(Photo by Didarul Islam)

The two trackers made camp with practiced speed, unrolling what appeared to sheets of canvas that they tied and staked in place, using tree limbs for the higher anchor points. Neither of them spoke while they worked, clearly having done this enough times that they knew what the other would need of them to do. None of the trees was near enough to Meric for the trackers to use in setting up her shelter so they draped a couple of blankets over her and left it at that.

Soon, the two trackers picked up their packs and settled into their respective shelters. Nis couldn’t see what they were doing anymore, but judging from the sounds she guessed they were eating.

“Gorvis,” one of them whispered, “my waterskin’s missing.”

“Meric probably took it,” the other responded. “She’s confused my pack for hers a couple times.”

The tracker whose waterskin Nis had taken crawled out of his shelter and located Meric’s pack. After a few moments of searching he returned to his shelter.

“You find it?” Gorvis asked.

“I found one, not sure if it’s mine or hers.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Gorvis yawned. “I’d guess she grabbed yours and then fell asleep with it.”

They both fell silent and soon thereafter the croaking of frogs began to fill the night. Before long, crickets and night birds began to add their own sounds to those of the frogs and Nis wondered whether or not the trackers would find it difficult to fall asleep with so much noise. The benefit to the noise, however, was that it would help obscure some of the noise she might make when she left.

Nis hovered on the verge of striking out again, torn by her concern over whether or not the trackers were asleep yet. Even with the other noises around them, Nis was pretty certain she would trip at least once and no amount of croaking, chirping, or hooting would cover that up if the trackers were still awake.

To pass the time, Nis looked up at the constellations and watched as the moon made its way across the sky. From Mel’s memories, Nis had learned to tell the general date based on which constellations the moon passed through. She hadn’t been gone from the archives long enough to have lost track of the days but it was a good way to pass the time. The constellations that the moon passed over would show her what month it was and then she could determine the week of the month based off of which stars in the those constellations were covered by the moon.

Someone in the clearing moved and Nis froze, suddenly becoming aware that she had been muttering aloud the names of the constellations and counting off the stars. Had someone heard her or were they just turning over in their sleep?

More movement, and this time it was clearly someone moving in her direction.

Nis began poking around with her stick, locating rocks and roots that she could step on to avoid making noise by stepping on any fallen sticks and leaves. Unfortunately there were still the branches that caught on her clothing as she went by. Most of the snags were quiet but enough of them snapped back before she could catch them and the rustling was certainly giving her away as she could now hear footsteps approaching.

Panic began to well up as memories of the night she’d been attacked by Skav came back to her. She couldn’t be caught. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. All that she wanted was to be left alone, to go back to how life had been before when she could simply wake up, record her dreams, and get on with her day.

“Nis?” someone hissed. “Nis is that you?”

It wasn’t one of the trackers who had spoken.

“Meric?” Nis replied before she could stop herself and immediately she clamped her hand over her own mouth. How could she be so stupid and give herself away like that? All she had to do was stay silent and Meric would probably have left it at that. Now that Meric knew it was Nis, all Meric needed to do was call out to the trackers and Nis’ brief attempt at freedom would be ended.

However, instead of calling out, Meric kept her voice low and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Nis replied, taking a couple steps further away.

“Yeah, I’d imagine,” Meric said and Nis heard her taking a few steps closer. “Do you need anything?”

Nis hesitated before answering. Was Meric being earnest and offering her help?

“I’ve got what I need,” Nis told her, deciding that it would be best not to simply trust Meric. It could be that Meric was trying to lure Nis closer to camp only to then call for the trackers so that they would have an easier time capturing her.

“I could come with you,” Meric offered.

“What? No!” Nis hissed at her. “You came to help capture me!”

“I didn’t,” Meric replied, taking a few more steps towards Nis. “I came to try and help you. And I have.”

For each step that Nis took, Meric matched her, but she did not try to truly catch up to Nis. It was as though Nis was some wild animal that Meric was trying to catch and tame, a comparison that Nis wasn’t too keen on.

“I’m not going back there,” Nis said. “Didn’t you hear what I did to Kyneh? I almost killed him!”

“I don’t want you to go back,” Meric insisted. “I don’t want to go back either.”

“You’re lying! Do you think you’ll get to skip the rest of your apprenticeship if you help bring me back?”

“I’m not lying. I really just want to help you.”

