The forest was dangerous, a place where the animal hobgoblins had taken over from more normal predators. It was also as familiar to Ree as the farm he called home. In the years since he’d come here, he’d watched the forest slowly return to a kind of balance after the hellish Change-winter and the magic circles: the same magic circles that had changed him from a human street rat to the hobgoblin he was.
His mind wandered into times long past, from the desperate days when he’d saved Jem’s life on the streets of Jacona and Jem, in turn, had saved Ree’s humanity and perhaps his life. If Ree had gone on the way he’d been, he’d soon have stopped knowing how to talk, and from there to forgetting he was human at all was but a step. When all you can do is run and hide, you start forgetting you’re not a small, hunted animal. And then . . .And then you start attacking humans, as animals do.
His meeting with Jem had led them to leave Jacona and head out to the countryside in which they imagined they’d be safer. Which just went to show how young they’d been.
As it turned out, it had been safer, but never in the way he expected. Jem had almost died of the coughing illness that winter, as they stayed out of towns where people would kill them. It was Jem’s illness that had forced Ree to come to the farm, to look for help. By blind luck, or perhaps blind destiny, they’d blundered into a farm that belonged to Jem’s grandfather. And here they’d been since. Ree and Jem and Jem’s grandfather, and later Amelie and Meren, Jem’s and Ree’s adopted children.
No one asked embarrassing questions about Jem’s and Ree’s relationship. Or rather, the only one who asked was Garrad, Jem’s grandfather, and only to tease them. And got a great deal of laughter out of their embarrassment. And if the children called Jem Da and Ree Papa, no one thought there was anything wrong with that either.
Anywhere else, their odd little family might be remarked, but the people of Three Rivers Valley had gotten to know the people at the farm for who they were–for their bravery and kindness and courage. Ree and Jem had helped the village too many times for anyone to remark two young men, much less a man and a hobgoblin, shouldn’t be raising children together, even if one of those children was also a hobgoblin. The village saw that they clearly could and were raising happy, sweet children out of waifs no one else wanted.
Ree sighed again. Sometimes he thought the only reason they’d taken the children on was that they had no idea how hard it could be. They were good children, and Ree would miss them when they left for houses of their own, but it was like living with your heart in someone else’s body. He worried every time Amelie went to the village and was late returning. And his heart about stopped when Meren took a fall from a tree.
With an effort, he focused on the work in front of him. That one looks like it’s starting to go. Ree bent closer to the shingle, close enough to sniff the wood. The scent of decay was faint, but there. It might not be obvious now, but in a month that shingle would be starting to crumble, and by the time winter set in, it would no longer be weatherproof.
He sat beside the shingle and started prying the nails loose, taking care not to bend them too much. Good nails were expensive; it was better to reuse them if you could. Getting them straightened by the smith down in Three Rivers village cost less than new nails, but it was still a cost Ree preferred not to pay.
He chuckled to himself. Like Jem, he’d learned farmer thrift from old Garrad, the owner of this farm and Jem’s grandfather. If he was going to be honest with himself, Ree had learned a lot more than thrift from the old man: Garrad had taught him the value of work, and to see himself as a man, not a street child and not a Change Circle freak.
Everywhere he looked, Ree could see the result of his work and Jem’s. The ever-growing herd of cattle, goats, and donkeys, the fields they hired men to plough and harvest, the walls of the home fields, and even the prolific damncats. Oh, they were ordinary cats, but somehow the name had stuck for cats raised on this farm.
Mostly, Ree suspected, because the Three Rivers folk were convinced he could talk to them and trained them. The things people would believe. Grown men and women, talking of training cats! It was the other way around: He observed them, recognized their calls and body language, and they knew he’d respond to something urgent.
Well, except for Damncat, the gray-and-white troublemaker with a fondness for Ree’s shoulder. That cat was smarter than most and knew it, too.
“Can I help, Papa?”
