Silver Secrets

Chapter 10: Mel

The farmlands pass surprisingly quickly—before long, the peaks of the Wolfstone Mountains, as Rowan calls them,  appear in the distance. They are capped with rock and then snow on the higher summits, but their slopes are cloaked in thick evergreen forest.

"That's the road we'll take," Rowan says, pointing to a narrow gap in the forest between two mountains. "It was the one used by traders and the like, when Highhold was still..." He breaks off, glancing at me sheepishly.

"Inhabited. It's okay," I shrug. I never even knew my real mother's name, let alone her destroyed home. It's not like I've lost anything.

That night, we make our camp in a small, scrubby woodland behind a huge mill. We stop well before sunset, because the weather looks like it's turning. We've had little rain all the way from Moon Bay, so I suppose our luck wasn't going to last forever.

"Can I try hunting tonight?" I ask as we dismount in a small clearing.

"You?" Rowan appraises me as he unsaddles Mistil, eyebrows lifted in what could well be amusement. "Have you ever been hunting before?"

"Well, no," I admit, "but Perdiscio had me practice using my powers on animals all the time back in Moon Bay, and I've been using them on Ember too. I think I might be getting better."

Rowan glances around the woods. "Fine, here's as safe a place as any. Don't go out of the woodland and if you get in trouble, yell for me."

Rowan's concern puzzles me a moment, but then I remember why he's even here—to make sure I get to Highhold and back safely. Our journey has been relatively easy up until now, but Rowan has no way of knowing if that will last. What would Captain Holanan do to him if I got hurt?

"I'll be fine," I tell him, tying Ember to a tree. Really, there's hardly going to be any bears in these woods. I'll just have to take care not to fall into the river or something.

Time to see what I can really do without Perdiscio breathing down my neck.

I have no hunting instincts like Rowan probably does, but on the side of the wood facing the mountains there's a wide, open meadow, and that seems as good a place as any. After checking over my shoulder to make sure Rowan didn't follow me, I get down on my haunches in the long grass at the very edge of the copse. I'm still inside it, technically.

There's something in the field. Three somethings, I think, but one is very close. It doesn't have a thought-buzz like I'm used to. I can detect it and feel it, but there's nothing I can make sense of.

I brace my hands on the damp ground and close my eyes, relaxing as much as I can. I feel things rush around me, as if I'm wearing a blindfold on a galloping horse, until I feel my mind hone in on one of the presences, like a hawk diving for prey. My stomach growls. Maybe I do have some sort of hunter instinct after all.

Suddenly it's as if I'm in two places at once. I'm still aware of my body, but also of a racing heartbeat and fear flowing through my veins like blood. I grit my teeth and will my prey forward, fighting all of its frantic instincts while desperately clinging on to my own awareness, because I'm terrified of what will happen if I let it go. Whatever I was expecting to happen, it definitely was not this.

After I manage to wrestle my prey forward, a brown hare bounds out of the long grass in front of me. I feel its every instinct screaming to run from the big creature in front of it. Some of my hair has escaped from its braid and blows into my face; I ignore it, pouring every ounce of concentration I have into urging the hare forward into my waiting hands. This will be the hard part. I know I won't be able to grab the hair while still controlling it, so I'll have to be quick. I should've set up a trap or something.

I give myself a second to prepare, and then I let go.

I slam fully back into my own body, but I manage to fall forward, not backward, and I clamp my hands around my catch as it shrieks and squeals in my grip, kicking back against my chest.

"Rowan!" I yell, pinning the bundle of fur down against the ground. "Rowan, help me! I got something!"

Footsteps crash through the ferns behind me and then Rowan is there, kneeling beside me. "Are you hurt?"

"No," I grit out as the hare kicks again. "Kill it!"

Rowan wrestles the hare out from under me, pulling it out by the neck. Then, before I can turn away, he twists his hands and the hare's neck snaps. It stops thrashing and dangles from his hand, limp.

Rowan nods at the hare approvingly. "Not a bad catch, though maybe you want to work on the killing part."

"I couldn't do it." I think of the silver knife wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of my bag. I wouldn't dare risk revealing it for the sake of a hare. "Sorry."

Rowan shrugs. "If you can do that again, it'll save a lot of time hunting. You catch it, I'll kill it."

"I didn't know I could do that." I hold my dirt-coated hands up in front of me. Things have been getting easier with Ember, but they were never that easy. Maybe I need a goal to use my powers, like dinner or not getting stabbed. "Just make sure I'm back in my own body first," I say wearily. I actually don't know what would happen if I took over an animal's body and then it died. Would I die too?

"Come on. I pitched the tent," Rowan says, offering me a hand up. His voice is different somehow. When I look up I see that, for the first time ever, he's actually truly smiling at me.