A piercing scream made Ree jump. He let go of the goat. The animal, free to do as she wished, managed to head butt him on the knee, while either she, or one of her fellows, kicked over the full bucket of milk onto the flagstones of the yard. Ree fell, clutching his knee, biting his lip not to let his opinion of goats come out of his mouth. The wail was Meren’s, a rising and falling scream of a young thing in deep distress. He could see Meren being dragged by the hand by Amelie—the human orphan that Jem and Ree had rescued and adopted.
Nearing ten, Amelie was trusted to go sell their daily collection of eggs in the village. Which was why she was wearing her best—and brand new—dress of multicolored striped stuff, her blouse with the lace slightly askew on the collar, on account of being her own handiwork, and her best apron with the ruffles around the edge and the pockets. She contrasted oddly with Meren, whom she had in a vise-grip around the wrist.
Meren looked more human than Ree. He looked almost fully human, save for cat eyes, a light covering of curly tabby fur, cat ears, tiny whiskers and the sharp little teeth in his wide-open mouth as he let out his scream of distress. He also looked like he’d been in a fight. His shirt and coveralls, fresh and clean just this morning were torn, muddied and bloody. His fur being light, it was quite easy to see both his eyes were bruised and would soon be black. A cut on his forehead bled profusely. He was trying to pull his hand out of Amelie’s grasp, tilting his rounded toddler body backwards.
Ree jumped up, rubbing at his knee, and wondering if his tail had broken in his pants. He limped over to them, grasped Meren by both shoulders to hold him still. “Melie, what—Meren, stop wailing. You’re safe. No, you can’t go back there,” in reply to Meren’s pulling in the direction of the gate. “Now, stop crying. Stop this minute.” His voice sharpened as it rarely did. Meren stopped crying and subsided into sniffles of discontent. Ree looked at Amelie, who was twisting her apron, a sign of distress. “Melie,” he said, softly. Melie had seen her whole family massacred through the keyhole of the cellar where they’d hidden her. These days she rarely had nightmares, and could be quite forceful when required, but she would still startle at a harsh word. “Tell me what happened.”
Melie sniffled. Now that she didn’t have to restrain Meren, tears dewed her eyes and she was making sounds as though only just preventing herself from bursting into lament. Ree examined Meren and his clothes. The shirt was torn and the pants Amelie had mended, with her inexpert, hasty stitches, were ripped in a dozen new places. There were a lot of cuts on his scalp that seemed to be more than village boys would have been able to do, with their human non-clawed fingers. And there were big bruises on his shoulders, just under his clothes. As for the cut on his forehead, it was long and vicious, looking almost as though it had been made by a dagger.
“It wasn’t Meren’s fault,” Amelie said. “Really, Papa, it wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” he said. Amelie didn’t lie, not even to defend the one she considered a baby brother. “Tell me.”
“When I came out of the mayor’s house, from delivering the eggs—” Melie’s hands twisted at the apron. “I saw Meren walking down the street. I . . . I think he was looking for me. And there were boys and they—” Sniffle. “Threw rocks at him.” Louder sniffle. “And I called him, but then they jumped him and he . . . he fought them . . . So I yelled at them all, and I dragged him away . . . ” Sob. “He didn’t want to come, but I thought, if he bit anyone, like last time . . . ”
“Right,” Ree said. “You did very well, Amelie.” Superbly well, considering she’d managed to get a fighting little boy out of the mud of the street without getting more than a light spattering on her skirt. Knowing that Amelie, like himself, did better when she was looking after others, he said. “Go and set the big pan of water to boil. We need to wash Meren and bandage his cuts.”
He had the clothes set aside for washing, Meren scrubbed but not dressed, and was finishing bandaging the forehead, with a strip of cloth tied at a rakish angle around the mess of tabby fur and white-blond all-too-human curls starting to come in all over Meren’s scalp, when Jem came running from the fields where he’d been supervising hired hands. With money from the furs of animals they hunted, they could hire day laborers—who were willing to come now there was no danger of being attacked by strange beasts or pressed into a renegade lord’s service—and plow the fields that had lain fallow too long. Jem talked of putting two acres to wheat and setting five acres to corn or some such thing. Ree normally let the talk wash over him like water.