Ree about jumped out of his fur. Meren might be all of four years old and part cat, but he could creep up on a body like nothing else on earth. Not that he meant to, it was just . . . Meren walked softly, especially when he discarded his shoes—which was most of the time—and he seemed to instinctively know to stay downwind.
The boy giggled, his greeny-hazel eyes lit with mischief. He was an odd sight, with his white-blond curls and sparse tabby fur. Without the fur and the pointed ears, Meren could have been taken for human, but as it was he was as much a hobgoblin as Ree, although Meren had been born that way. The child of two hobgoblins who’d been killed by the villagers, he’d been taken in by Ree and Jem as a baby and raised to be more human than animal—unlike his parents, who’d gone to the animal.
“Bored, are you?” Ree asked. Like Ree, Meren didn’t like being confined to the house. At least since the dire wolf had got through the fences two years back, he’d stopped trying to explore the forest on his own. Or— and Ree wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t the case—stopped getting caught at it.
Meren nodded. “Da and Melie are cooking, an’ Granddad said to get out from underfoot.” His thumb hovered near his mouth, ready to go in.
Ree eased a nail out and set it beside the others. If Meren was upset, he sucked his thumb. It happened less as the little boy got older, but if something really bothered him . . .
“Granddad got mad, didn’t he?” Ree collected the nails and handed them to his son—maybe not the son of his body, but Meren was his son, just as Amelie, an all-human orphan he and Jem had taken in, was his daughter. “Hold these for me, please? They’re valuable, and I don’t want to lose them.”
That diverted the threatened thumb and gave Meren something to feel important about while Ree eased the shingle free.
“Granddad gets mad lots.” Meren didn’t sound entirely sure of himself.
Ree nodded. With his claws digging into the shingle, it was a lot easier to pull it loose without disturbing any of the others.
“Can you keep a secret, a proper secret?”
He had his suspicions about what Garrad had said to upset the little boy, but more to the point, he knew why. This last winter had been hard on the old man; he didn’t walk much now, and when he did, he truly needed the walking stick Jem had made him years ago.
Meren sat straighter, trying to look taller and older than he was. “Yes, Papa.”
“It hurts Granddad to move,” Ree said quietly.
The shingle came free; he set it aside and reached into the pack on his back for a fresh one, started to ease it into place. “When Granddad is hurting, he gets grouchy.”
Meren tilted his head to one side, chewing his bottom lip. “Then he wasn’t really mad at me?”
“Nope. Granddad yells at everyone.” As Ree well knew, having been the recipient of Garrad’s temper more than a few times. “You know that.”
The thumb—complete with nails clutched in that hand—threatened to enter Meren’s mouth again. “But . . . Granddad said I was . . .”
Ree chuckled. “He told you to go play with the damncats because you’re just like them? He tells me that too, when he’s grouchy. He tells Jem just about the same, too.” It was an exaggeration, but not much of one.
“Not Melie, though.”
“No, but Melie is never wild, is she?”
“No,” Meren said, then paused and wrinkled his forehead. “On count of being a girl.”
“Probably,” Ree conceded amiably, though it was more likely on account of Amelie having seen her whole famil
y massacred when she was very young. “Could you pass me a nail, please?”
Meren stared for a moment, then carefully took a nail and handed it to Ree. “Oh.”
Ree wasn’t sure when it had become a weekly event to have Lenar and his family to dinner at the farm, but sometime between the time they’d adopted Meren and the time he’d saved Amelie from a dire wolf, it had started. And then by the time Meren was on his feet again after the dire wolf attack, it was simply accepted as something that happened like clockwork.
Lenar might be the Lord here, but he was also Garrad’s son and Jem’s father. True, he’d lost track of Jem when Jem was just a baby, leaving poor Jem to grow up as a street urchin. But he’d not done it with intent, and he loved Jem in his own gruff way. Besides, the two were so alike in temper and look that they might rub wrong but couldn’t avoid loving each other. The three of them treasured their time together, even if it almost always–at least until this last year and Garrad’s illness–had ended in all of them shouting at each other at the top of their voices.
