Skylark (30 page)

When I woke it was still daylight, although far darker than it had been. Either the sun was on its way down behind the mountains, or the sky had grown overcast. I glanced toward the camp, hoping to see Oren had returned—instead, there was a figure standing there, watching me.

I jolted upright, throwing myself back against the rocks. The woman stared at me, arms hanging loosely at her sides, eyes empty. She stood between me and the knife.

“Have you seen my baby?” she whispered, her voice sighing from between her lips.

“What?”

“She was just here. My baby. She was so hungry. Have you seen my baby?”

The child was gone. My gaze fell to the knife, which Oren had left behind. Had he another hidden somewhere?

Doubt seared my mind, followed by the briefest flash of an image of something tiny and black creeping up behind Oren, who stalked angrily along the slope, unnoticing, mind preoccupied with the stubborn burden that was me.

I pushed past the woman and snatched the knife, whirling to point it at her. “You, go back to where you were sitting.
Now
.” She stared at me, as if failing to comprehend. I remembered Oren’s tone and tried as much as I could to emulate it. “You stay there, and don’t move, or I’ll—I’ll
kill
you.”

The woman drifted away, still whispering to herself about her baby, heading toward the spot where she’d been sitting with her child. I sprinted for the place where Oren had left the pocket.

The sun had just dipped below the mountain ridge at my back when I burst into the world outside. I ignored the cold as I stared around, trying to find any sign of Oren’s path. There weren’t many options that didn’t involve a sheer, steep cliff— back down the way we’d come, or up around along the mountain’s side, away from the barrier. I scanned for footprints, but the only prints I could find had clearly been left by us as we entered the pocket earlier.

I closed my eyes.
Anything is possible
, Nix’s voice came to mind. I’d been able to sense the shadow people the night they attacked me. I tried to calm the racing of my heart, sense any tingle that might tell me where to go.

Please
, I thought, desperately.

I heard something in the distance. It wasn’t much, only the slightest rattle of pebbles—but in a world with so few creatures in it, I couldn’t ignore the sound. Whether it was a sound my ears detected, or something I sensed through my magic, I could not tell.

It had come from around the curve of the mountain. I set out, trying not to think of what I was going to do if I found the child before I found Oren.

The path, such as it was, was narrow and the deepening twilight was treacherous. To the left the drop was long, the mountain falling sheer away for at least a hundred feet before curving into the distance. I kept my hand against the rock wall to my right and my eyes on my feet, picking my way slowly.

I occasionally thought that I heard something, but I could never be quite sure that my ears weren’t playing tricks on me.

I had been walking for perhaps a quarter of an hour when I heard something that I knew
wasn’t
a product of my frightened imagination. A low cry, the sound of something soft striking stone, and then—so close my blood froze in my veins—a tiny, piercing howl of triumph.

I abandoned caution and flung myself ahead on the ledge, sending stone fragments careening off the edge. I rounded the corner ahead of me and nearly slid off the ledge when the scene unfolding in front of me registered.

Oren was facedown on the ground; a shadow crouched on his back, tearing at his clothes. He was alive—stirring feebly.

I screamed and ran. I flew at the thing, brandishing the knife. I caught it with the edge of the blade, causing a spatter of blood on the stone and a scream of rage from the child-thing. It lurched sideways, out over the edge of the cliff. Sinking its ragged fingernails into Oren’s arm, it dangled, dragging his body toward the edge. I threw the knife away and lunged for him as he began to sag over the drop. Throwing myself on top of him, I summoned every ounce of energy I had before flinging it up around us. I heard the magic connect with a crunch, the force of it launching us up and back. Oren landed on top of me, knocking the breath from my lungs, and the monster fell away. I saw its face for a frozen instant, shifting from shadow to light, my magic illuminating its humanity like a light.

Magic cures them. However temporarily.

The child’s scream echoed up at me as it fell, down, down—into silence.

I lay gasping for breath under Oren’s weight. I wanted to feel for his pulse, but my arms wouldn’t move, frozen with dread. I heard my magic humming around us, could see it overhead glimmering faintly, a barrier of protection.

When he finally groaned, I muttered a muffled something, and he rolled off me and onto his back. We lay on the ledge, panting.

“I thought I told you to stay put,” he mumbled, lifting himself on one elbow so he could look down at me.

A semi-hysterical laugh forced its way out of me. He raised a hand, fingertips just brushing my cheek, and then without warning, the backlash from the power I’d used hit me, and everything went black.

•  •  •

When I came to, I was by the waterfall again. There was still some light, telling me that I could not have been out for very long.

Supplies were strewn about the clearing, some of the packets torn to shreds, and there was no sign of the mother—or of Nix. Oren was crouched with his back to me, one hand steadying himself on the ground while the other sorted through my pack.

“What did she leave us?” My voice emerged as a dry croak. Oren glanced over his shoulder at me. “Most of it is still here,” he said. “I don’t think she recognizes the nuts and berries as food.”

“Is your head okay?” I asked. The blow to Oren’s head didn’t look too serious.

“I’m fine,” he countered, moving closer to me and dropping into a crouch. There was a small gash at his hairline, but it had already stopped bleeding. He gazed at me, his eyes as clear and as unreadable as ever in the twilight.

