Daywards Read Free Page B

on, striding between the sentries and taking a path well known to everyone in the clan, even if they very rarely travelled it.
    â€˜Are we going to the Eye?’
    Her brother simply grunted in reply and Dara fell silent. Even for the adults, the Eye was the most taboo place in their small world. Nobody ever visited there without Da, and he usually went alone, once every month or so but more frequently before a salvaging. Dara, like all the kids in the clan, had never set foot along the narrow path inland.
    Hurrying along in her brother’s footsteps, she tried to come up with a reason for Jaran to be taking her there.
    â€˜Did Da tell you you could. …’
    â€˜Dara, could you just shut up!’ Jaran hissed and, with a start, she noticed something odd behind his voice.
    He’s scared, she realised. The thought frightened her. As much as she and her brother fought, and as much as she disliked him, the one thing she’d always grudgingly respected was his ability to remain calm, even in the most alarming situations.
    When little Faani had wandered off from the crèche group and fallen down the escarpment onto a ledge below, it had been Jaran who’d climbed down, calm as you like, and coaxed the boy onto his back for the dizzying climb up. And when their father had his accident, it was Jaran who’d kept a cool head and knocked together a shelter, while Dara had just frozen up in blind panic.
    Seeing her brother – her twin – off balance was perhaps the most frightening moment of the evening so far, and Dara forced herself to take several deep breaths, calming herself as much as possible while they ploughed along the path.
    Dara had never liked the plateau forest, which was much more dense than that down on the saltwater plains. Now it closed around them, the trees drawing tight to the trail. The spaces between their trunks became choked with tangled, thorny underbrush, which snagged at Dara’s tunic if she strayed too close to the edge of the path and which forced her to keep to single file, dogging along in her brother’s footsteps, something she hated.
    The quiet was unsettling, too. The night forest should have been alive with the myriad scuffles and scrapes of the nocturnal world, but on this occasion a deep, almost suffocating silence pervaded.
    â€˜Is it a long way?’ she asked, but Jaran simply shushed her.
    Finally, after what seemed like hours, a dull light illuminated the trees ahead and a few moments later they stepped out into a dimly lit clearing.
    Dara glanced quickly around. Above, mounted high on poles at the corners of the clearing, four dull solar lights cast their weak glow across the cleared space. The orange light threw everyone’s features into strange, monochrome relief. In the very centre of the clearing a low, square, blocky building crouched, its roof festooned with oddshaped domes and dishes, all pointing towards the northern sky. In the nearest wall, a narrow doorway stood ajar, with hard, white light pouring from it and throwing a bright rectangle onto the dusty ground.
    Everyone was here, standing silently in a tight knot around a small fire in the middle of the clearing. All the aunties and uncles, all the kids and even the littlies. Every face was serious and the apprehension that had been building in her gut for the entire walk increased.
    Noticing Jaran and Dara’s arrival, Xani strode over to them. ‘You found her. Good lad.’
    Dara met her uncle’s eye levelly.
    â€˜What happened to you?’ he asked.
    â€˜Hunting was bad, so I kept going. Eyna should have told you.’
    â€˜She said you went swimming.’
    â€˜Only for a couple of minutes this morning. Then I hunted. What’s going on?’
    â€˜Da Janil is dead.’
    The words, so blunt and unexpected, had no meaning. If anything, Dara’s immediate response was to think that Uncle Xani was trying to play some sort of stupid prank. But his