“You saved a deer.”
Perhaps if there’d been less bitterness still swimming in her blood, the information would have delighted Mara. As it was, she was merely confused. She peered up at Eli, convinced he was mocking her, or maybe just trying to lead her astray, but the bashful tension on his face was genuine. His eyes darted to her, then away, as they walked abreast through wide, meandering corridors of the forest.
“I saved a deer,” he repeated.
“Why?”
He couldn’t shrug, not with Nick perched on his shoulders, but he wobbled his head from side to side in an approximation of the gesture. “I don’t know, really. Habit? I was kind of a soft kid. Used to take up strays. And when my magic began to manifest, healing animals was good practice. I could fix a shattered leg on a horse or a broken wing on a bird, and they wouldn’t go to the Order running their mouths.”
Mara understood that, the first part anyway. She, too, had taken up strays as a girl. But she didn’t want to tell him as much. It felt important, critically important, that she not give him anything of herself. Her trust in him was a fledgling thing, a product of necessity. All she truly knew of him was that Davy trusted him and that Beth said he would keep her safe. And that a sentient forest–it was sentient, she could sense that much now that she was paying attention–had apparently decided to trust him as well.
“So you came across a wounded deer and instinct just took over?” she prodded, dryly.
“Something like that. It was during a patrol, back when Davy and I were just cadets. I was young. I knew how to hold back my magic, how to hide it, but healing magic has a way of building up when you can’t use it. I was still developing the skills to let that pressure off as often as I needed to.”
“So you came across a wounded deer and instinct just took over,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“And now Loftland loves you.”
“‘Love’ might be a stretch. Now Loftland trusts me.”
Content with the answer, for now, Mara turned her attention back to their surroundings. Though the sun hadn’t yet risen, dawn teased the forest with tendrils of mist that formed around their knees and ankles.
“What time is it?” she asked, and he reached into his pocket and handed over the watch. She held it up so the moonlight hit the face, squinting to make out the location of the hands. “It’s five thirty,” she reported, handing the watch back over.
He waved a hand. “Hang on to it.”
“It’s not important to you?” If it wasn’t, it ought to be. She turned the watch over in her fingers, admiring the craftsmanship. It was high quality, heavy and solid, the gears all but silent. The case was even etched, with some design that caught the moonlight, silver flashing at her in the shape of mountains.
“It is, but you’ll take better care of it than I do.” He seemed to hesitate, lowering his attention to the forest floor. “It was a gift.” From whom, he didn’t say. Didn’t need to. “Maybe Nick could have it when he gets a little older.”
Mara’s fist clenched around the watch, the hinges digging into her palm. She wanted to throw the watch at him. Wanted to scream. Davy can pass down his own treasures to his own son in his own time!
“Besides,” Eli said, “you ask about the time so often, it’s more efficient for you to keep it.”
She forced herself to smile. Forced herself to thank him. Forced herself not to hurl the precious offering into the woods.
He didn’t speak again, and neither did she. They walked into the dawn, swirling mists giving way to low shafts of sunlight that set the entire forest to glittering. Her unjust anger dissolved with the morning dew, leaving her with the same peace she’d felt the night before. The forest floor shimmered gold beneath her feet, and warmth bathed her cheeks as the sun rose high enough to peek through the trees.
As if awakened from a dream, Nick began to chatter. No sentences, not even many words. Just noises–happy squeaks and delighted giggles, tuneless little songs and thoughtful hums. Mara began to forage, more from instinctual curiosity than from intent. She found a Holinberry bush and broke a branch off, passing it up to Nick so he could pluck the deep purple berries himself. Then a flash of white caught her eye, and she darted over to the small tangle of vines nestled between the roots of a tree.
“Lugmort!” she exclaimed, carefully extracting a few of the delicate white blossoms from the dense skein of thorns and slipping them into the tin she always kept in her jacket pocket.
“Pretty name,” Eli said dryly, from somewhere behind her.
“Hmm,” she hummed in agreement. “Ironic, because it’s a a beautiful plant, isn’t it?” She stroked one of the tiny green-black leaves in gratitude and popped back to her feet. “Nothing is better for infection than a tincture of lugmort.”
