Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
All thoughts of forgiveness and understanding disappear when she pauses in the snow again and draws her bow, and I hear a metlak’s warning cry, followed by the snow-cat’s howl. Worry thuds in my chest. How can one small human find so much trouble so quickly? I speed up, drawing my knives.
Mah-dee is brave. She swings her bow toward the metlak’s call, not backing away. Her form tenses, and in the distance, I see a metlak’s dirty, yellow fur against the snow. It crouches low, then calls again.
Mah-dee fires at it, but her arrow flops to the ground close to her feet. She mutters something in human again.
The metlak charges.
I bellow a response, leaping forward. I cross the short distance between myself and Mah-dee in a matter of moments. As a hunter, my duty is to protect, and I surge in front of Mah-dee even as she fumbles for another arrow. Blades drawn, I snarl at the metlak, daring it to approach.
Its snarl turns into a screech of fear. It turns and scrambles away, as I suspected it would. They are cowardly but vicious, and tend to run if confronted or cornered. It did not run from Mah-dee, and I shudder to think what it would have done to her if she had stayed in place and continued to try to fire arrows. The thought makes my stomach clench, and anger bursts through my mind.
Stupid human.
I chase the metlak a bit longer, taking out my rage on it. The creature continues to hoot and screech its fear, and I do not stop until I am certain it will not circle back to Mah-dee. I slow my steps and then turn back, scanning for the snow-cat or other dangers that Mah-dee might have stumbled into. I sense nothing, however, and relax enough to sheathe my blades.
Mah-dee is still standing where I left her, mouth open. The bow is in her hands, half-raised, an arrow resting. “What was all that?” she asks me. “And where’d you come from?”
“Did you not see my tracks?” I snarl at her. “Did you not see the tracks of the metlak before you charged into this valley?”
She blinks at me. “Tracks? I…oh. I didn’t think about that.” She looks back behind her, at the churned-up snow left from her snowshoes. “I guess that should have been obvious.”
My irritation swells even greater. Even the youngest of kits is taught to look closely at churned snow. “Who is with you?” I will knock that hunter on the head for being such a fool as to let Mah-dee run off by herself.
“No one is with me.” She lifts her chin defiantly. “I’m alone.”
“What? How?” There is no one protecting her?
Her brows go down and she gives me an incredulous look. “I put one foot in front of the other and walked out?”
“And no one was there to stop you?”
“Last I checked, it was a tribe, not a prison. And I don’t know if you noticed, but people are a little busy lately. No one’s got time to hang out with a bored human.” She says it in a casual voice, but there is a tension on her round, funny-looking human face.
An arrow slides out of the quiver she has on her shoulder—her shoulder, of all places—and I absently pick it up. “Why is everyone so busy?”
“There was a party the other day, which I know you know about, because I saw you there.” Her cheeks flush pink. “And then Maylak had her baby, so a bunch of people set off to hunt one of those really enormous creatures—”
“Sa-kohtsk,” I say absently, moving forward and untying the quiver from her shoulder. “This goes at your hip, not over your arm.”
“Oh. A sa-kohtsk, right. Anyhow, they need cooties for the baby. They gotta parasite him up. You know how it goes.”
I do not understand payr-uh-site but I do know how a sa-kohtsk hunt works. The delicate khui are removed from the creature’s heart and given to the newborn kit so he may live. Sa-khui children are born without a khui – they are native to this world and we are not. The khui burrows into the chest and wraps around the heart, lighting the eyes of the host. It keeps us strong and healthy…and gives us resonance. The humans are still not comfortable with the idea of such a thing living inside them, but those without a khui perish in a handful of days. “A khui is a good thing.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.” She shrugs. “And my sister and a few people are also going out to the fruit cave to go harvest and scope the area out. Cave’s gonna be pretty empty for the next while.”
“I see.” I tie the quiver at her waist and then adjust where it hangs. Mah-dee stands there like a kit, oblivious to how close I am. My head is full of warring thoughts. I am angry that the tribe has gone on not one but two hunts and I was not included. Of course I was not. I am exiled. I am not welcome until I have been punished enough that Vektal is happy. The thought burns in my gut.