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The days passed, and the higher Lily’s party climbed, the colder it got, taxing the tribe even more. Icy, rotten snow still clung to the edges of the trail, but fresh green shoots and bright blossoms grew between the patches of snow. It gave the ponies something tender to eat, though they rarely dared to duck their heads. The mountain slopes were eerily quiet, setting both the humans and the horses on edge. Occasionally, Lily saw a normal deer, or a normal hawk, its wings spread wide as it hung on an updraft, but there were fewer normal wild animals in this world than she would have thought. The ones that she did see were the furry burrowing kind, although once she did catch a glimpse of puma far away on another slope.
“Where are the regular animals?” she asked Dana after spending a morning searching fruitlessly. “The non-Woven kind?”
“They’re around, but they steer clear of Woven,” Dana whispered back. “Which means there are Woven nearby right now, so lower your voice.”
As she watched her footing in the treacherous slurry of rock, ice, mud, and water, Lily saw a great shadow blanket the ground. At first she thought it must be a storm front rolling in, and then she felt her Tristan tackle her from behind and cover her body with his.
“Raptor,” he whispered, his lips brushing the edge of her ear.
She heard the horses whinny and paw at the earth, ready to bolt. Lily turned under Tristan until she could see up and caught her breath. Circling above them, still hundreds of feet in the air, was something the size of a small aircraft. She saw the wings beat once lazily and it climbed up onto a higher updraft and flew away, as if it sensed it had been spotted.
“It’s enormous,” Lily said, still unable to completely grasp what she was looking at.
Caleb crouched down next to Lily and Tristan and shaded his eyes to look up. “They can carry a full-grown man away in their talons,” he said. “They just swoop down, and all you hear is a shout that fades away, like someone jumping off a cliff.”
“How many times have you crossed the mountains, Caleb?” Breakfast asked.
Lily repositioned herself and saw Breakfast pinned under Una the same way she was pinned under Tristan and she gave him a weak smile in camaraderie.
“Only twice before, to get to the buffalo-hunting grounds. I’m not much of a buffalo hunter. Rowan and his dad used to go every—” Caleb suddenly broke off and looked down, his brow furrowed.
Lily knew she was holding her breath and forced herself to let it out. Every time she heard Rowan’s name it knocked the wind out of her—out of all of them. It was like he was still with them, riding on the currents above them and casting a shadow upon the whole group.
Over the next few days as they crossed the mountains, Lily’s neck got sore from constantly scanning the sky. She wasn’t even aware that she was doing it half the time. Fear would slink in every few paces, and she’d have to glance up. The raptor stayed with them, biding its time, and waiting for the moment when they got careless. It got close enough once that Lily could make out its bald head and scaly talons. The greasy black color of its feathers reminded her of a giant buzzard. Caleb had told her that the hooked beaks had teeth. After that, Lily pictured a feathered pterodactyl when she thought of it. The one consolation was that raptors couldn’t hunt at night. But that was when the lion Woven came out, and Lily’s tribe traded an aerial terror for a terrestrial one.
The raptor got one of the pack ponies on the fifth day in the mountains. They all felt a pounding rush of wings, saw a flash of greasy black feathers, and the pony, the extra tents, and the grain it was carrying disappeared in one swoop.
It was the lions that got one of the braves. He was picked off so quickly, he didn’t even have a chance to scream.
Lily noticed that there was a kind of begrudging respect that the Outlanders reserved for the Pride, the Pack, and the Hive that went hand in hand with a deeper kind of hatred. It was a personal hatred they felt, one that outstripped the disgust and loathing they seemed to feel for the insect, simian, or reptilian type of Woven. Of course, Lily wanted to ask either Caleb or Dana why that was, but the time couldn’t have been worse for questions—not when the loss of one of her claimed was still so near.
At first the group didn’t dare go out into the brush to try to fight the Pride for the body. It was too dark to risk it, and the brave was already dead anyway. But as the night wore on and the tribe had to listen to the lions snarling and snapping at the other as they fought over the feast, it wore away their morale, and at Lily’s patience.
“The Pride is too smart to attack us head-on. We’ve got too large a group,” Dana told Lily as she huddled miserably inside her jacket. The dead brave had been one of hers. She’d never liked Lily’s command that they only kill attacking Woven to begin with, and Lily could feel resentment building in her. Dana’s whole point in joining her was to kill the Woven, not study them. “They’ll follow us like we’re a walking icebox, picking us off one at a time,” Dana grumbled.
Caleb grunted his assent and threw another log on the fire, trying to drown out the sound of a human being eaten. “We need to get out of the mountains,” he said. “With a raptor above and the Pride all around us, we’re sitting ducks.”
Lily could feel the hatred her tribe harbored for the Woven building with every growl from the Pride. She felt her tribe’s anger seeping into her. She didn’t want to be merciful and fight off only the ones that attacked anymore. She wanted them all to die. Lily pulled the heat of the fire into her skin. A witch wind moaned, silencing the lions.
“Kill them,” she ordered.
Enflamed with Lily’s strength and anger, Caleb, the Tristans, Una, and Dana stood up from around the fire and rolled into the darkness like a cloud of deadly smoke.
Leave one alive, Lily whispered in her Tristan’s mind. Dana said the lions were smart.
What are you going to do with it?
I’m going to run a little experiment.
Lily could hear sounds of a skirmish, but it was over quickly and none of her braves were injured. It wasn’t a fair fight with a witch fueling one side, and Lily repressed a twinge of regret before thinking of the brave she’d lost. Then she didn’t regret a thing. A few hisses, a few shouts, and then she heard her Tristan’s voice in her head again.
It’s a female. She’s badly injured.
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sp; Lily released the loop of power and her witch wind died, allowing her to drop to the ground and go to Tristan. Caleb and Una had joined him, and they were looking from her Tristan to the injured Woven, confused.
“Just finish her off,” Una said. “She’s suffering.”
