Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Bo
Slamming the ax down through the log, it splits easily in two. I grab another log and set it up to chop. I know my parents have more than enough wood to last them through a month, but it’s always good to be prepared.
After cutting through the next log, just as swiftly, I hear the door open and turn to see my mother stepping outside with a large glass of water.
“Honey, don’t spend too long out here. It’s hot out today,” she says worriedly as she passes me the cup. I try not to laugh, but it’s always like this with her. I am twenty-nine-years-old, and she still tends to treat me like a child half the time. But I know it comes from a place of love.
“Thanks, Mother,” I say before downing the whole glass and handing it back to her.
“Where are Hawk and Ronan? Normally, the three of you are inseparable.”
I smile down at her as one of my dads, Torran, comes out to join us. “Ronan is giving the hunters their assignments for the week, and Hawk is… around here somewhere,” I say, looking down the path and into the trees, unsure where he’s gotten to.
He was quieter than Ronan and me, and was content to sit on his own for hours, whittling away on something or other.
“Bo!” I turn to find him running down the path toward me, looking frantic. My father and I both step in front of my mom, our stances ready and eyes alert for the threat.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as he comes to a stop in front of us. I’ve never seen him out of breath before, but he’s panting now, as if he ran twenty miles to get here.
“It’s Florentina. She said it’s time!” he says as his wide eyes meet mine.
My mouth opens and closes a few times before I’m finally able to speak. “What, like right now?”
He nods his head quickly. “Yes, we must go. We need to be fully outfitted for our journey.”
“Why don’t you boys sit down and have a drink before you go?” my mom asks from behind me.
I turn my exasperated eyes. “Mother, if the seer says we need to go, then we have no time to sit around.”
My dad clasps me on the shoulder and gives me a nod. “I’m proud of you, son. Our island will be saved because of the three of you and your sacrifices.”
I lay my arm over his, gripping his shoulder back as I nod to him in thanks and respect. “Protecting our home is no sacrifice, Dad.”
He smiles as if he expected me to say that. He glances at Hawk as he tells us, “Take care of each other out there. And don’t worry, I’ll step in for Ronan while you’re all away.”
“Thank you, Torran,” Hawk says with a nod of respect.
“Give me a hug before you run off to save the world!” my mom says, already crying as she throws her arms around me, making me chuckle. “Not the world, Mother. Just Redmere.”
“Either way, we all appreciate what you’re doing. Bringing back that charm is our only hope now.”
She kisses my cheek, then moves to Hawk to give him the same treatment.
“Goodbye, Miryam,” he grunts out.
“I’ve told you, call me Mom or Mother!”
“Yes, Mother,” he says with his usual stoic expression as she steps back. I’ve never seen him smile, but I can tell when he’s happy or amused, which is the way he looks at my mother.
“We must hurry,” he says as we wave goodbye and start running down the path toward our home.
As soon as we get there, we strap on every weapon we have without saying a single word to each other. We don’t need to. We’ve been training for this for half our lives, ever since the seer first told us the prophecy at age fifteen.
We may not be blood-related, but having the island’s seer tell us a prophecy that foretold a way for the three of us to save our dying island, bonded us as clansmen.
If there had been any available female of interest in Redmere, we would have pursued her as a unit. But with a dwindling population, the available females here were extremely limited, not to mention they always chose to marry a unit of brothers, anyway.
“We must get Ronan, quickly,” Hawk says as he grabs his spear and I sheath my second sword to my back.
Running along the path, it doesn’t take long to find him in the center of town.
“Ronan!” I yell, interrupting his conversation with a couple of the local farmers.
When he takes in our appearance, he dismisses the men and takes a few steps in our direction as we come to a stop.
“It’s time,” I tell him, nodding when his eyes meet mine.
“The seer said we must leave immediately,” Hawk adds.
As usual, Ronan is already fully decked out in his gear. He almost never leaves home without his weapons.
“Have you said goodbye to Miryam?” he asks me, knowing my mother would be a wreck if she didn’t know where I was going.
I smile and nod as we turn and head toward the cliffs. “Yeah, and Torran said he’d fill in for you while we’re gone.”
