It never ended. It never stopped. A constant barrage against her eardrums, Jenny Mitchell rambled on and on and on about everything. Trees. Rocks. Dirt. Sky. Clouds. Flowers. The lack of flowers. Grass. Weeds. Birds. Worms. Why birds ate worms. Why worms didn’t deserve to die.
How could one person have so many words?
How could one tiny little person who was only fourteen years old have so many words trapped inside her?
The topic had somehow shifted to bonfires, probably since they’d barely avoided being part of fire of the volcanic sacrifice variety. And she was sharing what she knew about wood and the best wood for burning and the best way to cook over a campfire and the best meals she’d made over a campfire and that Meg was awful at cooking even outdoors.
It was too much.
It was just too much.
“Stop. Talking!” Barb exploded.
Jenny scowled with a surprised look in her eyes.
“Do you ever stop?” Barb leaned against her, the pain in her side and her feet and her back all combining to bring tears to her eyes.
“I thought we already established this, Barb. The answer is no.”
“Just. Stop. Please.”
“Are you always grouchy?”
“When my spleen is hanging out, yes, I’m always this grouchy.”
“I think you’re always grouchy whether your spleen is hanging out or not.” Jenny laughed softly. “Cheer up. We made it to the forest!”
The forest smelled like life. Dank, dark, musty life—but more life than could survive in the Centaur’s lava-spewing mountain. The air didn’t crack her skin. The trees swayed and groaned, their leaves whispering together about the strange humans that had just stumbled into their midst.
Barb squeezed her eyes shut and muttered under her breath. If the first thought she was going to have on entering a forest was what the trees thought of her, she’d definitely been hanging out with Jenny too long.
“Oh, goody. Now we won’t die on the side of a mountain. We can die in a creepy forest.”
“You’re so cheerful, Barb.” Jenny patted her back. “Now we just need to find beard moss.”
“No.” Barb kept her eyes shut as she limped next to the shorter girl. “No more moss.”
“But moss is good.”
“Moss is gross.”
“Moss is keeping your spleen and your gallbladder where they’re supposed to be.”
Barb grunted as she stepped on a sharp rock that jabbed through the mossy foot wraps Jenny had fashioned. “The spleen and the gallbladder are on opposite sides.”
“Your pancreas then. Stop complaining. I just want to keep all your internal organs internal, Barb.”
“And the best way to do that is to strap dirt-covered moss on me?”
“Absolutely.” Jenny beamed at her, smiling face still red and chafed from the heat of the volcano. “It’d dirt-covered. Not dirty. Makes all the difference in the world. Everybody needs a little more dirt in their lives.”
Jenny guided her around the trunk of a massive oak and led her to a boulder. “Sit down.”
“Maybe I want to stand.”
“Why?”
“Because I can.”
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think you can. I think you’re just being difficult.”
“I’m not being difficult.” Barb shook Jenny’s hold off and sank onto the boulder.
Getting the weight off her burned, bleeding feet did feel glorious, but announcing that to the world wasn’t necessary. And it would only make the smug grin on Jenny’s face broader, and the child didn’t need any more encouragement to keep running her mouth.
So. Many. Words.
The girl had a never-ending supply of them, seemingly. She hadn’t drawn breath since they climbed out of the volcano.
“Hold still.” Jenny bent and began pulling the dirt-smelling moss off the bloody wound in Barb’s side.
Barb batted her away. “Leave it.”
“Uh. Why?” Jenny blinked at her.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s really not.”
“It’s fine.”
“Do you think if you keep saying it’s fine that it’ll suddenly happen?”
Barb ground her teeth. “You just took care of it.”
“Hours ago.” Jenny pointed behind them. “Back in the foothills. You’ve got sweat and all sorts of nastiness in there now.”
“Sweat?”
“You sweat a lot, Barb.”
Barb let her jaw fall open. “Excuse me?”
“You do.” Jenny patted her arm. “But that’s okay. It means you’re well hydrated.”
“Don’t touch me.”
