Fugitive of the Sky

Chapter Thirty-Four: Aqie's Folly

Aqie looked for the hunter until the sun'd gone for good and she couldn't see enough of anything anymore. Dejected, she curled her hands around her knees on top of the bluff and stared where he should've been. "I thought I was doing the right thing, Adonai. But where did he go?"

The night birds called, but there was nothing she could understand. The stars barely lit anything and it was cold except for her kaprae. It was almost falltime if she'd been counting the weeks right, but everything seemed different outside the mountains. Different, and cold. And it didn't make much sense, like why her hunter had disappeared.

A wind curled by and Aqie shivered, drawing her arms in and wrapping her kaprae about herself. "Adonai, what am I supposed to do?" She shivered again and dared to let a little of her anger show. "If You want me to be all nice and forgive my enemies why did You make him go away before I did anything? Or did You just let me forgive him so he could die and disappear with a song like Larkwings do? I thought humans didn't work like that!"

She bit her tongue before she could say anything more. "I'm sorry," she muttered sullenly. "I don't mean any disrespect."

That was one of Cloven's favorite lines. Aqie kind of wished he was here right now so she could tell him what happened and ask why he thought Adonai could turn any good out of it. Or Dad, so he'd tell her the hunter wasn't worth it anyway. Or Mom, so she could tell her she wasn't really idolizing her kaprae.

"And I'm not!" she sort of yelled at Adonai, just in case He was going to tell her so. "I'm not and You told us to wear them anyway. It's not allowed to take them off."

Is it? Cloven yelling at her about idolatry just wasn't fair. He was the one who'd betrayed her and said she had to give up her kaprae to the Elders. He was so afraid of them for everything. But he'd been her friend all the way up until then. He'd shown her how Adonai was working in her life for good. They'd studied the Scrolls. He'd kind of helped her understand Mom and Dad's deaths and close the chasm a little.

His words wouldn't leave her alone. As if holding on to her Adonai-given heritage was idolatry! She'd jibed at him too hard and he'd just gotten angry. Why did everyone insist on her giving up her kaprae?

Aqie let her kaprae fall and jumped to her feet. "I get it already! I'll go to Larkhold! Just make all this pain and problems go away!" Before she could feel another prodding too strong to ignore, she took off and headed the best direction she could guess that was north and towards the mountains.

The farther she went, the colder it got. It was getting harder to sleep at night and she had to wrap herself up tight in her kaprae. It wouldn't cover everything so it was always either her back or her feet that were freezing at night. Dad had once said things were really cold at the Hunter's Strait, cold enough that to survive crossing it you really needed some winter things.

Too bad she didn't have any winter clothes with her, and there was no way she could sneak into a Mongor village and take some, even if she wanted to. And her tunic was getting small. It was all tight and stiff when she put her arms out, which made it harder to fly in. Mom'd said after her kranais she'd have another growth spurt. If only Mom could make her a new one and Dad could be there to see it.

After one particularly cold night where it rained and she couldn't sleep at all because she was lumpy and miserable, Aqie decided that stealing or no stealing, she had to at least get a blanket. She apologized to Adonai about thirty times in advance before going back to trying to ignore the niggling feeling.

The problem was, anywhere there were Mongor clothes there were Mongors, lots of Mongors that would make it too hard to sneak in past all their houses. Compared to those big walled cities she'd seen they were tiny, but it was still like twenty families of people. How did anyone grow up there when everyone was close by and remember how to talk to everybody? Maybe the way Cloven had seemed to know all the names and relations of everyone in the Farwings.