The more they walked, the more she found--whistleaf, trillblossom, ronobon, slistaph—and an idea began to form in her head. A goal that helped to focus her tattered mind.
They stopped to eat a small breakfast and she sketched out a rough plan, based on the plants she’d seen so far and what she knew she had in her kit.
It would be a rough brew--far from the ideal combination of herbs. Ronobon root paired best with cat’s tail, but the odds of finding cat’s tail here were slim to none. It preferred cold arid climates like the high desert north of the Bedford plateaus. But in lieu of cat’s tail, she could substitute willibut and ringfeather, which she’d definitely be able to find. She’d already seen some ringfeather, twined around the trunk of a sapling. Willibut would take some doing, but if she could find the elusive mushroom in the city park—which she had on several occasions—she could find it in the forest.
The rest of the recipe was just an ordinary serum base, and she could make that out of any common cooking herb, though gods’ breath would be best. She’d keep an eye out for that as well.
Her plan thus formed, she inhaled what was left of her food, ignoring Eli’s curious looks.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“I can carry Nick for a while,” she said as they gathered up their packs to continue. “If you’re getting tired.”
He shook his head, scooping her son up with a happy squeal—Nick’s, not his—and setting him atop his shoulders. “We’ve got a system worked out.”
The system, she couldn’t help but notice, consisted mostly of Nick yanking on Eli’s hair and drumming his heels against the man’s chest every time he got overexcited. But Mara wasn’t going to argue. She was dreadfully out of shape, and the mere weight of her pack was getting heavier throughout the day, new hotspots forming on the balls of her feet.
And though she loved her son and wanted him close, the thought of being a good mother to him, of engaging with his constant chatter, made her head hurt and her heart falter. Even before Davy died, she’d been a little tired. Nick was in everything. Concern for him permeated every waking moment, and often her dreams. His voice, his cries, feeding him, changing him, entertaining him, occupied the vast majority of every day. Her life, which before had been so rich with adventure and meaning, had been compressed down to this single, heart-clenchingly important task. And lately she’d begun to feel as if she was drowning, losing herself in it. She’d confessed her feelings to Davy once, a month back, and he’d assured her it would get better. “Once he starts talking,” he’d said.
She’d nodded and let him hold her and said he was probably right, but she’d wondered. Would it truly get better when her son learned to talk? When he stopped napping and stayed up later and filled every moment of every day with questions that demanded real answers?
Or would it get worse?
So, for all that it made her a wretched mother, she was happy to let Eli carry her son. To let Eli point out the little animals that scurried across the forest floor. Let Eli make up stories about the squirrels and the chipmunks and the homes they made for their families within the hollows of the trees. Let Eli hum in agreement when Nick babbled nonsense. Let Eli notice the foul odor or a dirty diaper and call a halt.
She changed her son, of course. She cleaned him and carried the dirty diaper to a nearby stream, scrubbing it until it was clean and hanging the damp cloth from her pack to dry as they walked.
But Eli watched Nick while she performed the chore. She didn’t have small hands tugging at her shirt while she worked or a small voice in her ear, growing steadily more frantic if she didn’t immediately turn her attention from her task to him.
She was a wretched mother, it was true. But she couldn’t help but feel relieved.
They walked all day, at a slow but steady pace. Mara mostly kept quiet, focused on the plants around her. She found god’s breath almost immediately after lunch, but willibut and ringfeather were elusive.
The forest was largely unchanging, though the trees grew the longer they walked. When they stopped for an early dinner, they sat in the long shadow of a tree as big around as her house.
“I wonder how old they are,” she said, resting her palm against the rough bark.
Eli passed her a heel of bread. “I’ve always wondered that too.”
“The forest hasn’t told you? I thought you were Loftland’s chosen.”
He rolled his eyes, but otherwise chose to ignore the latter half of her question. “These woods have always had a distinctly feminine flavor to them.”
“Oh?”
“Mm. Isn’t there some pithy little piece of folk wisdom? Never ask a woman her age?”
