She kept walking until the sun reached its zenith, its heat dispersing the mist. Dapples of light revealed mushrooms, berries, and fallen pine cones. Laira spent a while collecting a meal upon a flat rock. She had not eaten since . . . she couldn't even remember the last time; it had been at least two days, maybe twice that long. She dared wash her hands and face in a nearby stream, sit down, and eat. The food tasted like the dung. She had hoped the meal would invigorate her, but it only made her belly swirl, and she gagged.

For long moments, she lay on her back, struggling to breathe. She wasn't sure how many scrapes and cuts covered her. It felt like dozens, some mild—mere scratches from brambles—others deeper, like the cuts along her wrists and ankles. She didn't mind the pain, but as she lay watching the rustling leaves, she began to worry about infection. The tribe warriors sometimes rubbed their arrowheads with mammoth dung; they claimed that it would spread rot through a wound. After her splash in the mammoth's waste to conceal her scent, had she doomed herself to slow death by disease? Had she fought, fled, and gone through this pain simply for a lingering demise in the wilderness?

If no more rocs arrive by afternoon, I'll wash myself in the nearest stream, she decided.

For now she had to keep moving. The farther she walked from the tribe, the safer she'd be. She knew Zerra. Sooner or later, he would spit, curse her name, and give up the chase. He would claim she had died in the wilderness, then keep traveling south with his tribe, not willing to abandon his journey for a mere maggot like her.

"But I won't die in the wilderness," she whispered, rising to her feet. "I will find others like me. I will live through this."

She kept walking, every part of her aching, until the sun dipped into the afternoon. Only three times did she hear rocs, and they were farther away, still hunting her but confused, not sure where to look. Slowly Laira's fear of them eased, but her fear of infection kept growing, and her dizziness would not leave her. She needed healing herbs but didn't know the craft. Back at Goldtusk, only the crone Shedah knew healing, and she would share the art with none.

Goldtusk. The very thought of the word made her eyes sting and iciness wash her belly. The tribe had been her only home since she'd been a toddler. Laira had often dreamed of fleeing, of finding others like her, other cursed ones, able to become dragons. Yet now that she had truly fled, the fear would not leave her.

She sucked in breath and tightened her lips.

You can do this, Laira. You are ready. You are strong. You have dreamed of this all your life, and now the day is here.