Ride the Moon: An Anthology (14 page)

She could just see him in the darkness far ahead, winding his way past trees as silently as a shadow. All around, hazy white glows flowed behind curtains of vines and brush, mates doubtlessly close behind.

Then Ketern vanished.

She pulled up in surprise then hurried into the grove. Orba watched from above, her light encircling the marriage stone. Shara checked it, looking every which way—except above.

“We were married four weeks ago, my dear,” he whispered, soft as a breeze. “Only newlyweds may share this grove, as its name conveys.”

Shara spun and gave him a cross look to mask how startled she felt. “I know what it's called.”

“Then why...?” His eyes widened. “Unless you wanted to...?”

She shook her head hastily, willing herself to dim her faint glow. “No. Not yet.”

He nodded, giving her a teasing smile, yet she could see its falseness. “Interrupting me again, I see,” he said smoothly.

“And what were you going to say?” she asked, injecting playfulness into her tone.

“Unless you wanted to devour me with your eyes. Again.”

She laughed, then her face grew serious. “I have enjoyed these past weeks, Ketern. I hope you are not growing too impatient with me. I just want to know you more.”

“I understand and agree. I didn't mean to pressure you. It's been good to have a friend.” His face grew troubled. She knew him well enough to know why.

“How goes your training?” she asked, knowing the answer. Each night he returned to their bungalow covered in abrasions that had no time to heal before he returned to the field the next morning.

“As well as you think,” he said, walking over to the stone and sitting beside it. Shara crossed her legs and lowered herself before him. He was quite handsome, she thought, not for the first time. Most Orbian females swooned over the Tolbas-sized warriors in the Tribe, but Ketern seemed molded to suit Shara's ideal form: not too imposing, yet certainly strong enough to scoop her up. Her body blushed. She pushed away the thoughts quickly, hoping he would not draw attention to her outburst, when he spoke.

“I am not strong enough to fight in the Tribe.” He didn't look at her.

“Why should you have to fight? Did you talk to your father?”

He snorted. “The general would not tolerate his firstborn enlisting as an observer. House Wollen carries the blood of warriors,” he boomed, voice carrying across the grove, “not little sneaks who creep through trees.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

He didn't answer right away. “No.”

“Why not?”

“He'd never—”

“Your brother is more suited for fighting than you.” He looked wounded, so she leaned forward. “Ketern, I am the quietest Orbian I know—”

“Except when you attempt cooking. The words that come out of your mouth...”

“—and yet I could never sneak the way you did a few minutes ago,” she said, raising her voice and giving him a warning look.

He winked, then looked down. “My brother meets my father's expectations.”

Gathering her courage, she reached forward and took his hand. “But not mine.” A soft glow suffused her. She let it.

Ketern's grin almost split his face. They talked for a time, Orba's gaze growing fainter and fainter around them. Eventually Ketern yawned and pulled his hand from hers to stretch. “I should sleep. Training continues tomorrow, and I need rest if I am to top today's spectacular failure.”

Shara nodded, smoothing her features to hide her disappointment. Her hand felt so cold and empty without his. “You will talk to your father, then?” she asked casually.

He grimaced, then shot to his feet as the trees across the grove rustled. “We need to leave.”

She started to rise, then paused. “No.”

“No?”

“Not until you agree to talk to your father.”

“Shara,” he said, then glanced back as the sounds grew louder.

She took his hand again. “Please. For me .”

He studied her, then squeezed. “All right.” Then he pulled her up—she squeaked, but only half in surprise—and they darted into the trees just as two priests stepped through from the other side and looked around stupidly.

Four weeks later, Shara crouched near the marriage stone at the edge of Orba's gaze, waiting, listening. The air whispering through the trees carried no sounds of celebration, only silence. A sound behind her made her spin around. She wanted to call for Ketern, but he had said not to. She would listen. She trusted him.

