The Gatherer (Brilliant Darkness 2.5) (6 page)

“I smell something—” I start to say, but someone interrupts.

“Is this one of their feathers?” a man asks. The group goes silent.

“Yes,” Kai says.

“Arika.” Kadee speaks from a few paces away, regret in her voice. “I found Bega.”

Kora and Darel’s mother breaks down again. Kora would never willingly leave Bega behind. How much more can the poor woman take?

I reach out for the doll. Soft wood shavings escape into my palm from her lumpy body. I hold her to my nose. She smells dirty and mildewed, but under that, I detect the familiar scents of my young friend. Tears leak from my eyes.

When I hugged her, Kora’s thick, curly hair hinted of the spices of Arika’s cooking pot, the grassy meadows where she played with the other children, the water hole where she swam, the smoky 
allawah
 where she learned the stories of her people from Wirrim and Kadee, and her own cozy bed. All the sunny settings of her young life.

I bring Bega to Arika and hold her as she shakes with sobs. Rage courses through me. How can these women 
do
 this to us? Are they completely heartless?

“Nothing like this ever happened before the 
lorinyas
 came, Nerang,” the man who found the feather says. His voice sounds menacing. “
They
 brought this ill luck to us.”

“We should never have taken them in,” a woman says.

I stiffen, and a shiver runs down my back. They mean 
us
: Peree, me, the other Lofties and Groundlings.

“We didn’t cause this.” My voice stays even.

“How do we know that?” the man says. “Myall wears the same kind of feather.”

I clutch my hands together to keep them from shaking. “We found it in the woods back home. We didn’t know where it came from.”

“Maybe the Fire Sisters were there, watching you. Maybe they followed you here.” The woman’s words pulse with accusation.

“Through the caves?” Kadee asks. “The Sisters couldn’t have followed them that way without being seen.”

“Well, we had no trouble before the 
lorinyas
 arrived,” another man says. “It’s their fault!”

“Enough,” Nerang says. “We will not treat our new friends like criminals; it will not help bring the 
guru
 back.”

The shouts die down to grumbling, but the damage is done. I already feel sick about the children. Now I wonder if it could be our fault. My best friend Calli found that feather in the woods around our home; she gave it to me to give to Peree. 
Did
 the Sisters somehow follow us? Did we bring this terrible fate on Koolkuna?

People begin to pace as we wait, their feet swishing the grass, back and forth, back and forth. I sit with Arika, Moon, and Yani, gnawing my thumbnail, wracked with worry for Kora, Darel, Thrush, Frost, and the rest of the children. Wracked with guilt that we might be responsible. Wracked with a desire to 
do something
.

“Kadee,” I murmur. “Didn’t the 
anuna
 already know about the Fire Sisters if they took Kai when she was young?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of them,” she says. “Kaiya wouldn’t speak of what happened to her. We knew she disappeared from the Myuna, and her father never came back from trying to find her. She was with the 
runa 
when she was discovered, and Nerang nursed her back to health. That’s all we know.”

Kadee told me before that Kai was one of the few people to survive living among the sick ones. What did it do to her? And what happened when she was with the Sisters?

I catch the sounds of people moving through the trees toward the clearing, and I jump to my feet. I allow myself a flash of hope, but from their slow steps and the silence of the 
anuna
 around me, I can tell they don’t have the children. Desperate for some kind of comfort, I clasp the wooden bird that glides at my throat, the pendant Peree carved for me as a sign of his devotion.

It’s a relief when he finally hugs me to him, smelling of salt and bitter sadness. He takes my hands in his, rubbing gently to warm them. I shouldn’t be this cold. It’s late in the summer, nearly fall, but the temperature is still mild in the afternoon. It’s the shock. The clearing feels weighted down with it.

“We lost them.” Derain’s voice buckles with grief. “They left one woman behind to fend us off with her arrows, and then she slipped away in the shadows of the branches, moving like the wind. We searched, but we couldn’t find them again.”

“Then we have no time to lose,” Nerang says. “A search party will leave as soon as possible. Who will go?”

There are a few declarations from the group. I hear Derain, and a woman’s high voice, like birdsong, that I think belongs to Amarina. I worked with her in the gardens. She sounds as breakable as a thin stalk of the maidengrass that grew around our water hole at home, but Kadee told me she’s a skilled tracker and woodswoman who can coax fire out of little more than a handful of damp kindling.

“My brothers and me are going for sure,” Moray growls. I don’t trust them much, but they’re tough and cunning. We need whoever can help bring Frost and the children home.

“I’ll go.” My voice is strong, decided. I feel better for saying the words.

Peree squeezes my shoulders. “I will, too.”

I’m afraid to enter an unfamiliar forest, chasing after a group of kidnapping warrior women. I’m no fighter.

But I want to go for Kora and her family. They were the first to befriend Peree and me when we washed up in Koolkuna, helpless as babies.

I want to go for Thrush, Moon, and Petrel. I know all too well how it feels to lose a brother.

I want to go for Frost. Pregnant and afraid, she risked her father, Osprey’s, rage to free Eland and me when we were trapped in the Lofty trees.

I want to go for Nerang, who saved our lives, and for the 
anuna,
 who took us in, even if some might unfairly blame us for this tragedy now.

And… I want to go for Eland. I couldn’t save him. I can still save these children.

Everyone has done so much for us. How can I sit here, enjoying the protection and comforts they secured for us, hoping someone else will help?

I can’t.

I’ll go, and I’ll do whatever it takes to find Kora and the others and bring them home.

 
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