by Ila Mercer
‘Lita, Lita?’ It was Sal, standing by the door of the cottage with a lamp swinging in her hand.
‘Coming,’ Lita called, though she did not want to. Tears of anger and hurt were streaming down her face and she did not want Sal to see them.
She heaved herself to her feet and stumbled over a couple of loose logs. ‘Dammit,’ she cussed.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sal called, coming toward her.
‘Nothing.’
‘Here, I’ll bring the light so’s you can see where to tread.’
Lita hurriedly wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. Her eyes felt red raw and she hoped Sal would not see she had been crying.
‘Why are you skulking around this time of night?’ Sal said when she reached Lita.
‘I had to go,’ Lita replied.
‘Then you should of shook me,’ Sal reproached. ‘And I would of come with you. What if there were wolves or bears prowling ‘round?’ Then noticing the blood trickling from Lita’s hand, she exclaimed, ‘My giddy Aunt, you’re bleeding.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Come on, lets get you inside so I can put something onnit.’ Sal became all fuss and coddling now, shepherding Lita across the clearing.
Once they were inside, Sal fetched cooled water from the kettle, rinsed Lita’s wound, then tied it up with clean cloth. A couple of Beasts stirred from their sleep then resettled when they saw it was only Lita and Sal.
‘You done good with that map,’ Sal said in a half whisper, nodding her head towards it. ‘Do you think you’ll go with them?’
‘Who?’
‘Them Beasts, of course. The Hunter is sure to come sniffing ‘round sooner or later.’
‘I guess,’ Lita replied with a shrug. She had not thought that far ahead.
Sal raised one brow and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Where else then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lita replied. ‘I thought maybe I’d look for my mama.’
‘Who? That tinker what left you with old bag o’ bones?’
‘No. She’s not my real mama.’
‘Then who?’
Lita shrugged again. ‘This is the right cottage, you know. Where I was raised by my mama.’
‘What gave you that idea?’
‘I just know. I remember things – stuff I couldn’t know unless I’d been here before.’
Sal mulled on this for a bit, before saying, ‘Who’d know what became of your mama?’
‘MaKiki,’ Lita sighed. ‘Except she vanished into thin air.’
‘Nobody can vanish into thin air. ‘Specially a tinker. I’m sure there’ll be news of her out and about.’
‘The troubadours said no. And when I asked Biccen from the Painted House to ask at the docks, she came back with no news of her either. Nobody has seen or heard from MaKiki since she left me with Tipple.’
‘Then there is only one course of action. You’ll have to go and shake it out of old baggy bones,’ Sal said, giving the absent Tipple a vigorous shake with her great fleshy hands.
‘But, she’s stronger than me,’ Lita said.
‘Poppycock. She’s nothing but wind. And who said you need go as a maiden. Why not go as a Beast? If I hadn’t known better, I woulda died of fright when we opened Madam Grist’s door to find a lion on the other side.’
Lita felt her cheeks flush. Sal was right of course. If she used her powers, she could kill Tipple in an instant. Except, she didn’t want to do that. She’d never do that again. ‘I don’t have a token,’ Lita said. And then seeing the confusion on Sal’s face said, ‘I can be whatever I want.’
‘More’s the better. Be the fiercest thing you can think of, and you’ll have her wetting herself silly.’
Lita laughed, not so much at the thought of Tipple shaking with fear, but at the justice of it.
Shortly after this, they turned in for sleep.
That night Lita dreamed the strangest of dreams. She became a thing of horns and teeth, fire and scale, gleaming red eyes and crocodile legs. On golden wings, as thin and delicate as gossamer, she beat the air and roared terror into the heavens and earth. The image was as beautiful as it was frightening and when the dream woke her up with a start, she knew that Sal was right. Lita would be terrifyingly magnificent.
Her anger with MaKiki had passed too. MaKiki’s duplicity did not sit right in the cool green of first light. There had to be a reason she had lied about the past and if she ever found MaKiki again, Lita meant to know the truth of it.
The Hunter Closes In
The Hunter was near. A cocktail of scents betrayed his presence. Ari lifted his nostrils and detected the pungent aroma of the hound, stray wisps of leather, the oil used to polish the wood of the crossbow, and the rancid stink of unwashed skin.
If Ari had been on his own, he would have been far away by now, racing all night in the guise of a lion and running by day in the skin of a man, however Katarin could not maintain such a pace. When he was able to Change into his lion form, Ari carried her so that she might rest. With Katarin clinging to his back, he was no less agile, but she was vulnerable. An easy target in her white robes.
As if she sensed his thoughts, she ran her fingers gently through his silken mane and leaned so that her mouth brushed the tip of his left ear. ‘What is it, my love?’ she breathed. ‘Is he close again?’
He responded with a soft growl.
Ahead of them lay barren hills and behind them was the forest from which they had just emerged. Ari wondered whether he should double back. Re-enter the woods and skirt around the hunter until they reached the stream. This time they would follow the stream further. Perhaps he would even leave Katarin briefly while he criss-crossed his way through the brush. He knew she was tiring, that she could not keep going. It had already been three days and she was weakening with hunger.