Then he stepped into the light and without thinking she rose and threw her arms around him. When she pulled away, she forgot her fear at the sight of the wooden tree pinned to the breast of his uniform.

“You're an observer,” she said, beaming.

“Thanks to you,” he said, drawing her out of the light and glancing around.

She shook her head. “You were born for it, Ketern. I knew it, and your father now knows as well.”

Ketern ran a hand over his face. “He went on quite the tirade when I told him I intended to enlist as an observer, but he came around quickly.”

“Oh?”

Ketern chuckled. “Oh, yes. My final challenge involved sneaking past the great general and my newly christened brother. I'm surprised you didn't hear Father curse. He grew so angry he almost felled a tree.”

She clasped her hands in delight. “I'm proud of you.” She accepted his hand and let him guide her to the ground where they sat side by side. “What shall we do to celebrate?”

His face grew contemplative. “A feast, perhaps. You don't even have to cook it.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank
you
.”

She jabbed his arm. “And when shall we hold this grand feast?”

His smile faded. “Probably not for a while, I'm afraid.”

Fear came rushing back, though his presence dulled it. The grove suddenly felt small, as if the trees inched forward to surround them. She shivered. “What news?”

“My skill was not the only reason Father acquiesced to my will to join the observers. The Tribe needs them.” He took a breath. “Reports say invaders have entered the forest.”

She waited to speak until she felt calm. “Where?”

“From the south. Four parties of observers leave early tomorrow, each in a different direction. We're to send word of their largest gathering. The Tribe will attack at night; these invaders can't see as well as we can. Then—”

“We?” she interjected, and now her voice was anything but calm.

“Yes.” His voice shook too. “I will join the regiment heading south. My father's lieutenants say I have the most promise they've seen in centuries. Only then did the general become a believer,” he finished bitterly.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I believed in you.”

“I know. I've known you two cycles, yet you believed in me before someone who has known me my entire life.”

She tried to speak, but her throat constricted. Suddenly he was on his knees before her, his strong hand cupping her cheek.

“We will be fine, Shara.”

“I know,” she said. Her voice firmed. “I know. I have you to protect me.”

He leaned in and she did not pull away. When he removed his mouth from hers, she was breathing heavily, as was he, and her body shone as brightly as Orba herself. Part of her wanted to dim her light, but she didn't know if she could. His fingers traced their way down her neck, watching her with star-flecked eyes as he ran his other hand through her hair before both hands stopped on the clasps of her robe. She pulled back.

“Oh,” he said, panicked. “I—”

She pressed a finger to her lips and studied his eyes, seeing the same desire that burned through her. But was she ready? Then he kissed her finger lightly, and the memory of his lips pressed to hers came rushing back.

“I'm sorry,” he said softly. “I was just—”

“I know what you were just,” she said. He read her tone and grinned.

As the night wore on, Orba moved with it, politely averting her gaze.

The forest burned. Screams rose above the roar of the flames as they feasted on flesh and wood, stretching into the night sky like searing fingers. Shara burst into the marriage grove, eyes stinging, throat raw, coughing and sputtering as she stumbled to the ground and crawled. One hand, inflamed and searing, pawed the ground, feeling its way toward the marriage stone as she blinked away a mask of stinging tears. The other hand, a balled fist wrapped around her belly, clutched parchment stained with soot and ash and bearing the first words she had received from her husband since he'd left her almost three full cycles prior.

Grove. Safe.

Heavy footsteps grew louder behind her as an invader crashed through the ring of trees. Grunting, he grabbed her and flung her onto her back. She tried to cry out but managed only a hoarse whisper. The man struck her and her ears rang louder than the bells on Orba's Eve. Then he was on her, groping at her robe, tearing it away.

Suddenly his eyes bulged and he slumped, growing impossible heavy. A hand, small but strong, clutched at his shoulder and pushed him away. Then the hand grabbed her and she beat at it until a familiar scent washed over her: bark from the trees he scaled so effortlessly. Herbs from the wash she made for them each month. Sweat. Smoke. An acrid, salty tang.

