Seer's Blood

by Doranna Durgin

  “No,” Blaine said, although she frankly wasn’t sure. She let herself slide to the ground, and moaned again. That last shock had been the last she could take. “Damn bear. Damn dog.”

  Dacey relaxed a little, though his eyes searched her, as though he didn’t quite believe her. “Spirits, you put a scare on me! I heard that squalling and shrieking all the way to the camp. But Blue had to track to every doggone tree you cut.” He eyed her again, apparently finally convinced that she was indeed whole, for he relaxed some. “You give that bear some insult?”

  “Why, I walked right up to it and slapped it,” Blaine said. “Told it to stay outta my way. Spirits, Dacey! I reckon I got too close to a kill.” She nodded in the direction of the deer.

  He went to take a look, back in short order. “Bear don’t kill nothing that big, but he’s sure enough been eating on it.” He hunkered by the creature, running his hands over it. “Damn skinny thing. Sickly, I’d call it.”

  “Didn’t look so sickly when it was charging after me,” Blaine said sourly.

  He grinned at her. “No, I reckon it didn’t. Treed you, did it?”

  “Better’n Blue could’ve,” Blaine sighed, pulling up her skirt to look at her shins and the black chips of bark embedded there.

  Dacey rolled the bear’s heavy skull around to check out the injury done to it and let it flop back to the ground. “Broke its neck when it fell — though it might well have been dead before it hit the ground. Damn, you done good with that knife.” He stood and wiped his hands on his pants, and he was grinning that quiet grin. “Yup, Blaine. You can take right good care of yourself.”

  She didn’t see what was so amusing; her expression must have said it, though he didn’t give it any respect, and kept right on being amused.

  “Give over that knife and I’ll gut it. Bear meat’s tough, but it’s food.”

  Blaine tossed the knife to his feet. She stood, settled her skirts back in place, and shook out her legs, snatching up the damaged boot and jamming it on.

  “Where you off to?” he asked, looking up from the bear.

  “I spent all that time cutting those hemlocks,” Blaine said. “I’m not leaving ’em.”

  Dacey shook his head. “Take Blue with you.”

  She thought he was hiding another smile.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 11

  Dacey gutted and dressed the bear and they dragged it back to camp together. At first of the opinion that it wasn’t worth the trouble, Blaine changed her mind late the next morning. She awoke to discover that each move was an adventure in discomfort; the many scrapes on her inner legs and the tender skin inside her elbows were crusty and stiff, and Dacey, in anticipation, had cut out the bear’s sparse spring fat and rendered it. Before Blaine had a chance to make her first complaint, he handed her a little hickory basket full of grease, then busied himself with the dogs so she could minister to the sores high on her thighs. The crude liniment made her smell gamy, but softened her skin so it didn’t crack open with every movement.

  With her hurts assuaged, Blaine went to the rocks below their camp where they’d found a slow trickling spring. The chill water sent goosebumps running up her arms and down her back, but left her feeling cleaner, and freshened her eyelids, swollen from all her crying the day before. Willum’s death still hung over her, making her thoughts thick and full of pain, but when she climbed back up, she was ready to see what Dacey had planned for the day.

  He didn’t give her a chance to ask. As she entered the camp he looked up from the bear meat he was stripping to dry over the coals — for the dogs, he’d said; bear meat was good eating, but one so stringy as this one, they might as well give mostly to the dogs — and said, “You’re willing, I need you to see Trey today.”

  “Me?”

  “I think it’d be good to get to know him — and him, you. It’ll be easier to work with him if something sudden comes up. Iff’n you’re still looking to help, that is.”

  “Well... ’course I am.” Blaine’s expression took a turn toward wary — not a thing to do with Dacey, for the dogs had circled around her, closing in with hesitation but clear determination. Whimsy finally butted in close, nudging Blaine’s skirt aside so she could sniff and lick a greasy scrape. Blaine pushed her away, not gently. “Quit!”

  Dacey made a clicking noise between his teeth, a reminder to the dogs that he was watching. From under the hair that had fallen across his brow, he looked at her, thoughtful. “Just wander over to where we met him yesterday,” he suggested. “Listen to what he’s got to say. But Blaine —” This time he looked full and clear at her, his bright hazel eyes filled with quiet emphasis. “Don’t put yourself out in the open till he shows, and watch him a good bit even then.”

