Defy (15 page)

“Come on,” she muttered to herself as her
initial digging resulted in nothing more than a heap of mud next to
her knees. “Just one stinking worm!”

Her digging grew in desperation as her
stomach continued its relentless assault and the fish enjoyed their
mindless, taunting swimming just feet away. She moved along the
bank, looking both in and out of the water for bait. How was it
possible that a thriving stream yielded her absolutely nothing for
her efforts?

As the sky began to fade to indigo and a
chill crept into the air, her movements became frantic. Her
thoughts grew more disjointed. Primal sounds left her throat. She
had to get food. She wouldn’t starve to death out here in the
middle of holy-light-knew-where and prove her family right about
her lack of abilities. She could do this.

No, she couldn’t, she decided twenty minutes
later as she sank to the muddy bank next to her fishing pole and
sobbed in defeat. She was an epic failure who deserved to—

A voice interrupted her meltdown.

“Having a rough time of it, are you?”

Zachariah watched the female jerk in surprise
and turn to look at him. Her face was lined with sweat, mud and
tears, somehow making her all the more appealing. He’d be damned if
he could understand that reaction on his part, but there it
was.

He wasn’t actually there. What she saw was a
reflection of himself that he managed to project to her through
meditation. It was an effort he had highly doubted would work, so
his surprise at being there was almost as great as hers.

The fact that it had worked was a relief, as
well. His unexpected connection to her had proven highly
distracting during his journey with Nyx that afternoon. The
godforsaken chest pains had caused him to stop more than once in an
effort to ward them off. He knew that the pains weren’t really his,
but they sure as hell felt like they were.

And then there was the hunger. At first, he’d
addressed the ravenous need to eat in the traditional way: with
food. He’d set up a small camp with Nyx and ate a meal of fruit,
nuts and dried venison that normally would have satisfied him. Upon
finishing the meal, he’d set back off without a thought.

Within minutes, the gnawing sense of hunger
was at him again. And he finally understood that he was
experiencing
her
hunger rather than his own.

Still, he could have borne those phantom
physical ailments. He was no stranger to pain and he could easily
tell himself that these aches weren’t real. No, it was the nearly
crippling
feelings
she projected to him that literally
brought him to his knees.

The fear. The loneliness. The desperation.
The hopelessness.

He hadn’t understood it at first. All he knew
was that even the idea of moving one more step felt like too much.
Only when he consciously opened the bizarre connection to the
female in order to better understand what was happening did he
learn that she was experiencing what she thought of as
emotions.

Unable to take it anymore, he’d found the
spot he thought would work for his home for the next short while
and sat in the quiet. Nyx settled across from him, laying her
long-snouted head on the ground just feet from him. He’d used her
diamond eyes as his focal point and allowed himself to slip into
the meditative state. With the feathers and beads in his hand to
strengthen the connection, he soon found himself standing on the
edge of a stream and watching the female flounder on the bank.

He’d watched her without speaking at first,
trying to learn more about her. The fact that she was wallowing in
the mud on all fours took him by surprise. For some reason that
he’d never quite understood, most females disliked getting
dirty.

Her vibrant hair bounced around her head as
she moved along the bank. When she shifted and turned in search of
another spot to dig, he noticed a mark on the back of her neck. It
was a sun with a deep blue-green circle at the center and six
different-colored flames coming out of it. This drew his curiosity,
as did the deep blue-green cinquefoil symbols he had noticed around
her eyes that indicated she had a second power. The five-leafed
blossoms gave her an even more feminine appearance. The fact that
the symbols around her eyes and on her neck didn’t match puzzled
him.

She was diligent in her search for whatever
it was she sought, he would give her that. When she finally gave up
and the significant emotion she experienced also surged through
him, he decided to make himself known.

Anything to stop it.

“Oh, great,” she said in an aggrieved voice
when she heard and spotted him. “Not only do I have a breakdown,
but I have some uncaring stranger around to witness it. Could this
possibly be any worse?”

“You have a highly developed sense of the
dramatic,” he responded after a moment.

She gaped at him. “Drama? Oh, you want
drama?”

She stormed to her feet, all signs of defeat
fading from her face as anger replaced it. He watched without
expression as she approached. He told himself he wasn’t affected by
the impatient swipes that she gave the tears on her cheeks or the
resulting streaks of mud that marred her skin and made her look
even more vulnerable.

“I have no idea where I am,” she said
heatedly as she neared him. “I have no clothes besides the ones I’m
wearing, which are filthy and essentially rags. I have no food, no
map, no healing supplies. I was stabbed through the chest or
something and I’m in constant pain. And to top it all off, I’ve
lost my mind and I’m now communicating with a hallucination.”

“You have a very strange manner of speech,”
he couldn’t help but observe. When her lip curled on a retort, he
went on, “And why is it you cannot link to your Lekwuesti for your
needs? Can you not fly to a platform and make your way to the
stronghold for aid?”

“If I could do any of those things, don’t you
think I’d have done so by now?” she asked with an impatient waving
of her arms. “Geez—for a hallucination, you’re not very
bright.”

“I am not a hallucination.”

She reached out as if to touch him and her
hand passed right through him. Snorting, she shook her head and
mumbled something unintelligible as she walked back to the bank of
the stream.

“I am a projection,” he clarified, following
her closer to the water. “What you see is merely a—what is
that?”

She had lifted a pole that contained a long
length of fabric that ended in what appeared to be a metal
hook.

“It’s my absolute failure to catch any fish,
is what it is,” she snapped.

“Where did you get a hook?” he wondered.

After issuing an annoyed sigh, she replied,
“Slayer grass. For the fat lot of good it’s done me. I can’t find a
thing for bait.”

