Brena
“It’s poison, it will take your life.”
Brena took out a stone knife from her satchel. Though she worked as quickly as possible, the bear still shuddered in pain when she cut out the arrowhead. Brena forced herself not to flinch or pause.
The she-bear groaned.
The arrow, when it finally emerged whole, was black, both shaft and fletch, with no clan markings. The obsidian tip gleamed like a wicked smile. Brena took care not to touch it. She wrapped it in a leather oilskin.
The bear still bled, but the removal of the arrow restored her to greater strength. She was able to rise and shake out her fur. She stood up on her back legs, tall as a totem pole, towering over Brena. Her strange yellow eyes glittered with anger.
“I suppose you think you’ve earned my eternal gratitude and are now entitled to wish for wealth and love and luck and power.” The bear snorted in derision. “But you’ve only removed the weapon, you haven’t healed the wound. The wound cannot truly heal unless that arrow takes a human life. Will you kill someone for me?”
Brena stepped back. “I tried to help you, and you’re demanding a mariah?”
“You humans kill one another all the time,” the bear said. “You have two daughters. Do you really need both?”
“Stay away from them, faery!”
“You brought this on yourself,” snapped the bear. “I never asked for your help. I begged you to leave. The arrow demands death. An immortal can’t quench the arrow’s thirst. By taking it from my flesh, you’ve taken the responsibility of providing a human sacrifice. If you find a mariah for me, I will be fully healed. If you don’t, I will live in torment. I am at your mercy.”
“I won’t kill for you.”
“I will never force you to,” growled the bear. “I didn’t want to foist this choice on you. Despite what you think of the fae, we are not your real enemies. The wound is not mine alone. There is a wound in the world.”
A crow cawed. The bear shouldered her aside and lumbered away, unevenly, into the woods.
Dindi
Tamio recovered his wits most swiftly, in time to pull Dindi off the enemy.
“Dindi! Stop!” shouted Tamio. “That’s my mother’s brother Abiono!”
Dindi stopped struggling.
Coughing and huffing, the leader of the “enemy” Tavaedies removed his mask, revealing Abiono, Zavaedi of their own Tavaedi troop. The other Tavaedies removed their masks too, and all were men and women from the Corn Hills.
She saw now that the half-dozen Tavaedies and two dozen boys and girls stood on a forested cliff buff with a view of the sea on the far horizon. Pale morning light flooded a lovely expanse of land below them, meadows pimpled by artificial hills. Autumn tinted the fields and trees shades of citron and cinnamon. At the top of each man-made hill, a log stockade enclosed dome shaped houses. Cold tingles skipped down her back…
TO BE CONTINUED
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