Page 54 of Moon Chosen

Leda remained still.

“Nik! Thaddeus! I need your help over here. I’m losing this tree.”

Mari’s gaze was pulled from her mother as the youngest of the men motioned frantically to the other two as a broken cedar tree near the charred bones of the willow burst into flame. Nik and Thaddeus rushed to help him battle the fresh blaze.

Mari didn’t hesitate. Staying as close to the ground as possible, she scrambled over the edge of the bank and half ran, half slid, down to Leda. She reached her mother and knelt beside her, touching her shoulder gently.

“Mama?”

Leda’s shoulder was cold and already stiffening.

Her mother was dead.

“Come on, Mama. I’m going to take you home.”

Mari emptied her mind, focusing only on lifting Leda—gently, carefully. She didn’t try to carry her up the bank. Instead she moved quickly and silently with the current, following the creek downstream in the shallows, until she emerged ghostlike from the drifting smoke.

Mari paused then, breathing heavily. The day that had begun so bright and warm had turned overcast and cool. All around her mist began to lift from the warm, damp forest floor until, looking behind her, Mari couldn’t tell what was smoke and what was fog. With a start of surprise Mari realized it was well into the evening, and not too many hours until sunset. She shifted her mother in her arms, collecting her limbs. Leda’s head tilted close to Mari’s to come to rest on her shoulder. For a moment Mari let her forehead tilt down and she breathed in the familiar scent of the rose water Leda always used to rinse her hair.

“It’s okay, Mama. I have your back. I’ll always have your back,” Mari whispered. “It’s getting late, but you don’t have to do anything but sleep tonight. You finally don’t have to do anything but sleep.”

Resolutely, Mari stepped out of the creek, easily climbing the soft lip of the bank. She turned to the south, found the deer trail, and began the long, slow journey that would bring Leda home forever.

***

At first her mother’s weight had seemed childlike and easy to manage, but it wasn’t long before Mari’s arms began to ache, her legs became heavy and awkward, and her breath came in gasps. The sun was veiled by clouds, and Mari didn’t know how to reach its burning power. Leda’s unrelenting stillness was a gnawing pain within her daughter’s heart that soon grew to be an almost unbearable burden on the rest of her body. Mari stumbled on, forcing her legs to keep carrying her forward, afraid if she stopped, even just a moment to rest, she would never begin again. Night was coming, and though Mari didn’t want to think about it, the truth was that after dusk her mother’s body would become a beacon for the worst of the slithering, swarming forest scavengers.

There was a very real temptation that played with Mari’s grief-numbed mind. As if observing herself from afar, Mari considered what would happen if she were caught out in the open forest after dark, carrying death in her arms. Mari wouldn’t have to do much of anything. She could just sit down and hold her mother close. She could close her eyes and finally rest. Maybe even sleep. She was so, so tired. Darkness and the forest’s insects would take care of everything else. If she didn’t reach their burrow—didn’t get within their shelter—Mari would never have to know what one dawn, then another and another without Leda, would bring, because her life would end with her mother’s.

But if she didn’t make it back to the burrow she knew what would happen to her pup. As surely as if Mari had sealed him within a tomb, Rigel would die—slowly, alone, frightened and in despair.

Mari couldn’t do that to her Shepherd.

So Mari stumbled on, even after her aching arms became numb and her leaden feet were hardly able to move forward. The little path branched and Mari found herself standing still, breathing heavily and trying to rub the sweat out of her eyes. Which way? Which way? She blinked, orienting herself. Of course she knew where she was. She knew the forest as well as she knew her own home. To the right. She must keep moving always to the right.

Mari turned to the right, and as she did her foot was caught by an exposed root and, with a cry, she fell forward heavily, automatically twisting her body to try to shield Leda from the fall. A sharp pain splintered through her left wrist, and Mari cried out, collapsing in a crumpled pile—her mother’s body twisted around her.

Mari tried to get up. She rearranged Leda’s heavy, motionless limbs, collecting her in her arms like a beloved child—like Leda had so often held Mari and comforted her after she’d fallen and scraped her knees, or cried because she wasn’t like any of the other Earth Walkers and needed her mother’s reassurance and love.

But Mari couldn’t stand, and Leda couldn’t comfort her.

“I’m not ready, Mama.” Mari smoothed Leda’s hair back from her pale, cold face. “I’m not ready to lose you. What do I do now?”

Not far up the trail a branch snapped and Mari’s heart fluttered with a primal rush of fear. Supporting her mother with one trembling arm, she felt frantically inside her pack with the other, trying to find her slingshot and to ready herself for whatever further horrors this terrible day would bring.

The young woman who emerged from the foggy path didn’t see Mari at first. She was too busy glancing nervously behind her. When she did finally notice Mari, crumpled on the ground, holding her mother’s body, she stumbled to a halt, eyes wide and startled.

“Oh, no! That can’t be Leda. It simply can’t be!”

Mari’s anger felt pure and righteous, and so, so much more bearable than her grief.

“Sora, what are you doing here?”

The young woman ran forward, her gaze riveted on Leda’s still, pale face.

“Oh, Goddess! She’s dead? No, please no!” Sora’s face twisted in a mixture of horror and disbelief and she leaned down, staring at Leda and ignoring Mari.

Something within Mari snapped. Of its own accord her hand snaked out, clamping around Sora’s wrist. With a little shriek, the girl’s gaze met Mari’s, and what Sora saw there had her trying to pull away, face flushed with shock.