Page 44 of Challenged

The new female is given a bowl of broth, which she eats quickly, as though her stomach hungers nineteen seasons’ worth. Grace talks to her, keeping up a constant stream ofreassuring conversation. If the new female responds, it is with single words, not full answers or questions.

“She is as skittish as an arrika,” Paskar says, studying her. There is no wonder in his expression, no joy lighting up his eyes. This female does not make his heartspace sing.

“You would be far worse if you woke up on another world,” I say.

Paskar grunts. “True enough. Though I do not think sitting hunched in like that would be my response. I think I would behave as a merka beast cornered.”

He touches his fingers to his belly, wincing as he probes at the edges of his cuts.

“Stop poking them,” I say. “You are already relieved of your mapping duties tomorrow. You do not need to make your injuries worse to escape them.”

Paskar laughs, but then shudders. “I would take mapping duties over this. The warmth of the fire does not fully chase out the chill the Mercenia hut puts in the spirit, does it?”

A short while later, another new female emerges - this one pale and staring blankly, as if she looks but sees nothing. Rachel’s expression is full of concern as she guides her to sit down, trying in vain to coax any sort of response out of her. Molly tries to hand her a bowl of broth, but she does not take it. Does not even give any indication she is aware it has been offered.

“They are both confused and frightened,” Rachel says when I ask after them. “Neither was aware they had been frozen, never mind brought to Lina’s forest. It is much for them to process and they are not taking it so well as your Angie. Be grateful for her anger. At least her spirit is not…” She thinks for a long moment, searching for an appropriate word. “Squashed.”

“I think my Angie has had much practise at resisting being squashed,” I say, thinking again of the cruel things other malessaid to her. Things she repeated back to me, expecting my thoughts to take the same shape.

Rachel smiles at me, though there is a sadness to the expression. “Then I am glad she has you to guard her spirit from now on.”

The afternoon fades into evening, and still Jaskry does not return. I catch Anghar watching the tree line, concern weighing down his brows.

“I am thinking we should look for him,” he says to me. “I trust that Jaskry can handle himself should he run into trouble, but it would help Sally’s nerves, I think, to know that we are out there, trying to find him.”

I nod in agreement. “I can be ready to leave in a moment.”

I am taking everything I do not need out of my pack, so that I might travel light and quick, when Jaskry saves us the trouble, bursting through the trees and staggering to a seat by the fire, collapsing into it. I dash to his side, passing him a waterskin. It is a long moment before he has breath enough to drink.

“You have run very hard,” I say. “What trouble did you encounter to delay you so?”

My headspace is whirring with thoughts of other raskarrans - the remains of Basran’s tribe lurking in the trees, or perhaps some other threat we were not previously aware of. But before my thoughts can gain too much momentum, Jaskry waves a hand.

“I’ve encountered no trouble,” he says, then pauses again until his breaths are almost even. “The forest in that direction is as silent and empty as it is in every other. But the blight - it stretches much further. Further than I could run in one day and make it back to the fire. I’ve pushed hard to get back at this time and I didn’t see the end of it.”

“You did not see the end of it?” Paskar leans forward in his seat, clutching at his wounded stomach. His expression reflects my own confusion.

“Did you track round at all? See how far the rot spread?” Anghar asks, appearing next to us.

It cannot spread so far, or Paskar would have stumbled into the area Jaskry was mapping.

“It’s strange,” Jaskry said. “But it spreads in a narrow band, almost even. When it became clear that I would not find the end of it, I mapped out the edges.”

He leans over, scraping clear a patch of ground before him with his foot. Then, with a finger, he traces first a circle, a line extending out of it.

“If this is the edges of our hunting territory, how much further did you find the blight extends? You have been back from your mapping for some time, so it cannot be so far.”

I drop down to draw a second circle. “Our hunting territory extends about as far as to the horkat caves from the village,” I say for Anghar’s benefit. “It is about the distance from the village to the second outpost beyond that. A half day’s steady running.”

Jaskry nods, drawing a line on either side of his original one. “Then this is the distance from the village to the hunters’ hut, perhaps twice over. Not far at all. And there is no fading out of the blight as we have seen around the Mercenia hut. It’s worst closest to the hut, and improves the further out we go, yes? You’ve found the same in each direction?”

Anghar nods. “As if the Mercenia hut is the source of it, and the further away from it we get, the less the trees are afflicted.”

“Here, it’s more abrupt. There is blight, and then there is not. The fade happens over a much shorter distance.”

I squint at the map, trying to make this new information make any kind of sense in my headspace.

“And you checked in both directions?” I say, certain he has, but needing to hear it said.

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