Page 137 of Moon Chosen

“Right, just like you wouldn’t kill someone’s mother? Or father? Wait, you don’t thinkScratchersare someone. You think they’re something, so killing them is fine,” Sora said.

“I don’t think you’re a thing, and I—” Nik began, but Mari cut him off.

“Nik, I’ll be back soon. We’ll both be back. But you’re going to need to drink this so that I don’t have to worry about whether you’ll be here when we do return.” As usual, Mari sounded rational and reasonable, unlike Sora, who he had silently dubbed her crazy Scratcher friend. So when she handed him a mug full of a noxious-smelling potion, he drank it in several long gulps.

“Whoops, I might have put some nightshade in that tea. Was that the wrong herb, Mari?” Sora said with mock innocence.

Nik’s stomach clenched. Nightshade wouldn’t kill him, but it would definitely make him vomit, and the wound in his back would hurt bad enough that he might wish he were dead. He stared into the mug, wondering and worrying.

“Stop it,” Mari told her crazy friend, then she turned to him. “She wouldn’t really do that, but I made the tea. There’s nothing in it that will hurt you, though you are going to sleep. You know we’re Healers. We have to check on our other patients. We won’t be gone long.” She bent and hugged Rigel. “Stay here with Nik. Don’t let him leave.”

The young Shepherd licked her face and thumped his tail. She kissed his muzzle and then she and Sora, carrying packs filled with herbs and poultices, left the burrow.

Rigel went to the closed door and sat, whining fretfully.

“Yeah, I know how you feel, boy. But at least you know where we are.” Rigel looked over his shoulder at Nik, and then turned back to the door, whining again. The tea was going to kick his ass soon, but at that moment he felt completely invigorated.Mari had healed the blight! He wasn’t going to die! No one in the Tribe would ever have to die again—all he had to do was to talk Mari into sharing her poultice secret with him.

“And that’s something I’ll talk to Mari about when her crazy friend is out of hearing range. That woman is a thorn in my side,” Nik grumbled. But not even the Scratcher could dampen his mood today.He wasn’t going to die of the blight!“Hey, Rigel, how about we explore a little. And I do mean a little. I definitely have enough energy to hobble to that desk. Sitting at a chair, even for a few minutes before Mari’s awful tea knocks me out, will seem like a great adventure.”

He could feel Rigel’s eyes on him as he used the edge of the sleeping pallet to steady himself. Nik managed to shuffle the few feet to the desk, and then sat heavily with a groan. His wounds felt better, but the movement had caused stabbing pain to return to his back and a dull throbbing in his leg that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He sat very still, trying to slow his breathing and fight the dizziness that was already tugging at him.

The pup’s muzzle was wet and cool, and wonderfully familiar when it poked him. Nik smiled and opened his eyes.

Rigel was, indeed, a handsome boy. Nik caressed his sable-colored head and smiled into his intelligent eyes.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to thank you for saving my life. I don’t know how you got your Mari to come to me, let alone to bring me to her home and heal me, but I thank you. My father, Sol, would thank you, too. You remember Sol? The Sun Priest?” Rigel wagged his tail and smiled the panting, tongue-lolling version of a Shepherd smile, which had Nik grinning in response. “I’ll bet you do remember. I’ll bet you remember everything, and still you choose to be here—to stay with her.” Nik’s grin turned bittersweet. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of you. Your Companion is a lucky woman.” Rigel licked Nik’s hand before padding back to the door, yawning, and lying down in front of it at his normal, watching position.

“Well, I guess I’ve had enough adventure. Time to make my way back to my pallet.” Nik put a hand on the desk to help himself up, accidentally scattering the papers on which he’d seen Mari writing notations. Nik sat back down, meaning to straighten the pile and leave it as it was. He glanced at the neat writing. It was a journal entry about his wounds and what Mari had packed them with, how often she’d changed his dressings, as well as comments about the extraction of the spearhead and the potions she had been brewing to help him sleep and, he noted with surprise, help him heal.

Feeling a prickle of excitement, he quickly read through the annotations, looking for any mention of the ingredients to the poultice she’d used to cure the blight. Nik sighed in frustration. “She hasn’t written that part yet,” he mumbled to himself. “But she will, and all I need to do is to read and remember what she writes.”

Steal it—all I need to do is to steal it and get back to the Tribe with the recipe.

Nik felt a hot flush of guilt. No, he wouldn’t do something so dishonorable. He wouldaskMari to share the poultice with him and his people. It was only if she said no that he would consider a less trustworthy alternative.

He had to have that poultice recipe. For the Tribe. He had to have it.

Nik’s attention went back to the stack of notes. He read through them again, making sure he hadn’t missed anything, and from beneath the blank pages waiting to be filled with Mari’s neat handwriting, he saw the corner of something that didn’t look the same as the others. He pulled the thick sheet of paper free and sucked in a quick breath of surprise.

It was a sketch of Rigel, and it was exquisitely drawn with such talent that it could have been created by one of the Tribe’s Master Artists. Trying to fight off the dizziness that Mari’s tea was causing, Nik quickly paged through the rest of the papers, hardly believing the beauty they held. He looked up at the paintings that decorated the hearth’s mantel, and the few others that were scattered between sections of glowmoss and glowshrooms.

“Those are good, but not as good as these.” His gaze went back to the sketches. There was a small, almost unnoticeable signature at the bottom of each sketch. Nik squinted and made out the name,Mari.He kept looking through the pile, eventually coming to the last sketch—the one that had him holding his breath. It was of a Scratcher woman clutching an infant swaddled in the fronds of a Mother Plant. She was smiling up at a tall, handsome Companion and his Shepherd, who gazed at her with an expression that was filled with love.

“That’s Galen. It has to be. And that’s Mari’s mother, with Mari as an infant.” Nik shook his head. “I see this—and I see the grown-up Mari—and I know the truth, but it is hard to believe. All of this is just so hard to believe.” Slowly, Nik reorganized the papers, stacking them as neatly as they had been. Then he hobbled carefully to the pallet and collapsed there, breathing heavily and feeling ridiculously weak.

As his eyes closed he was thinking of Mari and wondering what his father would say when he told him all that he’d learned about her, and about the Earth Walkers.

Nik knew what his father would say. He could almost hear his voice there in the burrow as he fell into a drugged, painless sleep.Bring her home to the Tribe, son. Bring her home to the Tribe.

***

“It’s really hot today.” Mari paused, wiping the sweat from her face and taking a drink of water from the skin they’d brought with them. “And summer isn’t even here.”

“It hasn’t rained for days. It’s nice not to have to trudge through mud, but this heat is terrible,” Sora said.

“Well, the birthing burrow is always comfortable and cool, and there’s that nice little stream that runs down beside it. I can’t wait to dangle my hot feet in it.”

“Sounds wonderful. The women in the burrow always have the best food, too. Have you noticed that?” Sora said.