Page 70 of Challenged

I use my pack to prop the now broken door open and let in the forest air. Maldek walks through the first room to a door at the back.

“Beds,” he says after pushing it open. “They smell almost as vile as the ones Basran’s tribe were using.”

“I can tolerate dust and disuse better than another male’s dirty stink.”

There are two of themachinesmy Angie likes to use in the main room. I do not touch them, concerned I might trigger something to happen. Stacked against one of the other walls are some boxes. I lift down the top one and open it, finding a strange collection of things inside it.

“Looks like tools,” Maldek says, peering over my shoulder.

I take a good look at all of it, and everything else inside the hut, in case my Angie wishes to see it, then head back outside to light a fire.

We have climbed above most of the trees here, but there are a few hardy bushes around. I pull a couple up and squash them down with my feet, using my flints to set a spark amongst their tangled branches. They will not burn for long, their branches too thin to smoulder for any length of time. Fortunately, we are both tired and eager for sleep, and so will not be lingering at the fireside. I intend to be to my dusty, stinky bed as soon as I have finished my evening meal.

“We should probably scout around a little on our way back,” Maldek says. “Ensure that the rot does not spread out in any other direction.”

“If we each take an edge of the path, run back along it, we will see if there are any other paths branching off from it.”

“Tired of my company already?” Maldek grins.

“Never,” I say. “But it is not like we will have the breath to speak to one another.”

We boil up some djenti berries into paste and massage it into the soles of our feet and our aching calves. A waterskin full of djenti berry tonic each finishes the treatment, and should see us well enough to run all the way home tomorrow.

Home. It is strange to think of the Mercenia hut in this way. But it is where my Angie is, it is where Maldek’s Brooks is. And so, for now, it is home.

“This is the first time we have spent time together properly since before you left for Walset’s village,” I say.

“We spent the entire rains together.” But though Maldek arches a brow like he thinks I am a fool for having forgotten, his expression shifts immediately to regret. “I am sorry that I was not right in my headspace all that time.”

“It is not something you need to apologise for, brother. Continuing to carry your guilt after Sam was returned to us safe and happier than ever - that was the foolish thing. But I do not blame you for that, either. Headspaces are difficult things to control at times.”

I think of my Angie, desperate to return to a life where she was ill treated and would never be happy. Because it was familiar, all she had ever known. At least the shape of her thoughts changed faster than Maldek’s did.

“There will be few long evenings, just us two, now,” Maldek says.

I know why the elders put Maldek as a warrior, and me as a hunter when it came time for us to train in our skills. Maldek could have been a hunter - his build was always caught somewhere between the ideal for the two paths. Warrior’straining made him stronger, bigger. If he had trained in stealth and stillness, he would have become leaner. But we were trouble when we were together back then. The elders did not wish to have the constant battle to keep us from distraction, and so they separated us.

Understanding a thing is not the same as appreciating it, though. Sometimes, I wish we had both been trained in hunting ways. Long days, just the two of us, looking for a horkat or an ensouka to feed the tribe. We could have still had that, even with linashas at home.

Of course, when we did our training, no one thought there would be linashas again. I never assumed I would do anything but go back each night to the hut I shared with my brother. Being separated in our work mattered little.

“I will have to move out,” I say. “You will not want me and my Angie intruding on the space you share with your Brooks.”

Maldek grimaces. “It is not just my space.”

“It is your hut. Gifted to you by the elders, not to us. I was just the fool who did not wish for a hut of his own when he came of age. Never thought I would need one.”

“I never thought of it as mine.”

“I know.” I grin at him. “I should think my Angie would like the luxury of a brand new hut that she can choose for herself. Choice is important to her.”

“I do not think choice is a thing any of the females are overly familiar with.”

“When you have less of a thing, it grows in importance to you.”

Silence falls between us for a long, peaceful, but melancholy moment.

“All this change is good for the tribe, and for us both individually,” I say. “But I will miss this. The quiet. The two of us. We should make a promise to each other now that, whateverhappens in the next few seasons, we will find a way to make time for this.”

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