It was longer and leaner, with a pointed nose and ears and a look of cunning rather than the cold confidence of a wolf. “A coyote might sneak in and steal a chicken,” the creature continued.
Kuro moved to put himself between the beast and the chickens, although he didn’t know what he’d do if it attacked. The two of them were closely matched in size, and Kuro lacked the mouth full of sharp teeth that the coyote had.
“Worry not, Kuro Hayashi, I’ve not come for any chickens today.” The words carried with them more meaning than if they had been voiced; “chicken” was laden with hunger, and there was a clear emphasis on the word “today.”
Two words that stuck out in the uncomforting assurance, though, did not carry any meaning. They were bland and flat, like a blank grey space in an otherwise ornate tapestry. “How do you know my name?” he asked.
“I have heard it said,” replied the coyote. “You are a creature of some conversation in the wildlands.” He said “wildlands” as though it were the punchline to a joke.
Kuro felt at quite a disadvantage. This creature seemed to know a fair bit about him, and Kuro didn’t even know what he was talking to. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying not to offend the chatty predator. “Who are you?”
“Apologies, I have not introduced myself, how rude.” The beast bowed its head courteously. “I forget sometimes how much people love their names. Those like me do not rely on such things. We have a voice and a scent, true things that cannot be changed or hidden. Names are costumes, disguises, and lies. No different than the clothes you wear. Wouldn’t you agree, Kuro Hayashi?” Again, Kuro’s name, flat and uninteresting, a plain printed label covering up the thing it was meant to identify.
“I suppose so.” It was hard to argue with the coyote, but Kuro couldn’t help but notice that he had failed to explain who he was in any way. Rather than press the issue, he asked, “Why are you here?”
“I have come to see you, of course, Kuro Hayashi.” The coyote performed a parody of a bow. “Much has been said about you, but very little has been said to you. Most are too bound by promises and propriety to come themselves and are happy to partake in gossip. I found myself bored of rumour and having a gap in my schedule, so I decided to pay you a visit, to smell for myself whether what they say is true. Do forgive my rudeness of appearing unannounced, but I doubted I could secure an invitation. We coyotes are rarely welcome guests.”
“Why is that?” Kuro asked.
The coyote chuckled. “We are thieves, sneaks, and liars. We’re villains. Just ask anyone.” He gave a sly, vicious grin.
“Are you, really?” said Kuro. He didn’t have much trust in the opinion of anyone.
That earned a genuine laugh and a wagging tail from the coyote. “You would ask a liar for their truth. What a strange child. Perhaps it is fair to say that when everyone has already decided who and what you are, one can choose to either accept that role or spend their entire life fighting against it. One of those is a lot of work and is prone to failure. Though I don’t need to tell you that, do I, master thief Kuro Hayashi?”
The coyote was brutally correct, and it succeeded in making Kuro change the subject. “What did you want to know?”
“Whether what they say is true, of course.” The coyote gave a sly grin. Though with the slant of his eyes and angle of his mouth, he couldn’t likely produce any other kind. “Would you like to know what they say?”
Kuro didn’t expect that he did, but the coyote didn’t wait for an answer. “Word amongst the fairy folk is that you are an impossible child: a motherless son and a lutin wizard. They say that you were found and raised by the Path of the Lost and are the beloved of the West Wind.”
“That’s mostly sort of true,” said Kuro.
“That’s my favourite kind of true,” replied the coyote, settling on its haunches and preparing to listen.
“Some wizards made me out of lutin and human parts. I don’t really know how that worked, but I don’t think I have a mom. I grew up mostly in Detritus Lane. That’s what you mean by the Path of the Lost, right? I don’t think it raised me, though. It’s just a street.”
The coyote perked his ears and cocked his head. “Is it? Good to know,” he said mockingly.
Everything the coyote said dripped with layers of implied meaning and innuendo that Kuro couldn’t start to unravel. He felt like the beast was playing a careful game of verbal chess, and Kuro was throwing dice in a game he didn’t know the rules to. “I don’t even know what you mean about the wind, though.”
