Without a glance behind her, Kalindris hopped off the rock and set off after the noise. The forest rose up around her in aloof pillars, not like the familial closeness of the inner woods that left no room for sunlight. Too much light here on the border of the sea of trees; too much seeing, not enough listening. The Howling didn’t speak clearly here. She had to keep her ears up and open.
They rose up like spears and she listened. Leaves crunching, an offended cry, hurried breath.
The child.
Following.
Still.
“Hey! Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot!” the child protested, hurrying after her. “If you’re going to try to abandon me, at least be a little less obvious about it. It might give me the opportunity to track you and get something done today.”
Abandonment needed more than she had to give. That needed malice, anger, and she could spare none for the child. That was for someone else, along with her arrows, her knife and this day.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” the child asked. “I did everything right. I followed the tracks like you showed me. I’ve done everything you told me to. What did I do wrong?”
The child spoke too much. That was why Kalindris didn’t speak; the child used all the words. That was what she did wrong. She shouldn’t need nearly as much as she used. She shouldn’t need any. The Howling was the shict language, that which came with breath and wailing as they were born.
And the child couldn’t hear it. The child couldn’t use it. She could only breathe. She could only wail.
It hurt Kalindris’ ears.
“Are we at least going the right way?” the child asked. “I can’t come back until the beast is dead. If I do, I don’t get my feathers. I won’t be accepted.” The child’s voice dropped. “Father said.”
She stopped and cringed.
Rokuda said. Rokuda said lots of things. Rokuda said things like they were fact, like his word was all that mattered. Anyone that disagreed saw those bright green eyes and wide, sharp smile and heard his honey when he told them they were wrong.
Before Kalindris knew it, her back hurt. Her spine was rigid like a spear and visible beneath her skin. She turned around, ears flat against the side of her head, teeth bared.
The child stood there. Her hair was too bright, cut like some golden shrubbery and the feathers in her locks stuck out at all strange angles. The bow around skinny shoulders was strung and strung wrong, the skinny arms were too small to pull back the arrow. And her ears stuck out awkwardly, one up and one down, long and smooth and without notches in them. They were always trying to listen for something they couldn’t hear.
Her eyes were far too green.
“Your father,” she said, “is not always right.”
“If that were true, everyone wouldn’t listen to him when he speaks,” the child protested. She swelled with a rehearsed kind of pride, the kind she clearly felt she should have, rather than actually possessed. “When Father speaks, people listen. When he tells them to do something, they do it.”
Words. Heavy words coming from the child. Like she believed them.
An agonizing moment of concentration was needed for Kalindris to unclench every knucklebone of every finger from her fist. She had to turn away and tear her eyes and shut her ears to the child. She hefted her quiver, continued to follow the noise through the trees.
“We shouldn’t have come here. We should have listened to it.”
“We had no choice. Just keep moving. Keep moving.”
Mother and Father were fighting again.
“It got Eadne. That thing got my Eadne. And we left her. And we ran. From our own land!”
“Gods, will you just shut up and let me think?”
Mother and Father were not scared because they were fighting. And so neither was Senny.
Whenever she would get scared, she would look to Mother and Father. Mother would look at Father and get mad. Father would look at Mother and start yelling. And they would fight too much to be scared. So she would hold onto the little knife tucked away in her belt and she would be ready to fight and she wouldn’t be scared, either.
No matter how fast they were running. No matter how hard Mother was pulling on her arm.
“It killed her. It left her in a tree and painted the bark red with her. We should have stayed. We should have buried her. We shouldn’t have run.”
“We didn’t have a choice, you idiot. It was going to come for us next. It’s coming for us now. Think of her.”
Senny knew who they were talking about. Father called them monsters. They had come to their little house and told him to leave. They said it was their forest. He told them he wouldn’t. So they took Eadne.
Their name sounded like an angry word.
Father reached down and took Senny’s other hand. He pulled on it, too. Maybe to show Mother he could pull harder, so he wasn’t as scared. She pulled her hand back so she could grab the little knife and show Father she wasn’t scared, either.
But he didn’t notice.
He was looking forward. Mother was looking back. They said Eadne was back there, but Eadne wasn’t coming with them. They weren’t talking about Eadne. Maybe they didn’t want her to feel scared. She already knew, though. She had seen Eadne up in the tree with the branches and the leaves and her legs all blowing the same way in the wind.
Mother wanted to go back, but she kept moving forward with Father. Through the trees, back to their little house by the brook.
It was a good house. She knew that even if Father hadn’t said so when he told Mother they were going to live there. Bushes full of berries that were good to eat grew by the brook. And there were snares to set and rabbits to catch and Mother had showed her how to make stew. The forest was scary, but Father had given her the little knife. They told her never to go in there.
She looked past Mother’s arm at the trees. When they had come here, they looked dark and scary. But she had gone in there with the little knife. She knew there were places there they could hide from the beast, from that thing that got Eadne.
“Father,” she said.
“Keep moving,” Father said.
