Morrighan (2 page)

The others laughed, hoping the insult would escalate Steffan's wrath into a brawl, but he only waved away Piers's remark with disgust. “I can't bring home a suckling pig every day. We must all contribute things of worth.”

“You stole the pig. Five minutes of effort,” Piers countered.

“What is your point, old man? It filled your stomach, didn't it?”

Liam snorted. “It didn't fill mine. You should have stolen two.”

Fergus threw a rock, telling them all to shut up. He was hungry.

So it went every night, our camp always on the edge of hot words and fists, but our strength came from each other too. We
were
strong. No one crossed us for fear of consequence. We had horses. We had weapons. We had earned the right to cut others down.

Laurida waved me over, and I dumped out my bag. We both began cutting off the tender corms, then peeling the tougher stalks. I had known she would be pleased. She favored the green shoots, frying them up in pig fat, and ground the larger stalks into flour. Bread was a rarity for us—unless it was stolen too.

“Where did you find them?” Laurida asked.

I looked at her, startled. “Find what?”

“These,” she said, holding up a handful of the cut stalks. “What's the matter with you? Did the sun fry your brain?”

The stalks. Of course. That was all she meant. “A pond. What difference does it make?” I snapped back.

She hit me on the side of the head, then leaned closer, examining my bloodied nose. “He'll break it one of these days,” she growled. “For the better. You're too pretty anyway.”

The pond was already forgotten. I could not tell them that the girl had found me at the pond today, stalked me, fallen upon me without warning, rather than the other way around. I would suffer more than a bloody nose. It was shameful to be taken by surprise, especially by one of them. Their kind was stupid. Slow. Weak. The girl had even revealed her stupidity when she showed me how to take her food.

The next day I went back to the pond, but this time I hid behind some rocks, waiting for her to come. After an hour, I waded into the rushes to harvest the stalks, thinking that might lure her out. It didn't. Maybe she wasn't as stupid as the rest. Maybe she had actually listened to my warning. Yes, Jafir had frightened her. It was my pond now. Jafir's pond, forever and always.

I loaded my sack and rode farther south, looking for her camp. They had no horses—we made sure of that. She couldn't be staying far from the pond, but there was no sign of her.

“Morrighan,” I whispered, testing the feel of it on my tongue. “
Mor-uh-gon
.”

Harik didn't even know my name, called me something different each time he visited. But he knew hers. Why would the greatest warrior of the land know the name of a thin, weak girl? Especially one of them.

When I found her, I would make her tell me. And then I would hold my knife to her throat until she cried and begged for me to let her go. Just like Fergus and Steffan did with the tribespeople who hid food from us.

From a hilltop, I looked across the valleys, empty except for the wind waving a few grasses.

The girl hid well. I did not find her again for four more years.

Chapter Four

Morrighan

“Here,” Pata said. “This is a good place.”

A twisted path had brought us there, one not easily followed, a path that I had helped find, the knowing taking root in me and growing stronger.

Ama eyed the thicket of trees. She eyed the jumble of potential shelters. She eyed the hills and stony bluffs that hid us from view. But mostly I saw her eyeing the tribe. They were tired. They were hungry. They mourned. Rhiann had died at the hands of a scavenger when she refused to let go of a baby goat in her arms.

Ama looked back at the small vale and nodded. I could hear the tribe's heartbeat as well as she could. Its rhythm was weak. It ached.

“Here,” Ama agreed, and the tribe laid down their packs.

I surveyed our new home, if you could call it that. The structures were dangerous, mostly made of wood and in ruin from neglect, the passage of decades, and of course from the great storm. They would collapse at any time—most already had—but we could make our own lean-tos from the scraps. We could make a place to stay that might last more than a few days. Moving on was all I had ever known, but I knew there had been a time when people stayed, a time when you could belong to one place forever. Ama had told me so, and sometimes I dreamed myself there. I dreamed myself to places I had never seen, to glass towers crowned by clouds, to sprawling orchards heavy with red fruit, to warm, soft beds surrounded by curtained windows.

These were the places that Ama described in her stories, places where all the children of the tribe would be princes and princesses and their stomachs always full. It was a once-upon-a-time world that used to be.

In the last month since Rhiann's death, we had never stayed anywhere for more than a day or two. Bands of scavengers had run us off after taking our food. The encounter with Rhiann had been the worst. Since then we'd been walking for weeks, gathering little along the way. The south had proved no safer than the north, and to the east, Harik ruled, his reach and reign growing every day. To the west over the mountains, the sickness of the storm still lingered, and beyond that, wild creatures roamed freely. Like us, they were hungry and preyed on anyone foolish enough to range there. At least, that is what I was told—no one I knew had crossed the barren mountains. We were hemmed in on all sides, always looking for a small hidden corner to settle. At least we had each other. We knit closer to fill the hole Rhiann had left.

And the hole Venda had left too. I was six was she went away. Pata said she was sick with storm dust. Oni said she was
curious
, making the word sound like an illness. Ama said she was stolen, and the other
miadres
agreed.

We set about making a camp. Hopes were high. This small vale felt right. No one would venture here, and there was ample water nearby. Oni reported there was a meadow of maygrass just over the knoll, and she spotted a grove of oak beyond that.

Altogether there were nineteen of us. Eleven women, three men, and five children. I was the oldest of the children by three years. I remember that spring I felt distanced from the rest. Their play annoyed me. I knew I was on the brink of something different, but with all the sameness of our daily lives, I couldn't imagine what that something might be. Every day was like the one before. We survived. We feared. And sometimes we laughed. What was the new feeling that stirred in me? I wasn't sure I liked it. It was a rumbling something like hunger.

