Chapter 141: MIASMA'S GOOD STUFF
Three mornings later, Aiden returned to the four-channel cut with a jar of eel fat.
The forager was already there.
Her punt rested against the bank while her beast moved through the water beside it, its broad tail breaking the surface every few strokes.
Miasma walked beside Aiden.
Nyx had technically come with him. In practice, she had spent most of the trip slipping ahead through every patch of shadow that pointed east.
Cinder stayed at camp.
Aiden had called it guarding the claim again. She had understood exactly what he was doing and glared at him until he left.
Successful deception. Nobody was deceived.
The forager took the jar and opened it.
"Good fat."
"Just a trick from a lamplighter cut off from depot supply."
"Useful skill out here."
"I'd hoped to develop more dignified skills."
She sealed the jar again and set it aboard the punt.
Aiden looked down at Miasma.
The Venomspine was eating something growing between two roots. Thin black stalk. Green bulbs. The kind of plant Aiden would have assumed killed anything stupid enough to taste it.
Miasma finished the last bulb and looked for another.
"I need to know what else out here is useful to her."
The forager followed his gaze.
"She's already taken most of what the shallow fen can give a Venomspine. Spores, poison-root, stingflies, rot fungus. All good for her. None of it takes her much further from here."
She pointed east with the closed jar.
"Marrowfern will help her. It grows near deep water where the Vesperian growth is thickest. You'll recognize it by the leaves. They're dark green near the stem and almost black at the tips. Cut the mature fronds, but leave the roots and the young growth alone so the bed survives. The herb-folk used to tend whole patches of it when people still worked this part of the marsh. One of the old herb-workers is still alive upriver. If your Venomspine starts craving something I can't identify, find her. She'll know more than I do."
That sounded like knowledge Aiden would have preferred before he'd started letting Miasma eat random parts of the landscape.
Aiden looked east.
"Of course the useful plant grows near the water trying to eat me."
"Most useful things don't grow beside roads."
"Of course they don't. Someone would've taken the roots too."
The forager gave him a flat look.
Aiden accepted that he'd earned it.
She pointed toward a narrow channel leaving the eastern side of the cut.
"Stay on the bank. Follow that until the reeds thin. You'll start seeing green scum on the standing pools. Marrowfern grows past that."
Her expression hardened slightly.
"Don't follow the fern farther than you need to. The good beds reach toward deep water."
Aiden already knew enough about that water not to put his legs in it again.
"Understood."
The forager pushed her pole into the mud.
"Bring a few pieces back to replant too. If they take root, they're worth more than leaves meant for eating."
"Now you're teaching me to farm."
"Call it whatever you want. Just keep those pieces alive unless you want to make your next joke from inside the stomach of whatever lurks in the deep water."
That was harder to argue with.
Aiden went east.
Miasma passed him almost immediately.
Right. Apparently I'm the slow one on her shopping trip.
The reeds became shorter and darker. Stingflies gathered above stagnant pools, each carrying a long black barb beneath its body.
Miasma ate two as she walked, then tore into a cluster of yellow fungus beneath a fallen trunk.
Aiden watched her eat.
At the claim, Aiden and Cinder had both lost weight. Miasma had been living in a banquet hall the entire time.
He opened his Perception.
Green Vesperian Spores filled the air. They drifted between the reeds in thick clouds. Every few steps, the concentration changed. Some pools carried almost none. Others were dense enough to turn the air green through his altered sight.
Miasma kept choosing the dense ones before he did.
Aiden followed her through three patches and stopped pretending it was coincidence.
"Fine. You lead."
Miasma turned and he understood her glance as: I've been leading since the beginning. Did you think your perception would do it better?
There was something deeply insulting about being corrected by a beast who couldn't speak and still managed to make sure he knew he'd been corrected.
Nyx emerged from the shadow of a root farther ahead.
She wasn't following Miasma. She faced east. Again.
Aiden kept walking.
The ground sloped toward the water.
Dark particles appeared in the air ahead, the same kind Nyx absorbed. There were only a few at first, but they grew thicker as he followed Miasma downhill.
The Vesperian Spores stayed around the plants and wet soil. The dark gathered over the water.
The channel widened into a flat stretch of black water. No current. No insects on the surface. Nyx stopped closer to it. Her attention fixed on the black water.
The same deep water Corwin had gone into.