Jem was human, a blond giant of a man, and if the villagers frowned at his living in domestic bliss with a male—and a hobgoblin at that—no one would say it to his face. Besides the size and the temper that seemed to run in Jem’s family, Jem was the son of the local lord, a veteran of the Imperial army who was as likely to get cross at anyone complaining of his son’s way of life as he was to yell at his son for what he himself viewed as a transgression of decorum. So Jem could go out to the fields and supervise the hired hands, while Ree stayed close to home, planted a vegetable garden just past the farmyard, and looked after the animals.
Jem washed his hands and face in the used bath water and turned around, frowning as he wiped them on a towel. “What happened?” he asked, as Ree started to dress Meren in another shirt and coveralls. “The women bringing men their lunch told wild stories. That the damn boy has gone rabid and is biting all the village boys and tearing their arms out and what not.”
Ree shook his head, finished buttoning the coveralls. “Melie says the boys stoned him, Jem. And that she got him from the middle of a pack of them. If he bit anyone . . . ”
Jem snorted. “If he bit anyone, we’ll have my father on us before we’re much older. Which is why I thought I’d best come home and face His Rageness when he comes in.”
“You left the field hands alone?”
“Nah. Grandad is with them. He’s spent most of the morning telling them what they were doing wrong, anyway, and how much better it was in his day. He’s amusing himself greatly.”
Which was likely true, since by finding fault, Garrad, Jem’s grandad, could prove that he was still the grown-up and the owner of his own farm, despite Jem’s great stature and booming voice.
Jem squeezed Ree’s shoulder reassuringly. “If you want to tidy up, mayhap we might have a few bites of food in before my lord and father comes to yell at us.”
Ree emptied the tin bath and put it away, and with Melie’s help set out the vegetable stew and fresh bread. Jem played with Meren, throwing the giggling boy upward and catching him again when he fell, and pretending to subdue him when he tried to climb up Jem’s arm, claws extended. Ree shook his head at the matching laughter—man and boy—and was both grateful that Jem would make Meren too tired to get into any more trouble, and worried about . . . a slip of the hand, a swipe of claws, anything that could hurt one of them. Because if Meren hurt Jem, everyone would say he was a dangerous wild animal. And if Jem hurt Meren . . . If Jem hurt Meren, Ree’s heart might break clean in two.
It was impossible to raise anything from a cub—human, animal or in between—and not get attached to them. This was why this farm didn’t keep rabbits and pigs, and why their chickens were all layers save for the one inevitable rooster. They bought their meat elsewhere with the money from eggs and milk.
Watching Meren soar ceilingward, thrown by Jem, and landing, little claws involuntarily extended and flailing just short of Jem’s eyes, Ree wished he were more sure that there was a greater difference between this creature they called their little boy and the farm animals or the damn cats. He looked into Meren’s greeny-hazel eyes as they turned adoringly to Jem, and wondered if there was a human mind there.
Amelie returned, having changed into her everyday dress. They sat at the table.
“The problem is that the damn boy won’t talk,” Jem said, as he tore into the crusty brown bread with an appetite. “If Melie hadn’t happened to see—”
“No,” Ree said, as he gave Meren another slice of bread and got for his pains a loose, sloppy smile with little needle sharp teeth showing just beneath. “The problem is that Meren wasn’t supposed to go to the village again. I told him not to.” He knew he looked worried. “I’m not sure he understands what I tell him at all.”
“Oh, come,” Jem said. He chuckled easily. “I’m sure he understands you just fine. But he’s a little boy. The farm is boring. He wanted to go see where Amelie had got to!”
Which might very well be true, but it wasn’t the first time Meren had got beaten up in the village and one would think he’d have learned to stay away. Ree hoped with all his heart that he at least understood the many times he’d been told not to bite or claw anyone.
But he said nothing because Lenar arrived. The first thing that alarmed Ree was that Lenar didn’t start by screaming. Instead, he stood in the doorway, watching the family finish their food and saying nothing till Jem said, “Would you have some food, Father?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Lenar said, striding in, pulling the one free chair normally occupied by Garrad and making it groan with his bulk as he sat on it. He looked like a larger and older version of Jem, his body hardened and muscled by years in combat. He wore rich clothes, but practical—his shirt might be silk, but the jacket over it was leather, and his breeches were fine suede. A lord he might be now, by virtue of his gold in reward for good service to the new emperor, but in fact he still spent most of his day in the saddle, tracking down rumors of bandits or any hint of preying mercenary bands. He was what made this corner of the world so peaceful.
