My nose crinkles as I carry it to my mouth. Right before I can dart my tongue out to taste it, I’m slapped in the face by a wing. Morrgot snatches the moss, his talons scraping against my blistered fingertips, then flies off to dump it.
“Hey . . . that was lunch!” My scratches ooze a mix of blood and serum. I stare at the pinkish liquid, wondering if I could nourish myself off my own blood. Cauldron, my mind has gone the way of my cheese.
My stomach screeches like a wounded animal. As I reach out for another handful of moss, Furia vanishes from underneath me, and I’m standing in a meadow beside a narrow river. The water rushes down the mountain so fast its flow is deafening. And yet I don’t miss the grunts and cries of a child with rounded ears. The young boy is patting an abdomen that’s so bloated, it looks like it belongs on the body of an overindulgent adult.
When his face begins to bubble with welts, I gasp. His eyes roll into his head, and then he collapses face-first into the grass and his sausage-link fingers fall open, revealing a clump of yellow moss.
I thump back atop Furia with another gasp. Although the meadow and boy are gone, all I can see is him.
Him and his handful of moss.
The same moss I’d have ingested had the crow not seized it. It strikes me that the bird has just saved my life.
“Thank you,” I whisper, appetite gone.
I settle for another sip of water, then stash it back inside my satchel and stare at the thickening mist that does away with what little sunlight reached the trench.
Soon, the darkness surrounding me is so absolute, the mountain so still, the air so quiet, save for the clip-clop of Furia’s hooves on the stone and the occasional whoosh of Morrgot’s wings, that my lids drift low.
Lower.
Lo . . .
* * *
I awaketo the drip-drip of something warm along my fingers. I think it may be raining, but the dampness is localized. My spine groans as I peel my torso off Furia’s neck, and my fingers ache as I stretch them open. I must’ve clamped Furia’s coarse mane all night considering how rigid my knuckles feel.
When I catch the bloodstain reddening my fingers, my lids jerk as high as my pulse. I swing my gaze around to see what bled on me only to find Morrgot hovering an arm’s length away, a limp rabbit clutched in between its talons.
I wrinkle my nose as I realize he’s about to make a snack of the bunny. He dips lower, nodding his head to the rabbit. Is he—is he offering me his kill?
Stomach shriveling from the scent, I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t—” Bile jumps up my throat. I swallow hard to send it back down. I croak out the rest of my sentence, concentrating hard on keeping down my two-day-old polenta. “I don’t eat meat or fish.”
I figure it’ll probably seem ridiculous to a crow. I’m not even certain why I’m explaining my dietary preference.
Morrgot doesn’t drop the bunny on my lap or roll his eyes at me—can crows roll their eyes?—yet I sense his exasperation. He probably thinks me a dumb human. After all, I need sustenance. I know it. He knows it. And yet, here I am refusing to eat food that would sustain me.
“How much longer till we find your friend?”
His black wings stir the air once, twice, and then he flies off. It feels like a full hour slips by before his blackness blunts the white sky. Perhaps it has been one hour. Or two.
Although the sun barely splinters the smog, the air seems brighter, hinting at midday.
He flaps his wings, easing himself back into the trench, interrupting the one-sided conversation I’ve been having with Furia. Horses are, regrettably, rather aloof creatures. I wonder if Morrgot can plant images inside the stallion’s mind.
Morrgot sinks lower and extends one metallic talon.
I stare at the branches ornamented with large berries, then up into his jeweled eyes. “For me?”
His head dips.
I take the branches and, without wasting a single second, pick a berry and pop it into my mouth. It’s sweet, so very sweet, like the candy Giana used to bring back from Tarecuori. The juice slips down my tongue, a puddle of pure delight. Perhaps it’s because I’m starving, but I anoint these berries Most Exquisite Crop in all of Luce.
I pick off every pink pod, even the shrunken ones, and then contemplate gnawing on the branch in the hopes that the sap is as sweet as the nectar. In the end, I forgo acting like a rabid animal with a bone. I do, however, pull on Furia’s reins and offer the leaves and branch to the horse. The horse sniffs it once, then takes it from my fingers and chomps.
Although I’ve caught the horse licking the high stone wall to gather the moisture beading between the rocks, I haven’t seen him eat anything. Unless Morrgot has fed him while I was sleeping?
I cannot believe I slept while riding a horse.
