The Warrior's Path by Catherine M. Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

Maara’s presence in the room, familiar and comforting. When she was with me, the world was as it should be. I hardly remembered the woman with angry eyes who wouldn’t have me near her.
    “Why didn’t you want me?” I asked the question the moment it came into my head. If I had stopped to think about it, I might have said it differently, or I might not have said anything at all.
    For a time she didn’t answer. I thought she might already be asleep, but at last she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “When I first came to you, you said you didn’t want a companion.”
    “Oh.” She was quiet for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. Then she said, “I was wrong to do that. I’m sorry.”
    “You must have had a reason at the time.”
    “If I did,” she said, “I’ve forgotten it.”

6. Missing
    All summer the northern tribes left us in peace. At harvest time their warriors came to raid the farms along our northern border. The time had come for Maara to take up her sword and shield and join our warriors on the frontier. She refused to take me with her.
    “Why?” I asked her.
    She didn’t answer me. She concentrated on the folding of her pack.
    “Please,” I said.
    “No.”
    “Are you afraid you can’t depend on me?”
    “No.”
    “Why, then?”
    “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “You’re not ready.”
    “I thought I was doing well.”
    She stopped what she was doing and looked at me.
    “You’re doing very well,” she said. “Next year you’ll be ready, but not now.”
    As disappointed as I was that she wouldn’t take me with her, this was the first time she’d ever praised me in so many words, and the pleasure it gave me stopped my protests.
    “Let me go part way with you then,” I said.
    “Maybe,” she replied.
    In the morning we went north together. We stopped well before dark and made our camp. We were still a long way from our northern border, but we had gone as far as she would let me go. We ate our supper early. I had run out of things to chatter on about. I already missed her.
    She asked me for a story. She took me by surprise, and I began the first one that popped into my head.
 
    In ancient days, when only women were warriors, lived a young girl and her mother in a cottage at the edge of the forest. All around the cottage were meadows where they grazed their sheep, and in the springtime flowers of great beauty grew there. The forest was a dark and dangerous place, the abode of wolves. In wintertime, the hungry wolves came in search of sheep, and every year they killed at least a few.
    All her life the girl had feared the forest. One summer day, when the flowers in the meadow had all bloomed and faded, she sat near her flock in the shade of an old oak at the forest’s edge. The day was hot, and soon she slept. The sound of singing filled her dreams. She awoke, and still she heard it. Sometimes one voice, sometimes many, echoed among the trees.
    The girl followed the sound. Deep she went into the forest, deep into the dark beneath the trees, until she came to a clearing where flowers grew. They were all the colors of the night — the violet of twilight, the pale silver of the moon, the rose of dawn. In her delight, she fell to her knees and began to pick them.
    She had forgotten that it was the song she’d followed, but when the singing stopped, she remembered. She stood up and put the flowers she had gathered into the folds of her tunic. Then she began to be afraid. She turned for home but could not find her way. Night was falling.
    As the darkness deepened, she saw the amber eyes of wolves glowing in the shadows. The wolves drew near, until they were all around her. The whole pack of them pressed in on her, so that she could not tell one wolf from the other.
    They began to run, and she had no choice but to run with them. It felt to her as if her body ran on all fours, as if she were gathering her arms and legs beneath her before springing forward