21. Oaken
21
OAKEN
I t was amazing how much a man could be slowed down when he managed to go and mangle one of his feet. Truly astonishing. Infuriating, too. Because it meant I hadn’t been able to meet my bride when I was supposed to.
Magnolia. I smiled as I ran over the syllables in my mind. Even her name was pretty.
But my stupid foot was too stupidly broken to go and meet her and, though I’d tried, there had been nothing for it.
I’d had to turn around.
I needed to go home. Let my bone heal. Walking more than a few paces was out of the question, and even riding for too long didn’t work. I’d learned that the hard way, when after half a day in Fiora’s saddle, my foot swelled up so much I’d had to spend three days in a row flat on my back with my foot propped up on a rock above the level of my heart. The swelling had subsided eventually, but it had been an unsettling experience. At one point I’d queasily wondered if I would have to take out my hatchet and cut the blasted thing off just so that it didn’t kill me.
So. No walking. And barely any riding.
I couldn’t cover any cursed ground. I hadn’t even gotten out of the mountains yet. And Magnolia was many days of travel beyond that.
So home it was. For now. I’d make a splint of some sort. And I’d charge my data tab so that I could update the warden. And then I’d make the journey again later in the summer.
I could only hope that she would wait for me.
My foot throbbed. I’d have to stop and rest soon. Irritating, considering I was so close to home now. We were near the lake. My ears twitched, picking up the sound of water lapping.
And then, the sound of…
Chopping wood?
“Hold on, Fiora,” I muttered, halting my shuldu. I strained my ears.
There it was again. The slightly uneven rhythm of something sharp (like a blade) hitting something dull (like wood).
I had to be mistaken. There was nothing out here but my own cabin. Besides animals, I was the only one who lived for spans in all directions.
And yet…
I really was fairly certain I hadn’t gone mad since I’d last left my cabin. The sound was real.
I clicked my tongue at Fiora and we sprinted towards it. Hurt like the blazes, jostling my foot about like that. But the pain was soon forgotten when I circled a low, grassy peak and came upon approximately fifty bracku, three shuldu, two tents.
And one boy.
The boy’s hair was a gleaming shock of white.
His eyes were white too.
In his hand was a rudimentary blade that I half wondered if he’d carved himself from some poor slab of stone. It was not a typical Zabrian blade, though he was certainly Zabrian. He’d been hacking away with his pointy rock knife at some large hunks of wood.
He held the weapon up as I came to a stop before him.
“You know that’s easier if you use a hatchet or an axe to chop the wood. Instead of… whatever that is.” I pulled my own hatchet from my belt and hoisted it in the air, letting the early morning sun glance off its blade.
The boy just stared at me in mutinous silence.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said gently, returning my hatchet to my belt. Though I wasn’t precisely certain fear was even what I was witnessing here. “My name is Oaken.”
At the sound of my name, the boy’s white eyes flared. His lips drew back from his lips in a genka-like hiss. He looked like he was about to tackle me right off Fiora’s back.
Delightfully strange child.
“Are you alone?”
He was too young to be on his own out here. He had to be someone’s convict-ward, though I could not imagine whose. I dismounted, biting back a vicious curse as I landed. I still hadn’t figured out a good way to get down without agony seizing my cursed ankle. I breathed through the pain and glanced at the boy again, only to jerk back with surprise.
“Whoa, now!” I exclaimed. When had he gotten so close to me? And why was his weird little rock knife pointed right at my face? “Where’s your guardian?”
He scowled at me for so long I wondered if he would not answer. But then, without lowering his knife, he said, “I think Garrek went to the water for fish. I’m getting wood ready so he can make a fire when he gets back. I’m not allowed to start a fire on my own.”
I glanced over at the messy, shredded pile of wood the boy had clearly worked so hard to create.
“I see. You know, I wasn’t kidding about the hatchet. It really would… Hold on.” My head whipped back to him. My voice sounded strangely high, ringing in my own ears. “Did you say Garrek?”
The child looked at me like I barely had half a brain in my head.
“Of course I did,” he said. He lowered his knife, but only a little. “Did you forget the name of your own cousin? And keep your voice down. I think she’s still sleeping in her tent.”
I barely registered that last bit. My brain spun in my skull. Garrek . I had not seen him since we were children. When we’d been brought here and then immediately separated .
