Free The Disappearance of Ember Crow by Ambelin Kwaymullina

cup of tea was continually refilled, and I’d barely finished one piece of toast when another arrived. And they all found the time to tell me something, filling me in on a thousand small moments that I’d missed. Micah had finished building a fence to enclose our newly expanded food garden. Benny had come up with a new bread recipe, and Jin had succeeded in growing a bumper crop of potatoes. Penelope was excited about a new variety of aloe. She was our only Mender and she tried to use forest plants for treatments as much as she could, to avoid exhausting her ability on minor hurts. Andreas and Jo had finished making clothes for the youngsters who had outgrown theirs. And everyone had been practising their abilities as I’d told them to – Mai had got faster, Stefan could now lift boulders half his size, and Rosa could summon more water than she’d ever been able to before.
    They needed me, I realised, in the same way that I’d needed Pack Leader. And I needed them. I’d been going crazy trying to protect everyone, to keep them all in the nest, just as Jaz had said. But that wasn’t how a wolf acted. There was always danger in the world, and wolves knew it. The promise of the Pack was simply to always be there, to defend the Pack or die trying. I called out to them all in my head.
I am your Pack Leader, and I am here
. I could almost hear the echo of it, flowing back to me from them.
We are your Tribe, and we are here
.
    Connor was watching me intently. “Do you see?” he whispered.
    I nodded, blinking back tears.
Love is the only thing more powerful than hate
. Georgie had told me that once. And she’d been right, it was. It was even more powerful than the monstrous, angry part of me. Because I felt so much bigger than that, here. So much more. How could I have failed to understand that it was through their eyes that I saw the best of what I could be?
    I’d been running away from the very thing that would stop me becoming what I feared.
    I whispered back, “I’ve been an idiot.”
    “Yes. I know.”
    I laughed and leaned against him, munching on toast and enjoying being with the Tribe. Eventually breakfast was done and they all began to disperse, drifting off to their various tasks. Georgie and Daniel were the last to go. He was taking her to see the autumn lilies blooming. I didn’t care where they went, as long as Georgie was kept away from her futures for a while. And I knew I could trust Daniel to make sure she was occupied with earthly, everyday, here-and-now things.
    As the two of them disappeared into the trees I jumped up, and reached out to pull Connor to his feet. Then I threw myself at him. He laughed, staggering back a step before he steadied himself, and kissed me. Sensation and emotion looped back and forth between us until I wasn’t certain where he ended, and I began.
    The kiss left me breathless and wanting more. But I couldn’t lose myself in him for long, not when we were no closer to finding Ember. And I didn’t need to tell him what I was thinking. Sometimes he knew me better than I knew myself. He bent to kiss me again, a lingering promise of more.
Later
.
    And he said, “Let’s go search Ember’s laboratory.”

THE LABORATORY
    I stood in the entrance to Ember’s laboratory with Nicky at my side, watching as Connor switched on the solar lamps positioned around the cavern. The three of us were deep in the cave system, enclosed by warm air and musty darkness and layers of rock. Connor finished with the lights and I examined the room, trying to figure out if anything had changed. It took a while, because Ember’s lab was big and cluttered. There were long benches, scattered with papers. Shelves, holding bits of machinery and books. And cupboards, that I knew were packed with yet more of her things. Micah had crafted the furniture from bits of fallen wood, and each piece was carved with intricate designs of trees and birds and animals. Ember loved those carvings, just as she loved