On the first few visits Lenar’s wife, Loylla, had been uncomfortable, but now she either hid it or mostly forgot that this was a plain farm and not the kind of manor she’d spent her whole life in. She was a cheerful daughter-in-law to Garrad, and though she wasn’t so crass as to try to mother Jem, who was little younger than her, she behaved to Jem and Ree as an older sister might. Their little boy, a sturdy two-year-old, played happily with Meren whenever the family visited, and Lenar sometimes grumbled that the boy asked every day if he could go play “wif Mewen.”
Ree thought that Lenar didn’t really understand why little Garrad couldn’t come over every day, either, because it wasn’t Lenar who had to haul the little imps out of—among other things—the chicken coop, the water trough, the barn feeding trough, and every mud puddle they could find. That enviable task fell to Ree. There wasn’t a fence, tree, or building on the farm that Meren couldn’t climb, and if he could help or carry little Garrad with him, he would.
Which was why this warm summer night, while Amelie and Jem laid out the table and Garrad talked with Lenar and Loylla, Ree watched Meren play-wrestle with little Garrad, and made sure he was between the two little boys and the fence. At least today the worst they’d suffer was grass stains on their oldest clothes—worn, patched clothing that was kept just so the two of them could get themselves dirty without ruining good clothing.
A blur of movement at the edge of his vision caught his eye, and he reached out, catching Damncat before the gray-and-white menace could join the fun. “Oh, no you don’t.” He held the cat close and made eye contact. “You want to play with them, I get to trim your claws.”
The cat might not understand the words, but he understood tone and scrambled for Ree’s shoulder instead. One of the other damncats—another gray and white, with the lanky build of an animal partway between kitten and adult—took great care to groom itself. As if, Ree thought with a wry smile, it hadn’t been considering joining in the play fight a little before. One of Damncat’s siring, of course—Damncat sired most of the kittens at the farm these days. He sired smart, troublesome kittens, the best hunters and mousers in the region.
Ree suspected some of them had thumbs, although he’d never quite figured out which ones. There were just too many damncats.
The warm weight of Damncat leaned against his head, and the cat started to purr. Ree reached up to scratch the animal without looking away from the rolling, squealing little boys. I make a terrible wild beast, standing here petting a cat while minding two little boys. Not that anyone from outside the valley would realize that was what he was doing. They’d think I was watching my dinner and playing with my snack.
“Ree!” Jem called from the back door. “Dinner’s about ready.”
“I’ll get the boys in,” he shouted back.
He and Jem shared all the farm chores between them these days, what with Amelie spending each morning at the manor, learning how to be a lady, and Meren too young to help much. But when it came to herding small boys, Ree had the advantage over Jem, lacking the family’s quick temper.
Moving carefully so he didn’t throw Damncat’s balance off, Ree bent and grabbed the straps of a small pair of overalls, and hauled the wearer out. Little Garrad, halfway through a pretend “wild animal” growl.
Meren started to protest but stopped when he saw where his playmate was, safely held in Meren’s Papa’s arms. “Time to wash up and get into your good clothes, boys. Come along now.” Shepherding two little boys was a lot more difficult than dealing with the goats or the cows, Ree had learned. It got worse the older the boys got; he hoped they’d start getting more sense before he couldn’t keep up with them. Having to climb to the farm roof once or twice a day was one thing. Having to do that and save the goats from boys who wanted to ride them and race them was something else again.
Still, he got them washed and into their good clothes—pants and shirts, although they both went barefoot. It wasn’t worth trying to keep Meren in his shoes in summer, and trying to get little Garrad to do something Meren wouldn’t . . . Well, that one had the full measure of his father’s stubborn streak.
He even managed to get the two sets of blond curls tamed and turn the pair of them over to Jem with time to get himself changed.
Everyone else was at the table when Ree entered. They’d set it up with the best tablecloth and the best plates and all, and Melie had arranged some flowers from the garden in a bright blue vase she’d bought at the Three Rivers fair.
