Roar by Cora Carmack

Author:Cora Carmack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Perhaps death is all that waits for me across the great waters, but better to know death than to choose fear of the unknown.

—The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram

14

Locke’s whole upper body was stiff when he woke, as if the branch had stayed inside him and grew around him while he slept. He pulled a shirt on, and his muscles burned when he lifted his injured arm to shove it through the sleeve. Sweat clung to his forehead, and he decided he was too tired to bother with buttons. He lugged himself to his feet, ungainly and awkward, two things he rarely was. He shoved out of his tent to face the gradually lightening sky, and was shocked to see Roar seated by last night’s campfire, a bow and arrow at her feet and two rabbits roasting over a newly stoked flame.

His stomach twisted at the sight of her, and he wrote it off as hunger.

“What are you doing?”

She startled at the interruption, a heavy book sliding from her lap to land in the dirt.

“I was not sure if we were still to train this morning. When you did not come, I decided to be useful.” She gestured toward the rabbits.

“You killed them?”

Her lips thinned. “No. They fell from the sky and landed above the flames on their own. Some strange new type of storm, I guess.”

He snorted. “Calm your skies. I meant nothing by it.”

She lifted her chin. “What might seem a careless phrase for one can cut deep as a blade for another.”

“Now you sound like Duke.”

He bent gingerly to pick up the book that had fallen. The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram. He’d known this tale as a boy, though only from stories whispered on cold nights among homeless children looking to think about anything else but their actual lives.

He returned the book and sat down on a log, leaving one between them. “Have I done that to you?” he asked, already knowing and dreading the answer. “Cut you with my careless words?” Somehow what began as the intent to protect and teach had become a way to scorch any connection between them, like burning back an encroaching forest before the roots could dig too deep.

Before she answered, a yawning Jinx plopped down on the log between them, stretching dramatically in an attempt to wake up.

“Don’t tell me you two are arguing again,” she said. “Even I’m exhausted by it, and I’ve just been watching. Often. It’s hard to look away really. What am I saying? Don’t stop. You are my only entertainment besides Ran’s terrible jokes.”

“I have the best jokes,” Ransom said gruffly, stopping by the fire to examine the rabbits, and nodding approvingly.

Jinx clucked consolingly. “Ran, if you have to sing your own praises, you probably don’t deserve them.”

The morning continued with the rest of the crew ambling their way out of their tents, fatigued and groggy from the celebrations the night before.

Bit by bit, Locke was putting together the puzzle of Roar. She was

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