The Gatherer (Brilliant Darkness 2.5) Read Free

that to be a daughter of the Fire Sisters is an honor, a privilege. That is what we give the girls: pride in being a warrior, pride in being a woman. It is a gift.
    The men finally slink off toward the river, disappearing into the black. They move methodically back and forth between the trees and the Restless, searching. We stay in place. The girl falls asleep. I pull a blanket from my pack and wrap it around her, tucking the ends under her body.
    Fog drifts over the hill from the Restless, like the great banks of billowing clouds that steal up the mountainside from the Shivering Sea to the Cloister in the winter. The moisture sizzles when it reaches the Eternal Flames, the wall of undying fire that protects one end of our home.
    The men find nothing, of course. They settle a distance away from where we perch, and eventually they are quiet, probably asleep. Fools . They should flush us out while they can.
    I rouse the girl, whispering to her. We sit, ready to slip down to the branch below. But before we can escape, one of the men speaks in the common tongue. His voice comes from a distance, sounding plaintive, almost unearthly. He seems to speak to the mist. I shiver.
    "Daughter, I hope you are near and can hear me.” His voice wavers, as the girl’s did earlier. “I miss you.”
    She freezes beside me.
    The emotion in his words surprises me. He does not sound angry to have lost a possession. He sounds lonely, bereft, frightened.
    "If you can hear me, Kaiya, if you are listening, I will not stop looking until I find you. I love you."
    Tears drip down the girl's dirty cheeks now, leaving reflective trails of the moon. I watch, strangely fascinated. I have not shed tears since I was a young girl, living in fear of the Teachers, before I understood the power they offered me.
    Her muscles are rigid. It's clear from her face she wants to go to him. I bite my lip.
    Can a man truly love his daughter? No . It's not possible. Our Teachers taught us men have few feelings, and those they do have are reserved for themselves, not others.
    My eyes narrow. It must be a trick. This man is clever, cunning, deceptive. He hopes to turn my thoughts away from my duty. He preys on what he believes are my feminine weaknesses: sympathy and compassion.
    Has he not heard of the power of the sting and the invincibility of the Fire Sisters? If not, then he will learn.
    I bid the child to follow as I steal from branch to branch to the ground and into the swirling mist, away from the forest and away from this dangerous man.

4.
    Concealed by the fog, the girl and I creep over the berm and through knee-high wet grass to the impatient Restless. We must move quickly, using the noisy water as cover. It will be a long walk to where we can cross the river and again climb up into the trees. I begin to jog, knife in hand.
    She follows without prompting, her dark hair stark against the chalky mist. Her nose runs and her cheeks are streaked with tears, but her expression is blank once more. The sting is at work.
    I hear no sounds of a chase, so after a while I stop listening behind me, instead casting my senses ahead into the shifting haze. The ground is muddy and uneven, difficult to maneuver in the low light. T he girl slips and slides behind me,  yet I have no trouble keeping my feet. 
    When Adar and I were old enough and skilled enough to leave the children's compound, we went to live with a few other Initiates under the tutelage of Grimma, the Cloister's legendary training mistress. She helped perfect our prowess in combat and taught us ways of moving stealthily through the trees. The Sisters are phantoms of the forest, she would tell us. I took her training to heart.
    Male voices and the sound of a woman crying echo ahead. I pause to listen, holding the girl close behind me.
    "Shut up ," one of the men says. "If there is any game out here, we aren't gonna hear it over your racket."
    "And if we don't eat today, you don't eat today," a second man