Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar Page 20

  “Well!” Garrad said, with an explosive sound.

  Jem shook his head and said. “I’d best put some water to boil. That’s a right mess in that fur—besides, he has fleas.”

  “We ought to burn that damn fur,” Garrad said turning away from the table. “I’ll go grab some rags for diapering, shall I?”

  They filled the big tin bath and set it right next to the stove, so the baby wouldn’t take a chill. He held Amelie’s wrist tight while they bathed him, and sucked on his other thumb something fierce.

  “We’ll have to get some food in him,” Garrad said. “The poor thing is hungry. I don’t suppose any of the women in the village will nurse him neither. It will have to be goat’s milk.” He disappeared for a while and came back with a weird contraption, shaped like a plain-glazed old-fashioned oil lamp covered in dust. He set about washing it while Jem took a towel and wrapped the baby as Ree pulled him out of the water.

  “I think we’ll call him Meren,” Amelie said, as they lay the baby on the table, still in the towel. “Like . . . My dad.” Her voice trembled only a little. She’d seen her family massacred through the keyhole of the cellar where they’d locked her for her own safety. Ree didn’t know what she’d seen. Neither he nor Jem had ever thought it would do any good to ask. But these days she mentioned her dead parents with less pain, as if they were part of a beautiful dream now gone. He supposed she was young enough that eventually she’d heal altogether and perhaps even forget.

  “Meren is a right good name,” Garrad said softly. “And it’s not like we can keep calling him baby. Bound to get confusing if we call him Damn Baby too. Could get him mixed up with Damn Cats. Besides, Lenar will yell at us again on account of using bad language.” He’d finished washing the clay thing and was drying it on a clean rag, as he spoke.

  “What’s that, Grandad?” Ree asked.

  “Oh, this? One of the extra teats for my boys.”

  Ree blinked. He didn’t think you were supposed to call them teats if they were on humans, and how did anyone have an extra one?

  “Boys get extra teats?” Amelie asked.

  Jem just looked helpless. Some questions you really didn’t want to answer.

  Garrad winked at Ree and smiled at Amelie. “Turns out we still had one. My wife, your grandmother, Jem, often went to sell cheese on Fair Days. She left me with your father and his brothers, and I had to feed them. She’d leave milk in these here jugs in the cooling room for the baby, and they all suckled from them a treat. Now what we do is we scald a cup of milk, fill this and let it cool till it feels just warm on the skin. Then we see if Damn Baby will suckle.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to call him Damn Baby,” Jem said.

  “Oh, right,” Garrad set milk in a small pot on the stove. “Damn Meren.”

  Amelie giggled behind her hand, and Jem smiled, but Ree was thinking that maybe it would be better for everyone if Damn Baby refused to suckle. Though he couldn’t quite face the thought of watching the poor thing wasting away to nothing before his eyes. It wasn’t as if he would have the courage to put an end to the little thing’s existence. He’d already failed once.

  At any rate, there wasn’t any point thinking about it. They got the baby diapered and dressed in an old shirt of Amelie’s—which Garrad said would have to be replaced with manly clothes, or Lenar would yell about that too. When they put the clay . . . well, nipple was the only word Ree could think of . . . to his lips, it had taken Meren only a few seconds to start suckling.

  “I wouldn’t give him more than two teats full,” Garad said, as Ree looked at the empty-again jug in some wonder. “Bound to make him sick.”

  “But he’s still hungry,” Jem said, as Meren started a thin, complaining wail. Which, quite fortunately, was stopped by a sudden—startlingly loud—burp, making Amelie stifle a giggle. A little spit-up of milk came out with the burp, making Meren look surprised, but after they’d wiped that down with a clean rag, he’d put his thumb in his mouth and looked even more surprised when his eyes started to close.

  In no time at all, he was fully asleep, a warm, contented bundle in Ree’s arms. Which was when someone pounded at the door.

  When Garrad opened it, Ree could see past him to the worried, cold-looking face of the mayor. “Young Anders died,” he said. “Not all that the Healer could do would save him. We were wondering if you’d found—” He stopped, staring at Ree and the baby in his arms. Even from that distance it would be impossible to miss that the baby had fur.

