Black Bead: Book One of the Black Bead Chronicles (5 page)

“I hate him!” hissed Megan.

“Why did he do that?” growled Alain

“Who cares,” Connor said. “We’re out. That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah, but,” sputtered Alain “it’s like he hates her or something.”

“Enough!” shouted Tam, loud enough to pull Cheobawn
out of her dark reverie. “Everybody calm down. Adults are always testing you. If they get under our skin, they win. Look at us! Just a few mean words and we are all blubbering like babies.” He shook his head in disgust, glaring at them. “By all that’s holy, this must be a new record for a demi-Pack. Failed before we set foot outside the gate.”

The Pack flinched and grew silent. They watched their leader try to get control of himself. Tam opened his mouth to shout at them again but the looks on their faces stopped him. With a groan, he spun about and stomped away, kicking at every dirt clod and stone in his path.

Cheobawn rose to her feet, guilt overwhelming her own pain. Poor Tam. She had to live with this every day. Sorrow and betrayal were old companions. For Tam, this was surely a new kind of torture. She thought about volunteering to return to the dome but she could not find the will to say those words.

The ambient still throbbed. Cheobawn turned and found Megan standing behind her, her hands curled into fists.

“Shhh,” Cheobawn said, taking one of the girl’s hands in her own. She caressed it until the fist relaxed. The next words that came from her lips were a prayer, words Megan had used too often to soothe Cheobawn’s own hurts, words loosely borrowed from the prayers Menolly intoned amidst her smoke and ceremony on Temple Day. “Listen to the world, sister. Listen to the stars overhead. Let it go. It is nothing. A tiny thing that cannot compare to all that exists around us.”

Megan frowned down at her for a moment. Then a long sigh shuddered through her body.

“How can you forgive so easily?” Megan asked softly.

“If Hayrald did not love me, it would be harder. But he does, and that makes up for most things.”

Megan shook her head in disbelief. The ambient became a little less toxic.

“What hope have our men if their woman are lost?” Cheobawn said, quoting from the holy book. Megan grimaced.

“You hang around Menolly too much. You are starting to sound like a Priestess,” Megan said roughly, but she wrapped her arms around Cheobawn’s shoulders and pulled her close.
 

Cheobawn looked back at Tam.

“His heart still bleeds. We cannot go on until he is ready,” Cheobawn whispered.

As if he heard her words, Tam turned his head and stared back at them. Suppressing what looked like a snarl, he returned to them, his boot heels striking the ground with firm purpose.

Megan spoke first, cutting off anything he might have said.

“You are the alpha male,” she reminded him calmly, “I can go on, but I need to depend on you. I need you to stay focused. Alright?”

Tam struggled to say something to them. In desperation, he shot a pleading look at Cheobawn, as if he were about to say words that would add to the hurt already heaped upon her. Cheobawn tasted his turmoil in the ambient. She released the pain in her own heart and let the words he needed to hear fall out of her mouth.

“This is not about you. Those were Mora’s words. My Da moves his lips and Mora’s voice comes out,” Cheobawn said. “Words meant just for me. Accept your doom, Mora wants me to hear. I cannot be like the others. I cannot pretend that I will ever be normal …”

Cheobawn shook her head, unable to continue. She licked her lips, tasting blood. Her finger explored the hurt and came away red. Somehow, without knowing it, she’d bitten through her lip. She touched the gory finger to her brow, anointing her skin with the macabre war paint, the pattern much like those that Menolly painted on the faces of the penitents in the Blood Rites on Darkday.

“I can go back,” she sighed in resignation. “You have the map. You do not need me.”

Tam brushed her hands away from her face, his own face gone soft, his mind full of resolve that bled through the ambient and eased all the hurt in her heart.

“Squeaker’s twaddle,” he said, pouring a bit of water from his water skin into the palm of his hand and washing her face and hands with it. “I know what I know. They are wrong. Forget them. Fate has brought us together. The only real thing is our Pack. Nothing else matters. If we stand united against them, they cannot destroy us.”

