Kared's Children - Chapter 9

"You’ll have to eat."

"I’m fine."

She got up and went into the brush, dug around, found a few roots, nuts, and grasses, brought them to him.

"If you don’t eat what we find on the trip you won’t survive the journey."

"I’ll eat," he said, cracking one of the nuts’ thin shells.

"I filled the old one’s waterskin from the brook. You can carry it."

"Will that be enough for us?"

"Enough for you. I have another. And we’ll find water on the way."

"How far is this? Where we’re going?"

"Many days. You call it the North Forest."

"The North Forest? Mother Bedelia’s from there."

"Your mother?"

"Kind of. She’s a-she was-a friend." Damon let his food sit in his hands.

"Eat," Aleda said roughly. "We have to go."

Disinterestedly, Damon gnawed at a root.

This wasn’t going to be easy, Aleda thought. Not easy at all. She waited for him to finish.

He left most of the grasses, as he’d done the night before. "Aren’t you hungry?"

"I’ve eaten."

He nibbled one of the thick blades and its juice dribbled on his chin. "This is sweet."

"It’s called sweet grass."

He nibbled another blade.

There was something about him, she thought. He was like an animal. Cute. Like a pet.

Damon finished the grasses and wiped his chin and fingers on his shirt.

"Ugh," she said.

"What?"

"You could have used the brook."

"Have I offended you? I am so sorry, Aleda Princess Queen."

She didn’t believe what Xeter had told her at all. Not at all. "When you’re finished being disgusting, perhaps we could leave."

He stood without looking at her and stomped away.

In a few moments, though, she did see him at the brook. And he did wash his hands in the stream. But still she didn’t believe what Xeter had said. The old one had quite a sense of humor.

. . .

It was while he was in the hut, looking for something-he couldn’t remember what-that he found, on the table by the cot, the ring old Borja had given him just before he died. Still on its chain, a dull, broken thing, the ring was untarnished, gold, with a small red oval. Inside the oval was an emblem of a bird. What kind, he couldn’t tell. He tested it on his fingers; to his surprise, it fit.

He left the chain.

What he was feeling as he did these things was limitless and encompassing. It made him dizzy. It made him want to scream, but even in that desire, to know that the scream would do him no good. It had a name, and he knew what it was, but that knowledge, too, didn’t help. Nothing would. Nothing would change what already had been done. He’d been swallowed and was lost in it, completely lost.

He left the hut.

. . .

His armor, leather, the most expensive he and Bedelia had been able to afford, had been sitting outside for so long, on a line stretched from hut to tree, that somewhere among the days it had lost the sharp scent of sweat it had accrued. Damon plucked his cuisse, the thigh pads, from the line and laced them tightly against his legs. The jerkin he pulled stiffly over his head. He remembered its weight, but hadn’t worn it in so long that the weight seemed heavy. A sword he didn’t have. He remembered what had happened to his last; he still remembered the shock of it in his arm. His other sword, the short sword, he had left in Bedelia’s home.