Page 109 of Moon Chosen

“Leave it alone,” Mari said. “Please.”

Something in her eyes had Sora turning away and closing her mouth in a sad, thin line.

Mari sipped her tea silently while Sora finished breaking her fast, then they divided up the dirty clothes between them, grabbed their packs and their walking sticks, and began picking their way through the bramble thicket.

“Are we going the right way?” Sora asked.

“We’re going the right way to the stream. It’s in the opposite direction from the front of the burrow.” Mari used her stick to lift another thick branch of knife-tipped thorns so that Rigel and Sora could come up beside her. “We’re going to leave the brambles after this next turn, but stay right behind me. Don’t touch anything—not until I tell you it’s okay.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“It’s easier to show you than tell you.” Mari followed another bend in the bramble maze and lifted aside a branch that looked like a thorned wall. She stepped out of the thicket into a low, scrubby dip in the land.

Sora swatted at a huge mosquito, grimacing at the spot of blood it left on her arm. “I don’t see any stream. Just mosquitoes and a lot of mud and weeds in a grove of weird maple trees.”

“That’s all you’re supposed to see. And the weeds aren’t just weeds—same as the weird maples aren’t trees. Look closer.”

Sora sighed, but did as Mari told her. “Ugh! Those low vines that areeverywhereare poison oak. And those bushes are stinging nettles. I’ve never seen them so big!” She squinted, studying the closest of the odd-looking plants with disproportionately large maple-shaped leaves. Then she cringed back with a grimace. “Sweet Mother Goddess, those aren’t trees! They’re devil’s club! Touch their stalks or step on their shoots and you’ll be covered in spiny thorns. This place is awful. I don’t see a stream and I don’t want to walk through that. Can’t we go another way?”

“Your reaction is perfect. It’s exactly why Mama and I have nurtured this particular thicket for as long as I can remember. Transplanting the devil’s club was the hardest of everything, but this grove of them stops anyone from exploring this area. The stream runs just a little west of here, and the poison oak and nettles flourish all along it. There’s only one safe way through all of this, so stay close.”

“We have to go through this every time we go to the stream?”

“It’s easy once you know the path. When you see the stream and the bathing pool you’ll understand that it’s worth it.”

Mari picked her way easily around the devil’s club, nettle bushes, and past—without touching—the mounds of poison oak, heading down to a wide, shallow stream. Its waters were swollen with spring rains, but clear and sparkling in the early-morning sunlight. Mari stepped into the stream, wincing a little as the cold water lapped around her calves.

“How are we going to bathe in this? It’s way too shallow,” Sora said.

“This isn’t where we bathe, or at least not when we want to take a proper bath. This is mainly where we fill our water buckets. The pool is up there.” Mari pointed. “It’s fastest and safest to walk in the stream to it. That way you avoid all of that.” Mari gestured to the spread of poisonous ivy and nettles that crowded each bank of the stream. “When you find the site for your own burrow you’ll have to transplant some of these there, as well as the bramble and the devil’s club, of course.”

“How am I supposed to do that without sticking or poisoning myself?”

“You use gloves, common sense, and the power of the moon,” Mari said, sounding eerily like her mother. “Come on. It’s not far.”

They didn’t see sign of any living being except for lots of squawking jays and several gray squirrels who barked at Rigel and then disappeared into the trees.

“We’ll have to check the snares later today. We’re running low on meat,” Mari said.

“I’m just glad I don’t have to wade through another nettle patch to get to them,” Sora said, scratching her leg and wincing. “I got too close to one of those bushes.”

Mari was about to tell her that she’d get used to picking her way successfully through them when the sound of a waterfall carried to them. She picked up the pace, and soon they were standing below a triple waterfall and the clear, round pool into which it fed. Rigel ran to the pool, lapped up some of the sparkling water, and then he stretched out on a sun-kissed rock, sighed contentedly, and closed his eyes.

“Isn’t he supposed to be on guard?” Sora asked.

“He can guard with his eyes closed. Try grabbing me, and see what he does,” Mari said.

“Never mind, I’ll take your word for it.” Sora studied the cascading water and the waiting pool. “This is incredible. I had no idea it was here,” she said.

“That’s because up there our nice little stream is a frothing mess that cuts between a rocky gorge. It’s almost impossible to reach the water for quite a ways because the sides of the gorge are so slick. A dam was formed, probably from a rock slide ages ago, and that’s what made the series of waterfalls tame enough to form the pool and the spill-off that’s our little stream. It can get crazy if it rains too much, especially in the spring, but the dam has always held, and even if it didn’t the water would just flood the nettles and ivy, and once it receded again everything would grow right back.” Mari trudged through the stream, heading to the lowest part of the pool. On a wide, flat rock she laid out her clean clothes and the soaproot bulb. “Bring the dirty clothes up here. We can soak them while we wash. It’ll make it easier to get them clean, and if the morning stays nice we can dry them in no time on these rocks.”

Sora joined her, following her lead as she dunked the dirty clothes in the shallow part of the pool. Then Mari pulled the little paring knife from her pack and handed it to Sora.

“I want you to cut my hair,” she said.

Sora gave her a quizzical look. “Are you sure?”

“Look at it. It’s disgusting. I want it off.”