We all helped to drag the pieces of wood, some of it with large letters that had once been part of something else, a partial message that didn't matter anymore. Others found rusty metal sheets to lean against piled rocks. I grabbed a large plank flecked with blue. Ama said the world was once painted with colors of every kind. Now blue was a rarity, usually only found in the sky or in a clear pond that reflected it, like the pond where I had seen Jafir. Four winters had passed since I saw him last. I wondered if he was still alive. Though our tribe was ever on the edge of starvation, the scavengers were on the edge of something worse. They didn't care for their own the way we did.

Chapter Five

Morrighan

The vale welcomed us. The seeds we planted grew in the rocky soil with only a little coaxing. The distant fields, ravines, and hillsides offered small game, grasshoppers, and peace. In all my memory, these were the most serene months we'd ever had, and yet strangely, though I had always yearned for a place to stay, my restlessness grew. I eased the discord within me by venturing farther each day as I gathered greens or seeds.

One day as I sat on my haunches collecting small black seeds of purslane, I heard a voice as clear as my own say,
That way
. I looked up, but there was no “that way.” Only a wall of stone and vine lay ahead, but the words danced in me,
that way
, excited and fluttering—certain and sure. I heard Ama's instruction,
trust the strength within you.
I walked closer, examining the stones, and found a veiled passage. Boulders blended together to disguise the entrance. The path led to a boxed-in canyon—and in the distance, a hidden treasure that I gazed upon with awe. I hurried through knee-deep grass for a closer look. Though much of the roof was caved in, there were wings to the once great building I had found, and within those wings, I found
books.
Not many. Most had been looted or burned long ago. Even our tribe had burned the dry paper of books on wet winter nights when nothing else would catch. These few books were scattered on the floor amid rubble and layers of dust. Books that had pictures—ones with color.

Every day after that, this abandoned structure became my destination. I gathered food along the way, then rested and read on the wide, sweeping steps of the forgotten ruin. Alone. I imagined another time, long before seven stars were thrown to the earth, a time when a girl just like me had sat on these same steps staring up at the endless blue sky. Possibility became a winged creature that could take me anywhere I asked. I was wanton and reckless with my imagined wanderings.

Day after day, it was the same. Until one day.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye. At first I was startled, then angry, thinking Micah or Brynna had tagged along after me, but then I realized who it was. His wild blond hair was still the same, except longer than before, and it shone between the thick shrubs like a rare stalk of golden corn.
Crazy fool,
I thought, then kissed my fingers and lifted them to the gods for penance. Ama wasn't sure exactly how many gods there were. Sometimes she said one, sometimes three or four—her parents hadn't had time to school her in such things—but however many there were, I knew it was best not to test them. They controlled the stars of heaven, guided the winds of earth, and numbered our days here in the wilderness, and somewhere in Ama's recollection, she knew calling someone a fool was something the gods frowned upon. Wishing them dead was another matter.

Are the gods not wise?
I remember asking.
Why did they save the scavengers too?
It was a long time ago,
she answered.
They had not yet become scavengers.

He crept closer, still hiding behind the bushes. I kept my attention on my book, but I stole glances at him from beneath my lashes. Even from his crouched position, I could tell he was taller than when I saw him last, and his shoulders had grown wider. The shreds of a shirt barely covered his chest.

I heard Ama's warning.
Run as fast as you can if you are caught unawares.
But I wasn't exactly unaware. I had been watching him for some time and wondering why he was hiding. Hiding quite poorly.

I knew it was coming, so when he burst from the bushes, shouting and brandishing his knife, I didn't blink or startle but slowly turned the page I had finished, settling in with the next one.

“What's the matter with you?” he yelled. “Are you not frightened?”

I raised my gaze to his. “Of what? I think it is you who is frightened, hiding in the bushes for the better part of an hour.”

“Maybe I was planning how I would kill you.”

“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it the first time we met. Or the second time. Or—”

“What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing my book, standing on the steps like he owned them. He was just like all the other scavengers, demanding, crude—and smelly.

“Do you ever bathe?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

He looked at me confused, and then curious, his scowl softening.

I closed my book. “You don't have to be so hostile to me, you know. I won't hurt you.”

“You? Hurt me?” He threw back his head and laughed.

His smile made something hot pinch inside my belly, and before I could think, I swung out my foot, catching him behind the knee. He crumpled to the ground, his elbow making a loud painful thump when it hit the steps. The fierce scowl returned, and he whipped his knife in front of my face.

“I'm reading a book,” I said quickly. “Would you like to see?” I held my breath.

He rubbed his arm. “I was going to sit anyway.”

I showed him the book, turning the pages and pointing out the words. There were only a few on each page. Moon. Night. Stars. He was fascinated, repeating the words as I said them, and he set his knife down beside him. He touched the colorful pages rippled with time, his fingertips barely skimming them.

“This is a book of the Ancients,” he said.

“Ancients? Is that that what your kind call them?”

He looked at me uncertainly, then stood. “Why do you question everything I say?” He stormed down the steps, and strangely, I was sad to see him go.

“Come back tomorrow,” I called. “I'll read more to you.”

“I will not be back!” he yelled over his shoulder.

I watched him stomp through the brush, only his wild blond hair shimmering above the weeds until both he and his grumbling threats disappeared.

Yes, Jafir,
I thought,
you will be back, though I'm not sure why.

Chapter Six

Jafir

I separated the last of the meat from the skin—a nice plump hare that had made Laurida purr when I arrived back at camp. I hung the gutted animal from the tree. We'd had no fresh meat for our stew in four days now, and Fergus grew more sour each day at the few roots and marrow bones that flavored the water.

“Where did you get it?” Laurida asked.

I had cornered it in a gully not far from where I found the girl Morrighan, but Laurida didn't need to know that. She might tell Steffan, and he would take over my hunting ground like he took over everything else.