The Wolf You Feed

Chapter 6

The swirling mass of panicked horses was pulling Rowan and Comet closer to the drop off. But they were also gettting closer to Molly. Rowan whistled long and loud for her horse. The animal was scared, and the urge to run with the herd was strong. Imbedded in her bones along with all the other instincts she was born with. But Molly had spent enough time around campfires to not be as panicked as the other animals were by the smell of smoke. To her, smoke meant safety from the dead that roamed the countryside. It meant food and clean water and the love and tender care she recieved in droves from the woman that was calling her.

Rowan's familiar whistle had come to mean safety and security to her horse. Rowan held back the tears in her eyes as she saw Molly slow down and then stop. The sturdy black horse managed to turn itself around. When she got close enough, Rowan leaned to her right and grabbed a handful of Molly's long black mane. Then she jerked hard on Comet's reigns and kicked her heels into his flanks. Diana take the wheel.

Rowan kept her horses moving until they were far enough away that she didn't have to hear the sickening thuds of the other horses as they sailed over the end of the bridge and crashed to the ground. Swinging down from Comet's back, Rowan threw herself into Molly, hugging the horse as hard as she could. Molly nibbled at Rowan's hair, making her happy little horse noises. The ones that she only made when she was excited enough to act like a little colt again.

Comet was feeling left out of all the affection and he crowded in towards the happy pair. Rowan soon found herself smooshed between the two giant animals. They were squashing her so she could barely breathe. She shoved Comet back a step and slipped out, letting the two animals have a chance to greet each other without her in between them. Now that she had reunited with her animal companion, Rowan started looking around for her friends of the human variety. Daryl and Carl had been on the other side of the clearing. And she had ridden a little further away than she needed to. So Rowan wasn't getting worried yet. Daryl would turn up after a few minutes, just like he always did.

Fifteen minutes later, there was still no Daryl. And no Carl. Rowan tried her best to follow the instructions Daryl had given her on what to do if they ever got separated. Its harder to track a moving target. If you ever get lost, stay where you are and I will come for you. But she was starting to get more and more worried. There had been other people around. The ones that chased the horses off the overpass. Rowan guessed the people were just hungry and had killed the horses for food. That didn't necessarily mean that they were bad people. Daryl admitted to her that he got so hungry he ate dog meat once. The thought made Rowan step closer to Molly, rubbing her hand up the horse's neck to twine her fingers into the coarse black hair of her mane. She would starve die before she ever ate her animals. Or let anyone else try and hurt them.

Rowan decided she couldn't stand to wait any longer. She pulled herself up onto Molly's back, keeping Comet's reigns in her hands. Afraid of the people that she might run into, Rowan felt for the knife she kept on her waist in the decorative beaded sheath. In that moment she was grateful to Daryl for making her practice with it. On the other side of her belt, she had her slingshot and a cloth bag of smooth round stones that would fly straight. As soon as she had the slingshot in her hands, a smooth rock tucked away into the cup, she felt more confident and less scared. It made her think about Michonne.

Michonne had taken Rowan on as a sort of personal project. Rowan guessed that the woman had done it because Daryl asked her to, though he would never admit it. He wanted Rowan to be able to protect herself, and their baby, if she needed to. The fact that Michonne was prohibited from doing the sort of things she usually did might have also played a part in her decision to train Rowan. The woman was pregnant, bored and feeling restless.

So Michonne started with gun training. Which, of course, turned very quickly into a complete disaster. Rowan was afraid of guns. Hated guns. Squinted her eyes shut when she had to fire one. Also the guns Rowan was given had a tendency to disappear and never be found again. This made Rick a very unhappy camper. Especially when it was one of his guns that accidentally got dropped in the lake.

Next was sword fighting. Rowan would swing around the walking stick that used to belong to Morgan. She could hit a walker with it. But she wasn't very good with a sword or a machete. Michonne even let the woman borrow her sword to practice with. The next day she found Rowan out back on her porch using it to give herself a haircut. This thing is really sharp Michonne, thanks for letting me borrow it. That was the end of Rowan's sword fighting career. And pretty much the end of Michonne training her. Michonne had her beautiful baby a few days after the haircutting incident anyway and no longer had loads of extra time on her hands. Especially for what she now considered to be a rather large waste of her time.

