Soulmates Across Borders

Chapter 28

As the last beastman sank below the surface of the water, Pango said, There's an emergency. Wuruhina says your father was stabbed with a poisoned blade. We need to hurry back to Panui. Now!

Hake took off at a sprint back to the lilac fields for the flowers that could turn the king into mist. A few other summoners followed after him.

You need to lead your father back, Pango told her. She nodded and stood near her father, her misty body rippling with dread. He stood there, clutching his side where she could see a sword gash. It has missed vital organs, but if the blade had been poisoned, he wouldn't last long. They needed to make it to Panui as quickly as possible.

Hake sprang out of nowhere–he had turned to mist and carried back the lilacs they needed quickly. He arranged the circle, and another shadowman stepped up and turned her father and his wolf to mist.

Solí wanted to run up and hug him, but in her misty body she couldn't touch him. So she beckoned for him to follow her. She raced ahead, making sure her father could keep up and gradually gaining speed until she went nearly as fast as she possibly could go.

While she mist-traveled with her sister and father and their wolves, her brain whirled with dreadful thoughts. What if her father didn't make it? What if he died too? No! She wouldn't allow herself to think such things. They'd save him, she told herself. They had to.

How's he doing, Pango?

Wuruhina says he seems to be alright, though he is not mist walking as fast as he is able to, due to the pain of his injury. But in mist form, the poison cannot permeate through his blood. There's still time to save him.

Good. Tell her I know my father is strong. Tell her to tell him that I believe in him and he will be fine. And that I love him.

They flew on and on, while her misty body trembled from more than just the exertion of traveling so far at such speeds. They entered the black forest of the bear tribe and drifted straight through the trees and bushes and up to the bear tribe village.

They raced through the village and up to the high nohonga, where they finally let their mist makutu melt away.

"Help! The wolf king is poisoned!" Solí cried out.

The bear king came out of his nohonga. "Go! Bring the wise women!" he told Solí.

She ran to the wise woman's nohonga and raced into the dwelling. "Help! We need help!" She explained what had happened, and the wise women both gathered up all the requirements they could carry and came racing after Solí back to the high nohonga. Waiata even managed to keep up with Solí's brisk jog.

When they arrived, Solí's father was on the ground, collapsed in the grass. Shock hit her down to her core when she saw that her father had blacked out. The poison was setting in. No! She would not allow her father to die, too. She must save him somehow.

Waiata said, "Do you have the blade that cut him?"

"No!" They hadn't brought it. Why had they left it behind? The realization stopped her breath short in her throat.

Waiata tsked disapprovingly. "We need it to remove the poison. Who is your fastest mist walker?" she asked the bear king.

"My son." He gestured to Tokah's older brother Rakkah, who Solí finally realized had come out of the nohonga to see what was happening.

"They were fighting in the field outside of the forest near Itaone, on the river!" Solí called out to him.

"Go, Rakkah!" the bear king ordered.

The bear king's eldest son ran in the direction of the lilac storage nohonga.

"I can slow the spread of the poison," Manaia said. She made a circle of black charcoal around Solí's father. Then she sat on her knees, put her hands in her lap clutching her holy stone bracelet, and breathed. Standing directly next to her, Solí could feel the full force of the wise woman's mana, she was so powerful. "Whakamutua te rere o te paihana," she said in a strong voice.

The charcoal circle burned up with the light of a glowing white flame. Her father remained unconscious.

"Why isn't he waking up?" Solí asked.

"The makutu only stops the flow of poison. It will not reverse any of the damage he's already taken," Manaia explained.

The breaths rattled in his lungs.

Don't lose hope, Pango told her. But beside him, Wuruhina collapsed with a yelp. The poison was killing her too, thanks to their soulbond.

"Is there nothing else you can do?" Solí asked in desperation.

Waiata shook her head with a grim frown on her face. "I'm sorry, but without the weapon, we cannot know which requirements to use to cure the poison."

"Can you just try some and see if anything works?" she pleaded with a hitch in her voice.

So Waiata and Manaia took turns with different requirements, trying to cure the poison. As they worked, Solí counted by the moments until it felt like an entire spot of time passed. But the wolf king didn't open his eyes.

Finally, when enough time passed that Solí started to hope that Rakkah would return soon, Waiata shook her head and said, "We have tried every poison antidote that we know of. All we can do is wait and pray that Rakkah comes back in time."

And so Solí and Miraka joined hands and prayed as hard as they could to the sacred Kohatu stone. But the moments passed by, and the king's condition worsened. His skin turned yellow from the poison and his lungs rasped for air.

Solí sat on her knees near her father's head and cradled his chest in her arms. Tears dropped from her cheeks onto his face. Miraka joined Solí on his other side. They wept as the wolf king struggled to breathe.

Sobs racked Solí's body as her father breathed his last breath and went still in the grass outside of the bear king's high nohonga.

~*~

991 Words ~ 31221 Total