I shake my head, and Akari’s shoulders drop.
“Oh,” she says sadly. She swipes away the single tear that falls down her cheek. “How? Was it… the Skraeming Dhevilkin?”
I shake my head again and stare dead into her eyes. “It was an unChosen.” Akari gasps. “Bludgeoned her to death because she had theaudacity to believe Jasmin’s tokens would become hers. She thought that the males who were to chase Jasmin would take her instead.” I shake my head, ripping a sizeable chunk of grass free in my anger. “If the Skraeming Dhevilkin hadn’t killed her, I probably would have done it myself.”
I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know if I am even capable of murder. But at that moment, I believe I could have.
We sit in silence for a while until my stomach growls again.
“Alright, I have to find something to eat,” I announce, jumping to my feet. Akari startles at my sudden movement, then pales as she realizes I am leaving the rock circle. “I’ll just wander through the clearing, see if I can find any familiar-looking berries or something. Maybe a fish will jump out of the river and cook itself for us?”
Akari snorts but gets to her feet as well. “I’ll come with you. I don’t want to be alone again.”
I’m about to tell her to stay hidden, but decide against it. Not only because of the puppy dog eyes she sends my way, but also because I don’t want to be alone either. And two sets of eyes are better than one.
“Alright, come along then,” I tell her. “I want to climb a tree while we are out here, too. I want to find the camp.”
I drop to my knees and crawl out from the small opening. I pause with my head sticking out before I let the rest of my body follow. The clearing is silent and still.
I lend Akari a hand to help her to her feet after she crawls through behind me, then dust the dirt off my bare knees.
“Why do you want to find the camp?” Akari whispers, her eyes darting this way and that. “So we can get as far away from it as possible?”
“Actually, I want to get as close to it as possible.”
Akari gasps, and I grin at her over my shoulder as I make my way past the tree line and back into the clearing from earlier.
“I figured, where better to hide than right under their dainty little noses?”
Akari is silent for a moment as I scour the nearby vegetation. Nothing nearby looks edible, but I won’t give up hope just yet.
“That’s a brilliant idea,” she says. “When they try to track us, they’ll get confused by the scent of us remaining in the camp from the last couple of days. They won’t be able to find us. And then we will be free! Delta, we could go home!”
She looks a little sad at the revelation, and I don’t blame her. Her parents were so ashamed of her sexuality that they fucking sold her. A dead daughter was apparently easier to deal with than a lesbian one. Fucking homophobes.
I reach out and grip her hand firmly, smiling encouragingly.
“You could seeheragain.”
Akari’s eyes alight with hope, and she smiles back. I give her hand another squeeze before letting go and wandering further into the field. I spy a bunch of unfamiliar berries, but decide to give them a miss. If the fae hadn’t fed us these back at the camp, there had to be a reason for it.
“Over here!” Akari calls. She’s over by the tree line, looking up into the foliage of a tall tree. I jog over to her and look up to see what she is pointing at. I have to squint against the sun’s glare but sure enough, right up the very fucking top of the tree is a bunch of purple banana looking fruits. And these had most definitely been on the menu at camp. I remember dubiously peeling back the skin and biting into the jelly-likeflesh of the fruit. It has tasted like white chocolate, and marshmallows, and almonds, and bananas all at once. I would die to have another taste. Literally, apparently, because this tree was not designed for climbing.
The bark was mostly smooth, with tiny fissures here and there leading up the trunk. It would not be easy, but I was sure as shit going to try.
“How do you think-” Akari stops as I kick off my slipper and set a bare foot into one of the tiny ridges. “You aren’t going toclimbit, are you?”
My foot slips free immediately, so I switch tactics and grip with the tips of my toes. I haul myself off the ground and grab at another barely there edge.
“This will work,” I say with a lot more certainty than I feel. “With you guiding me from the ground, telling me where to put my toes, I’ll reach the fruit in no time!”
“Oh, I don’t know about this!”
I’m three-quarters of the way up the tree when my toes decide to slacken of their own accord. I hug the tree tightly, like a koala bear, but that doesn’t stop me from sliding down a meter, the palms of my hands and the side of my face, which I unfortunately have pressed against the bark, painfully losing a layer or two of skin from the top. I stop my fall pretty quickly, but fuck does it hurt.
Akari is calling frantic nothings at me from the ground as my trembling muscles cuddle the damn tree as if my life depended on it. Which it very well may. “Oh! Oh, God! Oh Delta! Hold on! Hold on, Delta!”
I take a couple of soothing breaths, then call down, “I’m alright! Let’s keep going!”
