AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Three
Oz
“Alziraya is showing, Oz. I can’t imagine a more perfect sign for you to leave. Well, not more perfect than the Cursor. You know what I mean. Oh, I’m a mess.” My dad wrapped his arms around my mother and drew her near. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
Leaving my parents wasn’t easy. I knew there were chores and tasks around the homestead that they would have to take up in my place. My dad stank at growing the potatoes, no matter how many times I’d tried to tutor him. He always forgot to layer the soil and ended up with pea-sized potatoes that couldn’t feed anyone. Then again, we were lucky to have that. After everything changed on the Earth, there were some who were unable to grown anything at all.
“Are you sure that’s Alziraya?” my father asked me. I was, after all, the expert on all things stars. Raising my head to the heavens, I confirmed that he had indeed seen the constellation our pack called Alziraya, the traveler. The stars combined to look like a man with a satchel on his hip. To tell the truth, it was that night that Alziraya looked like me more than ever.
My mother was right. It was a sign. Notthesign, but a corresponding sign prodding me to move. Move toward my destiny. Move toward her.
Easier said than done.
“I’m sure, Dad.”
Maybe it was me or maybe my unbridled excitement, but the stars glimmered brighter tonight. The sky was clear, no sign of a cloud in sight.
I was sure it was me. But still, it gave me a clear vision of my map. A map to my fated mate.
“You have everything?” My mom swiped at her tears. Her eyes were puffy and had stayed that way since I revealed to them that the Cursor had appeared to me only nights before.
“I have what I can carry. That should be enough until I get to her.”
My dad nodded, puffing out his chest a bit. He had found my mother the same way, following the stars when the Cursor rose and showed him the way. Their courting wasn’t the norm, not by a long shot. In fact, my mother’s pack had convinced her the reading of the constellation, of the heavens, was nonsense.
Dad stayed for three months, until she admitted he was her mate.
And that maybe the stars kind of had something to do with it.
Her opinion of the twinkling lights in the sky would change over the years and now, she planted her flowers and vegetables by them and refused to draw water from the well if the brightest star, Ovik, was showing.
It was worth Dad’s fight, for her. I might be facing the same thing with my mate.
“Travel by night if you can. And if you have to during the day, only by the small hours of the morning or the faintness of the stars at night. You have to go tonight so you can travel for nearly a month before the new moon. On the night of the new moon…”
“I know, Dad. It will be too dark to travel. I’ll find shelter. I promise.”
My journey to find my mate would be nothing like his. He had made his before The Fall, in a time when there were moving vehicles and rivers that still gushed flowing water. There was even grass when he went.
I mean, there was grass now, tufts of it here and there, but this was different, a deeper green. I wondered what other new encounters I would have on my way to her.
“You know that you and your mate are always welcome here. We will build what we have to—whatever it takes to have our family near.”
I nodded, trying to quell the tears threatening to stream down my face. I’d imagined this day most of my life and now that it was here, well, it was hard. Leaving and searching for her without a clue as to what she looked like or who she was, well, difficult didn’t quite encompass the situation.
Still, finding her was engrained in me, and I had to leave.
“I’m off.” With the warmth of my parents’ hugs still with me, I hefted my handmade leather pack onto my back, the same one my father had used on his mate journey, and took off, leaving first my parents’ land and then our pack’s land, and finally stepping onto water-neglected soil that hadn’t seen human footprints in ages.
I stopped for a moment and consulted the stars. The Cursor was fainter tonight, just the slightest bit but, to my trained eyes, enough to encourage me to get a move on. The quicker the better. There were enemies in these lands beyond the safety of the pack. Enemies that didn’t take kindly to shifters.
And humans were a hungry breed.
I made a rough scribbling of the night sky for my records and proceeded to the north, the way the Cursor was pointing. A dry wind whipped me in the face as I walked, my path lit by the glaring moon, giving the sun her rest for the night. The lands were more barren than I’d recalled. Every once in a while, we ventured off pack lands to snare small animals but only for feasts. We had become a mostly vegetarian pack simply because of the scarcity of animals. Our history books told of our pack taking down buffalo and elk that would last the pack for the winter, but even the elders hadn’t seen a large animal in decades.
I did my share of the work at our homestead but still, as the night waned into day, and the sun began to show her tangerines and peaches in the distance, my feet ached, and there was a dull, throbbing pain along the small of my back. I found a cave that boasted no boarders and, when I ventured in, I heard no scuffling or movement of any sort. About a third of the way in, or what I could see in, I settled onto the ground and munched on some roasted peanuts. My mother had made me take the last of her stores of peanuts, and they would have to fuel me until I got to my mate. I had no idea how many nights like this I would have to endure, but I was willing to travel to the ends of the earth if only for a moment with her.
By the light of the sunrise, I wrote in my journal about the few creatures I saw as I traveled and how many miles I guessed I’d traversed. I drew out the different terrains and other things that piqued my interest.
Toeing off my boots, I finally settled my back against a more rounded rock. My eyes shot open at the slightest noise, scanning the place for enemies and intruders even though it was more likely that I was the intruder myself.
As my eyes drifted closed again, I wished I had a name for her at the very least. That way, I could use it as a chant when things got rough, and I had a feeling they would get rough. Her name, and I was sure it was perfect, would be a mantra on my lips, a maxim to my journey, ever pressing me forward when my feet became heavy and my mind wandered with doubts.
I wished I could at least have her name.
