Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
I smell something foul and stop.
The scent of corporeal rot is in the air.
My first thought is to race back to the village, but fates, what if it’s Elly. What if that horrible husband of hers has just dumped her out here?
As I track the horrible stench, leaves and branches hinder me like hands trying to hold me back, and as I fight through, veering farther and farther off track, my mind spins—
“Oh … fates,” I whisper.
The dead cow is on its back, the poor animal’s heart-shaped hooves lax on the ends of its splayed, spindly legs. The belly is torn open in a ragged maw, the innards cast aside as if whatever had taken it down had been choosy in what it had eaten. I stumble back, and cover my mouth and nose so I don’t throw up. The remains have been here awhile, given the laziness of the flies, which have already gotten their fill, and the day’s warmth has rekindled the stench.
Looking into its milky, blank stare, I see nothing, I feel nothing. Then again, its death was at least a week ago.
I lift my eyes, all the while knowing exactly what I’ll see—
The setting sun is directly in a line with the remains.
To the west. The final compass point.
A pleading sound escapes my lips and I stumble back until I slam into a trunk. “Fates … we are doomed.”
Everything inside me screams that I’ve got to return to the village, and tell the others—and I know they’ll believe me because the carcass is here. The remains speak for themselves.
But then I think of Mare. I need those special leaves to help her stay alive, especially now that she’s claimed me the way a mother does.
Even though the gathering could cost me my life out here with what ate that cow.
I’ll just be quick about it.
Tripping and falling and flailing, I beat back branches and search the ground as daylight continues to drain at an alarming rate, that evil star growing ever more prominent as if it’s coming after me. My collecting pouch slaps against my hip, and my cloak snags on brambles and branches, my hood tugging back until it almost falls free of my head.
Alsaag is a shy plant that hides under the plate-sized leaves of the forest undergrowth, and I know I’ve got to slow down or I’ll miss its eerie glow. Yet as my blood rushes in fear, I go still faster and farther, faster and farther—
Abruptly, I realize I’ve gone very deep into the woods.
I stop and look around. So many shadows, closing in on me, stalking me, just as it was the night before as I ran down the village lane.
Maybe I’ve missed the plant’s telltale luminescence, but if I double back and find nothing, it will be too late to venture this far out again. I keep going, trying to scan the underbrush, while all my eyes really do is seek demons. I picture them as twice the size of a full-grown man, with the teeth of a predator, the claws of a grylon, and the—
Something tickles my nose and I brush my face under the hood. When it happens again, I notice there’s something in the air. Black wisps are swirling around like snowflakes, and there’s a buildup on the branches, on the dark leaves, on my sleeves. Before I can wonder too much about it, I catch the first glow.
Finally.
There’s a patch of alsaag throwing gentle shadows under some broad-leafed wallsa. Scrambling over, I throw myself down, and pinch the heart-shaped blooms from their nests of foliage. The stench of a dead body blooms in the cooling air and takes me back to the cow, not that I need the reminder. How something that can so powerfully sustain life smells like a corpse left in the heat has always struck me as one of nature’s worst jokes, and I choke back nausea.
More is growing nearby, but my harvesting is slowed by the many times I look over my shoulder and bat at the tufts that are falling from the sky even though there are no clouds above—and this is no snow that I’ve ever seen.
I move farther into the brush, and the sense that time is running out trembles my hands. Images of Mare struggling to sit up spur me on, and I’m even more determined than ever to keep her alive—
Abruptly, the rushing sound in my ears tells me I have gone way too far.
It’s as though there’s a river near me, except I know there’s no water here. I’m also aware of what the subtle roar truly is.
Later, I will wonder why I went forward, but one thing is true.
My whole life changes as I break out of the forest and step into the pale, loose sand that’s encroaching on the trunks and killing the root systems of the arboreal perimeter. Standing among the skeletal cangjas and tallsi trees, I crane my neck and look up, up … up.