“But, Father, the forest—”
“I know, I know, I know.”
Senny held up the little knife. “There are places, and there are berries and we could go there and I’m not—”
“Gods damn it, not now, you little shit!”
He didn’t say that word around her a lot. Because he thought she didn’t know what it meant. But he said it before, when he told them they were coming to the forest, when he built the house, when the people with the feathers in their hair came and told him to go away. His name for them was that word. She knew what it meant.
And he used it a lot more when he was scared. It was what the monsters were named. What their name sounded like.
“I don’t care if the shit’s upset because we’re in a lot more shit than we need to be because you won’t shut the shit up about all the shit!”
Mother wasn’t talking anymore.
Maybe Mother was scared, too.
She held on to her little knife. And she held on to Mother’s hand.
When the moon began to sink over the sea of trees and the starving owls went to their holes hungry, she tried not to hear him.
“One more thing.”
Only in darkness did Rokuda speak to her. Only when he could not see her trying to ignore him, when she could not go busy herself with some other task and pretend, for a while, he wasn’t hers. Only when he couldn’t see her run her fingers along the scar on her collarbone.
“I want you to bring back proof,” he had said.
“Proof,” Kalindris had echoed.
“A trophy. Something to show the tribe she has done it. I want you to make sure she had blood on her hands.”
“You want me to bring it back to you.”
“Yes. Take it and shove it in her hands, if you must. Tell her that it will make me proud. She will do it then.”
“Sh
e can’t shoot,” Kalindris had said. “She can’t draw the bow back far enough and she can’t stalk prey. She’s loud. Like you.” Kalindris continued lacing up her boots. “She can’t do it.”
“She has to.”
Kalindris froze as Rokuda sat on the furs next to her. The furs that had remained cold for years. She never slept in them unless the winter was too cold. But when she lay beside him, she didn’t feel the biting chill of winter. She felt sweaty, cold, clammy. Sick.
As she did now.
“They look at her like she’s not one of them. I can’t have that. And so she has to know what it is to be shict.”
He spoke that name too easily. Like it was a word. Shict was more than that. It should not have been uttered in the darkness, Kalindris had thought.
“She should know that already,” Kalindris had replied, securing the laces tightly.
“No one taught her.” Rokuda had edged closer.
“No one should have to. We are born knowing who we are. The Howling tells us.”
“She wasn’t. You have to teach her.”
Kalindris had said nothing as she rose up and moved to her bow. It was never far from her, save those times when he moved it. In the darkness, she preferred to keep it close.
But when she rose, he reached out. He took her by her wrist and she felt herself freeze. It grew cold again, cold as their bed.
“You have to show her,” Rokuda had insisted.
“I don’t have to do anything,” she had tried to speak. But her words were smothered in the darkness.
He tightened his fingers around her wrist and she felt cold all over. She felt every point he had ever touched her, a bead of cold sweat forming everywhere his fingerprint lingered on her skin. She grew silent, rigid. And when he spoke, his voice was an icicle snapping on a winter’s day.
“You will.”
She stared across the clearing and spoke softly, as to not stir the leaves before her.
“Do you know why?”
Kalindris’ own voice.
Strange and uncomfortable in her own mouth.
But the child was looking up at her. The child had her bow in her hands, an arrow in the string.
Kalindris pointed out to the log. The deer scratched at the moss with a hoof, pulled green scraps from the wood, and slurped them up from the ground. It wasted many sounds as it ate: grinding its teeth, grunting in satisfaction, slurping the greenery down noisily. It couldn’t hear her whispering to the child from the underbrush.
“Why it has to die?” Kalindris reiterated.
The child stared at the deer, squinting hard. She could almost hear the child’s thoughts, imagined them as noisy, jumbled things. The Howling was not there to give them clarity and focus.
“Food?” the child asked.
“No.”
“I don’t know. Competition? We kill it or we are killed?”
“By a deer?”
“It has horns!” the child protested.
The deer looked up at the sudden noise. Kalindris and the child were still and quiet. The deer was too hungry to leave. It continued to gnaw and to make noise.
“Why does it have to die?” Kalindris asked.
The child thought carefully. She winced with the realization.
“Because we can only know who we are by who everyone else is. We can only know what it means to be us if we know that we are not the others. And so we kill them, to know that, to know who we are and why we are here and why Riffid gave us life and nothing else. We kill. And because we are the killers, we are who we are.”
She felt her ears flatten against the side of her head. Her father’s words. Her father’s words repeated to a thousand people who would never speak against him, never tell him no. She hadn’t told him no, either. Not when she first heard it. Not until it was too late.
“No,” she said.
“But Father said—”
“No.” She spoke more forcefully. “Look at it. Why does it have to die?”
And the child looked at the deer. And then the child looked at her.
“Does it have to?” she asked.
The sound of ears rising. The sound of eyelids opening wide. The sound of a breath going short. Realization. Acknowledgment. Resignation. Sorrow.
The child.
