When the task was completed, she returned to where she’d buried her Ovì. While standing over the grave, she felt an emptiness she’d never known. For the first time in her short life, she was alone in the expanse of wasteland.
Many creatures of the Barrens found death at violent hands, some of them children. The small had always been easy prey for the strong, especially if their Mürs and Ovìs had been killed. While staring at the mound of dirt, her heart sank with sorrow that her Ovì was gone, but her hands began to quiver with rage. The fury she’d felt when the two creatures had defiled her Ovì rekindled inside her.
She whirled away from the grave and sprinted across the wasteland. As she charged down a hill, an interwoven web of light unexpectedly flashed in her vision. She wasn’t sure what was happening at first, but when she jolted forward, she knew.
With fervid determination in her mind, she transformed her anger to focus. She narrowed her vision to a few isolated beams and blasted into the light. Glittering wisps of white trailed behind her as she sailed across the dreary wasteland.
Before half the morrow passed, a wall of undulating colors spread across the distant horizon. The dirt under her feet tinted with red. The girl was filled with wonder that she’d journeyed to the western edge of the Infinite Expanse. Her speed would need to have matched that of a Traveler of the Delta to cover so much ground in so little time.
Using nothing but instinct, she withdrew her particles from the beams. As they reshaped into her body, she tried to slow to a sprint. She tripped on the uneven, rocky ground and tumbled forward. After sliding to a stop on the red dirt, she wiped blood off the gashes in her face and arms. She vowed to practice the transition as many times as it took to achieve perfection.
Since that morrow, her speed had more than tripled. No other Murkovin could come close to keeping pace with her. Even a Traveler of the Delta would fall well behind her when she sailed across the open space. Only the gifted Hunter could equal the woman’s speed.
The woman refocuses her eyes on the male Murkovin walking up the slope. He reaches the top of the hill and stops in front of the man and woman. Still breathing heavily, the brutish creature bends over and rests his hands on his knees.
The former Watcher snaps his spear up and lodges the point under the Murkovin’s chin. As he lifts the beast’s head with his weapon, the Murkovin has no choice but to return to an upright position.
“You said you know how to travel!” the former Watcher growls.
“I’ve done it before,” the Murkovin argues.
“You’re a liar! Sap is wasted on you!”
As the former Watcher’s eyes narrow, he presses the weapon firmly against the Murkovin’s neck. The woman realizes that he’s wrestling with the urge to rip open the creature’s throat.
“Stop!” the woman shouts.
She throws a hand up, grabs the weapon, and jerks it away from the Murkovin’s neck. The former Watcher glares at her. The woman steps in between them and removes a flask from her belt. After she hands it to the Murkovin, he gulps down the sap inside.
“You were looking off to your sides when you saw the beams,” the woman says to the Murkovin. “You need to keep your focus directly in front of you. I’ll work with you more on the morrow. I promise that if you listen to what I say, you’ll be traveling by the end of the next morrow.”
“I’ve done it twice,” the creature replies. “I know I can do it again.”
“That’s the most important part. Believe in yourself. Go back to camp now. Drink all the sap you need and get plenty of rest. We’ll resume on the morrow.”
The creature nods his head and then holds out the flask to return it to the woman.
“Keep it,” the woman says.
“Thanks,” he replies.
The Murkovin jogs down the hill in the direction of the camp.
“Your benevolence is wasted on them,” the former Watcher says quietly to the woman. “They need discipline.”
You weren’t born in the Barrens, she thinks to herself. You don’t know what it’s like to be raised in the wasteland.
The woman shakes her head. “They need confidence. That’s how they find the focus to travel.”
“Sap gives them focus,” he grunts. “But as long as we end up with five hundred who can travel, I don’t care how you do it.”
“You’re in a foul mood this morrow,” she says.
The former Watcher drops his spear to the ground, slips his arms around the woman’s waist, and lifts her off the ground. “I was away from you for too long.”
The woman leans her face to his and kisses his lips. She longed for his touch while he was in the Desert, the feel of his muscular arms around her body. But more than anything else, she missed the adoration in his eyes when he gazes upon her.
After their kiss ends, he lowers the woman’s feet to the ground. He turns to look down the side of the hill and drapes one arm around her waist. At the bottom of the slope, the female Murkovin whose life the woman had spared sits on a rock. Resting on her lap is an infant boy, the child of the woman and former Watcher.
The female Murkovin’s child kneels in front of the boy and holds up a small rock. The boy grabs
