Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 106646 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106646 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
"Oh, don't frown so," D'see tells me with a cheerful laugh. She holds the spear out to me. "I'm not much of an adventuress, but I am an excellent cheerleader. We'll still have fun today. You do the bloody stuff and I'll cheer you on. It's a perfect team."
I am a good hunter. I truly don't need D'see's help to find or bring down a kill. But a perfect team? I feel as if my perfect partner is behind me, standing next to O'jek.
Truly, he could not ask for a better female at his side. D'see is my friend but…she is not B'shit.
And it is not the same.
16
BRIDGET
After a few hours in the snowy foothills, it becomes clear to me that I'm not half the huntress I think I am.
I like to think that I'm competent. I've learned to hunt like most of the other women here, so I can take care of myself if I ever find that I'm stuck alone somewhere. I know how to set a trap with sinew cord, I know how to dig a pit, and I know how to throw a spear. I can follow a trail left in the snow. I can't use a slingshot or a bow like Sessah or Farli, but I'm decent, I think, overall.
Clearly I am mistaken about that, though.
As O'jek drags me over hill and valley, our pace utterly brutal, it occurs to me that whoever I went out hunting with in the past—Nadine and Penny, Zolaya and Raahosh and Vaza…they were taking it easy on me. O'jek is fiercely competitive and he has no time to waste with coddling me. He moves like lightning through the snow, and I'm forced to gallop behind him with my snowshoes, trying desperately to keep up. Running after someone while wearing snowshoes? Not an easy task.
As we pause at the top of a ridge for O'jek to pick up a scent, he looks back at me. I'm positively dripping with sweat, my leggings soaked from kicked up snow. I'm panting as if my life depends on it and leaning heavily on my spear.
"Do you need to go back?" he asks, frowning.
It's the only thing he's said to me today. I can hear the dismissal in his tone, and it makes me bristle. "Of course not."
"Do you need help?"
“Do you need help” is such a triggering phrase for me. In my experience, asking for help just ends up backfiring and shooting me in the face. My mother was convinced you were only strong if you could handle shit on your own. If you asked for help, she'd do her best to throw it in your face and make you regret that you ever asked. Like the time I asked my mom for help with my homework and she wrote all my teachers, bitching about how they couldn’t teach someone as “slow” as me. Or the time I got my period during a Thanksgiving dinner party and I asked her for a tampon. She immediately went out and told everyone how I'd “bled everywhere” and that we had to leave.
Mom didn't believe in showing weakness. Not to my father, not to the world, not to anyone. You didn't ask for help, because that gave people ammunition.
So I bristle when O'jek asks that. "If I want help, I'll ask."
His eyes narrow at me. He turns around and heads down the side of the steep slope, leaving me with the choice to turn around and go back, or to follow after him. Okay then, fine. I head down after him, half-sliding down the rocky slope into the valley. Once O'jek reaches the bottom, though, he grunts and just stands there.
"What is it?" I ask.
My partner looks over at me, then turns back to the snow. "Someone has been here recently." He points at a distant set of tracks, a pattern of divots in the snow a short distance away. They look half covered by the fresh snowfall, which means “recently” could be days ago.
"You think there won't be any game here?"
He shrugs, sniffs the air, and then crouches low, slinking forward like a hunting cat, his color rippling. Again, I have no choice but to follow. I bite back my irritation and go after him, keeping a few lengths between us. I can't help but compare O'jek to A'tam. A’tam, who finds a reason to laugh at everything, who's flirty and fun—except when he's being a possessive dick. But spending a day with A'tam can be fun. I think of all the nights in the pottery cave, where we just talk as I work on the clay, and the hours seem to pass so quickly. Why did I pick O'jek as a partner again, I wonder. This has been a completely miserable experience—
I take a step, forgetting to use my spear to test the ground in front of me, and then I'm falling forward. I let out a shriek as I plunge into the snow-covered pit, my legs tangled up with a skin. My head smacks against the hard packed snow and I bang my nose and lip against it like an idiot. I roll onto my back and stare up at the gray sky, my head throbbing and my muscles aching.