Mara dreamed she was on a ship. The surface beneath her dipped and swayed, a subtle rocking motion, and gulls cried just outside the small, circular window above where she lay.
Yawning, she stretched her arms and legs, fingers and toes both brushing rough wood at either end of the narrow cot. The wall of the ship was to her left, a small chamber to the right, just big enough to stand in. Her pack hung from a hook on the wall, alongside another.
The door squeaked open and Davy slipped inside, fully dressed and grinning. “Morning, beautiful.”
“Thought I was a bear in the morning,” she teased, holding her arms up to receive him as he bent, lavishing kisses on the bare skin of her chest and throat.
“A beautiful bear.”
“Where’s Nick?”
“With Eli, on deck. We’ll make port around midday.”
Mara wrapped her hands in his shirt and tugged him down until he fell atop her with a chuckle.
“Feisty this morning,” he observed, angling his body more naturally over hers. She wrapped her legs around the backs of his, raking her nails down his back.
“Just excited,” she admitted, “and grateful.”
“Grateful?” he breathed against her collarbone, hot and damp. “For what?” His lips trailed down between her breasts, and she she arched her back as he pulled the sides of her shirt open, planting open mouthed kisses in a spiraling path toward her–
“Mama?”
Mara gasped, shooting upright, and the top of her head brushed against rough canvas. Clutching her blanket to her, she stared at Nick, crouching in the opening of the tent. She’d slept in, judging by the play of the sun on his dark hair.
Again.
“‘wake?” Nick asked, resting his chin in his hands.
“Just about,” she croaked as she fought her way free of her sleeping roll.
She ignored Eli, who knelt by the fire, as she made her customary morning pilgrimage to the privacy of the woods. When she returned, he handed her a cup of tea and she drank it as they broke camp. And so they fell into a rhythm that would see them through the next fortnight of slow, steady travel.
They walked all day, from just after dawn to an hour before dusk, a little longer each day as the weather warmed with spring’s progress and the sun took higher arcs through the sky. Some days it rained. Some it didn’t. Some days Nick was cheerful, some days he fussed. Most days, Eli left them for a while in the early morning or late in the afternoon, when the sun made navigation easy. He returned, invariably, with some small game. Hares, quail, once a small turkey.
For her part, with the truth serum done with, Mara began to forage more broadly and she found plenty of evidence to back up Eli’s assertion that Loftland did not lend itself to starvation. Every day, she found something to add to their supper menu. Mushrooms, tubers, berries, leeks, nuts. Even when their bread and cheese dwindled, they ate well, and she plunged into sleep each night with a weary body and a full belly.
Every night she dreamt of Davy.
After the truth serum, she and Eli didn’t talk deeply, but they maintained a friendly exchange, mostly revolving around Nick. Eli was good with Nick. Better than her, really–more patient with the endless babble, more creative in generating silly games and stories to entertain him. At first she told herself that it was just a novelty for him and that she, conversely, was worn down to a nub by two years of incessant parenting. But as the days stretched on, she admitted to herself that he might just be better at it than her.
Unexpected, irritating notion.
“Why didn’t you have kids of your own?” she asked one night after she’d tucked Nick into bed, about a week into their journey. They sat on opposite sides of a small fire, drying their wet boots after a day of heavy rain. Though the sky above the canopy was clear of clouds, scattered with countless stars, the air still weighed heavy with excess moisture.
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Eli reached forward and turned one of Nick’s small boots so the damp side faced the flames. “Never thought about it.”
“But you’re great with Nick. Don’t you want your own?”
He flicked her a wry grin. “Never thought about it.”
She groaned. “I ought to drug you again.”
“I think about that all the time.”
“Oh, stop.” She rolled her eyes. “You know I wouldn’t do that. Unlike some people, I don’t practice magic without consent.”
He placed another log on the fire, waving the resulting shower of sparks away from the boots. “Is there a point at which you’ll let that go?”
“Probably not. You’re too perfect, I need something to hold over you. But back to my question, you truly never thought about having a family?”
“Never seemed a possibility, with the Order, the rebellion…”
“Davy made it work.”