A laugh bubbled out of her, but she choked it back, choosing to let the conversation die and focus instead on eating. Davy had always made her laugh. He considered it his job, he once told her, to put a smile on her face and bring the spark back to her eyes on weary days. And he’d performed his self-appointed duty with admirable consistency, with steadfast determination, and with keen skill.
Making her laugh was Davy’s job. And maybe someday, in a future that lay beyond the horizon, she’d be ready for someone else to fill the position. But today was too soon to be laughing with someone else, no matter if that someone else was only trying to help her.
To Mara’s quiet relief, they only walked another hour after supper before Eli announced they were stopping for the night. He unstrapped a length of canvas from Davy’s pack and began to construct a shelter. Mara, needing both distance and a sense of purpose, took Nick and went off in search of firewood. She expected some sort of admonishment to stay within earshot when she announced her intent, but Eli merely nodded and continued working.
Where the morning sun had cast a glittering sheen, the evening sun seemed to infuse the forest itself. Everything glowed with warm light, even as the air grew crisp. Nick scampered about, dropping more sticks than he was picking up, and Mara’s heart filled with the sun’s golden-red glow as she watched him. His dark hair and glass green eyes, so like his father’s. His joy, his innocence, that sweet, toothy smile he flashed her as he held up a stick for her to admire.
How could she ever have wanted time away from him?
Arms full, heart light, she led the way back to camp. Eli had finished constructing the tent and had a small fire already burning, though she was grateful to see he hadn’t amassed more than a small stack of kindling, so her contribution wasn’t utterly redundant. She knelt beside the fire and deposited her armload of firewood beside his pile of kindling.
“Do you feel safe here alone?” Eli asked as she added a few of the smaller branches to the fire. “If I left for an hour or so?”
She peered up at him in expectant silence. He frowned back.
“The vague nonsense,” she reminded him, when it became clear he wasn’t picking up her own vague nonsense.
He sighed, scrubbing a hand over the back of his head. “I have a cache of supplies, south of here. I don’t need to go. It’s nothing we can’t live without until Cinder. But there’s a bow, some fire-starter, other odds and ends that would make life easier....”
“Why didn’t we just swing south together?”
His face scrunched and he dropped into a crouch so they were eye to eye. “It’s feral territory, south of here.”
Tendrils of ice formed around her spine and she stared at him. “You said we were safe here.”
“We are,” he said quickly, holding out his hands. “They’re not…” He reached out and tugged his discarded pack closer, sitting on it. “What do you know of the ferals?”
“That they’re dangerous,” she said, her voice taking on a loathsome, hysterical edge.
Eli winced, but nodded. “They can be. But they’re not just a lawless, formless mass of monsters. They’re not really feral, to be truthful. They form bands that have their own customs and laws, not unlike our towns and villages. Some are fairly brutal, especially nearer to the periphery of the forest. They have to be that way, to survive and defend themselves against folks coming in, looking for game or timber.”
“And this band whose territory we’re close to now?”
“They're peaceful. And we’re not close. We’re miles away from the boundary of their territory.”
“But you didn’t want to take us near them?”
He sighed. "They’re wary of outsiders.”
She raised a brow. “But not of you?”
He didn’t answer, except to lower his head and scrub his hand once more over the back of his neck.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You happened upon a wounded feral in the woods and instinct took over?”
Another sigh. Another small, sheepish smile.
“How many allies did you manage to accrue before you learned to control your magic, Eli?”
“A few.”
“Enough to get us to the Ripshaws, I hope,” she teased, because his expression was so much more serious, more guarded than it should be. Like he’d actually done something wrong.
His answer was a relieved, grateful smile. “We’ll see.”
She sat back on her heels, watching the fire catch on the sticks she’d brought. “You’re sure we’ll be safe here while you’re gone?”
“I wouldn’t leave you if I wasn’t certain.”
She didn’t relish the idea of being alone, but it also wasn’t as daunting as it could have been. She did feel safe here, even knowing how close they were to feral territory. And she didn’t think he’d lie to her outright. Not about this.
“Go on, then.” She waved a hand. “But be back by dark.”
“Might be a bit after.”
She rolled her eyes. “Be back by a bit after dark, then. I’ll keep the fire burning.”