  “You can’t mean to keep the little beast,” the mayor said. “You were supposed to kill it!”

  Garrad made a sound in his throat and started to say, “There now, what has . . . ”

  “It’s the get of those monsters as killed my nephew!” the mayor yelled.

  Ree wanted to hide. He wanted to stay quiet. He wanted to take the baby a long way away and never come back. Just the two of them, monsters, and no one to judge them. But instead, and much to his own shock, he found he was on his feet, holding Meren so tight that he woke up and let out a thin, surprised cry.

  “My mother,” Ree shouted, hearing the words come out of his mouth, and not quite believing them, “Was a prostitute on the streets of Jacona. Does that make me a prostitute? My father was likely a mercenary, does that make me a mercenary? Does it mean the families of people my father killed get to kill me?” Meren’s thin wail made a counterpoint to Ree’s shouting but couldn’t overshadow it.

  “Now, there, son,” Garrad said in calming tones. He was the only one who spoke. Both Jem and the mayor looked shocked that Ree would actually yell—since Ree had kept himself quiet ever since Garrad took them in, hoping no one would hurt him. For all the good it did. “There’s no need—”

  “No, Grandad,” Ree said. “Not this time. This little one’s parents died for their crimes. He’s not them, no more than I’m my parents, or I’m his parents for that matter. What are you scared of? He hasn’t even got milk teeth yet. If you catch him gumming a cow to death, you can kill him, but not before.”

  Carried forward by his sudden fury he slammed the door shut in the mayor’s face. He half expected that the man would pound on it again, but he didn’t.

  As they heard the crunch of his steps on the gravel, walking away, Jem said, “I wonder if he’s going to summon a party with pitchforks . . . ”

  “What, and risk Ree tearing him apart?” Garrad said. “Not damn likely.”

  Amelie giggled, as if she thought the idea of Ree tearing someone apart was funny, but Ree had scared ßhimself.

  He didn’t want to tear anyone apart. “Meren’s just young,” Ree said. “And . . . and defenseless.”

  “That he is, son,” Garrad said, looking at Ree, who instinctively had started rocking the baby back to sleep. “You know, if he grows up . . . that is . . . if he turns out not to be fit for human company . . . ”

  “I’ll do what I have to,” Ree said, wishing he were sure he wasn’t lying. He knew his duty. He hoped he could do it.

  “I think we still have the old crib,” Garrad said. “Jem, come with me to get it from the attic.” There might have been just a hint of mischief in the old man’s voice as he added. “It will have to go in your room.”

  Ree and Jem exchanged a look of sudden shock at the idea of that pair of greeny-hazel eyes watching their every move.

  “What’s a pros-titute?” Amelie asked, looking up from her slate and chalk.

  “A word you shouldn’t say,” Garrad said. “Unless you want Grandad Lenar at us about your manners again.”

  “Oh.” Amelie turned back to her slate as Jem and Garrad walked away bickering, and the baby stopped crying.

  And then the little hand grabbed onto Ree’s finger and held it tight.

  Heart’s Own

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  This being the first warm week in six months, Ree sat milking the goats in the farmyard. Meren, the hobgoblin baby he and Jem had rescued almost a year and a half ago, was past
being fed with a nurser, but he still liked goat milk. Besides, Ree had heard goat cheeses were selling well to the itinerant traders—now that peace was returning to the region.

  The flock of six nanny goats pressed close, bleating softly. It was Ree’s considered opinion they were doing their best to jostle him and the goat being milked at that moment, so that they could all scamper away without being milked.

  But just as they had learned not to be scared of Ree—a human who had acquired cat eyes and rat fur and tail in the magic storms—he had learned not to fall for their tricks. He kept a firm hand on the nanny being milked. “You’re almost finished now,” he said. “Stop fussing.”

  The goat turned an evil yellow eye upon him and tried to head butt him in a not-unfriendly way.

  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 w
ere 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.