“He went to the lake, you said?” I asked, even as I was already hobbling towards the water.
The boy did not answer. A moment later, the sound of his rock-blade hacking against wood resumed.
I came upon Garrek suddenly. I rounded a small stand of trees, and there he was ahead. He was seated on the ground with his back to a boulder, his head down. His face was in shadow, but even so, I instantly knew it was him. There was no mistaking him, even though the last time I’d seen him he’d had skinny, young shoulders exactly like the ones on the boy I’d just left by the wood pile.
I did not speak. For a moment, I wasn’t sure I could. I’d had no indication he would be here. No warning at all.
I’d missed him. I hadn’t realized how much until that moment, when the sight of him felt a bit like a punch to the head.
Garrek was not alone. The reason his head was bent was because he was bending over someone.
A human woman.
My data tab, though cracked and currently out of power, still had visual capabilities. I’d spent enough time staring longingly at images of human females in the Zabrian database to recognize one when I saw one. Though she was smaller than I’d anticipated, her little body curled in Garrek’s lap – perhaps sleeping. He held a plait of her thick dark hair in his hand, stroking it like it was precious to him. His mouth rested against her temple .
I still had no explanation for why Garrek was here, but I at least had an explanation for this.
Garrek had elected to take a human bride. Just as I had.
Which was strange, because I thought the warden had told me some time ago that Garrek had refused to participate in the bride program. But clearly, that was not the case. Or maybe something had changed since then. Because my cousin held this human woman like he never wished to let her go. Like she was as necessary to him as his own hands, his own heart. There was no doubt in my mind that she was his wife.
It almost felt wrong to intrude upon them.
But I could not just stand there staring forever. My foot was already throbbing something fierce.
“Garrek?”
He did not react. He really was not that far away. He should have heard me.
“Garrek!”
No response.
Blast it all to Zabria and back. He’s really going to make me walk all the way over there.
And suddenly, he felt very far away.
I gritted my fangs, adjusted my hat, looped my tail ’round my belt hook, and started limping towards my cousin and his wife.
He did not lift his head even when I finally stood right before him.
Well, now he’s just being rude.
My tail unfurled. It slid along the ground and curled around a pebble the size of my eye .
I hurled it at my cousin’s head.
“Ah! What-” He reared back when it made contact. Wild, white eyes met mine.
“Hello, cousin!” I boomed.
He gazed blankly back at me. Like I’d roused him from some deep slumber. Or stupor. Or both.
“Oaken?”
“Who else would it be? You’re practically on my doorstep. When did you get here?” I aimed my tail at the curled figure still sleeping in his lap. “Are you going to introduce me?”
His face, which had been oddly slack before, went taut. Stricken.
And then I knew that something was very wrong. Because I’d seen that expression on him before.
At the end of our trial, when we were both condemned.
“What is it?” I asked urgently. I tried to crouch to get down to his level, but my ankle prevented me. Probably good. With my foot in such bad shape, once I’d gotten down there, it would have taken me ages to get back up.
He only gave me a single word in answer.
“Ardu.”
His voice was like that of a drowning man’s.
My stomach tightened. My blood crashed in my ears. I saw then two tiny brown and bootless feet. One of them with the telltale signs of an ardu’s bite.
And then my mind was on fire, questions and calculations ramming at each other so quickly it became hard to think .
“How long has it been?” I demanded. Already, I was turning to see how far I’d come from my shuldu. Garrek would have to get to his shuldu, too. And he’d have to be fast.
“What?” he asked dazedly.
By the Empire, the man was falling apart right in front of me.
“When was she bitten?”
I whistled sharply. Fiora came galloping along the stony beach at once.
“I…” Garrek shook his head, as if to knock loose some old, forgotten information. “It was just after sunrise.”
“Then there may yet be time. Get up,” I commanded him as I hopped madly over to Fiora. I took a harsh breath in – because this part always hurt like the bloody blazes – and hauled myself up into the saddle.
Thankfully, Garrek seemed to be responding to some of the urgency in my voice. By the time I was seated in the saddle, he was on his feet, cradling his dying wife close to his chest.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now, we ride like her life depends on it,” I told him, taking up my reins and turning Fiora ’round. “Because it does.”