Daywards

Daywards Read Free

Book: Daywards Read Free
Author: Anthony Eaton
Ads: Link
people were saying that this would probably be the final one. The last few salvages had been increasingly less successful; it had been years since they’d returned with any ferals or shifties and, after the most recent trip, when Da and the others had returned almost empty-handed, the old man had been heard muttering darkly that perhaps it was time to give up on salvages altogether. ‘Too much risk for too little return’, he’d said.
    Still, yesterday Da had announced that he’d be checking the Eye again, which seemed to suggest that there’d be at least one more chance for Dara to go salvaging. She hoped so. If nothing else, she knew it’d drive Jaran crazy if she got to go and he didn’t. That brought a smile to her face. And, of course, the prospect of actually seeing the skycity – that in itself was enough to make the effort of salvaging worthwhile, even if Da no longer thought so.
    Finally, when the sun was drooping low towards the nightwards horizon, she managed to bring down a decent-sized hopper as it grazed on undergrowth at the edge of the forest.
    â€˜That’ll do.’ It was much later than she’d intended to stay out and she knew she’d be in trouble, but right at that moment she didn’t care. It took a few minutes to gut and clean out her kill, and then she hoisted the carcass onto her bony shoulders and set off, walking purposefully now, back towards the escarpment path via the quickest route possible.
    As she hiked, the forest grew dark around her and the evening chorus gradually burst into song. A million tiny voices – chirps and grunts and squeaks and rustles – greeting the end of the day and the onset of cool night. As her hunting ended, so much more began.
    Without being aware of doing so, as much by habit as anything else, Dara let herself slip out into the Earthmother as she walked, enjoying the sensation of the cooling land through a thousand tiny, transient contacts and sparks of animal consciousness. Behind her neck, the hopper she’d killed was still warm, and a little blood dripped from it, soaking into the rich earth and leaving a speckled trail behind. She gave the hopper silent thanks for its sacrifice, and was almost at the base of the home trail, about to slip out from the lulling earthwarmth and concentrate on the climb, when something awful ripped through the land and into her.
    A wave of cold and despair and emptiness and loss like she’d never experienced tore through the fabric of the earth. Every tree, every animal contact, every tiny insect spark of life flared with pain, and then fell still, shocked insensible by the force of the feeling.
    As the immediate wash of pain faded, Dara stood motionless in a shock of recognition. It was a mind. A mind so familiar she knew it almost as well as her own. A mind whose taste and contact had been a part of her own thoughts since as early as she could remember. A mind suddenly torn apart by anguish.
    â€˜Ma!’ Her legs buckled under her and her hunting gear clattered to the ground. Dara gasped aloud as the wave of outpoured grief swept past her and onwards, into the land. So fierce was the feeling that she found herself driven ahead of it, outwards and upwards and then finally back into the entirety of her own mind. Around her, the night chorus had come to an abrupt and unexpected halt, the only sound now the unsettled rustle of branches and restless leaves in the deepening twilight.
    Something had happened. Dara knew it in every fibre of her being. Something was deeply, badly wrong. She tried for several seconds to reach but with her mind still reeling from the aftershock of that terrible, all encompassing grief, all she could sense was some sort of … absence. Something – and Dara couldn’t pin down exactly what – was missing. An indefinable hole in the usual way of things.
    Dropping the body of the hopper beside the trail, Dara sprinted upwards, just

Similar Books

Intimate

Kate Douglas

Finding Grace

Alyssa Brugman

Swan Song

Tracey Ward

Big Driver

Stephen King