He looked at the slayer grass leaves on the
ground, not having noticed them before. “Slayer grass?” He
considered that for a moment. “Well…that is bloody brilliant,
actually. You know, you could—”

“
You
could try not to sound so
surprised, Sparky,” she interrupted crossly as she straightened the
fabric on the fishing pole.

“Now I am ‘Sparky?’” he asked, growing
irritated despite himself. He was trying to aid her and she was
being difficult.

“Yeah,” she said, giving him a tart look.
“It’s called sarcasm, Sparky. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

Clenching his jaw briefly, he replied, “I
know very well what sarcasm is,
Beautiful
.” He deliberately
accented the last word, then regretted it when he watched the harsh
statement hit her while she was already down.

“Touché,” she said in a quiet voice, all
signs of anger gone. “Look, you’re right, whoever you are. I’m
having a rough time. Just let me have my personal collapse in
private, okay?”

It was a request he couldn’t ignore, as it
too closely aligned with how he’d feel in her place. Before he
honored her request, though, he had to offer her something. He’d
never get any peace, otherwise.

“You have all the lure you need right here,”
he said. When she looked over at him, he pointed a finger to his
head.

Then he made himself leave her.

“‘You have all the lure you need right
here,’” Tate mimicked snarkily when her phantom stalker
vanished.

She brought a hand to her head in an
exaggerated gesture to further mock him. When she did, she knocked
a feather loose. Staring at it as it floated to the ground, her
temper instantly abated.

“Damn,” she said as realization hit her.
“I’ll have to eat the hugest pile of crow after this.”

She got to work removing the shiniest beads
and a few feathers from her hair. Her mother had told her about
some of the lures she and her family used on the human plane when
fishing for trout. That memory made her think that could be the
kind of fish in this stream. Even if that wasn’t the case, these
fish could still be attracted to a similar lure.

One of the lures her mom described, called an
in-line spinner, consisted of some combination of metal, shiny
beads and feathering. Carefully crafting a piece of the green
slayer grass so that it was rounded and contained a hole at one
end, Tate again sliced herself with it and used the blood and water
to create a small oval to serve as a weight and dangler. Making a
piece of thread from the fabric of her skirt, she threaded two
shiny beads through it, then the metal disc, and finally a dark
feather that she frayed out at the tip. Hiding the hook as much as
possible within the lure, she was ready to give it a try.

Her boots were already pretty trashed, but
she took them off and set them on the bank. Her socks went next.
Then she rolled up her pants so they were above her knees. Finally,
she waded into the water so that she was closer to the teeming
fish, hoping there were no leeches.

She cast her line. Although she knew fishing
required patience, that was a resource of which she was in short
supply. So she silently issued prayers for dumb and hungry
fish.

When her line caught, indicating a bite, she
let out a little whimper and fought the urge to yank the pole and
line out of the water. As she eased the tension a bit, the line
caught harder, and she knew she had one hooked. Unable to help
herself, she jumped a bit in feverish delight even as she backed
toward the bank, bringing her catch along with her.

At long, long last, she pulled her prize onto
the shore. The trout flopped around on the muddy bank in a
desperate bid to get back into the water. Tate yanked mercilessly
on the line to get it all the way on shore and far enough from the
water that it couldn’t possibly get back in.

The mere thought of taking more time before
eating when her meal was right in front of her made her want to
scream in frustration. But her mother had warned her that raw trout
might contain parasites that could harm her. Eating something only
to have it kill her because of her own impatience was decidedly
stupid.

So she once again drew on the skills she’d
learned in the course of her childhood. This time, the skills had
been imparted by her Aunt Amber and Uncle Gabriel, both of whom
used to camp in the woods during their time on the human plane.

A few times a year, Tate and the rest of her
extensive family all had a campout away from their homes but within
the protected area. There were tents, s’mores, scary stories and,
of course, campfires. Having been forced to start more than one
fire as a lesson by her aunt and uncle, Tate collected what she
needed from the woods with confidence and care.

Sticking to the drier ground, she set out her
kindling, topping it with some dried birch and moss to more easily
catch the spark. Another piece of slayer grass allowed her to
create a makeshift blade that she wrapped with fabric for a handle.
She then started striking it against the quartzite chunk she’d
selected. It took a few minutes of persistent striking for the
sparks to finally get the tinder nest smoldering, but smolder it
did. She gingerly folded the moss and birch as she blew on it to
stir the burgeoning flames, and once they were stronger, she set it
within the kindling.

As soon as the fire burned steadily, she
cleaned the fish with the slayer grass knife. It was just as
disgusting as she remembered from her childhood, but thank goodness
she at least knew what to do. Working with determined efficiency,
she soon had the edible flesh free of the bones and skewered on a
damp stick.

The fire sizzled as the fish cooked and
dripped. Tate seriously wondered if any being had ever been more
hungry than she was just then. Having to wait until the fish was
thoroughly cooked and then cool enough to eat was utter
torture.

Eventually, the time came for her to eat her
hard-earned meal. Rather than stuff the hot fish in her mouth, she
deliberately took her time, picking it apart with her fingers and
savoring each bite. Although fish had never been her favorite type
of food, she decided it was about the best meal she’d ever had.

It wasn’t a ton of sustenance, but in light
of the severity of her hunger, it was enough to calm the worst of
it.

After she ate, she got more kindling to help
the fire last. She gave herself a sniff-test to see if she could
get by without bathing, but the exertion she’d put herself through
earlier had left its eye-watering mark, as had the fish guts now
coating her skin. There was no getting around the need to wash up
to avoid inadvertently luring predators.

She used an ill-conceived but functional
length of smooth, moist bark to hold the crushed soap nuts from her
pockets and some water over the fire to get the soap nuts hot
enough to steep. She removed her hair decorations while she waited.
When the soap nuts were ready, she went to work making her
lemon-scented cleanser so she could bathe.