Jenny giggled and rocked back on her heels, scanning the area around them while she swayed like the treetops, humming under her breath. Her blond hair was dark with grime and ash and dried blood. The pure white kurti dropping off her shoulders was now stained with soot and burned patches, ripped at the seams where she’d torn great swathes away to make bandages. From the knees down, her legs were scraped and burned and bloody.
And she was still singing.
Barb pressed her hand into her wounded side and felt the jolt of pain. Whatever the Centaurs had beaten her with had been sharp, enough to break the skin in more than one place, but the deepest wound was in her left side. Where the sharp object in the gaja nest had stabbed her. She hadn’t seen it clearly, but the fiery ache under her fingers burned like a bonfire. The heat radiating from it told her it was probably infected.
She shuddered to think about the germs that must have been on that stick.
Jenny knelt next to her again, armed with a sharp rock she’d picked up off the ground.
“What are you doing with that?”
Jenny smiled sweetly and cut the bandages off from around Barb’s waist. The rippled moss from the mountainside fell away, soaked in blood, and Barb hissed as it peeled off her tender skin.
Jenny chewed her bottom lip. “It’s infected.”
Barb clenched her molars. “It’ll be fine. Just leave it alone.”
“Leaving it alone won’t make it fine,” Jenny said cheerfully. “But I can make it better. Just stay there.”
She stood and skipped into the forest, gathering the remnants of her kurti skirt in her hands as she knelt in a nearby patch of greenery and began digging through it.
Barb started to shout at her, but drawing in the deep breath made her head spin. So she laid the back of her head on the boulder and concentrated on getting the world to stop swimming.
What was even happening? This totally wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her day in the Andarian Dimension. A memorial festival. Tasty food and really strong coffee. And maybe a game of cards or something afterward.
She couldn’t have guessed it would have turned out like this. But then, no one else could have either.
I hope Jim’s okay.
She’d lost track of him during the chaos in the village. Jim knew how to avoid danger well enough, but how did you avoid something like a living shadow that made you see the things you feared?
She shuddered again.
Being forced to relive her mother’s death again was bad. Being forced to face Lance’s horrible, beautiful face again was worse. But learning that the Centaurs had seen her reaction to it? That Jenny had seen it? Heard it?
Her face burned.
Those were private moments. Private pains. No one had a right to them unless she chose to share them, and the choice hadn’t been hers at all.
Whatever Tiron was planning to do with that shadow weapon wasn’t good.
Her side twinged, and she scrunched her face up to stop a groan. She was hurt. Everybody knew it. No need to make noise about it.
She caught her breath and glanced around the forest, slowly this time, in case the dizzy spell returned. Trees with trunks as broad as telephone booths crowded close, their massive roots punched through the spongy loam. The air smelled heavy and thick, old and ancient, full of secrets and decay and newly spouted saplings with bright happy berries.
Strange to have new life growing so close to a mountain so obviously devoted to destroying it all.
With a rustle of fallen leaves and moss-covered feet, Jenny scurried back, her face bright and her torn skirt full of things she’d foraged from the forest.
Yippee.
“Barb, you’ll never guess what I found!”
“A roast beef sandwich?”
“No, but that sounds great.” Jenny dug through her skirt and pulled out branch covered in green fruits the size of cherry tomatoes. She held it up like a trophy. “Karuadah!”
“What?”
“Karuadah, Barb!” Jenny sank to her knees and let her skirt full of treasures fall to the forest floor.
“You’re just saying words again, Jenny.”
Jenny plucked one of the green fruits off the branch and pried it open, revealing a dark green stone at the fruit’s center.
“I’m so happy I found this.”
“I’m happy for you. What are you doing?”
Jenny leaned forward and shoved the green fruit into Barb’s mouth. Barb gagged and choked and reeled backward.
“Chew, chew, chew!”
The fruit was sour. So sour it burned her eyes and her nose all the way into her sinuses. She moved to spit it out, and Jenny slapped her hand over her mouth.
“Chew it up, Barb. More is coming.”
Barb glared at her and swallowed as much of it as she could. Her empty stomach roiled.
