Free Raven Speak (9781442402492) by Diane Lee Wilson

the woman’s face, screwing the scowl tighter. “You ask too many questions for one so young. Just how many winters have you seen?”
    â€œFourteen.”
    â€œToo few to ask so many questions. You should squawk less and listen more.”
    Asa found herself bristling. “My father is clan chieftain. He taught me to ask as many questions as I needed.”
    â€œHow noble of him.” The throaty response reverberated as from a deep chasm. “And how very nearsighted. He’d have better spent his time teaching you to divine some important answers, such as one for this question: What are you doing so far from your clan? You’re a fool. I could have slit your throat while you slept and fed you to my birds.” Sensing an invitation to a feast, the other raven flapped its way toward the rock and joined its twin in a raucous chorus—a crowd of two chanting for a sacrifice.
    Flushed with new alarm, Asa climbed unsteadily to her feet. Every bone and sinew in her body ached. Her movements accidentally disturbed the hem of the woman’s cloak, which released an odor of blood and something else strong-smelling but indefinable. “Thank you for the barley cakes,” she said, pushing at Rune’s chest to get him to back away. “I’ll be off now.”
    With unnatural quickness, the woman had Asa’s arm in her grip. “Off to where?” Beneath her angular brow her one birdlike eye glinted, callous and cold.
    Ice chugged through Asa’s veins. She’d thought it would end differently; she had expected hunger or a storm to take them, but it was going to be this stranger. This was how she was going to die.
    The woman shook her arm. “Off to where?” she repeated.
    â€œTo my clan. They’ll be wondering where I am.”
    That snort again. “Who will—the dead ones or the dying ones? Who will be wondering about a headstrong girl who took her horse and ran off in the night? Who will care?”
    Jorgen will.
That thought came to her unbidden, and while she knew it was true, the idea made her squirm. Instead she answered, “My mother will care.”
    The woman released her arm with a dramatic flourish, the fingers of her rheumatic hand splayed against the lightening sky. She sucked in a sharp breath as the fingers stiffened; her blue eye rolled upward and back until only the mucous, yellowy white showed beneath her fluttering lid. “Your mother is dead.”
    All the smells trapped in the close space conspired to strangle Asa: the moldy dampness lining the dark crevices; the sour haze enveloping unwashed bodies; the briny tang of decay that filmed every surface, hovering. As if from a distance, she heard Rune’s hide scrape the jutting wall and her own breath rushing out of her nose.
    â€œThat’s not true.”
    The woman melted back into the present. She fixed her eye,returned to its faded blue, on Asa. “So now you think you have answers. Tell me, then, little girl of only fourteen winters: Where is your father?”
    A challenging tone, and an archly confident one, as if she already knew the answer and—Asa forced herself not to shiver—as if it were the same one given for her mother. She refused to accept either. A lot of people had died, true, but not her father and not her mother. Her mother was strong, and in a month’s time or less she’d be standing at the shore welcoming the
Sea Dragon
’s return.
    Jerking her chin toward the ocean, that great gray-green monster that swelled and retreated like a breathing entity, she replied, “He’s there, sailing south.” She didn’t know for certain that her father had sailed south, but the details seemed unimportant. “He and six men from our clan sailed yesterday … or maybe it was the day before … to find food. Last year’s rains rotted most of our crops and all our meat’s gone. This winter a lot of people got sick and