Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
“I don't know. My last memory is of hearing the old mother score the earth. I
turned my spear to avoid harming her, and then you were throwing clay at me a
few moments ago.”
The few steps to join him were hard won. “How do you keep your mind from
hearing your body?”
“Oimit, I don't know.”
Her breaths were shallow and rapid, her Clan marks pale crosshatches under
the layer of dirt. She must have started the last journey while she had sat
watching him; there had been no pain then, not even of memory. “Tu'pin, you're
being deliberately stupid. Your body can't forget. You sucked air, your hearts
continued to beat, these things at least, even in a...” She took a deeper breath
and managed to say the impossible. “Even during ertin'alli, a freeborn doesn't
cease to exist. Think, damn it!”
He didn't have an answer but the one he had given: a mystery. “Come with
me, Oimit.” He touched the Clan marks again, and her eyes, the rich blue pure
and seemingly bottomless, even now. “You might survive and if you don't I'll sit
with you a while. As you said, death is a lonely place for one.”
When she didn't answer, he left her. The Sourrin freehold, he thought,
regardless. When she caught up, she had the feather in her good hand, trailing it
behind her.
The veil was the color of dried blood - and still high - by the time they reached
the start of the Mouth. The freehold was on the other side of the narrow line of
peaks, a shelf settlement carved out an old stone blow, a jagged tooth broken off
near the base. The small caves had water of marginal quality; he remembered
that detail from a patrol survey he had checked while planning the hunt. They
weren't a'Genn affiliated freeborn, not worth the bother, land or breeding.
A fresh blow filled the pass he had hoped to take and new teeth chewed the
veil, moisture running in the seams from the heat of the stone piercing the sasiweb.
The wet was temping, a trial of sense over the rise of instinct. Caustic, it
would quench their thirst then kill slowly.
Oimit didn't mention his mistake; the new blow would have had to be in the
survey. They circled the hot ground slowly, into the older Mouth, all her attention
given to keeping one foot in front of the other. The only help she would allow was
to let him walk ahead and break path. The surface was treacherous.
He heard her fall and went back.
She was breathing. “Let me carry you,” he whispered into her ear.
In a faint hiss: “To the column, you're exposed here.”
A long time between each breath as he held her, waiting for the next. There
were shadows around them in the night; he raised yuin sight to watch the virmiti
play around the stark peaks. They hunted in the lower reaches of the falling veil.
And were hunted.
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca