“So what exactly were you looking for again?” Veritea asked.
“I’m…not sure,” Ven said. He felt awkward, distrustful of himself. This was one of the two beings who had nursed him to health, and he felt indebted to her in ways he could not begin to explain. He also wasn't thrilled about letting her on his old profession. “When I… back home, I had to travel a lot, for… for my job. And that meant, my job meant that I had to have a really good idea of what was going on in the place I was staying. Who was new in town, who owed who money, who had a grudge against who. I guess I just fell back on old habits when we came in. I’m sorry if that put you out.”
Veritea stabbed a particularly juicy-looking shank of pork from the nearby roast, tore a hunk with her teeth as she gave him an appraising stare. “No apology necessary,” she said after a moment’s contemplation. “This works, actually. You haven’t noticed that everyone’s staring at you yet, have you.” The last bit wasn’t an actual question, and it took Ven a couple of heartbeats to catch her meaning.
He turned and looked out at the throng around him. The Humans weren’t gawking, not directly; but every eye in the place peeked in his direction, every snatch of conversation held word that spoke of him. Okay, what do I do now? He swallowed.
To his eternal relief, Fleisze came around the fire at a trot, threw her arms around him and squeezed him in a bear hug. Tenderly, he patted his talons against her back in return.
“It’s so good to see you up and around,” Fleisze said. “Have you eaten?”
“Uh. No,”Ven said, his beak creasing in a smile. “We’ve been busy. Your daughter’s been showing me around.”
“Well, she chose the right place,” Fleisze said, offering him a skewer of his own. “It’s about time we got something more substantive on your stomach. I’m afraid the mineral content may be below your standard fare,” she said, light dancing behind her eyes.
Ven laughed; behind them, X’on offered a delighted chuckle. The ice broken, other Humans started to approach Ven as well; a few just wanted to run a hand over his arm or his horns, but many others had questions. Ven answered as many as he could manage. Yes, there were others like him, and many more besides, fantastic creatures that made even Ven seem common. His homeland was far away, and too dangerous to travel; he wasn’t even sure, at this point, how they planned to get home. Yes, he did eat rocks; no, he would not eat that, that’s dirt, not rocks, what are you, a child?
Then he heard a question that caught him completely off-guard.
“Can you help us?”
Ven looked out over the sea of Human faces, searching out the questioner. It was a younger man, almost a boy, he guessed, standing near the back of the crowd; Ven was surprised he’d actually heard the pinty-sized Human speak over the din. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the question that had found his ear.
“Help you?” he said, perplexed. He rubbed a talon against the back of his head. “Kid, to be honest, it looks like you Humans have things pretty well in hand. I can’t imagine there’s anything I can do for you that one of your elders here can’t handle on their own.” He pointed up at X’on. “Besides, me and the big guy here are kind of on a mission, and...”
“There’s something out there.” The boy said it matter-of-factly, though not without a touch of fear. The other Humans went quiet. No one challenged the statement, but no one supported it either. The only sound in the amphitheater was the crackling pop of the fire and the occasional sizzle of meat fat hitting the coals.
“There’s something out there,” the boy said again, “something like you, something big--bigger than him.” He, too, pointed a finger at X’on. Ven realized then that his arm was still raised toward the half-giant, and he pulled it back down lamely. “It’s big, and hairy, it eats our livestock and it’s killed everyone who tries to hunt it. My brother….” The boy trailed off.
“Is…is that true?” Ven asked the crowd before him. Can there be danger even here? Even in a place this…idyllic? It was a question he found himself unable to voice.
Fleisze spoke up first. “We do not…know if it kills them,” she said. “The ones that hunt it have never returned. They disappear.” She took his talon in her warm, meaty hand. “I will not lie to you. I did not offer my aid to you, did not care for you, in order to indebt you to me. To force you to help us. But I had hoped that, if you heard our distress, you would offer your assistance.”
Ven looked up at X’on, who offered an almost imperceptible shrug in response. Your call, it said.
He turned back to Fleisze, to Veritea, to the Humans. “I’ll do what I can. Do any of you have a description of the creature? You know where it hunts, do you know where it sleeps? What do you call it?”
Veritea sighed. “Its name is older than the city, than the people of the city. It’s called the Wendigo.”
Chapter 32
That night, after the open-air barbeque wrapped up, Fleisze brought Ven and X’on to her home so they could use the spare bedroom. It was. to put it politely, smaller than Ven had hoped. That made sense, though; Ven was a head and change taller than the average human, X’on an order of magnitude above that. Thankfully, it had the same sophistication of cured and shaped wood as the rest of the city, and smelled a warm, rich green so dark it was almost black.
And for the first time in over a month, Ven stretched out on a mattress. In a bed. In a room with walls and a ceiling and a door and all the little accoutrements of civilization one never knew one would miss until one had lain unmoving in a cave for a few weeks. His feet hung over the edge almost to his knees, but at the moment he couldn’t remember a time he’d been more comfortable.
It was nearing dawn. He could feel it in his bones, whose weight seemed to be creeping upward; in his joints, which began to stiffen agreeably. The outdoor banquet and resulting Q & A discussion had taken up most of the night. Never thought Humans would be so nocturnal. All the stories say they were afraid of the dark. Heh. He tilted his head to the side, yawned, and said in a quiet voice, “X’on?”
“Hnn?” came the response from the floor. X’on was laying on the room’s area rug--no bed the Humans had could hold him, and the spare room was too small to fit a third bed inside.
“Sorry to wake you,” Ven whispered. “But I just wanted to say…I’m sorry I called you a SongWeaver. Back when we first met. You’re not a liar…you’ve been nothing but straight with me this entire trip. So…I’m sorry. And…thank you. For including me.”
“Indeed,” came the mumbled response, though the garble of near sleep turned the back end of the word into a half-question.
“G’night friend,” Ven yawned again as the sun broke the horizon, and the bed frame creaked as the weight it held tripled.
*
Early the next evening, Ven, Veritea, and X’on, who attended in capacity as translator, took the horseless carriage--the vehicle, Ven remembered, Veritea calls it the vehicle--further inland to the outskirts of the cities furthest borders, where the livestock had most recently been attacked. Again, Veritea and X’on had to fend off Ven’s insistence on being allowed a turn behind the wheel. Ven, for his part, tried to play it cool. He knew he’d never get to a chance guide the sweet mechanical beast if he was a dick about it.
Once they arrived at the ranch, Ven jumped out and headed to the pasture on foot. With uncanny speed and agility, he made his way around the perimeter, then cut across the grassland, counting steps as he did so, never taking his eyes of the land in front of him. After walking the circumference and the diameter of the field, he examined the animals themselves--cows and goats, mainly, but there were some sheep and a few free-range chickens as well. Each animal took its inspection with a docile nonchalance, unperturbed by the strangeness of the creature analyzing them. He then went back to the fencing, inspecting the rope and wire, the posts they were bound to, the ground into which the posts were buried. A couple of hours after High Moon, he joined X’on and Veritea in the hayloft for a late lunch.
“What else can you tell me about the Wendigo? Besides what came up last night,” he asked Veritea, once they had all sat down.
“Not much,” she said around a large yawn--she’d taken a decent nap the afternoon before, but had fallen asleep while Ven was in the field, and had had to be awoken when Ven returned. “Almost no one who has seen it has lived to tell about it. Most of what we know are just legends. Stories.”
“All stories have a bit of truth in them,” Ven said, with a knowing glance at X’on. “Please, any information will be helpful.”
“All right,” she said. “A Wendigo is created when a man, through need or desire, consumes the flesh of his fellow man. That act invites a demon into the man’s body, transforming it into a creature of ravenous evil.”
“Okay,” Ven said, chewing a hunk of bread. “That’s a good start. How big are we talking? Someone last night described it as hairy; any idea how much hair? Human hair or mammalian?”
“The Wendigo is…very, very large,” she said, yawning again. “About as large as your companion,” she continued, pointing a finger at X’on, who smiled and continued eating. “Its hair is said to be coarse, more animal than human, and whiter than the snows of deep winter. Its hide is so tough our hardest weapons do not pierce it. It’s said to have claws and teeth longer and sharper than fisherman's spears, and the strength to carry even a bison to its lair across its back.”
“So it eats animals other than Humans?”
“When there are none of us to eat, it will subsist on animals, yes. But it does not find their flesh as sweet.”
“How about their blood?”
Veritea looked at him askance. “I’m…sorry?”
“Animal blood. Has it ever shown a preference for the stuff?”
“Not…especially? Not that I know of. Not over man’s blood, at least.”
“I see. And you say that it was once Human? Does it transform back and forth, like a Shifter?”
“A Shifter?” she asked, eyebrow knitting. “I don’t…do you mean like a skinwalker?”
“I don’t know, what’s a skinwalker?”
“A shapechanger,” she said. “A creature that can assume many forms, that tricks and deceives and plots. Great beings, said to have fled the world.”
“Nah, Shifters are just folk infected by the bite of other infected Shifters,” Ven said. “Usually wolves, but not always. So is the Wendigo a skinwalker, do you think?”
Veritea shrugged. “I would not think so, but I cannot say for sure. Again, we are speaking of a creature that almost no one has lived to describe, and those that have were traumatized by the experience.”
Ven’s ear canals perked up at that one. “Are there any of the victims around today? Anyone I could interview?”
Veritea shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “The last recorded Wendigo attacks were half a century ago. My grandfather was one of the survivors, but he passed when I was a child.”
Ven bit back his disappointment and placed a taloned hand on her shoulder, much as X’on had done so often for him when he need condolence, or guidance. He almost felt like he was practicing, learning the motions for becoming a compassionate being. For becoming the creature he wanted to be, not the one he was. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I’m sure he was a good man.”
Veritea smiled that enigmatic smile. “He was. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Ven said. “I think I have enough to get started. We should head back to your mother’s place, I need to get some things together.”
*
“Whatever it is, it’s not a Wendigo,” Ven said, once he and X’on were alone in their guest room. Ven was sitting on the bed, scribbling on a sheet of paper Fleisze had given him; X’on was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in his meditation stance.