“Well, I don’t need help. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

“No you haven’t,” Meric shot back at her and this time there was a hint of warning in her voice. “I’ve been going out each night to help muddle your trail so the King’s trackers can’t follow you so easily. They’re really good at spotting a trail but you and I have the same size feet and we leave similar tracks and I had them wandering all over for those first couple of days, leaving them false trails each night. We’d probably still be back there if they hadn’t heard that brute attack you. We’d almost caught up to you when the storm hit. The flood slowed them down for a day but then they saw your campfire on the mountain and there was nothing I could do to hide that.”

“Well I’ve been staying ahead of them just fine on this mountain.”

Meric let out a snort as she stifled her own laughter. “They would have caught you two days ago if I hadn’t insisted we sneak rather than go along so quickly. I told them I was too tired, too sore to keep going, and that if you saw us you might get so afraid that you’d slip and fall, possibly injuring yourself. I also started making campfires as well in the hopes of showing you where we were and to warn you that we could see your campfires too.”

Nis, who hadn’t stopped moving away from the trackers camp, considered what Meric was saying. If it were true, then she did owe a lot to Meric. It did explain why the trackers hadn’t found her those first few days when she’d been hiding in the copse.

“Listen,” Meric said in calmer tones, “if I wanted you to be caught, I would have woken the trackers by now.”

“Why, then?” Nis asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to help me?”

“Part of it’s that I don’t think it’s right to keep somebody locked up like that. You aren’t a book to put on a shelf.”

“Fine, then lead the trackers away and leave me alone. You don’t need to come with me to do that.”

“I know, but –

“But what?” Nis demanded. “Why would you want to be out here, struggling to survive, with people hunting you, when you could be back at the archives safe and sound?”

“Because…because,” Meric said, lowering her voice even further, “ever since I was little I’ve dreamed about being different people, living in different places. I thought everyone did, but my parents got upset the first time I mentioned it so I didn’t talk about it anymore. Then I heard about you when I began my apprenticeship and it seemed strange how the archivists would all get so excited whenever you came by, but then tried to hide their excitement from you as if they didn’t want you to know how much they wanted you to tell them about your dreams. It made me uncomfortable the way they’d whisper about the things you’d tell them. They were almost skipping the day they made you part of the archives. It was like you weren’t a real person to them. They just wanted your dreams. They never cared about you as a person.”

That gave Nis reason to pause. “You dream about past lives?” she asked.

“Not as often as I used to,” Meric admitted, “but yeah, a couple times a week at least.”

“Tell me about one of your lives,” Nis said, figuring that if Meric was lying she would have a difficult time coming up with something that sounded believable.

“I lived in a small town on the seashore,” Meric began at once. “We spent most of our time fishing in small boats near the coast. I was about this age when people started to notice that there weren’t as many babies being born. People laughed and joked about it at first, but then a year went by where no babies were born.”

Nis was about to accuse Meric of just taking that account from one of her dream journals but then remembered that her dream about Tique telling Mel about that place had happened after she left the archives.

“Do you know where that town was?” Nis asked.

Meric nodded. “Past the Unexplored Wastes and across the sea to the south.”

“None of the maps in the archives show any lands that far south,” Nis pointed out.

“I have the one I made,” Meric said. “It’s a bit dark now, but I can show it to you once it’s light enough.”

“Alright,” Nis said. “Let’s go.”

Meric hurried over, finally crossing the distance between them and gripping Nis in a tight hug.

“Okay, okay,” Nis said, uncomfortable with the sudden show of affection.

“Let’s get away from the stream,” Meric suggested. “We’ll leave fewer footprints on dry ground.”

Nis let her lead the way, quickly acknowledging that Meric was better at navigating through the underbrush than she was. Soon they were on a boulder field where they wouldn’t leave any sort of a trail.

“I saw this from the peak when we crossed over,” Meric explained. “It runs right up to Fool’s Fall River. We can swim to the far side of it and then wade upriver through the shallows so we don’t leave a trail. After a few miles we can cut across to Patience River. That should throw the trackers off our trail and give us time to build a raft and float down Patience.”

“You’ve really studied those maps I made,” Nis said.

“What?” Meric asked, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Those are the names Mel gave those rivers,” Nis explained, “but not the names everyone else used for them. I think they’re actually called The Twin Rivers.”

“Oh,” Meric said, “yeah, I guess I must have confused your maps for the official ones.”

“Right,” Nis said. None of her maps had been stored in the archives until she’d been taken in by it so Meric studying them and not knowing what they were seemed dubious at best. Nis would have to ask her about that later. Maybe it was as simple a thing as Meric being too embarrassed to admit that she’d been studying Nis’ journals. For now she was willing to trust Meric and follow her lead.