When Rains Fall (The Lost Fields #1)
Cassidy Taylor
CHAPTER ONE
Sibba
A cold breeze whispered through the bare branches, plucking one of the last defiant leaves from its perch and dropping it, brown and crisp, at Sibba's feet on the forest floor. Sibba froze, her breath a white cloud hovering in front of her. The same gust of wind danced across the meadow, the rustling grass a quiet echo of the ocean waves breaking against the nearby shore. The doe looked up, ears erect, eyes wide, muscles quivering beneath her light brown fur. If she smelled Sibba now, she would bolt, and Sibba would lose their last chance at fresh meat before the first snow. Even worse, it would prove her mother right. Darcey had argued that it was dangerous to go hunting when the storm was pressing down on them, that the animals would have all taken shelter. Her mother hated storms, but Sibba hated the idea of being stuck inside for days on end. One last excursion, one last taste of freedom, was all she wanted.
When the doe ducked her head back down to the patch of dry grass, Sibba allowed herself a quiet exhale of relief and another step forward. The supple leather of her boots was made for this, broken in after years of hunting in the forests of Ey Island. High overhead, Aeris circled. The golden hawk was just a speck against the heavy, gray clouds, hunting her own meal.
A few careful yards closer and Sibba raised the bow. It had belonged to her big brother, Jary, having been carved and strung by his own hands. The yew wood limbs were a gleaming light brown, painstakingly engraved with runes for strength and stealth and accuracy. She’d stolen it just before leaving Ottar with her mother—one more way of showing him exactly how she felt about his decision to stay with their father. Consequently, the bow was too big for her, but it only made her work harder. While at first she could hardly draw the bow, now her arms were chiseled with muscles, her grip on the bow steady and firm. She drew the string back, the arrow held between her fingers, until it touched the corner of her mouth.
The doe looked up again. Steady, she thought, both to herself and the doe. She couldn't rush or she would miss, and all they would have to eat during the winter would be dried jerky and fish, and the garden preserves—months of watered down skause that made the small house smell like a stagnant pond.
A branch cracked, the sound very close. Torn between shooting the doe and protecting herself, Sibba hesitated. The doe did not; she fled, her brown haunches disappearing into the slumbering forest, there one breath and gone the next. Sibba whipped around, the bow still held aloft, searching for the source of the noise. Ey Island was small and sparse, but in the dry season, when the tide was low, it was not uncommon for animals—predators and prey alike—to cross from the mainland and then end up stranded there with Sibba and her mother when the rains returned. Just because she hadn't seen a bear or a wolf or a field cat didn't mean there wasn't one, only that it had avoided her all season.
Movement flickered between tree trunks and she stopped her frantic searching, zeroing in on the small anomaly, the darker shadow that didn't belong. Another rustle, another snapping branch. Sibba wasn't afraid. It took a lot to scare her, and right now she was in no mood to be stalked.
“Raaahh!” she bellowed into the trees—a battle cry, a challenge. Let her bring home a new bear hide; then her mother would have to admit she had been wrong about this excursion. The figure moved, slinking from behind a trunk. It was the right size to be a bear, and just before its face registered in Sibba's mind, she released the arrow. She twitched the bow at the very last moment, more out of surprise than instinct, and the arrow embedded itself in the wood beside a man's head.
He held both of his hands in front of him as if to ward her off, his eyes darting sideways to the shaft of the arrow still wobbling from the impact. Sibba, who hadn’t seen a man in five years, took in the sight of him. He was big, but not as big as her father, nor quite as old. He had long, dark hair and a beard to match, and wore ill-fitting clothes that had been patched one too many times. The dark hilt of a sword stuck out over his right shoulder. He was like a strange and exotic creature. Her mother traded only with the weavers from Ottar, meeting the women once a month on the mainland shore. Sibba wasn't sure how to act or what to say to him, and so she did what she had always done in the face of danger—raised the bow again, plucking an arrow from the quiver at her hip and stringing it before he could speak a word.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I'm not a threat,” he said, not answering her question. “I'm not— I'm— Please.”
What did she look like for a man his size to be wary of her? She had shorn off her pale yellow hair earlier that year, and it just brushed her shoulders in choppy layers. Dirt covered her face for camouflage, and she wore furs as if she were more animal than girl. Add to that the straps around her legs and torso that held her weapons in place, and she supposed she could understand his wariness. She lowered the bow; as long as he maintained his distance, she could give him that.
“I'm just a traveling tradesman,” he said, still holding his hands up. There was something about the way he spoke, his accent clipped and uncertain as if he had to think about every word. She was instantly suspicious. It was rare to find an outsider in the Fields. The closest known country was across waters infested by Nokken and Kraken and plagued by swirling storms.
“Where are you going that brought you here?” she asked. Tucked away on the northwestern side of the Fields, Ey Island was not on the way to anywhere.
“To trade in Ottar,” he said, naming the largest port town in her father's territory and the place that had been her home for the first twelve years of her life. “A storm blew me off course and deposited me on your island. Do you have a place where I can rest and eat before I take my leave?”
There had been a storm off the coast several days ago. The black clouds never made landfall, but she had watched them rough up the waters that crashed against Ey's shore. “I have nothing to spare,” Sibba said.
“I don't need much,” the man said, finally lowering his hands. “Just a meal and a place beside a warm fire.”
She didn't trust him, though her mother would have pointed out that she didn’t trust anyone. Sibba would have preferred fighting a bear to bringing this man anywhere near her home. She could imagine her mother scolding her though if she were to turn this man away. No matter how much the woman had been hurt, she never failed to be kind. And this way, at least they would be able to keep an eye on him. Better to know where he was than to have him skulking about Ey Island until the tides turned and he could be on his way.