“Good,” he says as we run single file out of the village and through the narrow path. “Did Florentina say anything else?”
“She said she had a vision, telling her we must leave immediately,” Hawk explains. “And that everything we need to know is in the prophecy.”
We move silently through the forest to the narrow path that leads up the hill to the cliffs. We’ve taken this path hundreds of times, possibly even thousands. Once a week since we were fifteen, we’ve practiced this route to the skyreacher’s cliff, knowing it’s the fastest way off this island.
And it finally pays off today, reaching the top in what must be record time. The second Ronan steps out onto the large open rock platform, he lets out a long whistle, and we wait with bated breath.
I search the surrounding cliffs, ones that reach higher than the one we’re on and are home to the giant birds.
Movement catches my eye, and when I see a large brown skyreacher emerge from a cave, followed by two more, one all white and one a combination of the two colors, I smile as some of my tension releases.
We’ve been training these birds to come when called and let us ride them for over a decade, but they were still free animals and had every right to refuse us. Let’s just hope they actually let us ride them all the way to the mainland this time—a journey we’ve never taken before.
After attaching the saddles, we each climb on our own bird and hang onto the reins, not hesitating to have the skyreacher’s leap from the cliff and soar over the sea.
Their wingspan is almost twenty feet wide, which seems more than enough to keep our large bodies from hindering them as they sail smoothly toward the mainland.
The prophecy tells us where we need to go to find the charm that will save our land.
Not that we know it’s a charm, per se, but that’s what we started calling it years ago, since the prophecy doesn’t specify what sort of object it would be.
I knew it had to be a magically infused one, though.
Nothing else could help our dying island.
Half the vegetation has died out in the past twenty years. At this rate, there soon wouldn’t be enough healthy land for food, let alone us.
Go beyond the world you know,
It will be found where love does grow.
I recite those specific lines of the prophecy that tell us where we need to go. A place where love grows. The Mating Hunt. It annoyed us that the mainlanders thought we were the primitive ones because of the way we dressed, but they were the ones who still partook in such ancient, barbaric rituals.
Chasing a woman through the woods to force her to be your bride?
I shake my head at the thought. Why would any level-headed woman ever choose to participate when she could simply just pick who she wants?
Even on the mainland, men outnumber women twenty-to-one, so they have plenty of options for husbands.
It takes us well over an hour before the mainland starts to line the horizon. It reaches as far as I can see to the north and south, making it far bigger than I ever imagined.
It starts to get larger and larger until tall peaks in the South start to take shape.
Ronan steers his skyreacher toward them, and Hawk and I follow.
We know that the Mating Hunt takes place on the highest forest in the kingdom, and hopefully it’s somewhere near those mountains, as there is nothing else at even half the height anywhere else in sight.
It takes us another forty minutes or so to get close enough to spot what we hope is our target destination. There is a large, flat area before a massive forest spans out for miles and miles.
“How are we going to find the charm in there?” I yell to the others, as worry fills me.
“We’ll figure it out,” Ronan yells back over his shoulder. “I think this is the right spot,” he says, aiming his bird down to the open area where several other skyreachers are being led into a large cave.
The birds land gracefully, and the three of us quickly hop off and start to remove their equipment. I glance around and see everyone is looking at us with a mix of surprise and fear.
Once Tilly, my bird, is free of her gear, I rub her head and offer her thanks before stepping back and letting her go.
Ronan and Hawk do the same, and when we turn around, we find a meek-looking young man, barely out of his teenage years, staring up at us as he literally shakes in his shoes. As if scared for his life.
“You have something to say?” Ronan asks him.
“I-I-I was going to say I can keep your birds safe for you, while you’re here,” he says, his eyes flicking to where our birds have taken off, probably to find somewhere nearby to eat and rest.
“No need,” Ronan says before holding out his saddle. “You can, however, store this for us.” I drop mine down in front of him, and Hawk does the same as the boy struggles to hold up Ronan’s saddle.
“O-okay,” he says before scurrying off.
I try not to smile, but his fear amuses me. We take a second to look around the clearing, and everyone who is watching us suddenly turns around, as if they hadn’t been caught staring. It’s easy to see the large path through the trees that must lead to the Mating Hunt.