It might not be a proper feast, but it looked right homey to Ree. He smiled and took his seat, nodding to Lenar and Loylla. “Did anything come of that last message you sent back east? About being confirmed as a Lord?”
Lenar chuckled. “Either I’m not that important, or some clerk is having fits.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that much, so long as the taxes go in. I’ve got the records and the receipts from Karelshill, so any investigation is going to look someplace else.” He covered his wife’s hand with his much larger one. “The Empire’s pretty flexible, Ree. If it works and the taxes keep coming, no one’s going to argue with my position.”
Ree nodded and didn’t argue. Lenar had been a soldier before coming back to his old home with enough gold to build himself a manor, and he knew how the nobles and all did things. It would be nice to know Lenar was properly the local Lord, but if he didn’t think it mattered, it wasn’t Ree’s part to argue.
Conversation ebbed and flowed while they ate, Loylla mentioning how fast Amelie learned and how eager she was to know everything she needed to know, and Ree giving Jem a look that said he knew Amelie was learning as fast as she could so she didn’t have to be at the manor house. Not that she disliked Lenar or Loylla but she loved being at the farm, looking after her flower garden, feeding the animals, and milking the goats.
Lenar lamented how fast little Garrad was growing—he’d learned to feed himself well enough that he didn’t need someone to help him, and he didn’t even get too much on his face, although the food on his plate was mostly cut small enough for little fingers and didn’t have any gravy or sauces a child could smear himself with—and Jem agreed, complaining that they’d had to let down the legs of Meren’s overalls again so they were long enough to be decent, and he didn’t think they’d last until the tailor came through to take orders for the next year’s clothes.
“Oh, there’s been some bad hobgoblin problems in Karelshill,” Lenar said after Ree had taken both boys upstairs to sleep; it might still be full light outside, but small boys needed a lot of sleep.
Jem raised an eyebrow. He was looking more and more like his father: a bit less weathered, and without the beard, but still. “Attacks or just sightings?”
There weren’t as many hobgoblins these days, but the ones that could breed did, and some of them were vicious. Ree still needed to patrol the forest, although since he’d had to start patrolling on his own, he never went out without a weapon. The snow bears a
nd dire wolves were the worst.
Lenar sighed. “Attacks, son, bad ones.” He nodded in Ree’s direction and got the frown that said that he was worried about Ree. His voice boomed, too, which is how you knew that Lenar cared. He cared enough to yell at you. “You be careful out there, you hear. Don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about you being like them. What I hear is that something’s organizing them, using them to attack. Maybe softening them up for something else.”
Ree winced. “That would take magic, wouldn’t it?” His tail twitched and whipped against his leg. Most of the time his tail was just fine down one pants leg, but when he was worried, it tried to lash and made it look as though he had a snake trapped in there.
Lenar scratched his beard. “That’s what I hear. I’m not so sure . . .I mean . . .no offense, Ree, but say someone like you, only with bad intentions, got hold of some cubs. You could raise yourself a hobgoblin army that way.”
Jem made a sound of protest but stopped at Garrad’s soft, “He’s right, Jem. Ain’t nothing that says being mostly human means being good.”
Ree nodded. “Yeah, I know.” There had been too many nights when he’d lain awake wondering whether he was human and what part of him made him fit to be with full humans. And some nights he was sure he wasn’t. Sure he wasn’t good enough to deserve someone like Jem, who could have had anyone he wanted.
“It wouldn’t even have to be a hobgoblin,” Garrad said. “It could be someone who didn’t have any reason to care about other people . . . You wouldn’t even need to be a hobgoblin to do that, although it would be harder. Humans can stop being human too, you know? I think I might have, a bit, before you and Jem came,” he added, quietly.
Ree’s claws unsheathed, and he tapped the tablecloth with them. “How much damage was done?”
“No one dead yet,” Lenar said. “There’s been some stock taken and a few injuries.” He didn’t look happy. “The problem is, there are plenty of people who remember a ‘Hobgoblin King’ who came from up this way.”
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