Shadow Weaver (Back on Wattpad 2020!)

Chapter 6

Hooves thunder through the woods, the forest floor shudders with the approach of many men on horseback. Brin appears, running across the clearing. He hasn't even finished pulling up his trousers.

"Soldiers!" he shouts.

Tug kicks me where I sit cradling Kel's trembling body, my brother's eyes weeping pus, raw and itchy from the burning liquid. "Get up," he growls. He grabs Kel and drags him towards the stone shack. I follow as my brother edges into the dilapidated building, but hesitate on the threshold, fearing this is my chance, and I don't know how to grab it.

"You should leave our hands untied and not try to hide us," I say. "It would look better if it appeared as though we were all together."

"We are all together."

"Not captives," I clarify. "If Kel keeps his eyes down, no one would know we are not simply a family of hunters, returning to sell the deer and rabbit meat." Tug grips the hood of my parka and pulls me onto the tips of my toes. The collar of my fur digs into my neck, choking me.

"If the soldiers find out you're a shadow weaver," he says, "they'll send you to the tundra camps. Or perhaps they'll decide you're too old and then they'd have to kill you in front of the little one."

Camomile soap and summer grass invade my senses. Hair flutters about a pale neck.

Tug's incongruous memory is so unexpected, I grimace. Fortunately, he is too preoccupied to notice.

"There's no saving your brother once he's in the work camps," he says. "Most Uru Ana under those conditions don't survive long."

"I'm not stupid," I say through gritted teeth, because I can't breathe properly; because Beast-face understands me better than I understand him; he preempts my every move and thought.

"No one has ever escaped the camps," he says softly. Some secret layer of meaning weaves between his words, reminding me of the way he has built his mind to hide many things from the probing sight of a shadow weaver. Has he worked at the tundra camps? Umbra, shadow weaver, glitter-eyes, these are the slighting names we are usually given, yet Tug uses the name our ancestors who came from Auran, island of the Rushing Winds, called themselves.

I slip through the cobbled doorway into the rotting remains of a broken home. Winter sun shines through the narrow windows and a hole in the roof. Thick shadows linger in dusty corners and it takes a moment before I find Kel crouched by a back wall. His head rests on his legs, arms wrapped over his tangled hair, as though to protect himself from an oncoming storm. I kneel in front of him and try to lift his bound hands in my own, but his arms are locked in a tight grip.

The land rumbles like a great beast waking. A distant voice calls orders. I close my eyes and reach towards the voice, encountering many minds. After thirteen, I stop counting. I don't try entering any of them. I don't want to lose my sense of time and risk the soldiers finding me in a half-trance. My eyes flash open as a horse whinnies outside the front window, then blows through its nose.

"What are your names?" a man asks, his vowels rounded and musical.

"Tug Briggs," Tug says.

"Brin Twinerben."

"What is your business out here?"

"We were hunting."

"You return while most are just setting out. How long have you been out here?"

"A week."

"If you have been hunting, where is your sled?"

Hooves clop around the back of the stone building. I can no longer distinguish the voices enough to make out words. I concentrate on breathing steadily. The smooth light bay coat of a horse appears in the back window, a man's leg hanging off the side. The man jumps down and peers through the slim crack.