His face took on that careful, blank mask it always did when she wandered too close to sensitive subjects.
“Davy’s situation was different. For all that he loved you, your marriage was part of the plan, not a diversion from it.”
His use of the past tense–he loved you–didn’t even make her flinch. The dreams were so constant, so uncannily real, she’d begun to forget she was meant to be grieving. She didn’t even mind when Eli spoke as if her husband was dead. To her, in her heart, he wasn’t.
“I know that,” she said, “but your part of the plan wouldn’t have been strengthened by the cover of a family as well?”
“No,” he said simply, and she knew the conversation was over. “It wouldn’t.”
*
On the morning of the tenth day, Mara drew them to a halt when a flash of red drew her attention off to the south. She held a hand out to stop Eli and tugged on Nick’s sleeve, putting her finger to her mouth to silence his chatter. When she pointed, both sets of eyes followed her gesture to the glimpse of crimson in the distant trees.
“Do you see it?” she asked Eli, wondering whether she should be frightened or curious.
He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes as the spots of red coalesced into–
Mara bit back a gasp. Her fingers tingled. The hair on the back of her neck rose up, chasing a chill down her spine.
Rho deer.
She’d heard stories. Seen illustrations.
“I thought they were myth,” she breathed. Rho deer were purported to be unspeakably powerful, the only worthy prey of the old hunting gods. A relic of ancient times, of older, more powerful magic than could be found anywhere on the continents in the human age. A thin coat of Rho hide could ward against the deepest chill. A single drop of Rho blood in a rejuvenating tonic could revive an exsanguinated patient. A pinch of ground Rho antler, mixed into a simple affection serum, could cause the recipient to fall madly, irrevocably in love. “I thought they were myth,” she said again.
Eli merely shook his head. Even Nick was transfixed. Though he couldn’t have truly understood the gravity of what they were seeing, he sat utterly still, his eyes wide and round, fingers clasped tight in Eli’s hair as they watched the small herd move across the distant clearing. Though Mara had been doing the sensing exercises Eli recommended, she didn’t need them to feel the magic that rippled out from the deer in concentric surges, like waves in a pond.
There were only five–three does and two stags, one with a twelve point rack, the other much younger. Then a sixth came into view–tiny, its coat a shade of rusty brown that evoked old blood. The others arrayed themselves around it as it nosed idly at a patch of undergrowth.
I thought they were myth. I thought they were myth. Mara’s brain stuttered and lurched. If anyone, anyone were to know these creatures existed, the whole of Loftland would be razed and plundered. A hunter who brought back a single Rho carcass would live like a king for the rest of his life. His children’s children’s children would live like kings on what remained when he died. If he died. Rho heart, it was said, could impart unnaturally long youth.
“We have to go,” she said, loudly enough that the deer stopped their idle meandering and froze, ears flicking. Their eyes caught the sun and flashed at her–pure, silvery white. “We have to go, Eli,” she said more urgently, driven by some impulse she didn’t understand. A panic that lived at the base of her spine. The same panic that consumed her when Nick was first born, and she was too afraid to walk down the stairs with his tiny, vulnerable body in her arms, lest she drop him, fall on him, hurt him. Ruin him.
She pushed at Eli’s shoulder, and he complied, setting off again. Mara didn’t look, but from the corner of her eye she saw the deer dart away into the safety of the deeper forest.
They walked for ten minutes before anyone spoke. Even Nick sat in silence atop Eli’s shoulders, solemn and still. And when the silence was broken, nobody mentioned the deer. They spoke, instead, of their grumbling bellies and when they might stop for lunch. During lunch, Eli regaled Nick with an installment of the series Mara referred to as “Davy’s Daring Deeds.” This one had something to do with river pirates, but Mara was only half-listening.
Rho deer.
What other legends were true, that she’d never even tried to believe? Did the old gods walk among them? Could great waves rise up from the angry sea and drown the forests, turn the plains to briny lakes, render the great mountain chains to lonely islands? Did stars truly fall from the sky? What else was possible? What else was real?