“Don’t you?” the coyote replied in mock surprise. “Does she not cling to you, caress you, carry you, and guard you jealously? Is that not her scent I smell on you?”
“Do you mean my magic?” asked Kuro. “That’s just magic. The wind doesn’t have feelings. It’s not a person.”
“I suppose the wizards told you so,” said the coyote. “I’m sure they’re correct. They know so many things. Then of course, I’m not a person either.”
That raised a very big question for Kuro. “What are you, actually?” Kuro asked, and then quickly added, “Sorry, is that okay to ask?”
“Whatever do you mean?” the creature said, pretending not to understand.
“You’re not an ordinary coyote,” said Kuro. “Most coyotes don’t talk.”
“Ah, you suspect me of being something more than a mere animal on the prowl for unattended poultry?” Again, a sly grin and a slow wag of the tail. “An excellent question. It could be that I am a changeling in a strange disguise, or a wizard’s familiar left too long unattended and begun to think for itself. Or it may be that I am an ordinary coyote who has learned how to converse with people. Does that seem any less likely than a human who can pass through the veil and steal the magic of the fey? Perhaps I know even less about what I am than you do yourself. What I can tell you is that there are many things in the wildlands unknown to wizardkind. Unlike some, I am exactly what I appear to be, and there are many stranger things in the world than I.”
At that moment, Kuro was startled by a deep but gentle thumping noise from behind him. He looked to see that George had extended his legs and was slowly stepping his way into the corner of the barn.
“For example,” said the coyote, pointing his nose toward the tortoise. “Did you know that our mutual friend there can see the future? I suspect that his vigorous escape is signalling that I have overstayed my welcome.”
Seconds later, Ralph burst through the door. He began barking loudly and chased the coyote around the barn, panicking the animals and stirring up dust and hay. Kuro lunged for the dog, putting his arms around his neck and his shoulder against his chest in a hopeless effort to keep the beast back. “You should probably run,” said Kuro. “I can’t really hold him.”
As the coyote pranced, laughing, out the door, he said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, beloved of the wind. You are what I was expecting, but not at all who I was expecting.”
Kuro let Ralph drag him along for a while, acting as an anchor to slow the dog down. He wasn’t certain whether he was protecting the coyote or Ralph. He expected a fight between them would go poorly for both, so keeping the two apart seemed like a good plan.
Kuro was troubled by the strange things the coyote had said to him, mostly by the overwhelming feeling that it was all true and that he didn’t really understand any of it. He let his dinner preparations soothe his unease, though whenever a door in the house opened and a breeze would encircle him as it passed through the kitchen, Kuro wondered whether he understood anything about magic at all.
Dinner was a triumph. Kuro didn’t know if eating it himself or hearing the excessive praise from Charlie and her dad was the better part of the meal. He briefly imagined a world where he could just stay at the farm and cook every day instead of going back to school.
The true glory of the evening was Kuro’s pie. It was apple, with a sweet crumble and a caramel drizzle on top. Waiting for it had been t
orture, and giving parts of it away was a feat of grace he wasn’t certain he could repeat. It wasn’t just delicious—it was also familiar and comforting, like a hug so warm and tight it made his ribs ache.
The reaction to it was not quite what Kuro had expected. Charlie devoured it without a word and gleefully returned for seconds. Her father, though, ate it slowly and had to frequently stop to take deep breaths and to wipe his eyes and nose, as though it were very spicy. Despite that he kept saying, “That’s a good pie. That’s a real good pie.”
When he’d finally finished his piece and recovered from it, he asked, “Where did you learn to make pie like that?”
“I found the recipe in the cupboard,” said Kuro. “I could tell it was a good one because it was the most faded and stained.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Mr. Cook nodded and swallowed a couple of times. “That was a really good pie. Thanks, Kuro. That was good.” He then pushed himself from the table and went outside to chop some wood.
