Siena (Forestfolk, Book 1)

Chapter 2

Although I had my own hut, I could never really call it my own.

A screech outside startled me from my nap. “I don’t want to go in there! She’s an Aberration!” A child’s voice.

“Then remember that the next time you decide to split your head on a rock,” scolded his mother. “Who said it was a good idea to jump from that tree?”

I couldn’t hear what he grumbled next, but she soon dragged him through the doorway, stopping just inside.

I smoothed my dress—I’m pretty sure my hair was hopeless—and stepped forward. “How can I help you?”

The boy, whom I recognized as a member of Pimo’s poop-singing chorus, hid behind her skirt. She dragged him out, his planted feet sliding across the ground, and then I saw why they were here. Blood streamed from the cuts all over one side of his head, matting his dark hair and staining his bare shoulder.

I stepped toward him, and he shuffled behind his mother again. With a small sigh, I sat in the chair to make myself less “hostile” to this boy. She pushed him toward me, close enough for me to reach him, and I extended my hands.

“Ow!” he said before I even made contact.

I jerked my hands away, casting a nervous glance at his mother.

She frowned at me.

“The sooner you let me heal you,” I whispered, “the sooner you can leave.”

With an impatient huff, he remained still, and I laid my hands on his head. When I finished, he scampered away, tugging his mother toward the entrance. The woman tossed me a curt “thank you” before exiting.

“How come she gets a whole hut to herself, and we have to share?” the boy whined once they were outside.

“Hush,” she said. “What she can do is unnatural. You can’t trust someone like that. Who knows what else she can do?”

My cheeks flushed with shame, and I was glad no one was around to see it.

I stared at my hands. Hands that helped people and made them distrust me at the same time. It wasn’t my fault that I had these aberrant abilities, but according to them, I was born a bad person. Unworthy.

Stop.

A few years after my mother died, I told myself I would not indulge in self-pity. My mother wanted me to stay strong, and so I would.

I dropped my hands to my sides and stood, lifting my chin. A weaving project would give me something else to think about. Yes, perhaps a new grass mat.

I headed to the firewood tent, where the tribe also kept reeds and other plant material for weaving and similar projects. If it weren’t for crafting, I might go insane here.

As I walked back to my hut with an armload of tall grasses, Meresh bounded up to me. “Hello, Siena.”

“Hello, Meresh.”

“What will you be making today? Maybe something for me?” A dimple appeared on his tanned face as he grinned, brown hair lightly brushing his shoulders.

I smiled despite myself. “What would you like?”

“What do you think would befit the chieftain’s son?” he asked with a wink.

“Perhaps a larger headband for your ever-increasing head size?”

Meresh laughed. “As long as it’s made with love.”

Satisfied that I would be thinking about him in my hut, he winked again and took off.

A small cluster of women preparing meat didn’t bothering hiding their stares.

“That boy is too handsome to be consorting with the likes of her,” one of them said.

“It’s scandalous,” the other replied. “All that yellow hair. You’d think he’d at least have the sense to find someone pretty.”

“Chief Magar should say something. Does he even know?”

A pause. “If you want to tell him, be my guest. That man and his temper . . . I wouldn’t want to do that to Meresh.”

I shook my head as I walked out of earshot. Meresh was well-liked, and not brutal like his father. The chieftain was an imposing figure who took what he wanted, when he wanted. His eyes burned with hatred for Aberrations, but he didn’t let it blind him to our uses. He tolerated the useful ones, like me. I once heard someone whisper that Magar’s own father had been killed by an immortal fire-breathing Aberration during a raid from another tribe. It sounded like an exaggeration to me, but when a chieftain died, it was a big deal.

Magar became elevated to chief at eighteen, much younger than any other chieftain I knew of. Normally this would have been challenged by a number of others who wanted to become chieftain themselves, but when you’re a ruthless, violent, and cunning young man, you find ways to silence the opposition.

A small girl, running full speed right at me, skittered to a stop when she saw me and stared with wide-eyed terror. I opened my mouth to say hello, but she turned tail and ran, feet sliding in the dirt before gaining traction.

I sighed. It wasn’t so bad when my mother was alive. She sparked with life and reminded me every day that, even though we were outsiders to this tribe—she’d been taken from her own tribe while she was pregnant with me—it didn’t mean we couldn’t take joy in being alive. “Listen to the birds,” she’d say. “Smell the scent of the wind on the plains. Really feel what it means to be alive.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I still hung on her every word.

