The Fire Sisters (Brilliant Darkness 3) (2 page)

“Frost is still young enough to be trained in the Sisters’ ways,” Kai says, “and she’s pregnant. Her baby is even more valuable to them. If she has a girl, they can raise her as their own.”

“
My
baby?” Moray says. “I don’t think so.”

I wish I could say he was worried for Frost, too, the Lofty girl of about fifteen or sixteen who somehow got mixed up with him back home, but he’s only ever been concerned about their child.
His
baby. While Moray’s not my favorite, he doesn’t deserve this. No one does.

I hear Bear passing blades around. Others clatter into the clearing soon after, hopefully with more weapons. Peree and Petrel’s voices are among them.

“We’re going after them,” Peree says, touching my arm.

“I am, too,” Moray says.

Which means his brothers, Cuda and Conda, will follow. They seem to follow him everywhere. Right now, I’m glad. The group jogs off in the direction the Sisters took the children, and I send a silent prayer of protection after them.

Kadee and I stand with the rest of the villagers. Some cry softly, others wail. Still others argue, their voices crashing together like the waterfall meeting the Myuna. I find Moon and put my arms around her and Yani as they both sob. What else can I do? I’m desperate to look for Kora and the missing children, but I can’t move as fast as Peree and the others. I’d only hold them back. I don’t know the first tree or bush in this forest.

Kora, where are you?

“These Fire Sisters,” someone asks, “where do they come from?”

“Their home is called the Cloister.” Kai’s voice is hard, her words clipped.

“Where is it?” I ask.

“Many days’ walk through dangerous territory.” Her voice grows even colder and sharper when she speaks to me. “Along the River Restless.”

River? A stream runs out of Koolkuna from the Myuna, but I had no idea there was a river somewhere.

“We must find them before they get that far!” someone says.

“You won’t catch the Sisters if they don’t want to be caught.” Kai’s voice dips. Is she upset about the children, or are her memories painful? Both? It’s hard to tell with her. “And you’ll have no chance of getting them back if they reach the Cloister. Flames that never die protect the Sisters’ compound. High walls are guarded day and night. No one gets in or out unless they allow it.” She pauses. “They… they aren’t like the
anuna
. You can’t reason with them or talk them around. They’ll kill you if you try to take the
guru
back.”

I bite my lip, drawing blood, as people cry out.

“What of the boys?” Moon’s voice quavers. “You said they gather girls and have no men. What do they do with the boys they take?”

I hold her closer and rest a hand on Yani’s plump, velvety thigh, reassuring myself she’s safe. My pulse slows a bit in response.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see any boys in the Cloister,” Kai says. “Only girls and women.”

If Eland had survived, if he’d come to Koolkuna with us, he might have been taken with Thrush. I would have lost him anyway. Our world is so precarious. Why do I try to pretend otherwise? I sway on the edge of the dark well of guilt and grief I’ve often fallen into since my brother’s death.

People begin to shout at Nerang and at each other. My eyes fill with tears. Although we’ve only been in Koolkuna a short time, I’ve come to care deeply for the community—the people who live here and the place Peree and I hoped to call home.

“What can we do, Nerang?” The woman’s voice thrums with sorrow.

“Calm yourselves. Perhaps the others are already bringing the
guru
back to us. In the meantime, look around. We might find something of importance.”

Nerang’s probably buying time, giving us something to do, but standing here talking about the awfulness of the Sisters isn’t helping anyone. With a gentle squeeze, I let go of Moon. I may not be able to
look
for clues, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find any.

Dropping to one knee, I feel the ground, trampled under our feet. All I feel are the crushed remains of grass and flowers, their petals still soft but already wilting. If there’s anything else down here, it’s been smashed flat. I listen to the agitated voices of the
anuna
as they search… the breeze rattling leaves in the branches of trees around us… the song of one intrepid bird not driven off by the commotion. Breathing slow and deep, I sift the air as I might a handful of grain.

And there
is
something else.

One scent stands out. It’s like the smoke from a fire, only more abrasive, as if it were created by something other than burning wood. I realize it’s been needling my nose and throat; I just wasn’t paying attention.

“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.

Koolkuna is eerily quiet for a warm and sunny afternoon. I hear none of the familiar sounds of hammering, sawing, laughter, or snatches of gossip as we pass the kitchen, the workroom, and the compact, comfortable homes that I know sit around the central part of the village. Ghosts might as well inhabit it.

A woman wails from the trees where more homes nestle. The sound of her anguish settles into the pit of my stomach, a physical thing.

Peree and I pass through the village and reach our home on the outskirts. I shut the door quickly to block out the woman’s cries, then collapse against it. I’d love to lie down for a moment, but there’s no time.

This is the same home Peree and I stayed in when we were in Koolkuna before, but we haven’t been able to spend a lot of time here since we returned. We’ve been busy helping the other Groundlings and Lofties settle in. The place feels empty, shadowy, and too still now. Not much like home at all.

Peree gathers me in, pressing my cheek to the intricately stitched shirt he borrowed for our partnering ceremony. It smells pleasantly of greenheart wood, as if it's been kept safe in a wooden chest somewhere.

I’m still wearing my own finery, a dress made of the softest leather, with feathers and fur strategically sewn here and there for adornment. It belonged to Nerang’s partner, Yindi, who died years ago. The elaborate hairstyle Arika carefully arranged for me is drooping around my face. It doesn’t matter now.

Peree laughs a little and smooths the mop out of my eyes. “Today was a disaster.”

I rest my chin on his chest. “Complete disaster.”

“The children. Frost. The Fire Sisters, whoever they are.” He pauses.

“Our partnering ceremony.” My chest aches.

It feels selfish to even think about this now, but Peree and I had
plans
. We’d been deciding whether to live on the ground or to build a home in the trees near Moon and Petrel. We’d talked about what our duties in the village should be, all the things we wanted to do for the others and ourselves now that we don’t have any rules imposed on us about spending time together. These are the hopes and dreams planted between us that will have to remain dormant.

He rubs soothing circles across my back. “We’ll have an even bigger and better party when we get back with the children. Bigger than the Summer Solstice celebration. Better than the Feast of Deliverance.”

“But if we fail, if the children—” I smother the terrible words. I can’t even think them.

I tell him what some of the
anuna
said while he was gone, about how we brought the ill luck to Koolkuna. “The
anuna
might let us stay, but will they ever accept us?”

Peree’s hand freezes. “How could they think
we
had anything to do with what happened today? That’s ridiculous.”

I run my fingers through his shoulder-length, wavy hair. It’s the color of daffodils and sunshine, I’ve been told. He plans to remove the feathers he wears and cut his hair after we partner, as is the Lofty way. I want to respect his people’s traditions, but I’ll be secretly sorry when he does.