By day, they made only small progress against the Hunter, on equal footing when Ari became a man again. But at night, by the light of the moon, Ari was able to carry his mate on his back. Was able to share some of her secret burden.
Not that she was aware of the secret budding in her womb. It was too soon for her to know such things, though Ari had detected the change in her scent. It was like a beautiful blossoming on her skin, making her sweeter and more fragrant than she had ever been. Of course, he had not been able to tell her. It would only make her more anxious, now that there was another life to consider.
Katarin squeezed his ribs with her knees. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked, though she knew he could not answer.
In reply, Ari turned back to the forest. Except this time he loped through the tall grasses by the edge of the glade, looking for a better way in. Stretching his senses thin, he sought a feature that would accommodate a lion, but not its hunter. Here there were no rising mountains, no swampy marshes, no broad ravines.
Eventually he found something of use. Only a short time before, a pack of wolves had passed. Ari knew it would muddle the hound, this sudden array of pungent scents. One of them had even dropped scat by a tree. Ari used the scent to his advantage and followed their trail for a while. The wolves were on the hunt, moving quickly across the pine needles and moss. Their rich and spicy scents overlayed the milder tones of their deer quarry.
After a while, Ari realised that Katarin had fallen asleep. Her fingers no longer grasped the locks on his shoulders, her hands dangled loosely about his neck and her body slipped a little with each flowing stride. He shook his shoulders and growled until she shifted.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I must have fallen asleep. It’s just that I’m so tired.’
It had not been easy on her. He stopped, dropping his head, leaning forward slightly and after a moment she seemed to understand that he wanted her to dismount.
She alighted and wrapped her arms around his shaggy head. Her cheek pressed against his golden jowls. That she loved him was still a marvel to Ari. That this beautiful woman did not recoil – was an endless fascination. He thought back, briefly
, to the moment of his first encounter with Katarin. She had of course known about his arrival before she met him and perhaps this had prepared her. That, along with the tales Lars was sure to have shared with her. He remembered her sitting by the window, her head bent over a cloth and needle. It was morning and the sun lit up the fire in her hair, so that she seemed, at first glance, to be the source of the radiance. She had dazzled him. Even more so, when she glanced up, her eyes curious, and her smile welcoming.
With the sudden memory of that moment, a purr thrummed in his chest. In response, she stroked his muzzle lightly with her fingers.
When he stood up, she did not let go. Suddenly she seemed to sense his intentions. Her fingers clutched tighter and he turned and nudged her belly. He gazed intently into her eyes, hoping to convey his thoughts. She kissed him lightly on his hairy brow and released her hold. ‘I know you’ll come back for me,’ she said as she edged away from him. ‘I’ll be here. Waiting.’
With a flick of his tail, he turned. His padded feet skimmed across the forest floor, as he raced back the way he had come. He would throw the Hunter and the hound off this trail by laying another and lead them far away from Katarin while she slept. It was the only way to keep ahead, though his body was also starting to tire, for he had slept little in the past few days.
Two miles back, the scent of the Hunter and his hound grew strong again. Ari stood on an outcropping and lifted his muzzle into the air. The scent came downwind – to the left. If he circled around them, he might be able to ambush them from behind.
The idea made his heart heavy. It was against the law of his people to intentionally kill a creature. Especially when the creature in question could carry the remnant spirit of a close kin.
As a young boy he had killed a lizard just to see whether anything would happen and afterward he had felt such remorse he could not eat for days. He had not told his father or his granddam, because he was afraid of what they would say. Then came that terrible day when his brother Dani died, while they were swimming in the sea. At the time Ari thought the spirits of his ancestors were punishing him because he had killed the lizard. In his childish mind he linked the two events, believing as only the young do, in the causality of his actions. And though he was now a man, and no longer believed such things, he still felt a stirring of shame when he remembered that act of killing.
In Dracodia, they had no such qualms. Even Katarin had urged him to rip the Hunter to shreds. She had not understood Ari’s reluctance. A part of him knew the Hunter would never give up, that he and Katarin were in great peril, but if he killed the Hunter, he did not know how he would feel about himself. Would he be any better than the Dracodians who had enslaved him? And how could he return to his people with that stain on his soul? He would no longer be able to hold his head high amongst his people, knowing that dark secret and they would sense it, even if he never spoke of it. Therefore, he had to find a different way. Evasion was the only choice in this dangerous game of cat and mouse.
Ari sprang from the outcropping and loped through tall grass, his body leaving a trail of crushed stalks. Above him, the moon hung like a low hanging fruit, swollen and round, ready to fall from the sky and slip behind the Cawkill Ranges within the hour. In the guise of a lion Ari had speed and power on his side, but when he returned to the form of a man, he would lose his advantage over the Hunter.
On the other side of the meadow, he caught the scent of the Hunter again, but not the hound. This baffled him. How could the Hunter have travelled so fast? Only a short time ago, he had been on the other side of the meadow. Ari crept through the brush of the bordering forest, his nostrils flaring, the pupils of his eyes large and receptive, the hair on the back of his neck prickling as his ears and tastebuds picked up myriad signals of warning.
