and whenever she passed an edible variety, she gathered some and poked it into her bag.
She made her way forward through the forest in this manner all day, never stopping to rest, meandering this way and that while she tried to maintain a Westerly direction, which would take her away from GateWide, while she looked for a suitable shelter where she could hide from the Enforcers and the beasts in the night.
Several hours after the sun had reached its zenith in the sky above, and had begun its descent back to the horizon, Kara thought she heard the sounds of horses far back in the distance. According to her tutor, few horses existed in the wilderness, so the sound of them could only mean that the Enforcers were in the forest behind her, looking for her so that they could drag her back to GateWide to face the Sovereign’s anger.
Kara began to search for a hiding place in earnest after that, but she found nothing suitable, and began to feel desperate as the sun fell further and further toward the horizon.
When she couldn’t find a shelter on the ground, she began to try to scout out the highest, broadest tree that she could find, one that had enough of a canopy of leafy branches to hide her should anyone be looking up into it from the ground. After several more hours, her legs aching, and her back tired from carrying the heavy bag, Kara picked out an ancient, enormous oak tree. At its base, it was twice as wide as Kara w
as tall. The broad branches spread out far, far above her head, some of them doubly as wide as her slender hips were, growing almost horizontally out of the thick, old trunk. Finding exactly the sort of tree she’d been looking for, Kara now wondered how she was going to climb the behemoth.