Living Proof

Chapter Seven

Autumn had come, but Kaia didn't know if it planned to remain, as summer was slow to concede defeat this year. Still, the breeze held a hint of a chill, sent the dead and dying leaves scuttling all about her small garden that she'd coaxed into life in one of the unlikeliest of places—within a thicket of sticker bushes. She'd spent a great deal of time and energy when she first happened upon this cabin at clearing out the middle of the thicket, which she'd used to camouflage the garden itself should any orc—singular or part of a pack—happen upon her home. It had taken some doing, and she still had healing scratches along her upper arms and shoulders from the stubborn prickers, but she'd managed, and while her garden might be small, it was enough to sustain her through just about the entire summer and into the autumn. Come winter, she'd have to move on, for game had become sparser and sparser since the orcs tore through, and although her garden had been bountiful, it had not yielded enough to sustain her through an entire winter as well.

That made her sad, for this was the longest she'd spent in any one place in quite some time, and she had come to think of it as home. She would miss the rundown shack she'd claimed as her own. Hopefully she would stumble across another one at some point in her travels.

Still, she was going nowhere as long as Boromir remained with her. He'd made great strides in only five days, but he was still a ways from being able to be up and out on his own. She was impressed that he'd managed to survive what happened to him, but he would not survive much longer, should she turn him out.

Which, of course, she was not about to do.

She turned toward the cabin once more. Sounds of water sloshing about floated on the breeze out to her. Part of her wished he'd waited for her to help him, but part of her was glad he hadn't. The strangest thing had happened when she'd helped him remove his shirt. The air felt as if it cracked about them, the way it did before a lightning storm at the height of summer. And for one moment, she'd had the feeling he was contemplating kissing her.

But that wasn't the strange part. No, the strange part was the pang of disappointment that coursed through her when he didn't do it.

"And that is madness," she muttered, sinking to her knees to dig up the last turnips of the season. She wasn't particularly fond of turnips, but they were hearty and easy to grow and so when she had the chance to buy seeds, she leaped at it. There were perhaps half a dozen left from the crop she'd planted in August, and they all went into the small basket on the ground at her knee.

She was in the midst of digging up the last turnip when she heard the sound of cracking branches and crushed leaves. Kaia went still, setting her trowel on the ground without a sound, and looked over toward the back porch, where her bow and quiver of arrows stood propped against it. The turnips forgotten, she crept through the narrow tunnel she'd created out of the overlapping and interweaving pricker branches, biting back a hiss of pain when a stubborn thorn caught her cheek and tore open a jagged slash just below her left cheekbone.

Ignoring the hot sting and the trickle of blood that first dotted the surface of her skin, then spilled down along her cheek, she fought her way out of the brambles, only not quite as noiselessly as she'd liked to have emerged.

More branches broke. More leaves rustled. The noises grew louder.

She had a visitor.

The sounds came from the western edge of the small parcel of land upon which her cabin stood. Fortunately, the kitchen was on the eastern side of the house, so hopefully whoever had arrived couldn't hear Boromir's bathing.

Or so she hoped.

But that hope was dashed a moment later when the ugliest orc she'd ever seen came around that corner of the house and greeted her with a guttural, "What's this now?"