“Oh?” he asked.
“Yeah. At least, not the kind they’re used to,” he continued, not looking up. “Something that big would have left prints in the field, deeper and larger than anything those animals would leave. But there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary except a couple of hoof prints that didn't match anything in the pen, and those were only in the muddiest and shittiest areas. Whatever went in there was light on its feet. It got a snack while it was hunting, too--two of those goats had puncture marks on or around a major artery, and there was a cow with an open wound in the leg that appeared to have been treated, but then re-opened.”
“I see,” X’on said, without opening his eyes.
“And everything smelled right. Dark yellows and browns, some muted greens; animal smells, not human. So we could be dealing with a skinwalker, something that can shift down into a creature that can move light and quick, pick out its prey, and abduct it when it re-enlarges itself…but there should have been tracks around the fence to account for that, too. No…there’s something else here. Something like a brownie, or an imp, but much more vicious…hey, I need a favor.” He waggled the paper in X'on's face. “Sometime tomorrow, when the sun’s up, will you get me this stuff? I need to re-equip.”
X’on cracked his good eye open. “Really?” He glanced at the list, then back at Ven. “And how do you propose we pay for your new toys, my friend?”
“Ah. Right.” Ven paused; took a long breath. “Sell…sell my sword. I’m sure someone around here would pay top dollar for a good dwarven weapon.”
X’on’s eye widened. That got him up. “You can’t be serious.”
“I absolutely am. This close to the finish line, what do I need it for? What, are we gonna have to fight an abominable snowman or something?” The color suddenly drained from his face. “Wait, we’re not gonna face an abominable snowman, are we?”
X’on actually rolled his eye at that. “I doubt it. But why are you willing to cast aside something so valuable for these humans? Help them, yes, but that is so much more than helping.”
“And you, what, don’t you want to help?” Ven replied, a little hotter than he intended. “They saved my life, our lives, and they’ve given us nothing but courtesy and respect. These are good people. Better than anyone I’ve met in my life. I’ve been a Hunter--worse, a hunter for money, a bounty hunter--as far back as I can remember.” And worse than that for more years than I care to tally. “All my life, the folk I’ve met along the road have wanted something, wanted a piece of me. These Humans, they asked for my assistance, but they didn’t badger, bargain, or cajole. If I’d said ‘no’, I think they’d have said that was fine and let us go on our way. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
X’on had not moved from his relaxed, meditative stance on the floor. He closed his eyes again and said in a quiet voice, “Humans also hunted the dragons to near extinction. Who knows who they would have gone after next if they hadn’t been stopped? Are these…people…truly worth your faith, Ven?”
The room was silent for a few heartbeats, as Ven pondered the question. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I hope so.”
X’on opened his eyes again. He reached out and took the paper from Ven’s talon. “I shall do my best to procure these items for you, then,” he said. “If it will bring you peace for me to do so, then consider it done. And once you put this incident to bed, what then?”
“Then we head off. We find the dragon’s hoard, and we live like kings.” Here. I’m living here. Once all this is done, once I’ve claimed my share, I’m settling here. With these people. A new life, a new start, far away from the pain, the hopelessness. The loneliness. Away from everything that came before.
Chapter 33
“Slow down. Slow down slow down slow down the brake is on the left thebrakeisontheleft!!!”
Ven coasted to a screeching stop with almost a whole third of the vehicle still on the road. He was panting heavily, and sweat was pouring from his forehead, but the wide smile that stretched across his face was genuine.
“How'd I do? It was my first time, yeah, but I kinda feel like I'm a natural. I've always been good with new tech.”
Veritea pulled herself out of the upholstery and gave him a quivering pat on the hand. “You were… eager,” she said, her voice shaky. “That counts for something, I guess.”
X'on, several shades paler and sitting ramrod straight in the back seat, put a slow, almost mechanical right hand on the door's release hatch, and took the overloaded pack by his side with the left. “I will walk the rest of the way. If the pair of you do not mind,” he said.
“No, it's cool, we'd all better hoof it from here,” Ven said, oblivious to his companions' dread. “Any closer and the noise might alert the creatures that are hunting around here.”
“Creatures?” Veritea's voice shot up an octave. “As in plural? You think there's more than one?”
“It's a possibility,” Ven said. “But I told you, I don't think it's a Wendigo either.”
“I pray you're right,” she said.
Ven chuckled under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. There's a pun in there, is all.”
The rest of the walk to the barn that overlooked the terrorized pasture happened in silence. As they moved, Ven felt Veritea slip her hand into Ven's talon; he held it loosely as they walked, hoping he was providing the girl some comfort. At least I hope that's all she wants. Otherwise, this could get awkward. Several magnitudes of wrong species awkward, and that's just to start. Her hair smelled jasmine purple. Ven found himself hoping desperately that hadn't been for his benefit.
When they got to the barn, X'on lugged the bulk of equipment up to the loft while Ven did some quick reconnaissance of the area.
“No one yet,” he confirmed on his return.
“How do you know they hunt at night?” Veritea asked.
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