Page 20 of Warrior of the Wild
“No. It’s much more useful than dung. I’ve been experimenting.”
“With dung?”
“No! With ziken blood.”
Now she has my attention. “You didn’t!”
Her tears disappear. The healer in her comes forth. “I did. If you’re injured out in the wild, smear this cream on the wound. It will heal most cuts and scrapes instantly. It won’t mend broken bones, and it won’t re-form lost limbs. I can’t figure out how they manage to grow those back. I’m still working on it, and I have much to figure out, but—”
I embrace her before she can finish. “It’s wonderful. I’m sure it will help.”
Maybe I’ll last two days out on my own instead of one now.
Hurt spreads through my heart as I hold my sister. My hours with her are numbered, and I don’t know how I’ll possibly let her go.
UNSURPRISINGLY, ICAN’T SLEEP.I’m half-tempted to leave while everyone dreams; that way I don’t have to face them all in the morning. But if I don’t stick around to hear what my quest is to be, I’ll have no hope of returning home, no chance of redeeming myself so I can enter the goddess’s Paradise.
There’s also no chance I could leave without waking Irrenia, who refused to sleep in her own bed despite my protests. She said she was going to stay by my side for as long as she could.
Bugs chirp loudly outside my window, counting down the seconds until I have to leave the safety of the village.
I try to close my eyes, but when I do, I see my father’s face. That look of disappointment. Of embarrassment. Of anger. All of it for me.
Could I have misread his face? Surely he was only surprised? My father couldn’t have really turned against me so quickly, could he? Not after all the years of training. We’ve grown so close in all that time.
I remember the day when things finally changed between Father and me. It was ten years ago, and it was the same day I realized my mother would never love me again.
My whole life I’d been mocked for my bulkier form. Evenwhen I was so young, I knew I was different with my short torso, wide shoulders, muscled figure. I knew that I didn’t look like my sisters, and all the village kids my age would tease me for it. My father barely looked at me back then. I was daughter number six. His sixth disappointment. He never had time for me.
I was sick of it. Sick of being told I wasn’t pretty like my sisters, sick of being told I took more after my father, sick of my father not paying attention to me.
At the end of the year, all the eight-year-olds were lined up and told to declare their professions. Father had every child come up to the village square one at a time and state what they would do for the rest of their lives. Then they went to stand with the masters of that trade.
When it was my turn, when my father finally looked at me for the briefest moment and then looked heavenward, as though he were embarrassed to even acknowledge my existence, I said, “I will join the warriors.”
I remember being surprised by the words. I’d thought for sure I would join the jewelers like my four eldest sisters and mother. It’s what I’d been planning.
But then my father looked at me. Really looked at me.
“Rasmira, don’t waste our time. What is your real choice?”
I stared him down, held myself as high as I could. “Give me your ax.”
While much scoffing and laughing came from the villagers, my father listened. He took that ax from off his back, an ax that Irrenia and Ashari couldn’t hope to heft an inch off the ground, and handed it to me.
I took it. I lifted it high. And then I threw it. The ax embedded firmly into the nearest tree with a satisfyingtwang.
I couldn’t remember anything feeling so right. While I enjoyed jeweling immensely, I realized that I wanted this more. Especially with the way my father was now looking at me.
I said it again. “I will join the warriors.”
Father escorted me himself over to Master Burkin. As we walked, he said, “You’re to listen to Master Burkin in all things. If you can prove yourself, if you become the best, I will make you the next ruler of this village.”
All my father’s attention suddenly became mine. He watched over me, trained me, talked with me, loved me in his own way. Mother lost her husband to me. Because I was like him, he loved me more. And once she realized things would never be the same for her, she began to treat me the way Father did her.
I was ignored, ridiculed, held to different standards. I was always a disappointment to her.
I took comfort in my prowess with the ax, but that only drove me further and further away from her.
