Barsali stood up and dusted off his hands. The party had already demolished what was left of the long-tailed gar. It didn’t go very far compared to a hog.

“I’m going to take a look around,” he announced. “I’ll see if there’s another route west that we can take to avoid that river.”

“Good idea,” Yvan replied. “The rest of you don’t need to keep sitting around. Patrol the area and establish a perimeter in case someone comes.”

Omer and Niyazi both got to their feet. Rien licked the last of the gar juice off his fingers while he took a few more bites of meat off the bone.

Neils and Vidal were still eating, too. A few scraps still clung to the gar skeleton dangling from the spit.

Wesh didn’t turn away from Eliska even once. Yvan took off his jacket, spread it on the grass next to Wesh, and put Wesh’s portion of the meat on top of the jacket until Wesh was ready to eat it.

No one disturbed Wesh’s work. Yann didn’t want to watch anymore. Nothing Wesh did made any difference.

Yann got ready to stand up and go on patrol with the others. Anything was better than sitting here doing nothing.

Just then, Rien shifted around on his seat and flung what was left of his bone in the wild girl’s direction.

She kept lurking around the edge of the men’s camp. Her occasional muttering and snarling drifted to their ears.

“Here! You can have that!” Rien yelled to her.

The bone landed in a pile of leaf debris under the trees. The girl launched herself at the bone, scrambled in the litter to pick it up, and attacked the leftover meat with her teeth.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Yvan snapped.

Rien looked up. “What? I thought she might be hungry.”

“So you feed her like an animal—after she just pulled Eliska out of that river?” Yvan smacked his lips and turned to Wesh’s portion of the food. “Now Wesh will have to go short because of you.”

“Don’t,” Neils interrupted. “She can have what’s left of mine.”

He got up, pulled a bunch of leaves from a nearby tree, and plastered them together into a makeshift plate under what little was left of his food.

“Take mine, too.” Vidal handed his food up to Neils. “She looks like she needs it more than we do.”

Neils added it to his own portion, crossed the bank, and approached the wild girl.

She scampered away into the trees to get away from him. He stopped and held out the leaves with the meat and bones sitting on top.

“Do you want this?” he called. “You can have it with our thanks. Take it.”

He waited, but she bared her teeth and hissed at him. She refused to come any closer.

He finally gave it up, laid the leaf plate on the ground inside the trees, and walked back to the fire.

She crept out as soon as he put a safe distance between them. She advanced slowly and then darted out, snatched the plate, and took off with it. She vanished into the undergrowth.

“Good thinking,” Rien remarked. “Now we’ll never have to see her again.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Yvan snapped again. “Is it absolutely necessary that you be as hateful as you can to everyone?”

“I’m not hateful to everyone. I was trying to be nice to her.” Rien wiped his hands on his pants. “I don’t see what the problem is. It isn’t like we want her hanging around keeping us awake all night with her noise.”

“Just keep your mouth shut!” Yvan snapped. “Don’t let me hear another word out of you—ever.”

“You mean…..” Rien faltered. “You mean—like—ever?”

“Not until I tell you to. Don’t speak unless I ask you a direct question. Understand?”

Rien made a face and looked away, but he didn’t say anything.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He stood up and then Vidal did the same thing. The men divided themselves into pairs and headed off in different directions.

Yann should have gone with them, but he saw this one chance to talk to Wesh while no one else was around.

Yvan still sat there next to Wesh. He would hear everything, but Yann just had to bite the bullet and take the consequences.

He waited for the men to leave and then cleared his throat with difficulty. “Um….Wesh?”

“What is it, my boy?” Wesh muttered without looking up.

Yann summoned all his courage and blurted out, “I think I made a terrible mistake.”

Yvan’s head shot up exactly the way Yann knew it would, but he couldn’t stop now. He had to get this out if it would help Eliska at all.

Wesh looked up for the first time, too. “What did you do?”

Yann poured out the whole story, including everything that happened after he killed the Darkling.

He only left out the part about him flirting with her and then holding hands with her afterward.

He sensed his father sitting there and listening through the whole sorry recital. Yann felt himself explaining all of this to his father more than Wesh—as if anything could explain such a colossal lapse in judgment.

What had Yann been thinking by keeping something so important to himself? He never would have dreamed of keeping an injury like that from his father if it happened to one of the Watchmen.

“I should have told you,” he finally stammered. “Her head hurt for two days after that. I wanted her to tell you, but she said not to. I should have…..and now this…..That river did something to her….didn’t it?”