“What are you doing?”
Jenny shoved the other half in her mouth.
The overpowering sourness made her throat constrict, but Jenny kept her hand in place over her mouth.
“Trust me,” Jenny said. “Josharons use karuadah to reduce fevers and protect against infection. It tastes awful, but it’s the best thing for you right now.”
Barb swallowed with a painful grimace. “Don’t ever do that again?”
“Feed you life-saving fruit that will keep your internal organs where they’re supposed to be?”
“Feed me at all.” Barb reached down and snatched the branch away from her. “I’m struggling with you picking things up off the ground and shoving them in my open wounds and my mouth. I think you’re trying to kill me.”
“Oh, if I were trying to kill you, I’d think of a much more effective way than death by moss or berry.”
“That’s comforting.” She glared at the green fruit. “Are you sure about this?”
“Positive,” Jenny said. “It’s one of the most common herbal medicines the Josharons use.”
Barb rolled her eyes and plucked another fruit off the branch, biting into it and chewing at her own speed. It didn’t taste any better when she actually chewed it, but not having to forced it down her windpipe helped with the panic level.
Jenny began sorting through the precious valuables in her skirt. Sticks and rocks and lengths of tree bark. Moss and mushrooms and more moss and leaves and—moss. Did she mention the moss? So much moss.
With every piece Jenny set aside, she told a story. Stories about how it worked, why it was called what it was called, why people liked using it or didn’t like using it, what it tasted like—or why you weren’t supposed to eat it.
“How do you know all this?” Barb finally sighed.
“Yaasha taught me.” Jenny smiled. “She’s an old Nibe who lives in Chandan Village. She’s blind, and she needs a lot of help. So I visit her a lot, and one day she just started teaching me about herbs.”
Jenny grabbed one of the piles of moss from her stash, a tangled mass of fibrous strands all the color of ivory, and held it up.
“This is beard moss,” she said. “Great for wound treatment. Helps with some swelling. Between this and the karuadah, you should start feeling better soon.”
Barb snorted, and Jenny began stripping more fabric off her skirt.
“You’re not going to be wearing much of anything by the time you get done,” Barb said around another bite of sour berry.
Jenny giggled again.
“One time when I was little I wanted to make a new dress, but all I had were flour sacks. But I wanted to do it anyway—”
Barb tuned her out.
Not that she didn’t have faith in herbal remedies, but from the fiery pain that kept shooting up her side, she doubted that a handful of octopus moss or whatever it was would be enough to contain the infection.
The same thing went for eating sour berries.
She needed an actual anti-biotic, but there was no way to get one until they got to Atama Village.
“—it was so much easier just to open a brand new bag, since the fabric wasn’t as worn out. So I grabbed a knife—”
Something dark shifted in the shadows of the forest. Barb froze on the boulder but didn’t move to silence Jenny’s rambling. Whatever was there had seen them anyway most likely.
“—Little did I know how hard flour was to clean up, otherwise I wouldn’t have dumped the whole sack—”
Barb narrowed her eyes at the figure in the darkness. What was it? A Centaur? Had they been spotted leaving the mountain? If Centaurs were chasing them, how would they manage their defense? Two unarmed women, wounded and weak, wandering around in a forest with no idea of where they were going? They’d be easy pickings.
Centaurs would be bad.
“—but the dress I made actually turned out really fabulous. It had little flowers all over it, and I thought that was just really clever. Flowers on a dress made from a flour sack. Velanna didn’t laugh—”
But what did they actually know about the forest? If Josharons didn’t come here, didn’t venture this far south, anything could be alive in these woods.
Centaurs were bad, but at least they were a known quantity. Barb narrowed her eyes and tried to spot the figure again. It had vanished.
Bad. Very bad.
“—but I used it as a pattern to make a lot of dresses after that, so Velanna couldn’t be too upset. Even though we’re still finding flour in the cracks of the tiles in the pantry today.”
“Jenny?”
“Do you need me to make you a dress?”
“What?”