Cheobawn stared at him, surprised by his certainty. Tam’s passion was premature at best. They had only just Packed and already this Alpha male had them bound and wed. What did this deeply complicated boy know that she did not?

Tam pulled a medstick from one of his many pockets. They were used to stop the bleeding of the minor scuffs received in sparring and Cheobawn wondered that he had one handy. Not all the demi-Pack’s battles for rank took place in the safety of the practice rooms. This thought hinted at dark burdens and hidden depths under Tam’s perfect exterior. As he dabbed the astringent end on her wounded lip, she wondered if she and he had more in common than she first thought.

“No more bleeding,” he scolded her sternly. “It attracts all sorts of nasties.”

Cheobawn looked up into his eyes, admiring his stubborn determination. Were they Pack and not just a temporary thing? She knew he was wrong but for him she would make herself believe his hopeful words. If she pretended they were true then maybe they would become true. Wrapping the fantasy of her own Pack around her like a warm coat, she smiled.

“That’s what I want to see!” he said encouragingly, smiling back. He looked up into the worried eyes of the rest of his teammates. “I will take point with Cheobawn. Connor next, then Megan. Al, you take rear guard. Keep a stick’s length apart, no less, no more. Let’s practice our Battle Trail maneuvers. No talking. Come on, everybody. We are going to have some fun!”

Taking Cheobawn by the hand, he turned and strode down the East Trail, his troop close behind.

Chapter Five

 Tam’s pace was measured, his strides wide. His legs ate the distance effortlessly. Cheobawn reviewed what she knew about Battle Trail. It was a more complicated form of Dancing Molly – follow the leader, doing what they do, stepping where they step. Add complete silence and you got Battle Trail. You could still talk but you had to do it using fingersign and forest sounds. She knew fingersign better than most girls her age. Da had been teaching her since before she could remember. It was something they did to pass the time while waiting for Mora and the Coven to stop being busy and notice them.

They left the cultivated fields and orchards behind and entered the forest. The trees blocked the sky and closed in behind them, casting a perpetual twilight on the forest floor.

As Cheobawn’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom, details revealed themselves. Birds and insects and treehoppers of every kind buzzed and chittered softly in the canopy high above their heads. Croakers called from their hiding places under the ferns and squeakers sang from the miniature pools inside watercups clinging like great green insects to the tree trunks. Cheobawn tried to see everything, thrilled at each new sight. This was so much better than the photos and videos she studied in class.

It was hard to see everything she wanted to see and still keep up with Tam. Cheobawn, being more than a head shorter than her leader, managed to match his pace but she had to take three steps for his two. It took all her concentration and most of her energy. She did not protest. Tam’s plan called for speed. She did not want to be the one to slow them down. But more importantly, she did not want Tam to regret his decision to let her join them. This was her problem. She would solve it.

She listened to her body. She listened to the ambient. She watched Tam’s rhythms and there she found a solution. She let her body feel his as if it were her own, matching his heartbeat and breathing. She set her legs to mimic his every step, pushing her stride wider, letting him pick the best places on the trail to put their feet. After that it was just a matter of getting out of the way and letting the process of walking take over. She smiled, pleased at her own ingenuity. Turning her attention back to the scenery, she reveled in the feeling of being truly free in a place of profound beauty for the very first time in her life.

She listened to the trees. Each one seemed different from the next, like a single voice in a choir. One could focus on a solitary tree but the true beauty came in their harmonies. Together they were one organism draped like a living skin on the land from the edge of the snowfields high on the mountains all the way down to the infinite cliffs of the Escarpment to the south.

Cheobawn wanted to hold her breath so she could hear the trees talking to each other but her laboring heart brought her out of her reverie. Borrowing rhythm and pattern from Tam was one thing. Borrowing energy was another problem. By the time they reached the fork in the road and turned up the lesser traveled North Fork Trail, the strain of trying to match Tam’s bigger strides was turning her legs to jelly. As the trail rose before her, she struggled for a moment, determined to keep up. It was becoming a point of personal pride that she not be the first to break under the relentless pace.