I shook the wistfulness from my head and reentered my hut. Thinking about her wouldn’t bring her back.

* * *

I could smell dinnertime long before it was actually ready. The aroma of roasting meat wafted about the compound soon after the hunters returned. Aberrations and those taken from other tribes were always the last in line for food, so we were lucky to get any scraps. They liked to keep us underfed so we remained weak, pliable, and grateful for what we got.

As I awaited my turn, Nily approached me. She was one of three Aberrations living with this tribe. The third was Stobon, a tribe-born marksman who began shooting bullseyes as soon he could lift a bow and arrow. Nily was his mother.

She peered at me with keen eyes as gray as her long tresses. She was brought here the same way my mother was, forcefully. She tilted her head and examined my face, flicking her eyes over my nose, my ears, my hair. Nily’s unnatural skill was reading into one’s very soul. It scared a lot of people.

She peered into my eyes. “You are not like the others.”

And sometimes she just stated the obvious.

“Your deeds will be remembered,” she continued.

Other times she made broad, cryptic statements that made people think she was crazy. I didn’t think she was crazy, but sometimes I wondered if she might occasionally be wrong. The people around here didn’t seem to remember that I helped them, too blinded by their own prejudice.

She finished by stroking my hair once and saying, “You are a fountain of good. Your footprint will be significant.”

I blinked as she wandered away, wondering at the meaning of her words. There was a rumor around the compound, as there often was, that Nily once whispered something into Chief Magar’s ear, and that when she left, his eyes were shiny with unshed tears. Magar did his best to quash this rumor, of course, but some things just can’t be killed.

I took my scraps back to my hut and found Grash there. His large, muscular body lounged lazily in the chair. One of tribe Zurbo’s finest warriors. A lot of girls swooned over him and his bushy beard, but he made my skin crawl.

He sat up straighter when I entered, and his eyes raked over my body from head to toe, lingering on my budding breasts. A tiny shard of fear pricked my stomach as my heart began hammering.

I set my food down as calmly as I could. “Are you injured, sir?”

He smiled at my dutifulness. “As a matter of fact, I am,” he said with a leer. Then he pulled out a knife, which startled me, and proceeded to carve a line high on his thigh. Blood trickled down the side of his leg as he looked at me and said, “Well? You are obligated to lay hands on me, are you not?”

My hands clenched into fists, but I avoided eye contact. “Yes, sir.”

Dread was an ugly flower blooming in my stomach as I approached Grash, who spread his legs and leaned back again. Only my fingertips touched the wound, but he grabbed my hand and yanked it closer. “Do it right, girl.”

I ignored the growing stiffness against the side of my hand and concentrated on healing the wound as quickly as possible. When I finished, I reclaimed my hands and stood up, but not before he swung an arm around my waist to pull me against him. I went rigid and looked frantically at the doorway, hoping maybe the guard would stop him, but that wasn’t likely to happen. It was more likely the guard would join Grash in assaulting me.

As the upper echelon, warriors took whatever they wanted, insulted whomever they pleased. If my mother had not been pregnant when she was taken, I might have been sired by a Plainsman.

My heart pounded now, as I began to struggle. That’s when Shandy came stumbling into the hut for the second time that day. “I think it might be my other foot this time,” he said, his speech slightly slurred. He stopped when he saw Grash, his eyes darting from me to him, and then back to my pale, frightened face. Understanding subtly registered on his drunken face, and then he said, “D’ya mind, Grash? I don’t want my toe falling off.”

Grash grudgingly let go of me and stalked out of the room, rudely bumping Shandy’s shoulder as he went. My body slumped into the chair with relief, and I turned my grateful eyes to Shandy, who still stood wavering near the doorway. He waved me out of the chair and dropped into it himself, saying nothing. After I fixed his toe, he ruffled my hair, more gently this time, and said, “You’re a good kid.” And then he left.

* * *

In the morning, I resolved to fashion myself a weapon of some kind. I wasn’t allowed weapons, of course, but I wanted to at least be able to defend myself. In all honesty, though, I was deluding myself. Even if I had a razor-sharp knife in my hands, what good would that do against seasoned warriors three times my size? Still, I wanted to have something, if only to ease my sense of helplessness.