Aiden didn't call her back yet.
Miasma stood beside a low mound of wet earth several paces from the water. Aiden almost missed what had caught her attention.
It grew beneath dead reeds where almost nothing else survived. The leaves were broad and deep green near the stem, then darkened toward the tips until they were nearly black.
Marrowfern.
Simple enough once he saw it. More importantly, the Vesperian Spores around it were far denser than anywhere they'd trained.
Dark particles also gathered around the black ends of the leaves.
Aiden crouched without touching it.
"So it needs both. All right." He drew his knife. "I guess we're doing gardening."
He cut one mature frond near the stem and held it out.
Miasma took it from his fingers. No hesitation. No cautious bite. She ate the whole thing. Then, she stared at the plant.
"Of course one wasn't enough."
He cut a second.
She ate that too and she began to change slowly enough that Aiden almost missed it.
The spines along her back darkened toward the tips. When she stretched, they stood higher than before. They seemed longer too.
Then the smell of her venom sharpened enough to catch in the back of his throat. Toxin Filter reacted immediately.
Aiden leaned away.
"Hey, you're growing."
Miasma looked pleased.
Or as pleased as she ever looked, which mostly meant everyone else was expected to notice without assistance.
He opened Perception again.
The Vesperian Spores around her were moving. She drew them in faster than she had near camp. Green motes vanished against her skin and between her spines while the concentration around the marrowfern slowly rebuilt.
There it was. Real, visible progress.
About time.
Aiden looked over the rest of the patch.
Several mature plants grew across the mound. Smaller ones filled the wet soil between them.
He reached for another frond.
Miasma put one forefoot on his wrist.
Aiden stopped.
She moved past his hand, nosed aside a dead leaf, and exposed a smaller plant beneath it. Then she looked at the mature fern.
Back to the smaller one.
"I know. Leave the young ones."
Miasma removed her foot.
Aiden stared at her.
"You could've trusted me," he grumbled.
He cut two more mature fronds and handed them to Miasma.
This time she didn't eat them. She gathered one beneath her chin and carried it several feet up the mound. Then she began scraping at the wet soil.
"You want to plant that one?"
She kept digging.
Apparently yes.
Neither of them knew the herb-folk's greenwork, but Miasma knew what fed her and Aiden could see where the Vesperian Spores gathered. That was enough to start.
He crouched beside her.
"Too dry. Over there."
He pointed to a damp strip beside the roots of a dead tree, where Vesperian Spores pooled thickest.
Miasma carried the frond over.
Aiden dug a shallow hole with his knife, set the base into the wet soil, then packed mud around it.
Miasma pressed the surface flat with both forefeet.
They looked at the result. It looked like a dead leaf stuck in mud.
Excellent. Natural talent.
"If it dies, we blame the forager for her vague explanations."
Miasma lowered her spines. Aiden chose to interpret that as agreement.
He took two more fronds, wrapped the bases in wet moss, and tied them with a strip of cloth.
If they survived, he could try to plant them near camp. If they didn't, he knew where more grew.
Aiden smiled.
"Don't get comfortable. I'm not moving the shelter down here."
Miasma ignored him as he packed the fronds and headed back toward camp.
He took several steps before the bond tightened. He turned. Nyx stood exactly where he'd left her.
Behind her, the water was perfectly still.
"Nyx."
She looked at him once, then returned to the water.
This wasn't curiosity anymore.
She wanted to go down there badly enough that leaving required a choice.
Eventually, Nyx crossed the distance and slipped back into his shadow.
The pull remained. Aiden felt it all the way up the channel.
Fine. I noticed.
He wasn't taking the pack into deep water just because Nyx wanted something. He also wasn't going to pretend she would stop wanting it.
They were halfway back when Aiden smelled smoke. The wind carried it from the direction of camp.
Too much smoke.
I banked the cooking fire before leaving. Something's not right.
He ran.
The reeds thinned near the claim, and the grey column became visible above them. Then voices carried across the water.
Men. More than one. At his camp.
Aiden left the path and dropped behind the last wall of reeds.
Miasma crouched beside him, her newly lengthened spines disappearing into the grass. Nyx spread through his shadow.
Through the smoke, people moved around his shelter.
The forager had warned him about takers.
Three mornings had been enough for the first batch to show up.
Aiden lowered himself into the mud and started counting.