Still, I tell her what happened.
“We crossed the Lake of Lost Souls yesterday.” I shrug, trying to be nonchalant as if that will have any effect on… anything. “A big black bird of prey came out of the sky and attacked us—”
The gasp that Lena lets out is loud enough so that Ronl reenters the room. “Are you okay—”
“A skystalker?” she grits. “You survived an attack by askystalker?”
Ronl tucks the infant closer to himself and covers her ear as if the bairn can understand what we’re saying. “A skystalker? No one lives through such a thing—thank the moon your husband was with you—”
“Oh, no. He’s not really my husband. And actually, I had to draw the bird away from him.” I focus properly on the wound. “He was fighting the bird off with his broadsword, but then he found himself on the ground. So I got the bird to chase me—”
“You didwhat—”
“Whatdid you—”
I shrug again. “They like flashes of light so I held my knife over my head and spurred our horse. The bird—skystalker, I guess—went after me.”
There’s a strained silence, and I glance at them, thinking perhaps they believe I lie? But no. They seem utterly dumbfounded.
“How did you get away?” Lena breathes.
“I ran it into a boulder.”
Ronl is squeezing his infant so tightly to his heart, the little one lets out a squawk. “I do not understand? You did what…?”
“I threw the knife.” When I go to mimic the motion, my forearm contracts with pain and I wince as I bring the limb back down. “It wanted my knife. Igalloped the horse toward a boulder grouping and I… when we got in range, I threw my blade into the rocks. It went for the flash of light.” And fates, I wish I still had the weapon, if only for nostalgia’s sake. “Anyway, yes, I ran it headfirst into a rock. And my injury happened just before that. One of its talons scored my arm as it came down at me.”
Lena glances at her husband. Then she rubs her face as if she’s collecting herself. “I have never met anyone who has lived through one of those attacks.”
“Nor I,” Ronl echoes. “And there are many who come here from the Lake of Lost Souls route. In fact, I know many who have lost members of their traveling parties out in that territory to those birds of prey.”
The awe they show me is nothing I’m used to, but at least Lena moves on fast. “Such a wound is very dangerous. They carry disease because they are necro-eaters, and they use those feet to gather the dead that are their meals.”
With that, Lena falls silent, but she’s not looking at me, her husband, or her newborn. She is staring into the air before her, her mind clearly working.
It’s a while before she speaks, and when she does, it’s in that language I cannot understand. And “speaking” is the wrong word. She’s barking orders at Ronl, and he’s nodding. Then she holds up her arms and he puts the baby into her outstretched hands.
Ronl has proven to be a gentle soul, but there’s none of that as he turns away for the door. He’s going to battle, under the instructions of his wife… for me.
“I don’t want to be a bother,” I say in a small voice.
“You helped me keep my life and made sure my baby survived. I pray that I am not returning that mortal favor unto you, but I worry that I am.” She shakes her head. “This is very serious, this wound—and you know it. I will do all that I can.”
Abruptly, Lena sits farther forward, even though she grimaces as she does so. Taking my hand in her own, she says, “Do you always cry when people are kind to you?”
“I’m sorry?”
She reaches up and brushes my cheek, turning her fingertips around so that I can regard the tears she collected.
“Do you cry when people are kind to you?”
I wipe my eyes and try to hide how I tremble. “I wouldn’t know.”
She squeezes my palm with her own. “You are family to me now. What is the word in your voice? ‘Sister,’ I believe it is.”
Lowering my head, I watch as my tears fall on our entwined hands.
“Sister,” I repeat roughly. “Yes, that’s the word.”
