“If you’re awake, we need to get that arrowhead out of your side,” he said.
He spoke the Common Tongue, the speech of traders and travelers. It’s a mixture of words and phrases from a dozen different languages. Dalyntor had taught us pups how to speak it fluently, though among pack members, we spoke only Dairnish.
“The poison has worn off, and I suppose the numbing effect as well.”
He was right. I felt the barbed tines, sharply cold, and a dull ache. The impact had bruised me as well as penetrated my flesh.
The guide jerked his head right, left. He was taking in the threats, listening intently. Sniffing the wind with his feeble human nose.
He lifted me, grunting at my weight, and set me down against a mossy hillock in the shade of a generous elm. I dared to look down at my side. The arrow’s shaft had been cut away, leaving only a few inches. Blood, once glistening pearl, was now crusting brown.
I looked at the guide, trying to search his eyes, to understand. I racked my fuzzy memory for all I knew of humans, all I had heard in poems, in lessons, from my—
From my—
It came at me like a boulder down a mountain, and I could not flee the knowledge.
My mother. My father. My brothers and sisters.
I remembered the rest.
The burning mirabear hive.
The soldiers and their spears.
I remembered it all.
I closed my eyes and heard the screams. I smelled brackish blood, steel and iron, sword and armor.
I saw a spear poking at the dead bodies, the pitiful dead piles of fur.
A terrible rage grew within me.
I wanted to hurt someone. I wanted to hurt this boy.
I wanted to tear his flesh apart with my teeth. I wanted him to bleed like my family had bled.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “This will hurt.”
Good. Let it hurt, I thought. Let me feel actual, physical pain.
The guide gathered dry twigs and a handful of dead grass. He drew out his tinderbox and struck flint to iron. The sparks touched the grass and smoke curled.
“I couldn’t start a fire at night,” he explained.
His voice was strange. It was two voices. One was a gruff baritone, but beneath that, as if concealed, was a second, softer voice. “We won’t make much smoke, and the angle of the sun will blind anyone pursuing us.”
He drew a knife.
I drew a sharp breath.
But he didn’t stab me. He held the knife blade over the fire. “The weir women say a hot knife heals better,” he said.
I didn’t care. I didn’t want to heal. I wanted to kill, or to die, and the two things were one in my mind.
All dead. All of them.
All of them.
“I have to make three small cuts,” the guide explained.
I heard his words, but they were just empty noise.
My family. My pack. All dead.
The blade burned as it pierced my skin, and I couldn’t help flinching. Luckily, the guide’s hand was swift and sure.
The pain went deep, but I did not scream.
I would never be weak for this human.
The second cut was worse. I had to grit my teeth until I feared they would crack.
The third cut was easier to endure. I was adjusting to the pain.
It was nothing compared to the pain inside me.
“I have to wiggle the arrow a bit,” said the guide, “to get it out.”
He did, and it hurt, but he was able to remove the arrow quickly. He cut the arrowhead from the broken shaft, wiped off my blood, and dropped the sharp point into a pouch on the side of his quiver.
I made an inventory of his weapons.
The bow and arrows.
The rusted sword that was too big for him and awkward when he knelt.
The knife in his boot.
The guide opened a leather pouch on his belt and drew out a crushed green leaf. He placed it over the wound in my side.
“Hard to keep in place on fur, but it will help the healing,” he said. He tied it in place with a long rag wound around my chest. “I was aiming for your leg, but you moved at the last minute,” he added, as if by way of apology.
“I wish you’d hit my heart dead-on,” I muttered, surprised to find myself capable of forming words. “At least I’d be with the others, where I belong.”
The guide gazed at me. They were the first words I’d spoken to him, and he seemed to be debating how to answer.
“I’m glad you survived,” he said at last.
I looked away. “I am not.”
With a sigh, the guide kicked the fire apart, scuffing dirt over it. “We need to move on,” he said.
Although he didn’t free my hands, tied uncomfortably behind my back, the guide undid the rope binding my back feet. He lifted me again, still tied, and with a heave that was at the limits of his strength set me astride the horse. I was sitting upright, no longer baggage.
With liquid grace, he leapt up behind me and reached around for the reins, and we were off at a quick trot.
We emerged from shadow into light. I didn’t recognize our location. This was not the forest or the meadow or the sea. We were in a dry place of low scrub and exposed rocks.
The boy kept his horse to the rocks as much as possible, making it harder to track hoofprints.
I told myself to see everything, that every detail would be useful for escape.
I tried to focus on the path ahead.
But it was no use.
No matter where I looked, all I saw were the piled bodies and sightless stares of everyone I had ever loved.
12.
Whispers
We moved on. Slowly our surroundings changed. The terrain grew rockier and more treacherous. The stand of pines that had been on our right thinned and finally ended. Every step, for both horse and guide, seemed to be a struggle.
The guide appeared tired. Yet he pushed on, urging the horse around outcroppings of glittering rock jutting so near that both the guide and I had to shift to avoid being scraped.