Wesh slumped and went back to bending over her. “I don’t think it made any difference, my dear boy, if that makes you feel any better,” he muttered. “Eliska’s power makes her especially susceptible to the Dark. The river would have affected her the same way even if she never got hurt.”

“But you said she shuns the Dark,” Yann blurted out. “You said she had no affinity for it.”

“She does and I never said she had an affinity for it. She has unbelievable power. The Dark twists that power more than it would twist anyone else in the same situation. If you or your father fell into that river, I doubt it would affect you much at all. It might even spit you out unhurt onto the bank. It’s different for her.”

“So…..” Yann gazed down at Eliska’s still face. “You don’t think the Darkling inflicted any kind of injury on her?”

“If it did, it was purely a physical injury.” Wesh laid his hand on her forehead. “I’m not sensing any damage to her skull or her brain. She got a headache from landing so hard. That’s all. She would have been fine in a few days—and she would have responded to the river the same way even if she didn’t get hurt beforehand.”

Yann shook his head. He didn’t want to accept that.

If that was true, then he really couldn’t do anything to help her.

He wanted so badly to believe that it would help her. He hoped and prayed that telling Wesh the truth would somehow give Wesh the ammunition he needed to drive the Darkness out of her and bring her back.

“Go on patrol, son,” Yvan interrupted. “Take your mind off it for a while.”

Yann got up and stumbled away in a daze. He almost tripped over the wild girl on his way to join Omer and Barsali.

She sprang in front of him, contorted in strange body positions, and yowled at him. She twisted her face into insane expressions.

He tried to walk around her, but she only leapt in front of him a second time and yelled at him even louder.

She startled him into waking up enough to realize where he was—and where she was.

She no longer scuttled around under the trees where she’d been when Neils gave her that food. She’d moved.

He tried to walk away from her a second time. She rushed in front of him for the third time, got in his face, and went through the same sequence of grimaces, disgusting expressions, and incomprehensible shrieks, snarls, and howls.

Yann froze in place trying to decide what to do, but just then, Vidal, Rien, and Niyazi came back.

Rien pulled his sword on her again and slashed it at her. “Get out of here, you freak!” he bellowed. “Go on! Get out of here!”

Niyazi pulled Yann away. “Did she attack you, boy?”

“No, it sounded like she was trying to talk to me.”

“She isn’t trying to talk to anyone,” Rien snarled and stabbed his weapon at her again. “Go on! Get out of here! Be off!”

She retreated, but not without baring her teeth and snarling at him plenty of times.

The three men must have been on their way back from patrolling. They returned to the fire and took Yann with them.

Barsali, Neils, and Omer returned a few minutes later. Yann had no other option than to sit down with them where he’d been sitting before.

“Everything looks quiet out there,” Barsali reported. “We’re the only people around.”

“Except for her,” Rien muttered. “If she doesn’t leave, I swear I’ll have to….”

He broke off when the girl crept right into their camp.

She circled a few times and inched closer each time. She finally worked her way around to Wesh’s side of the group and approached nearer to Eliska.

“Get away from here, you filthy wretch!” Rien barked. He picked up a stone from the ground and winged it at the girl.

Yvan shot out a hand and snatched his wrist, but he sent the rock flying before Yvan could stop him. “What did I tell you about keeping your mouth shut?” Yvan snapped. “I’ll be driving you out of camp if you make another sound.”

The rock missed the girl and landed in the undergrowth behind her. She didn’t look at it and she didn’t back off. She showed no sign that she even understood that he’d thrown a rock at her.

She crouched there and then gamboled a little closer to Eliska.

“Should we stop her?” Barsali asked. “What if she’s a Darkling?”

“She isn’t dangerous—not to Eliska,” Wesh replied. “She wouldn’t have saved Eliska like that if she was.”

“But how could she survive that river if she isn’t a Darkling?” Neils asked.

“Maybe she doesn’t have magic, either,” Yann suggested.

Wesh looked up and studied the wild girl. “Yes, she does. She has huge magic. She’s almost as strong as Eliska.”

“Then how did she survive?” Yann asked. “The river doesn’t seem to have affected her at all.”

“We don’t know what this girl was like before,” Wesh replied. “She could have been perfectly normal and the river drove her insane.”

“Then why isn’t she unconscious the way Eliska is?” Vidal asked.

“The Dark affects everyone differently.” Wesh went back to his work. “I don’t know who this girl is, but from the way she’s acting, I’d say she’s as worried about Eliska as we are.”

End of Chapter 22