The Farwalker's Quest by Joni Sensel Page A

and spread it wide to cover them both. Ariel eyed it with longing. Then some harder emotion slipped over her heart. With a baleful glare, she turned back into her huddle. She didn’t want tobe any closer to someone so awful, not even for a measure of warmth.
    After a moment, heavy oilcloth dropped on her. She whirled indignantly, squirming away. But he hadn’t moved nearer. Without a glance in her direction, he lay back down where he’d been. Ariel had the coat to herself.
    She drew it around tight, leaving herself just a slit to breathe through. Gritting her teeth to stop their chatter, she gripped her only touchstone to home, the green bead at her throat. With morning birds chirping as though nothing was wrong, Ariel waited to hear snoring.
    Her head buzzed with exhaustion, but sore limbs and a sore spirit kept her awake. She yearned for her warm bed, her home, and especially her mother. Her chest felt as if vital fluids were flowing out from a hole in her heart. The longer it leaked, the more hollow the rest of her felt. Yet one burning irony remained: only a half day ago she had, impossibly, wanted to leave all those things that she loved.
    Watching clouds mount on the horizon like an assembling rescue squad, Ariel told herself they hinted that someone was coming. A dread veil hid her mother’s fate from her, but Luna wouldn’t come searching in any case. She’d send others who were able to fight—Jeshua, maybe, along with some Fishers. Slowly warming under the oilcloth, Ariel fell into a half-waking dream where a band from Canberra Docks raced through the forest on a trail of hoofprints, shouting their rage. They might even have Elbert, bound and gagged, to lead them. They would never stop to rest but would hurry on, hurry on, until they found her and saved her. They could arrive anytime.
    In the next days, Ariel clung to that dream like a dog with a bone. Slowly, gnawed by time and distance, it shrank.

CHAPTER
13
    Thunder began rumbling midday as though answering Ariel’s stomach. When rain splattered Scarl’s clothes, he sat up and moved farther under the witch broom’s meager protection. He shivered in the ensuing downpour. Afraid he’d take his coat back, Ariel pulled it more snugly around her and pretended to sleep.
    She jerked when Scarl’s hands moved to his coat. A whimper escaped despite her resolve not to give him the pleasure of knowing her misery.
    â€œRest easy. I just want something out of a pocket.” He rummaged. Withdrawing a strip of dried fish, he tore it and passed half to her. The familiar salty taste redoubled her homesickness without really soothing her hunger.
    â€œCan I get a drink?” she asked, trying to decide whether to scoop water with her bound hands or simply throw herself onto her belly and slurp like the horse.
    Scarl retrieved a battered tin cup from another coat pocket. “Dip it shallow,” he said, handing it to her, “and you’ll drink less mud.”
    After quenching her thirst, she ventured another question. “When will Elbert get here?”
    Scarl’s dark eyes flicked to her. “When he does.”
    â€œDoes he know where we are?”
    One corner of his mouth twitched. “He’ll find us.”
    He was not overly fond of words, plainly, but his responses were so prompt now, she tried again. She was afraid of the answer, but she couldn’t bear the black uncertainty, either.
    â€œWas he hurting my mother?”
    Inhaling deeply, Scarl looked her straight in the eyes. “I told him to tie her and gag her, that’s all. As long as it takes a while for her to be found, we’ll have too much head start to be followed.”
    Ariel dismissed the head start. Her rescuers would overcome that. She wanted badly to believe the rest that he’d said. It would have been easier if his gaze hadn’t slid to the wet ground the moment he finished speaking.
    â€œI’m the one who