“A dress.” Jenny smiled. “I could make you such pretty dress, Barb. You’d probably look really attractive in a dress.”
Barb stammered. “That’s not—what are you—stop talking!”
“Eat more berries. You’re still grouchy.”
“There’s something in the trees!” Barb pointed over her shoulder.
Jenny blinked and followed her finger to the area of the woods where she was pointing. “Of course there is. It’s the woods.”
Barb sagged against the rock. “What?”
“Lots of things live in the woods, Barb.” Jenny sat forward. “Just because we’re close to Centaur Mountain doesn’t mean they have to be bad things. Maybe they’re cuddly fluffy bears.”
“Bears would be bad, Jenny.”
“Or cute fluffy wildcats.”
“Wildcats would also be bad.”
“I mean it could also be a giant snake.”
“A what?”
“And snakes aren’t fluffy, but they’re seriously misunderstood.”
Barb sat forward. “We need to go.”
Jenny pushed her back down. “I need to finish sorting your internal organs.”
“It won’t matter where my internal organs are if whatever that thing is attacks us.”
“That’s true.” Jenny shrugged, pressing the beard moss into Barb’s side and binding it tightly with bandages.
Barb winced as the pressure sent shooting pain up her ribcage and back.
A low rumbling trembled in the air around them, and Barb froze. Jenny’s fingers tightened against her.
Barb hardly dared to breathe.
The low thunderous growling continued, and a pair of glowing orange eyes slid out of the shadows of the trees around them. The moon cast enough light through the tree canopy that they weren’t in complete darkness, but it was certainly dark enough.
“Is that—a wolf?” Barb whispered.
It looked wolf-like—but it was far too big. The creature was the size of a small horse. Its wrinkled snout dripped drool from needle like fangs and teeth, and its bristled tail stood out parallel to its spine. Black as the darkness it slid out of, it set saucer-sized paws steady on the forest floor and lowered its maw, glaring at them with orange-golden eyes.
“Syahavik,” Jenny whispered with wide eyes. “It’s a black wolf. I’ve only heard stories about them.”
“Are they cute and cuddly?”
“Not really.”
The wolf approached, it’s growling like a thunderstorm.
“Okay.” Barb said softly, forcing herself to the edge of the boulder. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“What are we going to do, Barb?”
“I’m going to distract it. And you’re going to run.”
Jenny stared at her. “It’ll kill you.”
“But you’ll get away.” Barb held her gaze fiercely. “And I mean you’d better get away.”
The wolf came another step closer. If it leaped at them, it could reach them. It could rip Jenny’s throat out with one bite.
Jenny faced the wolf, on her knees, hands draped against her pile of silly treasures.
“Actually, Barb,” she said gently, “I have a better idea.”
“Your ideas involve moss, Jenny. No better ideas.”
Jenny laughed. “Oh, Barb, I have more creative ideas than moss.”
The wolf closed in. Barb could smell it now, a scent like rotting meat and heavy musk.
“Just run, Jenny,” Barb said, not looking at her. “I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“I know.” Jenny’s voice sounded sad.
As she should.
Rightly so.
But Barb wished she’d hurry up and run.
“Everybody always has to take care of me,” Jenny said.
The wolf gathered itself.
“Jenny, run!”
The wolf leaped.
Jenny snatched something out of her pile of forest foraging and lifted it—a curved wooden stick bent with a strip of tree bark bound to both ends—a bow? Where had she found a bow?
Her motion blurred.
The wolf collapsed at their feet in a heap of stinky fur and rattling breath, a rough arrow punched shaft-deep through its eye socket.
It tried to stand with a pitiful whimper, and but the arrowhead had hit its brain. The beast stumbled and went lip with a last creaking whine.
Dead.
Barb turned her head to stare at Jenny.
What had just happened?
Where had she gotten a bow? Where had she found an arrow?
Jenny didn’t look at her and stood up slowly. “No moss this time,” Jenny said quietly.
The girl finally looked at her with a soft smile, but its brightness didn’t reach her eyes. And Barb would have sworn she saw a silver tear slip down Jenny’s cheek.