The Slave

4.

Zin woke to a dark dawn, a grey gloom filtering through the canopy. It was still much too early but there was no way she was going back to sleep. Two days they'd been travelling towards the mountains where they planned to take refuge in their labyrinth of caves. Through the canopy she glimpsed their snow-tipped peaks glinting against the sky. The thought made her hands sweat: darkness, thick heavy air, suffocating spaces. Only the most experienced hunters would be allowed to hunt and forage in the surrounding trees. She couldn't think of anything worse.

A stone cage.

They'd been moving at a steady plod—two days!—and had seemingly made no progress. The mountains appeared just as far away, and always she felt that pinch at the back of her neck, that knowing that the Paleskins were dead on their heels. As a hunter it was agony. Zin was unused to so much burden: the bulky supplies, recalcitrant rams and children, the crippled and the old. She could see the frustration in the other hunters' faces and hear the strain in their voices as they called for their loved ones to hurry.

We move swiftly or die.

But they weren't moving swiftly at all.

Slowly she sat up, clutching her head with a hiss. There was a pounding behind her eyes, and she knew it was from her strange dream. She'd been an eagle flying high in the sky, and below had been the Paleskins, an enormous host of them, so large it had seemed to sprawl into the horizon in a tide of shining metal. To her eagle eyes, they had almost looked like the scales of a fish. It had seemed so real she could still feel the rush of the wind through her feathers, the heat of the sun against her back, the thrill of her dizzying height.

Now there was only her headache and that stomach-churning guilt that had only grown stronger since the moment she'd heard of the impending attack. Heart hammering, feeling sick, she staggered to her feet. She needed to get away.

Most of the camp was still asleep, except for the occasional woman suckling a baby or old man who liked to rise early. They stared as she passed. Zin tried to ignore them but it only made her heart beat harder. Carefully, she stepped around the sleeping bodies, heading to the edge of camp.

She sat at the top of an incline, the great forest spread out below in a field of leaves and branches which rippled like water in the breeze. In the distance she could see the ocean glinting against the horizon. It would be another cloudless day. Another hot day. She should be grateful. It would make for an easy journey. But it was hard to feel anything, hard to think anything, except dark thoughts.

'Zin?'

She turned with a start. 'Amma. Did I wake you?'

'No, sweet. I was already up.'

Zin shuffled over as her mother sat beside her. Her arms were empty of Quip. She hadn't braided her hair and it hung in a golden waterfall down her shoulders. She looked tired. They were quiet as they watched the sun rise.

'There's nothing wrong with being scared,' her mother said finally.

'I'm not scared. I mean, I am, but—'

Her mother was silent. Zin kept looking away. 'It's not your fault.'

Zin dug her fingers into her knees. 'I know.'

'Has someone in the clan said something to you?'

Zin shook her head, then took a breath. 'No, but they look at me.' Zin tried to control herself but tears blurred her eyes. 'How do you stand it, amma?' she said suddenly. 'We are one of them. We are the enemy. All of us. Don't you feel—?' She took a shuddering breath, then turned her face away.

Few in the clan truly accepted their family. They were tolerated well enough but rarely accepted. Zin tried not to let it get to her but it stung every day. Her father's parents had died before Zin was born, so she'd never gotten a chance to know what they might have thought. But she had an aunt who didn't want anything to do with them, along with her three children—Zin's cousins. Her aunt only associated with her brother if she had to. And never with his Paleskin partner. Even less with his half-Paleskin offspring.