“You are nothing!” he answered, as if he’d heard a different question from my lips. He settled into his saddle, then reluctantly looked my way again. “Jafir de Aldrid,” he answered.
“And I am—”
“I know who you are. You’re Morrighan.” He galloped off.
It was another four years before I saw him again, and the whole of that time, I wondered how he knew my name.
Chapter Two
Morrighan
It seemed being afraid was in my blood. It kept me ever aware, but even at ten years old, I was weary of it. I remember I returned to camp warily that day. From an early age, I had known we were different. It was what helped us to survive. But it also meant little passed by the others, even the hidden and unsaid. Ama, Rhiann, Carys, Oni, and Nedra were strongest in the knowing. And Venda too, but she was gone now. We didn’t talk of her.
Ama spoke without lifting her gaze from her basket of beans, her gray and black hair pulled back neatly in a braid. “Pata tells me you left the camp while I was gone.”
“Only to the pond beyond the rock wall, Ama. I didn’t go far.”
“Far enough. It only takes a moment for a scavenger to snatch you up.”
We’d had this conversation many times. The scavengers were wild and reckless, thieves and savages preying on the work of others. And sometimes they were killers too, depending
on their whim. We hid in the hills and ruins, quiet in our footsteps, soft in voice, the walls of an empty world giving us cover, and where the walls were only dust, the tall grasses hid us.
But sometimes even that was not enough.
“I was careful,” I whispered.
“What called you to the pond?” she asked.
I was empty-handed—nothing to show as a reason for my trek. As soon as Jafir had galloped off, I had left. I could not lie to Ama. There were as many questions in her pauses as in her words. She knew.
“I saw a scavenger boy there. He was tearing at the cattails.”
Her eyes darted up. “You didn’t—”
“He was a boy named Jafir.”
“You know his name? You spoke to him?” Ama jumped to her feet, scattering the beans in her lap. She grabbed my shoulders first, then brushed my hair back, examining my face. Her hands traveled frantically up and down my arms, searching for injuries. “Are you all right? Did he harm you? Did he touch you?” Her eyes were sharp with fear.
“Ama, he didn’t harm me,” I said firmly, trying to dispel her fears. “He only told me not to come to the pond anymore. That it is his pond now. And then he left with a sack of corms.”
Her face hardened. I knew what she was thinking—they take it all—and it was true. They did. Just when we had settled on the far side of a valley, or meadow, or among the abandoned shelters, they would come upon us, stealing and sowing terror in their path. I was angry with myself now for showing Jafir how to loosen the tubers. We owed the scavengers nothing when they had taken so much from us.
“Was it always so, Ama? Wouldn’t they be part of the Remnant too?”
“There are two kinds who survive, those who persevere and those who prey.”
She scanned the horizon, and her chest rose in a weary breath. “Come, help me collect the beans. Tomorrow we leave for a new valley. A far one.”
There were no valleys far enough from their kind. They sprouted as freely as burrs in the meadow grass.
Nedra, Oni, and Pata grumbled but said nothing more. They deferred to Ama because she was the oldest and the head of our tribe, the only one among us who remembered Before. Besides, we were used to moving on and searching for a peaceful valley of plenty. Somewhere there had to be one. Ama had told us so. She had seen it with her own eyes when she was a child, before the foundation of the earth was shaken and before the stars fell from the sky. Somewhere there had to be a place where we were safe from them.
Chapter Three
Jafir
I wiped the blood running from my nose. I knew better than to draw my knife—but I would not always be a head shorter than Steffan. He seemed to know this too. The back of his hand came less frequently these days.