“You don’t look like you have a concussion,” I said, clearing my throat and looking away as I struggled to sit up. 

“My parents could do that.” Oren was still watching me, making no effort to help me up.

“What?”

“What you did back there. Knocking the dark one away without touching it. My parents could do it.”

“Your parents were Renewables.” 

I stared at him, trying to ignore the thumping of my heart. There
were
others like me. “Did they—were they from the Iron Wood?” 

Oren’s face tightened, and he shook his head. “No. That’s a bad place. They were—” He paused, the tight expression softening into one of uncertainty, gaze clouded with confusion. “I don’t know. I was very young. But they could do that.” 

“But you can’t?”

He shook his head. “I remember they kept trying to teach me. I can’t do it.”

“But maybe if you just tried again—”

He cut me off with another shake of his head, quiet. “I’m not like you, Lark.”

Before the resulting silence could grow too thick, Nix whirred in from beyond the barrier.
“I chased her off the food,”
it announced.
“I tried to keep her from leaving the barrier.”
There was a note of apology in its voice.

“You did right,” Oren said, without bothering to lift his head. As far as I was aware, it was the first thing he’d ever said to the pixie.

Somewhere in the roar of the falls, I could hear the echoes of the child-thing’s cry as it fell. Despite the summer warmth, my body felt colder than it had before Oren taught me to make a fire. I put my forehead down on my knees, cradling my limbs in close with a shiver.

“So did you,” Oren added, quietly. I turned my head enough to be able to see him out of one eye. He was still watching me.

“She was just a kid,” I whispered, my eyes prickling and my throat dry. “And I killed her.”

“You didn’t have much choice,” Oren said. “It’s survival.” 

“Maybe survival isn’t worth it, at such cost.” I shut my eyes, turning my face into my knees again. The world spun, dancing to my exhaustion, and no matter how hard I willed it to be still, my dizziness got worse and worse. A hand touched my hair. For once, the jolt of energy at Oren’s touch didn’t jar my senses; it ran down my spine until it sat in my belly, tingling and leaping.

“Is it always like this?” he asked. He was close enough that his voice made the very air vibrate. “Using magic?” 

I would have shaken my head, but I was afraid moving would cause him to stop touching me. “It’s getting worse,” I said. And though I hadn’t dared to think it myself, I knew it to be true as soon as I said it. “Harder to recover from every time.”

The hand moved, a gentle stroking motion. “You had no choice,” he said again. “And I’m grateful for what you did.” 

“You wouldn’t have been out there if I hadn’t provoked you,” I pointed out. His hand dropped away, making me bite my lip. Why had I said that? The pang I felt in the absence of his touch nearly robbed me of breath.

“It doesn’t change the fact that you came after me.” Something had changed in his voice, prompting me to lift my head. He was still looking at me; how had I ever found those eyes to be so frightening? There was a youth to his gaze, something that reminded me he could be no more than a couple of years older than I was. Just now, there was something in them that I could not identify—something like fear. 

“I’ll take you to the Iron Wood,” he said.

Chapter 24

From the summer lake, we only had to climb a short distance before our path took us downward again, on the other side of the ridge of mountains. Even so, Oren’s head injury and my weakness slowed our progress. He called frequent halts, all but force-feeding me from what rations the woman had left behind. I had made the mistake of telling him that my magical recovery was linked to food. I knew we were low on supplies and should be conserving them, but whenever I pointed this out, Oren’s face became unreadable, and I gave in.

We sat on an overhang to eat our mid-afternoon meal, legs dangling over empty space. In front of us spread a vast plain, crisscrossed by rivers, dotted with forests with leaves tinged in orange, red, and gold. Every so often a mound of rubble stood as a monument to the farmhouses and barns and silos that had once governed the fields, which were by now lost to wild grasses and trees.

“There it is,” said Oren, after we’d finished.

I was licking the juices of the berries from my fingers, and paused when he spoke. “Where what is?”

“The Iron Wood.”

I stared, but saw nothing that stood out as anything strange. As if sensing my confusion, Oren tilted his chin in the direction of the valley. “See there, on the horizon?”

He leaned toward me, supporting his weight on one arm behind me and stretching the other over my shoulder, pointing. The warmth of him, shielding the chilly breeze, made my skin tingle. As always when he was near I could not be sure if it was fear that caused my breath to catch, or something else.

I forced myself to concentrate on what he was saying.

“See the river there that curves in on itself? Follow that bend up toward the horizon.”

“I see a forest,” I said, hyperaware of how close his face was to mine.

“See the gray, just at its center? At the very edge of the horizon.”

It looked as though some blight had descended upon the wood, turning the trees ash-gray and dead. “That’s it?” I whispered.

Oren let his hand fall. “That’s it,” he confirmed, still leaning on the arm behind me.

“Why are you so frightened of it?” I asked, scarcely daring to breathe for fear he’d leave, that he’d avoid the question once again.

He stayed close, eyes on the distant landmark. “All my life that place has meant death. You don’t overcome that easily. Why are you so set on going there?”

“A woman once told me there were others like me there. Like your parents. All I wanted was to fit in—and in my city, that ended up meaning a lifetime of slavery and suffering. So I left. The Iron Wood—it’s my chance at a normal life.”