I studied the wind for something familiar, something knowable, and found nothing. It whispered and moaned but told me nothing of where I was or where I was going.
The wound on my side ached and burned. The crude bandage around my chest wouldn’t let me draw a full breath.
We crossed a chuckling stream, and I realized how thirsty I still was.
I heard the whispering wind, the stream, and perhaps—could it be?—something more.
My name on the breeze.
“Byx.”
I waited, and there it was again.
“Byx!”
I strained to listen but heard nothing else. Was it some echo of my mother’s voice? Did she still call to me from the land of the dead? But all I could hear was the clatter of the horse’s hooves on rock and the guide’s breathing.
You’re not thinking clearly, I told myself. Hearing what isn’t there.
And yet again it came.
“Byx!”
I was hearing, perhaps, what I wanted to hear: someone, somewhere, searching for me. Someone who knew I was still alive.
The wind whispered its eerie music, and another memory came unbidden. My parents had been talking softly, just a few days earlier. They were sitting in the far corner of our makeshift home inside the mirabear hive, whispering about us. About my siblings and me.
They thought we were asleep.
We weren’t.
When it comes to the subject of sleeping pups, parents are strangely skilled at fooling themselves.
“If trouble comes,” my mother said, her voice hushed.
“When trouble comes,” my father corrected.
“When trouble comes,” she continued, “I worry for them all. But especially I fear for Byx.”
I heard my name and startled. Still, I kept my eyes shut and my breathing slow and even. No one feigns sleep better than I.
“Why Byx, love
?” my father asked.
“She’s so young. So small.” My mother’s voice trembled. “I had a dream, a terrible dream. They came for us. I dreamed she was the first to die.”
“The first to die.” My father was silent for a long while.
I remembered lying motionless, silent, scarcely breathing, waiting for more.
“I, too, had a dream,” my father said at last, sighing. “Worse in some ways. I dreamed”—his voice caught—“I dreamed she was the last to live.”
“No,” my mother said, and I could hear that she was softly sobbing. “Don’t even think such a thing.”
“They say humans have a word for it. Endling.”
My mother laughed bitterly. “They would have a word for it, wouldn’t they?”
My brother Reaphis, sleeping near the bottom of our tangled pile, nudged me with his foot. “Don’t worry, Byx,” he said. “They won’t waste arrows on a runt like you. You’re not worth the trouble of eating.”
“They don’t kill us to eat us,” my oldest sister hissed. She was the smartest among us, perhaps because she was the best eavesdropper. “They kill us for our fur. That’s what Dalyntor says.”
We’d all heard that rumor many times before. Not that it made it any less painful to hear.
“Are you asleep over there?” my mother called.
We knew well enough not to answer. My parents grew quiet, and so did we.
“Byxer?” my brother Jax murmured hours later. He couldn’t sleep either, it seemed.
“Yes?” I said softly.
“Don’t worry. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you.”
Jax was a year older. He was sweet and silly, and had one violet eye and one green one. He was my favorite, and I was his.
“I’ll protect you, too,” I said.
If I’d said that to any of my other siblings, they would have scoffed. Not Jax.
He reached for my hand.
When I woke up hours later, he was still holding on tightly.
13.
The Cave
We came to a stop. The guide said something to the horse, a short, terse-sounding word in a language I didn’t understand. The horse shifted his weight.
A mossy, wet-stone smell filled the air, and the wind moaned like an old animal struggling to breathe.
The guide spoke again to the horse, this time in the Common Tongue. “Stay here, Vallino.”
Vallino did as he was bidden, standing still and dropping his graceful head to snuffle for the few bits of grass peeking out between the rocks.
I tugged at the knots holding my hands, but it was pointless. My captor was clever with ropes.
Moments later the guide returned and, with some effort, yanked me off Vallino. My feet hit the ground with a soft thud. Gently the guide directed me forward around the bluff. I smelled damp air wafting from the entrance to a cave.
I tried to jerk free, but it was a useless gesture. I stumbled into the cave, and as we rounded a bend, the light from the entrance was nearly extinguished. I struggled to make out shapes in the featureless dark.
“This is far enough,” the guide said, again using the Common Tongue.
He settled me down onto my rear, not a comfortable position for a dairne. “Wait here,” he said, as if I had a choice. “I’m getting Vallino.”
The clip-clop of hooves echoed against the walls. The horse was skittish, wary in the enclosed space. I understood how he felt. It was so dark it was almost like being blind. I could barely make out the guide’s form until he was right next to me.
Carefully he peeled away the bandage and the medicinal leaf. “That’s good,” he said. “The bleeding has stopped.”
That voice. Once, when I was just a pup, I heard men’s voices from a distance. We’d strayed too close to a village, close enough to hear the shouts and grunts as the men pursued us.
Yesterday, again, I heard voices like theirs: guttural, deep in the chest, booming.
But this boy’s voice was different. There was hidden music in it, like a lark’s call from a faraway tree.
He retrieved his water pouch and a blanket off the horse’s back. “Vallino won’t mind,” he said, but the horse’s angry snort said otherwise.