Listening.
Wordless.
“Why does it have to die?” she asked again.
“Because,” the child said, “I have to kill it.”
Kalindris nodded. No smiles. No approval. No sounds.
The child raised her bow, drew the arrow back and held it. She trusted only her eyes. She checked her aim once, then twice, then a third time. On the fourth, when her hands had started to quiver from the strain, she shot.
The arrow struck the deer in the tender part between the leg and the nethers. It quivered there, severing something that the deer needed. The beast let out a groan, its breath mist. It staggered on its hooves, turned to flee. But its legs didn’t remember anything before the arrow. It shambled, bleeding, toward the forest.
The child drew an arrow and shot again. She trusted only her heart now. The arrow flew too wide. She shrieked, her voice panicked, and shot again. Words befouled the air and the arrow sank into the earth, heavy with her fear.
The deer took another step before it fell. The arrow stood quivering in the deer’s neck and the beast lay on its side, breathing heavily, spilling breath and blood onto the earth.
Kalindris approached it, the child behind her. She reached behind and grabbed the child, shoving her forward. The child stared at the deer’s eyes, at herself reflected in the great brown mirror of its gaze.
The child looked to her.
Kalindris reached into her belt and pulled the knife free. She held it out to the child. The child looked at it like it was something that shouldn’t be there, something that she would only ever see hung upon the wall of her father’s tent.
She thrust the handle toward the child.
“Why?” Kalindris asked the child.
The child looked up at her. The sight of eyes wide and pleading. The sight of resentment. The sight of fear and hate and betrayal for making the child do this.
But no words.
The child took the knife and knelt beside the deer. She pressed it to its throat. She winced and she cut through the fur and the hide and the sinew to the root of the beast’s neck.
She opened it up and it spilled upon her. It spilled over her hands and onto her arms. And the child kept cutting silently.
As the brook babbled alongside them, she tried to keep up with her parents.
“Are you scared, darling?”
Senny wasn’t. She was trying hard not to be, anyway. She shook her head and held up the little knife. Father didn’t seem to notice.
“You don’t need to be scared,” he said. “Not when I’m here. We’re going to get through this, all right?”
She nodded. She wasn’t scared.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, darling. I was just irritated. Your mother was screaming so loud.”
Mother didn’t seem to notice that they were talking about her. Mother held on to her hand and kept pulling her toward the cottage. The brook was nearby, churning away. Vines of berries grew nearby, ripe and bright in the sunlight.
They could go to the forest to avoid the beast, maybe. They could run there and live together there. The cottage was nice and she would miss it and she would miss Eadne and she tried very hard not to think about Eadne because whenever she did she felt like she was going to throw up and then Mother would cry.
“Darling, everything’s going to be all right,” Father said. He wasn’t looking at her, though. “Everything will be fine, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, Father,” she said. “I’m not scared. I still have the knife you gave me. Look.”
“It’ll be all right, darling.”
“Father, we could go deeper into the forest. We could escape the beast there and come back whe
n it’s gone. I’ve been there, Father. It’s not as dark as it looks. There are berries and food and we could go there instead of the cottage.”
“Yes, darling. The forest.”
“Father, Mother is scared. She’s holding on to my hand so hard that it hurts. Father?”
Father said the same thing again. Over and over. All “darling” and “mm-hm” and “fine, fine, all right.” She soon stopped talking. Father wasn’t listening. Because if Father listened, he would hear her voice starting to sound like it always did whenever her throat felt funny and she wanted to cry.
And then he’d be scared. And then Mother would be more scared.
He needed to say his words so he couldn’t hear her. And she needed to stay quiet. And Mother needed to hold her hand until it hurt. And she needed not to throw up or cry or do any of those things that a scared little child would do.
Maybe when Eadne was around, she could do that.
Eadne was dead.
When the sun began to scowl over their tent and the first wolves rose to the hunt, she hated herself like she hated him.
“I want to ask you something,” Rokuda had said.
“No.” Kalindris had replied.
It was a noise Rokuda only heard from her. He had no idea what it meant. “Why aren’t you bothered by this?” he had asked, undeterred.
“By what?”
“By how they see her, by the fact that they think she’s not one of us. Not a shict.” He forced difficult words through a snarl. “Not mine.”
“I don’t pay attention to what she does.”
“Why not? Haven’t you seen what they think of her? How they look at her?”
“No.”
“They look at her like … like she’s … like she isn’t …”
His words had failed him and he had begun to snarl. He hated it when words would not work for him, because when his words would not work, neither would the Howling speak for him. And when he couldn’t speak, he started snarling, because people couldn’t agree with him. People could tell him “no.”
And that was when he started making scars.
“She reaches out to try to hold on to your hand when she’s scared. She … she asks them things, instead of knowing what the Howling tells her.” She heard his nails rake the fur and find that insufficient for his rage. She heard strands of his hair snap from his scalp as he pulled it. “She cries when she gets hurt. She snarls when she gets angry.”
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