When they tumbled out on a rocky hillside, she blinked several times, trying for a return of her normal perspective.
Rune stood next to her, tail twitching and head turning from side to side as his nostrils flared. “I am going hunting,” he announced and took off at a lope.
Aislinn was hungry, too. Reaching out with magic—or trying to—she understood that she was far too depleted to do much of anything that way. “Unless a mouse happens to run over my foot and I’m lucky enough to catch it, guess I’m out of luck,” she groused.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Find water for us,” drifted back to her.
Good advice. Opening her senses, she sought the tang that meant water. It would have been easier with magic, but it wasn’t impossible without it. Nevada wasn’t as dry as it looked. Once her mother had checked out, Aislinn had spent several weeks wandering from one miner’s shack to another, trying to find a place to shelve her grief. There had still been cars and gasoline to power them then, so it had been relatively easy to leave Salt Lake—and to return. Tara hadn’t seemed to understand that Jacob was dead. She’d talked to him all the time. And she’d reverted to Gaelic, stopped bathing, and almost stopped eating. It had been as if Aislinn hadn’t even existed anymore. In fact, when she’d returned after a month of knocking around Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, her mother had just looked blankly at her. Aislinn had wondered if her mother even realized she’d been gone.
Water. She wrenched herself back to the present. A spring was just over the next ridge. Either that, or an artesian well. Trusting that the wolf could find her, she started for it, stumbling over rocks littering a talus field. Maybe she might have just enough magic to help her pick a path… No go. She stubbed a toe, cursed, gave it up, and used her eyes.
The spring was exactly where she’d sensed it. It wasn’t much, a trickle oozing upward out of moss-coated ground. She’d just eased herself down next to the slick, algae-coated rocks when she spied Rune walking toward her. His mouth bulged with two fat rabbits.
She dug a small circle around the water to encourage it to pool and lurched back to her feet. “Nice!” she exclaimed. “Dinner.” Gathering sage, she piled it between rocks. When she had a respectable heap, she lit it with a thought. Fire was the first magic and by far the easiest. Aislinn waited for the blaze to die down so she could cook over it.
She picked up a rabbit and looked quizzically at the wolf. “One of these is yours.”
“I can get more.”
“No,” she insisted. “Eat one of these. If we’re both still hungry, you can hunt for more.”
The wolf snatched up the smaller of the two rabbits and hauled it a few feet away. She heard the crunch of bones breaking. Gutting her rabbit with the dirk that always hung from her waist, she tossed the entrails Rune’s way. Once she’d skinned the carcass, she threaded the meat onto thick pieces of scrub oak and warmed them over her fire. Not caring that the meat wasn’t fully cooked, she ate as soon as blood stopped dripping from it, sighing as the succulent flesh burst on her tongue. Sometimes, she thought she could taste the desert grasses the rabbits fed on. Who knows? Maybe I can.
Rune edged closer, snout painted with gore. He stuck his nose in the sandy declination she’d hogged out and drank, slurping loudly. Then he walked over to her small stack of rabbit bones and started crunching them down. “Do you want more?”
“No, I’m good. We need to sleep. I don’t have enough magic right now to move a raccoon out of here, let alone the two of us.”
He nudged her with his nose. “Sleep, human. I will take first watch.”
She stuffed the last of the rabbit into her mouth, chewing. “Okay,” she said, her words garbled by the meat, “but wake me so you can rest, too.”
He didn’t, though. When she opened her eyes, the sky was thick with stars. It was cold, like it always was in high desert places in the dead of night. Rune lay next to her, warm against her side. Even though she’d known him for only a few hours, it felt as if they’d been together forever. A part of her wondered how that could possibly be. Another part accepted—and welcomed—that she was no longer alone.
“You were supposed to wake me.”
“I would have. The night is not yet over.” His voice rumbled against her.
She draped an arm around his warmth and fitted her body against his back, almost like she would have done with a lover. “Sleep, Rune. We will leave when it’s closer to dawn.”
She felt his body relax against her, heard his breathing slow, and smiled to herself. Yes, it was a lot like having a lover, though simpler in many regards. She thought about their next jump. It would be the first one beyond where she’d been before. She didn’t have an image to hold in her mind. Maybe I can ask Rune. He’s been to Taltos.