Far behind, he heard the yap of the hound, and his body loosened. The Hunter must be far behind, he reasoned. But then the Hunter’s familiar scent wafted toward him. Something was terribly wrong.
He turned slightly when he heard a light snap and then something whistled through the air. A shaft glinted as it sped towards him and missed the top of his head by a whisker.
His body tensed with the realisation that he’d walked into a trap. The Hunter too, it seemed, had decided to double back, using the hound as a decoy. Again, a shaft glanced through the trees and Ari leapt to his left missing the second speeding arrow.
He stared past the tree trunks and spied the Hunter not more than twenty paces away in a small clearing, reloading his crossbow. Fear and rage engulfed Ari – making his blood grow hot. He wanted to fight. He wanted to run, but something stopped him from doing either. Then an image of Katarin came to mind. He imagined her sleeping in the glade, curled up like a small child and he decided he would do it. He would kill for Katarin and their unborn child and be damned with the consequences.
He lunged forward and roared.
In surprise, the Hunter dropped his bow and stumbled back slightly.
Had the Hunter never had one of his Beasts turn on him before, Ari wondered? He sprang closer, with a clear sightedness that astounded him. He would go for the Hunter’s jugular and end it quickly.
The Hunter reached behind his back and with one smooth motion, drew a long blade from a concealed sheath. He brandished it at Ari, and suddenly the lion-man faltered.
They were only two paces apart, so close that Ari could see the pulse in the Hunter’s neck.
‘Come on,’ the Hunter growled, beckoning with his free hand. ‘Let’s end this now.’
With those words, the spell was broken. Ari could not do it. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the knife, or the Hunter. Or that he was even afraid of what would happen afterwards. He just could not do it now that the Hunter had spoken. With that utterance, the Hunter had changed from a thing of fear and hatred back to a man.
Ari turned and ran. Back through the sapling forest, dodging left and then right, in a zig-zag retreat, though no arrow followed.
Out in the meadow, he noted that the moon had sunk halfway down the mountain and the slow drain of the Change made his body grow sluggish.
He had the presence of mind to turn towards the hills, planning to lead the Hunter away from Katarin again, padding through the grass with heavy, plodding steps. With each stride, his body slowed, the power drained, and the flow reversed. Now the borrowing was spent and the light of his Changing drifted like cinders into the sky. Normally this display of leaving entranced him, but tonight it filled him with dread for it marked his location as clearly as a beacon marks a ship on a dark sea.
From behind, he vaguely sensed the presence of the Hunter. Losing the heightened senses of his lion being was always disorienting at first, leaving him with the notion he’d been struck deaf and blind.
He stumbled now on two legs, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Hunter. If Katarin had understood the weakened state in which he was left when the Change drained away, she would have been appalled. However, he had never shared this with her. It hadn’t seemed to matter at the time.
At the edge of the meadow, gorse bushes clung to the hillside. Ari struggled through a gap between two bushes, only to be rewarded with a deep scratch on his forehead and right hand. He knew the Hunter would choose to skirt around the bushes, as he had done on the last two days. This, more than anything spoke of the Hunter’s confidence. He was not so desperate that he bashed blindly along the same trail as his quarry.
Back at the Keep, on the night Ari first met him, the Hunter told them he’d never failed a hunt. Ari thought it was an arrogant boast at the time, but now he was not so certain.
Beyond the gorse bushes, the hill grew steep and Ari struggled to find stable footings. The rocks beneath his feet slid and caused loose dirt to cascade down the hillside. He worried he was making too much noise and the Hunter would know where he was, but he was committed to his plan, knowing that if he reached the top of the hill soon, he would have the lead again. Every moment he led the
Hunter away from Katarin, the more time she had to rest. And, unless she had that rest, they would not be able to keep ahead of the Hunter.
It was pitch black by the time Ari reached the top of the hill. He strained his ears, but the hill was quiet. For several minutes he did not move, wondering if the Hunter had hunkered down to rest – waiting for the return of daylight before he continued. It was not such a bad idea, Ari thought. He could not see anything. Not even his hand when he held it close to his eyes. Surely the Hunter too was impeded by the lack of light.
He felt around and discovered a hollow beneath a large rock and pushed his body into the space. He heard something crunch beneath his leg, and when he patted the spot with his hand, felt the remnants of what could only be old, brittle bones. The hollow was lined with bits of grass and small twigs, and the ground held a residue of warmth. He wondered briefly what creature he had evicted from the hollow.
Within moments, Ari fell asleep, tired by fear and exhaustion. However, his sleep did not give him any peace for his dreams were filled with violent images. In one scene he had the Hunter’s head in his great lion maw and then he saw that it was not the Hunter at all but was instead his granddam. When he released her, she flopped to the ground and stared at the sky through dull and vacant eyes. And he knew he had killed her.
*
He woke with a start, noting that the first blush of light hovered on the horizon. His heart beat rapidly as he realised, he had overslept. Perhaps the Hunter had decided not to pursue him and had traced his way back to the hound. Perhaps they had set off after the older trail. And perhaps they had found Katarin all alone in the woods. He did not know what he would do if that had happened. Perhaps it would give him the resolve to kill his pursuer.