9 Preparations

The next morning, Paula set a bundle of food on the kitchen table before Brightise. Brightise looked up in confusion.

"Were you just going to starve before you could even leave Selgonfield?" Paula asked her disdainfully.

"I wasn't going to steal from you," Brightise muttered.

"Then you were stupid. Or you were just planning on stealing from someone else on the way."

Brightise blushed.

"I thought so," Paula said.

The hardest part was explaining to Clober why they had to go. With Morral still gone and their house burned, Brightise had to make up a lot of excuses.

"We are going to a place that accepts women. You know about the Amazons. You learned about them at school."

"Is Morral coming too?" Clober asked.

Brightise hesitated before she said, "She might meet us there. If she doesn't, we'll catch up with her later."

She took extra care to omit the part where she left Clober with a bunch of strange female warriors and ventured into the hellish Land of Fire. She was an awful sister.

Before they were ready to set off, Paula took her aside and told her, "Be careful not to run into any Slorigans when you get to Robenrain."

Brightise nodded.

The Slorigans were male warriors that lived north of River Draban. They were not on very good terms with female warriors. Both the Amazons and the Doyas disliked them and only interacted with them when it was absolutely necessary. That was usually once every couple of years, when they needed to have children. The fact that the Slorigans had children with both the Amazons and the Doyas, who were fierce enemies with each other, made the female warriors even angrier with them. No Amazon wanted her daughter to have a Doyas half-sister.

If the Slorigans did not possess Thunder Powers, war would have broken out between the three tribes more often. As it was, there was only an ongoing war between the Doyas and the Amazons.

"I'll just watch for thunder in the sky and head in the opposite direction," Brightise promised her.

Paula nodded. "I wish I could come with you, but I think five more children would kind of slow you down," she joked.

Brightise laughed.

Then she hoisted the bundle the woman had made for them on her back and took Clober's hand.

"Let's go," she said.

When they went out of Paula's house, they found Gren waiting for them in her garden. There was a tall white horse standing next to him obediently. Paula looked critically at its hooves, which were dangerously close to her vegetable patch.

"I heard you were leaving," Gren told them.

Brightise turned to Paula.

"My kids have awfully big mouths," Paula admitted.

"We are," Brightise confirmed. She didn't know how much Gren knew, but the less she said before Clober, the better.

Gren gestured to the horse. "I was going to give it to Morral when... I mean if..."

Everyone looked around the garden uncomfortably.

"Anyway, you can have it," Gren said at last.

"Thank you," Brightise answered.

She didn't have the heart to tell him that Morral didn't know how to ride a horse. They'd never had one. Brightise herself had only learned by working on the fields with other people's horses.

Gren picked Clober up and put her on the saddle.

Brightise hugged Gren, Paula, and each of her kids goodbye. She had never hugged them before, but this could very well be the last time she saw them, so she wanted to make it count.

She wasn't kidding herself. She might be able to get Clober to safety if she reached the Amazons' camp in time, but that didn't mean that she would survive her trip to Granza and Mount Krasta.

She might have Fire Demon blood after all, but so did all the Fire Demons.