Page 46 of Bonded Ever After

“I have enough,” he tells me stubbornly.

I stop drinking and fold my arms in front of my chest. He groans, looking frustrated, but goes back to drinking, and I do too. Even though he’s going painfully slowly.

I know what he’s doing. He’s been doing it the whole trip. He’s trying everything in his power to take care of me and the Little Bean. I appreciate it. But if he collapses out of dehydration, it’s not like I’m just going to leave him behind. We both make it, or neither of us does.

We drink everything we possibly can from the bush and then collapse beside it. I feel better, but it’s still not enough. Even if we find these plants littering our path, I don’t know that this amount of liquid will be enough to ensure we survive this trip.What the hell are we supposed to do? Head back? Try again with more supplies?

I don’t know.

“Elora!” Callum gestures to a hill not far from us.

There’s motion. Something is coming toward us.

Callum helps me stand, and we both hurry back to the path. When we’re safely on it, we look back and watch as about a dozen strange creatures make their way down a hill and toward us. They’re short, about waist high, with shimmery metallic skin and lots of packs on their backs. They even pull along black and metal creatures that are some strange mix between a short horse and a donkey. There are more packs on the backs of the donkey-creatures too, which makes me wonder if they’re journeying from a long distance.

“They’re… people,” Callum says.

People with shoes, clothes, and animals that work for them. They must be intelligent in some way, yet I wonder if they speak our language. I wonder if they mean us harm.

“Do you think these are the traders our dads warned us about?” I ask, suddenly excited.

If they are, we could trade for food and water. This could be our chance to actually survive until the end of this realm. Ouronlychance.

“I think so,” Callum says warily.

“Do you remember what our dads said about them?”

He thinks for a minute. “Trade or you will die. Be respectful. Bow often and do not hold eye contact.”

My heart hammers. “Okay, then that’s what we do.”

As they approach, I start to bow. Callum does the same beside me. I’m not sure how much bowing is the custom, but we do it every minute or so, trying to convey that we’re not a danger to them, that we’re open for trading.

They stop a few feet from the path.

“Hello,” Callum greets. “We’d like to trade if that's possible.”

My gaze meets one of their dark eyes, and I dart my glance away, not wanting to cause trouble. All we know about these creatures is what our dads told us, so we better listen to their warnings really well. It might be the only way we survive this.

The creatures set into motion, laying a metallic-looking piece of leather over the ground, then setting up things all over it. In one area, they have items that shimmer and shine. Things that look like gems and gold. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as some of the things they have. But the thing is, we’re not here for gems.

They set out other items, things that look like tools that I imagine are very useful here, but we don't know what they are, or how to use them, so they’re not useful to us.

Finally, they set out glass jars that seem to be filled with water, along with different foods they unwrap to show us. None of the food looks particularly good, since it appears to be dead snails and pieces of meat wrapped with brown leaves. But it’s what we need.

“Stay here,” Callum whispers to me.

I tense, but I do as he says.

He leaves the path and kneels down, taking his backpack off. The first thing he does is take the chest of goldarium off the backpack and set it down. I tense. The goldarium is what we can part with the most. We don’t need it for survival, and yet, when we reach our destination, we intend to use it to build our farm, so we can’t give away too much.

The small men seem very excited about the goldarium, luckily. They start whispering between each other, and then point to each of their piles. Callum points to the food and water, and they pull out more food and water. When they seem to have it all out, they point to the goldarium and start to show the size of it that they want.

To my surprise, Callum negotiates, decreasing the size with his fingers, going back and forth with them, but eventually they agree upon a size. Callum opens the goldarium and pulls out a part of it, melding it like putty between his hands before he gets a ball the size of what they want.

When they see the size, they suddenly get angry. Swords come out, so fast I can barely follow them, and Callum is surrounded on his knees.

Callum bows to them several times. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

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