  “You said he wasn’t Annekteh.”

  “He ain’t. According to him, none o’ the folks have been Taken. But there’s more than one way to control a body, Blaine. He’s much as told us how they’ve been doing it.”

  “Willum,” Blaine breathed, a hundred different scenarios of revenge tumbling through her mind.

  Dacey nodded and laid another strip of meat on the greenstick drying rack he’d lashed together.

  “Don’t be doing anything to get yourself in trouble,” Dacey said, as though he had read her vengeance-filled thoughts of a moment before. “Just listen, come back and tell me what he says.”

  Blaine shrugged. “All right.” She rubbed a stray smear of grease into her skin a little more thoroughly. Maybe one of her snares had caught a rabbit. She hoped so, since Dacey seemed to have forgotten about breakfast. With a sigh, she got to her feet.

  “And take Blue with you,” Dacey said.

  Blaine stopped. Blue, rabbits and briars. No good, as Dacey would say to his dogs. “He’ll just be in the way.”

  “Not if you tell him to get out of the way,” Dacey said without missing a beat.

  “He won’t listen to me,” Blaine said, and winced at the petulance she heard in her own voice.

  “I reckon he will, at that. Call him.”

  “Blue,” Blaine said reluctantly. The dog lifted his head from Dacey’s blanket and gave her a surprised look. “Here, Blue.” His tail thumped. He stood, shook off, and trotted over to her.

  “Tell him to sit,” Dacey said quietly. Blue cocked an ear at him, but continued to wait, tail gently waving as he stared up into Blaine’s face.

  “Sit, Blue.”

  The hound watched her, ever wagging his tail, as though she hadn’t spoken at all.

  “No, tell him,” Dacey told her, surprising her with the command in his own voice.

  All right, then. “Sit!” she said. Blue sat with a thump, watched her a moment, and turned his attention to the itch that plagued him. “He did it,” she said, not quite believing.

  “Course he did. He’s got a crush on you, remember. Now, you tell him to stick close — with me, tell ’im — and he’ll stay right with you. Iff’n he goes after something, tell him no good. That ought to keep you out of trouble.”

  She gave him a narrowed-eyed look, on the verge of telling him she didn’t need any dog to keep her out of trouble. Then she thought about the bear and simply nodded. “With me, Blue,” she said as she took up the hike to the clearing. The dog followed happily, never straying very far from her and readily responding to her call when he did — that is, as long as she told him instead of merely suggesting the commands.

  They walked along the ridge, a distance that seemed longer now that she had an actual goal and wasn’t simply wandering. She even wondered if she’d missed the clearing, and was thinking about turning back when she saw its bright flash. Sunlight, partway down the mountain. Blaine slowed, her hand on Blue’s collar — and her blinder in the other. No point in taking chances, if Trey had talked, or brought Annekteh with him; the blinder would hide her. She stopped and stood there, watching for movement, looking for the grey of the pants that Trey had been wearing. After several moments of nothing, she moved closer a
nd did it all over again.

  At last, satisfied that if Trey was hiding she wasn’t going to be able to find him anyway, she moved down into the clearing and chose a seat behind a soft old tree trunk that lay along the hill. Blue sat on the first command, then lowered himself to the ground. Blaine’s hopes of his continued good behavior didn’t last long; he was soon shoving her arm with his big cold nose, courting her attention. “Quit,” she told him, pushing him off, keeping a hand on him so he’d maybe be under the influence of the blinder, too. “Just because you done listened to me don’t give you the right to get familiar.”

  With a sigh, the hound put his head on his front paws. They waited — Blaine for some sign of Trey, and Blue for whatever she might want him to do next.

  Despite Blaine’s vigil, it was the dog who first raised his head and pointed his nose down the hill. He growled and sniffed the air, then thumped his tail once. “No,” Blaine said, quiet but as firm as she’d ever been with him, stopping him when he would have risen to greet Trey. Now she could hear him, too, making his way up the hill with slow but steady steps.