Daryl tried to teach Rowan to shoot his bow. She wasn't half bad if she actually tried. Which she usually didn't, because shooting cute little animals made her feel bad. She didn't mind cooking them and eating them if they were already dead, but she hated doing the killing. The other problem with the bow was Rowan didn't have the upper body strength to string it. She would need a crank attachment to really be able to use it, an item they were fresh out of in Alexandria.

Reg was the one that gave Rowan the slingshot. It belonged to his son Spencer, but the young man never used it. Why would he when he had a perfectly good gun? Rowan liked the slingshot. It didn't look scary, like a gun. More like a toy. Daryl saw the gleam of interest in Rowan's eyes when Reg handed the item to her. And he would be god damned if she wasn't out of the back porch the very next morning practicing with it. Her dad was watching her, drinking his stinky herbal tea on the porch swing with his happy fat cheeked baby on his lap. Daryl opened his mouth to offer his wife some encouragment. but he saw Rowan's father shake his head at him.

"Make a fuss over it and she will throw the thing away," her father whispered under his breath to Daryl after he took a seat next to him on the swing. Her father knew her best. So far nothing Daryl had tried had motivated Rowan to want to learn to protect herself. And he had tried a lot of shit. Pretty much everything he could think of to do.

So Daryl sat quietly, letting Rowan's brother climb over into his lap and rest his warm little head against his chest. He sat quietly and he watched. Rowan wasn't going to win any slingshot competitions any time soon, but he was happy to see she was mostly hitting what she aimed for. Tin can after tin can fell prey to the small round stones she hurled at them. A week later she was up on the wall with Spencer, taking turns with the slingshot. Popping off walkers with river rocks.

Rowan held the slingshot by the cup, the hard rock pressing into her palm. The best thing about the slingshot was that she knew she could use it to protect herself without killing anyone. A hard flung rock to the head would kill someone. But a hard rock to the shoulder or thigh would send them packing. Packing but still alive. Rowan didn't want to kill anyone. Not even mean people.

Comet was staying close to her and Molly without much urging, but Rowan kept his reigns in her hand anyway. The last thing she needed was for someone else to take off and get lost. She headed across the open grassy area where the horses had been grazing, taking care to keep her eyes away from the direction of the bridge and all the dead horses that lay under it.

Rowan got to the other side of the clearing where she hoped to find Daryl and Carl. No one called out to greet her and she was starting to get a sense of foreboding deep down in the pit of her stomach. She swung down off her horse and tied both horses reigns to the branch of a sturdy looking tree. Then she started walking around the edge of the clearing searching for any signs of Daryl or Carl.

Rowan found one of the torches the people had been using to chase the horses. Some thin tendrils of smoke were still curling up into the air from the charred end of it. Rowan picked it up, putting her hands in the spot where the last person had held it. She closed her eyes, trying to get a feel for the kind of person had held the torch last. The images came in quick flashes, too fast for Rowan to really see what they were. Horses running. A tall fence made from wooden beams. Orange and black striped fur. She saw and she also heard. The cries of the little children she had been hearing in her dreams. Rowan dropped the stick, kicking it away from her with a look of disgust.

There was a flattened bush nearby. It looked like someone had been flung into it or stomped on it. And it was too far away to have been trampled by the horses. Rowan edged closer. Down in the broken thorny branches she found what she was looking for. A torn scrap of plaid colored fabric. She rubbed it between her fingers. The material was familiar, but she couldn't place from where at first.

It came to her in a sudden flash of terror. Carl's shirt. The western style one with the faded white piping that he and Enid took turns wearing. That's where this fabric came from. Someone threw or tackled Carl into a bush. Maybe even hurt him. Rowan felt her eyes start to fill with tears but she bit down on her lip and wiped them away with the back of her fist. This was not the time to start getting emotional. She had to stay calm if she wanted to help the boy. Rowan shoved the scrap of fabric down into her pocket and kept moving.

Finding the scrap of fabric had been bad. It scared her. But what Rowan found around the other side of the next big tree sent a chill straight up her spine. It sent big fat crocodile tears streaming down her cheeks with no hope of holding them back. There was a small puddle of fresh blood. And another torch. This one unlit, with blood on the end of it where the char from the flame should be. Next to the blood was Daryl's crossbow.