I entered the firewood tent, collected various plant materials, and found myself a sturdy little branch about twice the thickness of an arrow. Back in my hut I scraped the bark off the sides and smoothed the grip. Then I took the sharp rock I used for cutting plants and cord and started hacking at one end, angling it so that a point began to form.

It was about mid-afternoon by the time I sat back to look over my work. It was no masterpiece, but it would pierce someone without giving me splinters. I slashed the air with my stick, liking the feel of it in my hands. It was about as long as my forearm. I felt the tip with my finger, sharpened it a little more, than slashed the air again. I would likely be put to death for stabbing anyone, but it didn’t take me long to realize that there are some things worse than death.

Just then Shandy lumbered in through the doorway. I quickly hid the stick behind my back, but it was too late. His eyes looked sharp today, free of their usual semi-stupor. He approached me, and I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, my insides quaking in fear. He would most likely report me, and then I would be punished. Maybe even executed.

“Do you have an injury, sir?” I mumbled.

“Let me see that.” His tone was even, almost soft.

I looked up at him.

He towered over me. He towered over everyone he was so big. I was frozen in place, hands clenching the stick behind my back. He held out his large hand, and I stared at it. With a large gulp and trembling hands, I slowly brought my stick around and placed it gingerly into his palm, then awaited the worst.

I braced for a strike that was sure to come.

Instead, he examined the stick with a curious “hmm.” Then he looked back at me, at my guilty face, and said, “With something like this, you need to stab, not s***h. Like this.” He demonstrated a few times, then offered it back to me.

I stared at it, then at him, wondering if this was some kind of trick.

“Go on, now you try it.”

I took the stick and stabbed the air a few times, then he grasped my hand, startling me.

“Easy now,” he said, loosening my fingers. “Ease up on your grip a little. If your knuckles are white, it’s too tight. Remember that. You should wrap the handle in some leather for a better grip.”

My mouth opened, closed, eyes narrowed at him. “Why are you doing this?”

Shandy simply said, “Everyone should know how to protect themselves.” Then he turned around to leave.

“Wait!” I called, surprising myself. “Why did you come in here if you weren’t injured?”

He shrugged and replied, “Just wanted to see how you were.”

* * *

Having wrapped the handle in a leather strip as Shandy suggested and hidden it in the hides of my bed, I went about the business of cleaning. I used handfuls of reeds to brush the cobwebs away from the thatched roof and mud walls of the hut. The woven floor mats were taken outside and shaken out. Then I headed down to the river to wash myself.

I was walking back, wringing water from my hair, when Meresh found me.

“My father has declared a raid, and that I am to fight by his side,” he announced, watching my face for a reaction.

“Oh?” I kept my face expressionless. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Excited, of course! I am a man now, and men defend their territory.”

“Raiding another tribe isn’t exactly defending,” I said, shaking my head.

“Semantics,” he said. “Aren’t you excited for me? I finally get to prove myself on the battlefield!”

I smiled cheerlessly. “I’m happy you’re excited, but I’m not excited about you being in danger.”

“So you do care!” He grinned, an almost smug expression on his face.

“Of course. You’re my only friend.”

“Maybe we can be more than friends, when I return.”

“Maybe,” I answered, unsure what to think about that. “Which tribe are you raiding?”

“The Krat. Father says it’s retribution.”

It was an excuse and we both knew it. The likely reason was they had stockpiles of something that Magar wanted. “But didn’t the Zurbo raid them first? And what was the reason then? When does it end?”

He pressed his lips together. “You don’t understand, it’s tribe honor.”

He was right. I didn’t understand. So instead I asked, “When do you go?”

“In two days.”

I nodded and we walked in silence. Then he said, “Your birthday is in two days, isn’t it?”

I nodded again, touched that he actually knew when it was.

“We’ll do something special when we get back. We can celebrate our victory and the start of your fifteenth year all at once.”

“That’ll be nice,” I replied, though a knot of worry tightened within me. Meresh was my only friend. Although it might be nice to explore my feelings for him beyond friendship, what would his tribesmen think? What would his father think? Surely he would not be allowed a relationship with me. They barely seemed to tolerate that he spoke to me on a daily basis. Meresh was charming, but how could he convince an entire tribe not to hate me? Who besides him would want to celebrate my birthday?

These questions weighed on my mind as he walked away. Questions I would never find answers to.

Because that celebration never came.