“That was weird,” said Charlie as she considered the merits of a third slice.
“You thought so too?” said Kuro.
“Totally. That was a really good pie but not, like, a burst into tears kind of good pie.”
Kuro looked at his treasure box of recipes on the counter and thought he understood. Those weren’t just recipes. They were family recipes. Helena’s family recipes. The pie had felt familiar to him because he had eaten it before. It was a recipe Charlie’s mother had known well enough to bake by heart when she was being forced to take care of him. He had just unknowingly recreated a favourite of Mr. Cook’s murdered wife.
When he explained that to Charlie and asked if she thought he had done something wrong, she responded by taking her third slice and eating it slowly. Quietly savouring it. Something he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her do before.
Twenty-two
Immovable Objects
The rest of Solstice break passed much too quickly. Between cooking meals and odd jobs, Kuro felt the days fly by. In the small gaps, he took time to practice his familiar summoning. With Charlie’s happy help and the cozy comfort of the farm, he was worse than ever. He could barely get a wisp of smoke to manifest. He might have had better luck if he’d tried while being menaced by a manticore, but he couldn’t risk that kind of injury while he had something in the oven, and he always had something in the oven.
Just as Kuro was settling into the rhythm of the farm life, it was over.
On the last day before they had to head back for school, Mr. Cook called Kuro outside to help him chop wood. That was a strange request for a couple of reasons. The first was that they already had a lot of wood and needed very little. The house was heated through magical appliances. The fireplace was mostly for show. The other was that Charlie was better than either of them at chopping wood. She could use her magic to drop an axe through a log from twenty feet away while reading a book. Kuro, on the other hand, could barely swing the axe. It was too big for him, the chopping block was too high for him, and trying to use his own brand of magic would probably end with the head of the axe embedded permanently in something or someone.
It turned out that the wood chopping was just a ruse, a way to get Kuro alone somewhere Charlie wouldn’t eavesdrop. Once Mr. Cook had chopped his way through enough logs to be convincing, he said, “I’m glad you could join us for the holiday.”
That was the sort of thing that Kuro might have taken at face value, but something about an axe slamming down right after he said it set a different tone.
“Thank you,” said Kuro, which seemed a safe choice. He wasn’t afraid of Charlie’s father. He had shown every sign of being a genuinely kind and friendly man. Kuro couldn’t help but calculate whether he could escape the situation, though. It was an old habit that he had made no effort to break.
“It’s been good having you here,” said Mr. Cook. “Not just for the cooking—that was an unexpected bonus.” He laughed and gave Kuro a gentle punch to the shoulder. “I mean it was good to get to know you. I’ve heard so much about you, but a lot of that’s Charlie’s stories, which can be a little . . .” He took a moment to search for the right word. “Creative.”
Kuro nodded in understanding.
“It was a bit weird, you know. Both the ladies in my life think of you like family, and I’d barely met you. Charlie’s basically decided that you’re her brother, and Helena loved you like a son. She talked a lot about you after she got free of that Phineas.”
That hit Kuro like a spear through the heart. Helena had been kidnapped and forced to feed and teach Kuro. By all rights she should have hated and resented Kuro. The suggestion that she had cared for him was unwelcome news.
There was a long silence, metered out by the steady thumping of axe into wood before Kuro could mutter, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” asked Mr. Cook.
“It’s my fault she died,” Kuro replied. “If it weren’t for me, everything would be fine.”
The next axe fall landed like thunder, and Mr. Cook rounded on Kuro. “Never say that,” he said with rising anger. “Never even think that. None of what happened is your fault. Helena would tell you that herself if she could. It tore her apart when she thought you had died after the Hounds raided Phineas Hearn’s hideout. She blamed herself for not being able to get you out safely. Helena was a warrior. She would have fought through an army if she thought she could save you.”
Kuro was dumbstruck by the strange fury in Mr. Cook’s voice. It wasn’t directed at Kuro at all but was just too big to contain, and it peaked as he said the name of Kuro’s former master.