I caught a flash of white teeth and wondered if the guide might actually have smiled, but I couldn’t be sure.
He draped the blanket over me, tucking it around my shoulders and feet. “Caves are chilly,” he said. Raising the waterskin, he directed a stream of cool water into my greedy mouth.
I would have liked to throw the blanket aside—I was already well acquainted with the odor of horse—but I needed the warmth. I was shivering like a cornered chipmunk.
As night fell in the world outside, the cave came alight with a soft glow of moonsnails. They dotted the ceiling and walls, barely moving, but moving nonetheless. Their translucent shells slowly pulsed with light, changing color from pale pink to deep orange like tiny, traveling sunsets.
The guide returned to Vallino, fumbling around in a leather bag. He pulled out a canvas feedbag with straps and tied it over Vallino’s nose, then brushed the horse’s coat. After picking brambles from Vallino’s gold-streaked mane, the boy raised each hoof in turn and carefully pried out stones and dried mud with his knife.
Only when Vallino had been cared for did the guide sit across from me. He had a small slab of dried meat and tore off a piece to share. I would have refused, wanted to refuse, but if I was to escape, I had to stay strong. He ripped the hard brown meat into smaller bits and fed me like a pup.
“I wish I could make a fire,” he said, almost apologetically, “but in this location the Murdano’s men may notice smoke if it escapes the cave.”
The guide studied me, and I studied back.
He had likely never seen a dairne. I wished I had never seen a human.
His furless skin was a soft brown. The only significant hair he possessed grew in black waves, tied back with a leather cord into a stubby tail. His dark eyes were not unlike my own, though it was hard to be precise in the strange light. He had no muzzle, only a strangely flat mouth. Full lips alternately covered and revealed useless teeth that could never take down prey.
“So,” he said. “You’re a dairne.”
“And you’re a human boy,” I spit back.
A wide smile formed. “Well, I’m glad that I can fool you, too.”
“Fool me?”
“Indeed.” Suddenly the gruffness that had always sounded false to my ears was gone. His voice was higher in register—serious, but not grim.
It hit me with the clarity of a lightning bolt.
“You’re female!”
“Correct,” said the guide, in that same amused-but-serious voice. “I’d have thought the fabled dairne sense of smell would have exposed me by now. But then, I suppose after weeks hunting in the wilds, I’m dirty enough to smell like the foulest man.”
“I’m sorry.” I blurted the words automatically. I’d been raised to be respectful, never to call any creature by the wrong name. “I’ve had little experience with humans.” Then, recovering my anger, I added, “And I wish I’d had still less.”
“I’ve had no real experience with dairnes,” the guide replied. “You’re the first I’ve been near.”
“Then it wasn’t you who sent out the dairne warning call near the cliff?”
“So you heard it?” The guide looked pleased. “Yes, that was me. I’ve learned what I could about your kind over the years. One of the poachers taught me that call.” She tilted her head. “How did I do?”
“The pitch was all wrong.”
“Perhaps you’ll teach me how one of these days.”
“So that you can capture more dairnes?” My throat tightened. “If there are any more of us.”
He—no, she—looked down. “I’m sorry about your . . . about the others.”
I felt words inside me bubbling to the surface like bile, but I didn’t speak. I could not say the word “family.” I could not say “bro
ther” or “sister.” “Father” or “mother.”
The pain of it would have choked me.
Instead I focused on sense memory. I recalled the smells of the poachers and the Murdano’s soldiers and compared them to the scent of this girl. I picked out the differences and tucked them away. Never again would I confuse male and female humans.
“Do you have a name?” the girl asked.
“Do you?”
“My name is Kharassande, though everyone calls me Khara, which can be a name for either boy or girl. But I’ve been called ‘boy.’ Or ‘guide.’ Or ‘you there.’”
“Are humans so stupid they don’t know that you’re female?”
“Humans see what they expect to see. I dress as a boy, speak as a boy. So they see a boy.”
“But why?” I asked, my natural curiosity getting the better of me for a moment.
“Why am I disguised as a boy?” Khara tore me another chunk of the meat and pushed it into my mouth. “Girls aren’t allowed to hunt. Girls aren’t allowed to do many things. Most things.”
It was a strange notion, but then, I knew so little of humans. It was the truth, of that much I was certain.
There is no point in lying to a dairne. We will always feel the falseness. And while dairnes may exaggerate or tell tall tales, may joke or be playful with words, we do not lie the way other species do.
Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it’s not.
“And you?” Khara asked casually.
“I am female,” I said. “I have no reason not to be.”
She nodded. “Lucky.”
“I’m not feeling lucky.”
“I suppose not.”
Khara stared at me. So much about her human face was unfamiliar, and yet her gaze was every bit as intelligent and searching as any dairne’s.
“If we were to run into the wrong sort of person,” Khara said carefully, “being female might get me hurt.” She paused. “Even killed.”
Instantly I understood what she was doing. She was telling me that she’d entrusted me with dangerous information.