Page 89 of Moon Chosen

“Do not fear. The Reaper has sent me a vision to show how the People may regain Her pleasure. Your Champion has already begun to obey Her commands. He has purged the Temple of the infestation known as the Watchers.” Dove pointed below at the flaming pyre. “The old women and their filth are being purified by fire. The God is pleased by this, but the next steps must come from Her People.”

“Tell us what we must do! Tell us how we regain the God’s pleasure!” the People cried with one voice.

“Behold your Champion! He knows the God’s will,” Dove said, gesturing to him with a graceful flourish of her smooth, white arm.

Dead Eye leaped onto the lip of the balcony beside her.

“Hear the will of the God!” he shouted. “She commands Her People no longer eat of the beasts they find in the City. She commands Her People no longer eat of the flesh of the Others. She commands Her People live a purer life.”

“How? Where do we find food? Where do we find sacrifice? How do we hope to renew our skins?”

The voices of the People verged on hysteria. Dead Eye waited patiently for them to still. When they were finally silent, all with upturned, listening faces, he spoke.

“Know that the Reaper has spoken to me though Her Oracle, Dove. I asked the God how to lead Her People to find strength again, and She has answered! Our God tells us it is our right to have more because for so long we have had so little.” He pointed toward the distant hills filled with the deep, verdant green of the thriving pine forest that protected the Others. “Why are they better than us?” Dead Eye paused to let the excited whisperings beneath him grow, and then his voice silenced their murmurings. “They are not better unless they can hold what they have! The Reaper reminds Her People through their Champion that might is right, and compassion is best found on the triple points of a three-edged sword.” His wide gesture took in the distant city in the trees. “In the land of the Others the People will find new life!”

Into shocked silence the old man’s voice was a rusty blade. “Leave our City? The City of the God? Perhaps that is your way, but it is not the way of the Reaper’s People!”

Dead Eye found the speaker easily. It was, of course, Turtle Man. He had stepped forward from the clustering group of People and was glaring up. Dead Eye thought of rebutting his archaic statement with fact—the same facts he and Dove had discovered between them—but no. The People were used to the reality of death and sacrifice. With no further hesitation, Dead Eye grasped the trident spear used to burn the God’s mark into the flesh of younglings, and flung it down, skewering Turtle Man in the middle of his chest.

The old man collapsed like his bones had gone to mush, stumbling and falling onto the pyre so that his body fed the flames into a roaring frenzy.

The People remained very quiet, their eyes all upturned toward Dead Eye and Dove.

“You killed him?” Dove whispered.

“I did.”

Dove lifted her arms again. “Thus our Champion culls dissension from the People.”

As if speaking on cue, Dead Eye added, “Who wishes to move into a new future? A future a strong, mighty People deserve?”

With no hesitation a young Harvester known as Iron Fist stepped forward. “I wish that!”

There was only a small pause, and then another and another of the People moved forward to join Iron Fist, each shouting their affirmations. Dead Eye saw that far from all of the People stepped forward—that many of them faded back into the shadows and rubble of the City.So be it. They are dead to me. Soon I will send them to be with their dead God.But for now it was enough to focus on the People who waited below.

“Come to me!” Dead Eye shouted joyfully. “All Harvesters and Hunters join me on the God’s balcony.”

As if finishing his thought, Dove added, “And women of the People, join me in the Chamber that is no longer the Watchers’, but now belongs to the People!”

As the People entered the Temple, Dead Eye lifted Dove from the balcony ledge and kissed her fiercely.

“It is all coming to pass, my Champion,” she murmured against his chest. “The women and I will feed you and your Hunters and Harvesters.”

“And I will explain the new will of the God to them.”

“Yes, my Champion. Yes!” She kissed him again, only moving reluctantly from his arms when the footsteps of the People sounded outside the Chamber. “Welcome them,” Dove said, smiling up at Dead Eye as if he truly was her God. “This night marks the beginning of your new life.”

“Ournew life.” He corrected her, gently stroking her smooth cheek and kissing her soft lips once more before he strode to the entrance of the Chamber to greet his People.

26

“Nik, I’m telling you—there are no new tracks. No new signs. Nothing,” Davis said. “I’m sorry, man. I know you have to leave with the foraging team tomorrow, and I wanted to send you off with some good news, but there’s nothing here that even hints at your pup or a girl. We just keep finding sign of those big, crazy Scratcher males and the destruction they’re leaving behind them. No women’s tracks. No canine tracks.”

“Cuz, I know you don’t want to hear this. Hell, I don’t want to say it. But I think we’ve run into a dead end,” O’Bryan said. “And it’s not that Davis and I don’t believe you. We know you saw that mutated Scratcher girl somehow start a fire. We know that the pup is alive—or at least he was a couple of weeks ago. The three of us found his tracks. But they led to nothing. Went nowhere. I know it’s still early today, but I think—well, I think it might be time to call it quits.”

Nik thought he’d be ready to hear that Davis and O’Bryan wanted to quit searching for the pup and the girl, but the reality of it hit him hard—right in the gut. He swallowed past the knot of frustration that had threatened to choke him for the past two weeks, and with a supreme effort kept his voice calm. He pulled out the skin of fresh water he’d filled at the last stream they’d crossed and tossed it to O’Bryan, then nodded for him to share it with Davis. Taking collard rolls filled with nut paste, rice, and vegetables from his pack he passed them to the two men, giving Davis extra for the hardworking, always hungry Cameron, he motioned for them to join him on a fallen log.

“I hear you. I hear both of you. Do we all agree that something strange has happened with the Scratcher males?”