It took a few deep breaths for Mr. Cook to be able to unclench his jaw and speak normally. “Do you know what finally broke Hearn’s hold on Helena?” he asked.
Kuro shook his head.
“He wanted her to train you to kill. She wasn’t chosen by accident, you know. She used to be a Valkyrie, one of the Winter King’s personal guard.” He sounded proud of her having that title. “Hearn snatched her because she could make you into a soldier for him. She could have fought a frost giant to a standstill, but Hearn didn’t fight fair. Just put a spell on her brain. She said that his magic worked best when she was doing things that came naturally. Caring for a kid in trouble, teaching a child to read and cook. That was fine. Hearn didn’t think teaching you to fight would be any different, but training a five-year-old how to murder, that isn’t natural. It wasn’t enough for her to turn on him, but it was enough to break away and run. She told the Hounds about you, and they were meant to save you. You should have seen how angry she was when they didn’t. Nearly stormed the Granite Citadel herself. If it weren’t for Charlie, she might have. When I found out you were alive and Hearn was in chains, well, you don’t know how happy that would have made Helena.” His story had turned slowly from angry to sad over its course, and ended wistful, with him just staring into the clouds.
“I didn’t know that” was all Kuro could think to say.
“Didn’t much expect you to,” replied Mr. Cook. “I kind of thought you should. It didn’t go quite like I planned it, but it’s said now. So, there it is.” He let out a long sigh and let the axe rest. “I mean it, though. I’m glad you could come. It was really nice getting to know you.”
Kuro really didn’t know what to do with any of the information he’d been given. Between the things Mr. Cook had said, and the cryptic revelations by the coyote, Kuro’s head was muddled. All the events of his life remained the same, but they had been turned upside down.
Kuro tossed and turned for a long time that night while his mind tried to make sense of what everything meant. If what he’d been told was to be believed, Helena had run away for him rather than from him, he’d been adopted by a street, and was in a romantic relationship with air currents. Could any of it be true? How many of the things Helena had taught Kuro were because Phineas had made her, and how many had she chosen as a way to help Kuro? How many of the se
cret places and safe havens in Detritus Lane had Kuro discovered, and how many had been revealed to him by the lane? Did the wind help him run and jump because he wanted it to, or because it wanted to? Did any of it make any difference? He felt like he was looking at the world through a warped mirror and wasn’t sure which side of the reflection was the real one.
Kuro slept poorly, and his thoughts continued to wrestle with each other during the trip to the ferry the next day. The routine of ferry boarding helped him crawl out of the recesses of his mind and reconnect with reality.
Greetings between friends, shouts of complaint at having to go back to school, the wash of the increasingly ice-covered bay against the veil, and the warning whistle of the boat were all clear and present and real. That helped. A clumsy insult from Evelyn Lemieux helped even more.
“What a lovely chapeau,” she said, looking down her nose at the nice warm hat Kuro had been given.
Kuro waited for the threat or insult to follow, but it didn’t come. Apparently, she thought it adequate to just point out that he was, in fact, wearing a hat. Something which she was not doing. A hat would unsettle her perfect locks. She had chosen, instead, to wear a dress of elegant silks, which wouldn’t have been warm enough for late spring, let alone a chilly winter day at the edge of the water. The snow on the pavement around her had all melted away from her efforts to generate enough magical heat to make her outfit bearable, but even so, the wind was whipping by strongly enough that she was fighting not to visibly shiver or hide in her carriage.
Kuro considered, for a moment, that the wind might be a closer ally than he had credited.
Kuro and Charlie had no need to stand around the parking lot, posing in their fancy new Solstice clothes, trying to impress the other royalty. They boarded the ferry and found a good spot to settle. Charlie built a blanket nest in a bench seat on a lower deck, which would keep her propped up for the journey through the Blandlands, and Kuro rolled under her chair and curled up, planning to sleep his way across the bay.
Volume 2: Burglary Page 23