Merely sucking more air into her lungs was not enough. She needed more than air. She listened to the forest around her. Life infused everything, filling the ambient with energy that hung in a heavy cloud just off the edge of seeing. She drew it in like air, breathing it into her heart and her legs and her lungs, filling herself up with it, using what she needed before letting the excess run back into the ground through her boot heels. The pain and fatigue disappeared immediately. It took no more than a dozen steps to set the rhythm of this energy flow in her head. She had no difficulty matching Tam step for step with this borrowed vigor after that.

The more she listened to the forest the more it became solid and real in her mind. Everything glowed. Trotting on, she watched this overlay of light as it played out around the trees and the ferns. Buzzers left trails of light in their wake. She could tell where the hoppers hid in their burrows by the bright spots they made in the ambient above their dens.

She grinned in delight. It did not take much of a leap of imagination to pretend that the stones of the mountain under her feet were the bones of some monstrously huge bear and that all the living things in the forest were part of its living pelt.

Cheobawn thought about what it must be like to be this bear. Did the fall of her boots upon stone tickle his furry sides? She danced behind Tam, daring it to wake.

With her mind full, she ran blind, trusting Tam to guide her feet, her connection to his mind her lifeline, while her eyes flitted from one amazing sight to the next. Sunlight broke through the dense canopy in random places, making columns of golden light in the humid air. Flutterflies and gnats and buzzing nasties danced through the light like falling stars. The blooms of the parasitic sugarsips hanging off the lowest branches, garish in their yellow and pink displays, were the only thing to relieve the constant theme of greenery. A bit of sweet nectar lay at the base of each flower. Cheobawn eyed them longingly. Perhaps on the way back, she could sample their liquor.

She did not see the large root that Tam jumped over until almost too late. She got over it, but only just, her heel skidding down the opposite side, making her lurch and stumble. Somehow Tam sensed it. He spun on one toe and shot out a hand, catching her outstretched arm, keeping her on her feet.

He held up his fist, and the Pack, alert to his signals, stopped.

Alright?
Tam fingersigned while his eyes sized up her condition.
 

Trying not to breath hard, Cheobawn nodded stoically then thought better of it. Drink? she asked. Even here, in the shade, the heat of high summer found them and turned the damp rising from the dead leaves into steam. Tam nodded and signaled the same to the others.

Cheobawn pulled her waterskin off her belt and took a long drink. Tam touched her hand.

Slow. A little bit. Too much gets you sick
, he signed. She nodded.
 

A sound, deep and ominous, like the groan of a giant, filtered through the canopy above her head. Cheobawn jumped, her head still full of giant sleeping bears. She looked around, wide eyed, trying to sense the danger in the ambient as her heart pounded in her chest. No one else seemed to be alarmed, not the birds, or the treehoppers or the croakers or the buzzy bugs. Not even her Pack.

Tam touched her shoulder to get her attention.
Trees,
his fingers said. She frowned and made the query sign.
 

Watch me
, he signed. He pointed the fingers of both hands at the sky and waved his arms back and forth, blowing on them. Trees in the wind. She frowned, not quite understanding how that would make such a noise. Tam blew harder and his tree hands bent against each other, the fingers locking and rubbing together. She cocked her head, puzzled.
Living wood
, he signed. Then he rubbed his two index fingers together.
 

The sound came again and suddenly it made sense. She stared up at the canopy, enchanted. The trees had voices, only they needed a neighbor to help them speak. Trees, it seemed, needed friends as much as humans. Tam touched her shoulder again.

Understand?
his fingers asked.
 

Cheobawn nodded happily.
Tree Packs make tree songs,
she signed.
 

Tam opened his mouth to laugh but stopped himself. Connor snorted. Tam snapped a
quiet
sign at him. Cheobawn glanced back at the others, smiling.
 

Connor’s fingers flashed the symbols for
new cub just opening eyes
.
 

Cheobawn stuck her tongue out at him, returning with
fenelk hindquarter.