House of Winter

Chapter 12, Part 2

"Has your magic been weak without Jinni by your side?" Tom asked.

Lumi felt a flicker of realisation. "I suppose so," she said. "Jinni has always made my magic stronger."

"That's understandable," Tom said. "Most starrlings can't do very much magic without a kinnling. We can collect wood and make a fire the ordinary way."

But Lumi was confused. Her magic while she'd been back in Singtsu had felt fine. But now, she felt tired just from the small effort of trying to light a fire.

Tom found wood quickly and built a small campfire easily. They roasted the mussels and Lumi watched with interest as Doctor Hart cracked them open to eat them.

"We should all get some sleep before we start travelling again," Doctor Hart said. "We've got a long way to go before we reach the mainland, and we'll need all our strength there in case we run into trouble."

Lumi agreed. She was tired from flying through the night, and now that the morning suns were warming up the day she was starting to feel pleasantly sleepy. But there was nowhere comfortable to sleep. The sand on the beach was soft but it was in such direct sunlight. Instead she went further inland to the woods and sat down under a tree.

"Here," Tom said, and he held out his coat to her. "Lie on that."

Lumi opened her mouth and then closed it again, as she looked up at Tom. "But then you won't have anywhere to sleep."

"I spent every summer of my youth sleeping out in the woods with the wolves," Tom said. "It was how I bonded with my mother's pack so well. Kobuk and I grew up together like that."

He lay down across from her, next to another tree.

"So you're used to sleeping outside, on the ground?" Lumi asked.

"Sure am. Have you ever slept outside?"

Lumi thought. "No," she said eventually. "I don't remember a time when I didn't have a bed. Even when the House of Fire burnt down any my room was burnt, I was still given a bed in the dormitory."

"Builds character," Tom said. "That's what my mother used to say."

Lumi lay down on Tom's coat. Kobuk the wolf came to lie down next to them. Across the way, Doctor Hart had settled down in the crook of her lion's belly.

Lumi found herself staring up at the trees above her, waiting for sleep to take her. It was all well and good to be tired, but she'd never slept like this before.

She woke to the suns high overhead, and the sounds of Tom moving about. Doctor Hart was up and sitting staring at nothing.

"We'll need fresh water soon," Tom said.

They packed up and mounted their kinnlings again and set off. The day was hot and the suns were burning, and Lumi knew they wouldn't be able to fly for too long with this heat, but they flew for a couple of hours before they found another place to rest. There were more nuts and another nap in the sun.

It was Lumi's first day as a traveller, as a runaway, as a refugee of war. She had never relied so desperately on other people for her survival. She had never had such an unpredictable day. She'd never realised just how much she took a comfortable bed for granted.

Because they rested mostly in the day, at night they were able to fly quite a few hours, stopping only for short breaks for the kinnlings to rest and stretch.

Just before sunrise once again, they found another empty island to set up camp. This time, Lumi, Tom and Doctor Hart lay down to rest, while the kinnlings went off together to hunt.