What alarmed Ree was that Lenar had taken their invitation to eat, something he’d never done before.
Out of some protective instinct, Ree rose and picked up Meren, who was drooping to sleep in his chair, as he usually did after the midday meal. “Ree—” Jem started, but Ree didn’t want to know what Jem wanted or if he wanted him to stay or was merely censuring him for his cowardice.
“Have to put Meren in his bed,” Ree said. “Otherwise he’ll wake up in a moment and then be fussy because he won’t be able to sleep again.”
He held the baby to his chest, the blond/tabby head bobbing against his shoulder as he moved, the whiskers tickling his neck. He carried Meren all the way up the ladder to the attic, still stocked with last year’s hay, smelling warm and dusty as it usually did in this season. They’d built permanent walls up there to make a bedroom for Amelie, and for the last three months Meren had shared the room with Amelie. The ladder presented no problems for him. He liked climbing things. Ree had thought he’d never recover from seeing Meren chase the rooster atop the barn, but then he’d started climbing the uneven wall around the vegetable garden and chasing a butterfly along the top. Ree had almost killed himself rescuing him.
Though Ree relished having his room for himself and Jem, part of him felt guilty for having Meren up here. The little crib looked so odd at the foot of Amelie’s little bed, covered in the lace coverlet that Lenar—in a benevolent mood—had given her. But when Ree had said they should keep Meren longer in the bedroom, Jem had said he’d be damned if he was going to have the damn boy there till the damn boy was talking. Which just went to show that Jem lived in another world. Ree wished that Meren would talk.
He lay the warm, heavy little body on the quilt in the crib, then covered him with an edge of it. Not too much, because the attic was warm. He pulled down the side of the crib too, because there was no point making Meren climb over that when he got out.
Over summer Ree would have to talk to Jem about taking a day or two and a couple of the hired hands and helping build another little room up here for Meren. Amelie would soon be of an age where sharing a room with a little brother wouldn’t be proper.
As Ree went down the stairs, his worry returned. What if Meren never spoke? What if he became violent as he grew up? Oh, he was sweet and affectionate, and would sometimes put his arms around Ree, and would play and laugh with Jem, but so did kittens. And young tigers. What part of Meren was child? Which kitten? And would the kitten show himself feral?
“Look, what I’m saying, son,” Lenar’s voice boomed to Ree’s ears as he reached the bottom floor, but he wasn’t yelling. Only being his forceful self. “Is that you should put him in a muzzle.”
“A muzzle, Father?” Jem said. The yelling would start at any moment.
“Oh, come, son. It’s not like I’m saying he should be put down. Our Amelie says, and I trust her, that he had enough provocation, and everyone knows that a dog taunted will bite back, no matter how tame. Especially an untrained puppy.”
“Meren is not an untrained puppy.”
“No, of course not. Untrained kitten more like, though why your damn young man can’t train that kitten when he trains the others—”
“Meren is a little boy,” Jem said in the tone that meant he had gone past anger and was now very calm and also very dangerous. Ree had only ever seen him get like this in defense of himself or Amelie.“Jem! What little boy walks a mile and a half of country roads on his own?”
“An . . . adventurous one?” Jem asked, but sounded unsure for the first time.
“Look, I don’t like telling you this. I wouldn’t like hearing it if it were a cub I was raising. I’m just saying he’s not quite human.”
“He’s like Ree.”
“No, son. Ree grew up as a human among humans. The . . . the change happened afterward and it’s not very deep, perhaps. But this . . . cub was born of people who were changed. I can tell you, Jem,” in a suddenly firm voice, “that no normal human child can walk at six months the way that . . . that . . . little Meren could. And no human child can climb before a year.”
Jem sighed. When he spoke he sounded tired, as if feeling defeated. “We don’t know how old he is, Father. It’s hard to tell. He might have been six months when we found him. Or more.”