Chapter 34: When the Fire Dies Out

The four awoke to a cold, bitter morning with little sunlight.

Clove was the first to sit up while the rest rubbed their eyes. She shivered, bundled her traveling blanket over her shoulders, and hung a small cast-iron cooking plate on the tallest sticks that made the fire pit. After Clove gave a few quick, breathy blows on the smoldering embers, the fire smoked back up and ignited the remaining kindling.

Ike set a few more branches they’d found in the crag over the fire, along with some thin roots he plucked from weeds along the trail. He was about to comment on how sleeping near moss and on a bed of rocks did wonders for his back, and how he felt like a kid again, but he saw Clove’s frown, and how she shook off the night’s aches and pains, then decided against it. Not everybody was as accustomed to the woods as him, and finally Ike was feeling as if he was in his proper element, away from expensive, impractical clothing.

He also felt like nothing helped to flip a frown to a smile more than a hearty breakfast.

Ike rifled through the bottom of his pack and pulled out a tiny, bound sack of oats. He gleefully poured them into a cooking pot, but as the final oats clanked to the bottom of the pot, he grimaced and mumbled, “This is all the food I’ve got left.”

Neither Maritza nor Ronan wanted to leave the cozy company of the other’s side, but Ronan darted up and made for his pack.

His cheeks were flushed when he saw that despite their empty stomachs, Clove and Ike were grinning at him. They nudged their eyebrows towards a sleepy Maritza stretching with her eyes shut through a big yawn.

“I think I’ve got some oats left,” Ronan blabbered, trying to change the subject that he had spent his night beside her before it came up. Even though he’d slept on a pile of pulled roots and damp grass with pebbles and stones poking his back, he’d had the best night’s sleep he’d ever had, all because he lay beside Maritza. Her breath had touched his cheek when they slept, and he found it to be the most comforting feeling.

He found peace in knowing that she was resting right next to him, and it helped him to forget the hundreds of things on his racing mind, close his eyes, and fall asleep.

Clove had grabbed Ike’s banged up cooking pot, and she rattled it in front of Ronan’s face.

“If you have any oats,” she muttered, “add them to the rest here.”

Ronan poured his own pathetic portion into the pot, as did Maritza.

“Well,” Maritza said, tapping her oat sack to get every last grain, “we have enough to feed a child.”

“A child!” Clove exclaimed. “We have two men among us! And need I remind you, we’ve got to feed the horses, unless we plan on eating one of them next!”

The white and beige horse were resting beside the other, lying down close to the fire and by a small stream. As Clove pointed to them, their tails wagged and heads rose up, though the group could see the sleepiness still in the horse’s eyes.

Martiza ruffled around her bag and found a portion of salted beef.

“We can split this as well,” she said, “though I’m afraid that’s all the food I’ve got.”

Clove shook her head.

“We won’t make it an hour on the horses with that,” she sighed. “And even if they’re able to press on, we’ll surely fall right off from exhaustion.”

Clove fell back onto a stone near the campfire and sat, her lips soured. Her long black hair was mangy and tangled, and her corduroy fencing pants were ripped at the ankles.

“Hey,” Ike said softly, “Don’t get down yet.”

He spread both his arms wide. “There’s always something to be found outside!”

Clove let out a small laugh as she watched Ike twirl from bush to bramble, and underneath rocks and inside crevices. She had never expected him to be such a mountain man, and along with his muttonchop sideburns, his rugged brown beard was growing out. In the wilderness, Ike looked like an entirely new person.

“Alright,” he said, approaching the pot of oats, “I’ve got some thunderthistle, a few handfuls of frostberries, a couple of jarwyrms, which, if you get past the initial crunch aren’t really all that bad, and of course I found a bundle of yeetshrooms, and those will really have a good taste to them if we cook them with some salt from the beef.”

Clove, Ronan, and Maritza all stared at Ike as he darted around the fire pit, hooking up pots and cooking plates, and skewering wriggling jarwyrms and plucked yeetshrooms to twigs.

“Ike,” Ronan said, baffled, “where did you possibly learn all this?”

As if it were common knowledge, Ike added some berries to a pot of boiling water, then said, “My father and I used to scavenge from the lands of his estate. He always used to say to me ‘Ike, if you want to appreciate the life I’m going to give you up in the temple, you need to learn to live out here in the trees and mud.”

Ike portioned out some frostberry and oat cakes, and jarwyrms and yeetshroom skewers to the group.

“Honestly, I never did like it up in that temple!” he laughed, gnawing into a crispy brown jarwyrm.

Maritza and Clove covered their hands to their mouths.

Ronan hesitantly accepted the skewer and held it in front of his eyes.

“I think I saw the wyrm move,” he groaned.

Ike licked his fingers and said, “Oh, maybe I didn’t cook that one all the way through.”

Maritza coughed and Clove gagged.

“We’re taking the cakes,” Maritza said, turning Clove away from the sight of the cooked insects.

Ike brought a larger pot of cooked moss and thunderthistle to the horses. They stuck their noses over the pot of green mush, sniffed, and then ate heartily, whinnying as they gobbled the food down.

“They’ll be plenty energized after that,” Ike declared through a grinning laugh.

He turned around to see Ronan about to bite the tip of a jarwrym.

“I don’t know if this is the head or the ass,” Ronan mumbled. He closed his eyes and took a tiny bite.