  She watched as snatches of him became visible through the branches and briars, and then as he reached the clearing and stood there, his mediocre features uncertain as he looked around. It was at that moment, as it became clear that he was afflicted with her own malady of ungainliness, and that his knees and elbows didn’t seem to know in which direction to point, that she decided he might be all right. If he’d come to a collected and graceful halt, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to stand him.

  She waited for another few minutes and shoved her blinder into her pocket, standing up behind the tree. He noticed her immediately, relief on his face — although his features quickly reverted to their suspicious set. When she was close enough, he said, “I didn’t figure you’d come.”

  “I got just as much stake in this as you,” Blaine asserted. “More. I got Willum.”

  “That’s true,” Trey admitted, and then they stared at one another.

  “Well?” Blaine said when her patience ran out, which, truth be told, didn’t take an excessive amount of time. “You got anything worth telling us?”

  “Plenty,” he said in a haughty tone, obviously considering whether or not to impart his wisdom. She waited, and he relented. “Let’s get out of this clearing. It’s a fine place to meet, but it’s a good place to be watched, too.”

  “I know. I done the watching,” Blaine reminded him.

  Trey gave her a look, and probably would have set on her with some sharp retort, but Blue’s whine cut through the air instead. He’d decided that they weren’t so interesting after all, but he definitely wanted another chance at the rabbits. He looked up at her, face arranged to be its most beseeching — ears down low and pitiful, eyes showing sad white.

  “No good, Blue,” Blaine said sharply, envisioning a noisy hound rabbit-bawl in the middle of their clandestine meeting. Blue looked away from her, doggy refusal to accept her words even though he still obeyed them, staying by her side as she led the way to the log.

  “He does too listen,” Trey said, dignity lost in the sputter.

  “Yeah, he does,” Blaine said guiltlessly, settling down on the damp ground behind the fallen tree. “Now, quit wasting time — said yourself you didn’t have much of it.”

  “That’s so.” Trey leaned against the log and studied her openly. “Expected to be dealing with Dacey.”

  “Do you want I should go back and tell him you don’t know nothing? Maybe he’ll come hisself, tomorrow. ’Course, maybe he won’t. He don’t want to be seen messing around the hills — they already had him once.”

  “So how are you so sure he’s not Taken?” Trey asked, removing his hunting knife from its sheath for the sole purpose of digging little holes in the rotted bark of the tree.

  “He’s not. I seen what they did to him.” She paused at the memory of the fear on Dacey’s face, and the way he’d changed when she saw him next...the way he always changed, when he thought of that day. It occurred to her for the very first time that they could have simply Taken him to learn what they wanted, and why hadn’t they? But no, now weren’t the time for such questions, not with Trey watching her face so close. “No, he ain’t one of ’em. That’s for certain-sure.”

  He looked at her through the forelock of dull brown hair that had fallen over eyes of an equally indeterminate muddy brown, and offered her nothing.

  Blaine thought that if he was in her family, he’d have taken a bath more recently than the obvious several weeks it had been. “Listen here, Trey. Maybe you was expecting Dacey, but I ain’t gonna go running to the Annekteh with whatever you tell me and I ain’t gonna forget it before I get back to him.”

  “I can’t believe yer running with him at all! “Trey blurted. “Y’ought to be at home, not leaving your folks to worry an’ taking up with some stranger. It ain’t seemly.”

  As if she’d been able to get help when she tried! As if all she’d done hadn’t been worth anything, when here she was, back in the thick of things — not hiding out down south, like would have been safe. Blaine jumped to her feet, her bound-together braids hitting her back with the vehemence of her motion. “You don’t know nothing, you — you squirrel-brained — you jug-eared — you...you coward!” She knew she’d struck home when he lunged to his feet as well, his face red, but she didn’t let up, not with the amount of mad riding her shoulders. “Afraid to tell your business to a girl, that’s what your problem is! Well, I don’t want to hear it, neither — doubtful you got anything worth listening to!”

  She stalked a few feet up the hill and turned for another salvo. “And you listen to this! There ain’t nothing unseemly about Dacey Childers! He’s more of a gentleman than you can ever pretend to be —” ’Cause he’ll take me for who I am, an’ trust me to do what I can do — “And I ain’t running around with him like you think!” She gave him another glare for good measure.

