Jason hurried back inside and found Kayla working with a pot over the hearth.
“Where was the rabbit?”
“You had your marker out back,” she said.
He nodded. The marker was so that he could find it again, but there was no sign of where he had buried it.
It had to be somewhere, but he didn’t know where it had ended up.
“Can you come out and help?”
She cocked her head, frowning at him, and shrugged. After slipping on her coat and gloves, she followed him back around the house, and the two of them dug through the snow, searching for the rabbit, but there was no sign of it.
“Nothing?” Kayla asked, leaning back on her heels.
“I thought you said we still had one remaining?”
“We should have one remaining.”
Jason breathed out. As far as he knew, there should be more than just one left. There should be many, and yet, there were not.
His stomach rumbled.
He wasn’t as accustomed to going hungry as he had been.
“We still have some dried meat inside. I think we can make do with that until you can catch something tomorrow,” she said.
He nodded, following her back into the home. Why couldn’t it be easier? If his mother had come around, then there was the hope they would finally find a way out of the trouble they’d known ever since his father had passed, but now they had to figure out who was stealing from them.
Somebody had to be stealing. It was not that common for people within the village to steal from others, and so Jason didn’t know who might have been responsible. It would’ve been a simple thing for someone to sit and keep watch for his return, noticing where he buried the meat and taking it.
Without having any way of keeping track, he wouldn’t be able to identify who it was.
Unless he set some sort of a trap. It was the kind of thing that could cause trouble in the village, especially as small as it was and with as few people as were here, but he needed to know. If they were going to go hungry, then he wanted to find out who was stealing from them.
The village works best when we care for each other.
If only Jason were able to see that more often in the village.
Kayla returned to her work, boiling the water and pouring it out into three mugs and steeping the spices for tea. She tore off strips of dried meat and set them onto a plate.
They took a seat at the table, neither of them saying anything, looking toward the door.
Minutes passed, and still their mother hadn’t returned. It was hard to know when exactly she might return, and now with her feeling better, it was possible she might’ve stayed at the shop to get everything back in order. They might have cleaned everything up, but there would still be quite a bit for her to do to prepare to help others again.
Kayla was picking at her meat and Jason tore off a chunk, chewing it slowly. It was tough, though she had seasoned it well. It tasted fine, but he would have much preferred something fresher.
Sipping at the tea, he breathed in the spiced aroma, staring through the steam rising off it toward the door.
“I should go check on her,” he said.
“We can both go,” she said.
“You need to eat.”
“So does she.”
“Stay here. I’ll see if anything happened.”
He got to his feet, throwing on his coat, his gloves, and his hat and hurrying out the door and along the outer edge of the city. When he reached the hut, he found the smoke still drifting from the chimney, and he pulled the door open.
The flames had been quenched in the stove, yet heat still filled the inside of the hearth. There was no sign of his mother, and everything that she’d been working on had been neatly stacked away.
Jason frowned.
Where would she have gone?
They should have stayed with her, especially with as strangely as she had been acting. Someone should have remained with her.
He closed the door, sealing it shut, and took a different way back toward their home. When he was nearly back, thinking that he might have to sweep along a different route, he found someone lying on the ground.
Jason went racing toward the fallen form and rolled her over.
“Mother?”
He checked her neck, feeling for the artery there as she’d taught him. She was still alive, but she was cold. It reminded him of what he’d seen with Angus.
He scooped her off the ground and debated. He could carry her back to their home, but any supplies that might be needed to heal her weren’t going to be there. Anything she might have acquired today could be useful.
He ran, praying for speed, and reached the hut, threw the door open, and set her down on the recently cleaned cot.
He looked around. He’d never taken the time to learn from his mother. It was never something he’d thought would be beneficial for him. He was a hunter like his father. His sister was going to follow in his mother’s footsteps, and she was the one who was going to train to be a healer—or would have, had their mother not let herself go.
He didn’t have any idea what to do or what medicines might be useful.
The only thing he had was the dragon pearl.
Would it even work?
Jason had no idea. He squeezed the pearl, pulling it from his pocket, and rested it on her chest. Focusing on the heat deep within himself, he pushed it out through the dragon pearl and let it roll away from him and into his mother.
At first, he detected nothing.
There seemed to be a strange resistance to that pressure as he tried to push it through her, but the longer he focused, the more he felt it drawing up through him. There was some resistance still, and he forced his connection to the dragon pearl, to the power he knew was within it, and let it roll out through her.
She gasped.
Jason held on to the connection to the dragon pearl, to the heat, and waited. It continued to flow through her, no longer meeting the same resistance.
She took in another breath. Her eyes blinked open and she rolled over toward him. “Jason?”
“It’s all right. I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. We found you outside.”
“We? Is Kayla here?”
He sighed, shaking his head. “No. I guess I found you out here.”
“Where am I?”
“Back in your shop.”
“Shop?”
Her gaze swept around the inside of the room before turning back to him. She held his eyes for a long moment and then fell back into a slumber.
At least she seemed to breathe more easily. He pulled up a chair, watching her.
How had he helped heal her?
He didn’t really understand the magic of the dragon pearl, only that there was some within it, and because of that, he was able to connect to it. He was able to use the power of the dragon, borrowing from it.
It was strange that the power from this dragon pearl seemed to be heat, but that was always the way he detected it. The dragon within the cave was an ice dragon, so different than the one Henry rode, and he would’ve expected the power to be different, too.
The more he focused on that power, the more he felt it was a similar sort of thing.
Kayla needed to know that their mother was resting. He needed to let her know that he’d found her, but he didn’t feel comfortable leaving.
Would it be safe to carry her back to their home?
She should rest, but he wasn’t about to leave her alone and have her wander again.
He lifted her, and she stirred briefly before falling back into a stupor. When he stepped back outside, he discovered that the wind had picked up, kicking through the village. The bright and sunny day had ended, leaving nothing more than a cold chill in the air.