The Gatherer (Brilliant Darkness 2.5) by A. G. Henley Page A

already wilting. If there’s anything else down here, it’s been smashed flat. I listen to the agitated voices of the 
anuna
 as they search… the breeze rattling leaves in the branches of trees around us… the song of one intrepid bird not driven off by the commotion. Breathing slow and deep, I sift the air as I might a handful of grain.
    And there 
is
 something else.
    One scent stands out. It’s like the smoke from a fire, only more abrasive, as if it were created by something other than burning wood. I realize it’s been needling my nose and throat; I just wasn’t paying attention.
    “I smell something—” I start to say, but someone interrupts.
    “Is this one of their feathers?” a man asks. The group goes silent.
    “Yes,” Kai says.
    “Arika.” Kadee speaks from a few paces away, regret in her voice. “I found Bega.”
    Kora and Darel’s mother breaks down again. Kora would never willingly leave Bega behind. How much more can the poor woman take?
    I reach out for the doll. Soft wood shavings escape into my palm from her lumpy body. I hold her to my nose. She smells dirty and mildewed, but under that, I detect the familiar scents of my young friend. Tears leak from my eyes.
    When I hugged her, Kora’s thick, curly hair hinted of the spices of Arika’s cooking pot, the grassy meadows where she played with the other children, the water hole where she swam, the smoky 
allawah
 where she learned the stories of her people from Wirrim and Kadee, and her own cozy bed. All the sunny settings of her young life.
    I bring Bega to Arika and hold her as she shakes with sobs. Rage courses through me. How can these women 
do
 this to us? Are they completely heartless?
    “Nothing like this ever happened before the 
lorinyas
 came, Nerang,” the man who found the feather says. His voice sounds menacing. “
They
 brought this ill luck to us.”
    “We should never have taken them in,” a woman says.
    I stiffen, and a shiver runs down my back. They mean 
us
: Peree, me, the other Lofties and Groundlings.
    “We didn’t cause this.” My voice stays even.
    “How do we know that?” the man says. “Myall wears the same kind of feather.”
    I clutch my hands together to keep them from shaking. “We found it in the woods back home. We didn’t know where it came from.”
    “Maybe the Fire Sisters were there, watching you. Maybe they followed you here.” The woman’s words pulse with accusation.
    “Through the caves?” Kadee asks. “The Sisters couldn’t have followed them that way without being seen.”
    “Well, we had no trouble before the 
lorinyas
 arrived,” another man says. “It’s their fault!”
    “Enough,” Nerang says. “We will not treat our new friends like criminals; it will not help bring the 
guru
 back.”
    The shouts die down to grumbling, but the damage is done. I already feel sick about the children. Now I wonder if it could be our fault. My best friend Calli found that feather in the woods around our home; she gave it to me to give to Peree. 
Did
 the Sisters somehow follow us? Did we bring this terrible fate on Koolkuna?
    People begin to pace as we wait, their feet swishing the grass, back and forth, back and forth. I sit with Arika, Moon, and Yani, gnawing my thumbnail, wracked with worry for Kora, Darel, Thrush, Frost, and the rest of the children. Wracked with guilt that we might be responsible. Wracked with a desire to 
do something
.
    “Kadee,” I murmur. “Didn’t the 
anuna
 already know about the Fire Sisters if they took Kai when she was young?”
    “This is the first I’ve heard of them,” she says. “Kaiya wouldn’t speak of what happened to her. We knew she disappeared from the Myuna, and her father never came back from trying to find her. She was with the 
runa 
when she was discovered, and Nerang nursed her back to health. That’s all we know.”
    Kadee told me before that Kai was one of the few people to survive living among the sick