Ketern touched her cheek with a hand that felt warm and sticky but she took it and held it there. Then he collapsed to the ground and she saw the blood oozing from a hole in his belly the size of a fingertip. She watched him fall in a daze, and her mind wandered off.
How could so much blood come from such a small hole?

He whispered her name and that shattered her trance. She fell beside him and fussed at his robes, tearing off a strip of cloth and patting his belly with it, trying to ignore the high note of panic in his voice as he babbled her name over and over and the way his wide eyes clung to her as if she were the only branch on the forest's highest tree.

She pressed the cloth against his gut as hard as the red hands clawing at her arms, but the blood soaked through. She looked around desperately. “Help!” she cried, but her voice dissolved in a fit of coughing.

He called for her again, fainter now, and she cradled him close, crushing him against her to stop his shakes. She called out again and again, willing her voice louder and louder, but still no one came. She rocked him, talked to him, telling him her special news that she had waited to reveal to him in person, until her eyes fell on the shaft of soft light from above, cool and imperturbable as ever.

“Please. Please don't take him from us. I'll do anything. Please.”

It was not a proper prayer like the ones her mother had made her intone over and over, but it was
a
prayer. Orba would hear it.

Four nights later, Shara knelt within the light that cradled the marriage stone, one hand resting against her protruding belly. She was alone, and not just in the grove. The priests had gathered all surviving Orbians and embarked on a journey out of their forest and to another. If another forest even existed. No one knew for certain, but the priests had told them to go, so they went. Mother had insisted Shara come along but gave up after Shara refused, migrating with the rest of their people and leaving her daughter behind in a land ruined by the invaders' onslaught, one the Tribe had only just managed to turn away. The invaders would return, the priests said, but Shara didn't care. Only smoking stumps hid her from prying eyes, but no eyes remained alive to pry.

Shara was alone. So there was no one around to scream, to faint, to chastise, or to beat her when, after hours of quiet reflection, she looked up at Orba and said:

“I hate you.”

The goddess, she had decided, worked in mysterious and cruel ways. All her life she had worshipped Orba not because she'd wanted to, but because she'd been told to. She had followed her people's laws and customs not by choice, but by heavy-handed command. Then, on a night not even six cycles before, her mother had practically dragged her to the marriage grove to give her to a husband she had never met. Custom demanded it. Orba had chosen Ketern for her, and her for him, and that was that.

And
that
had worked. Shara squeezed her eyes shut, but the memories of her short time with Ketern played against her eyelids as easily as they played against the forest's blackened carcass. Marriage was not a path she had chosen, but it was a path she had come to love. And then Orba, the one who had pushed and prodded her down this path, had apparently changed her mind.

Or had she? Did she have as much control over her Orbians as the priests believed? Shara thought back to something Ketern had said the night they were wed.

Orba, in her infinite wisdom from her place high in the sky apart from all our thoughts, feelings, and struggles, has chosen us to be together
.

Ketern was right. What did Orba know of their lives? Did she have a plan for any of them? She gave Ketern to Shara, then took him away.
So sorry, Shara, dear, but I made a mistake. We'll just start over somewhere else, hm? Now be a good girl and go wander off into the unknown for awhile
.

Shara braced herself on the stone and hauled herself to her feet and looked around at the charred remains of trees that had stood for thousands of years.

“What path do I walk now, goddess? Do you even know?”

Predictably, Orba did not answer. Shara turned away to leave—not sure of where she would go, exactly—when light glinted off a small object near the far side of the stone. Curious, she went to it and gasped. As quickly as she was able, she stooped and retrieved the crest of House Sonta, the House of her maiden years.

It looked the same as when she had given it to Ketern the night Orba had joined their Houses, but marred by a small patch of blood. Ketern had taken it with him at her insistence. He said he would place it next to hers again when he came home to her.