  “I don’t got much to tell you no ways,” he snapped back. “And I ain’t afraid to tell you nothing. There’s just no use to it, ’cause you can’t pass on what you don’t understand.”

  As Blaine began to draw breath for a reply, Trey gestured at her torn up legs and snorted derisively. “Yesterday when I saw you, you was tangled in briars, and now look at you! Your skirt’s all ragged, and your boot’s a mess, and your legs are all tore up. It’s sure you ain’t got a clue how to handle what you’re into, and I ain’t taking any chances.”

  Blaine’s pent up breath whooshed out as she searched for the proper words, words to curse him so bad the flies wouldn’t light. Then she realized the truth of it, and drew herself up. “I guess I handled that bear just fine,” she said airily. “I’m alive, and that’s better’n the bear got out of it.”

  He didn’t hesitate for a minute. “You yell it to death, then?”

  “I stabbed it in the eye and kilt it.” She lifted her chin. “I might be back tomorrow, or I might have more important things to do. Dacey’ll come, then, I reckon. You want his help in this, you better be here.” She turned her back and stalked up the hill, one sharp “With me, Blue!” drawing the hound to her side. It took most of her willpower, but she managed not to check if Trey was watching her leave.

  By the time she got back to camp, she wasn’t feeling so self-full. Dacey had trusted her, and she hadn’t taken care of things as needed. But...in some ways, he’d not trusted her. And still wasn’t telling her everything. Why hadn’t the Annekteh Taken him?

  It didn’t help that he greeted her with an amiable smile, and that he was fleshing out the bear skin, or the way he heaved it up so she could admire it. “It’ll be a nice pelt when it’s tanned,” he said. “Won’t look near as skinny, then.” And he actually winked at her.

  Blaine soberly assessed the thing. “It looked a lot bigger when it was coming for me.”

  “That’s usually the way of it,” Dacey agreed, his mouth lingering in a one-cornered grin. He draped the skin back o
ver the fleshing log he’d rigged and worked at it for several minutes before asking, “Did he show?”

  Blaine gave a shrug that turned into a reluctant nod. “Didn’t have nothing to say, though.”

  “That so?” Dacey lifted his head just for a moment, but it was long enough to make Blaine look away.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s so.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Dacey said, shifting the skin to work on a new spot, scraping away the bits of flesh and fat left from the skinning. The dogs arranged themselves in a circle around him, their ears cocked high in hope. Even Blaine could smell the fresh pelt, and she was glad that at least its blood no longer hung heavy in the air. Neither her empty stomach nor her sudden mood were prepared to endure the raw smells associated with Dacey’s job.

  She moved a little further upwind and leaned against the granite wall of rock that formed one edge of the camp. It reminded her of her rock at home. Home. Willum. Family. This one, too, sat at the top of a hill. Unlike her own familiar perch, it was backed by an accessible, if not inviting peak, of dirt and trees. It beckoned to her, but she turned her back on it.

  “Why didn’t they just Take you?” she asked without preamble.

  “How’s that?” Dacey responded quizzically, one eyebrow arching in amusement.

  Blaine felt her face grow warm. Could have come on to that some better. “When the Annekteh had you at their camp,” she repeated, phrasing her question more carefully, “why didn’t they just Take you? Why’d they fool around with that jimson?”

  Dacey scraped steadily at the skin, carefully angling his knife so it wouldn’t cut through the pelt. His shoulders suddenly seemed too stiff to do the job right. “I keep forgetting you saw that.”

  “You weren’t of any mind to pay attention to me.”.

  “No.” That stiffened him up even further; he waited long enough that she thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. But she knew he was thinking about it by the too-deliberate way he worked, so unlike the casual skill he usually employed. Then he stopped working altogether, and his faraway gaze narrowed. She might as well not have been there, and he might as well have been carved of stone — until he took a sudden, deep breath, and started working again. “I did get one advantage from the seers,” he told her, as though those intervening moments hadn’t happened. “The Annekteh had no effect on them, and they can’t Take me, either. I should’ve told you before.”