by Fel
Tarrin used it as a springboard to get him to the branch higher up, the branch he'd targeted, then scampered around and behind the tree trunk, safely out of the Trolls' line of sight. He peeked back around the other side, lower down, seeing them standing at the bank of the river, howling curses and screaming, stamping their bare feet in frustration. They were too busy being mad to think of finding a way across the river, but that wouldn't last for long. He had to move, and he had to move now.
He hesitated an instant, weighing his options. He could try to find Dolanna again, but he had no idea where he was, and he certainly didn't want to lead a hundred Trolls right to her. He thought about following the river down to the original one--he was certain that the two joined somewhere--but he had no idea if Dolanna would be there once he evaded the Trolls with his roundabout route and tried to find her. She told him to go to the Tower. She expected him to go to the Tower. He seriously doubted that he would be able to find her, for she would obviously take another ship downriver, and he couldn't keep up with it. She would meet him at the Tower.
So that was where he decided he had to go.
Looking up, he got his bearings using the Skybands. Since they crossed the sky from east to west, and he could see from the morning sun which of those two directions was which, he knew which way to go. Go west to the coast, and then south to Suld.
Turning away from the morning sun, Tarrin left the howling Trolls behind, dropped to the ground, and ran south, with every intention of doubling back on a good bit of his trail and then going into the trees to give the Trolls fits when they got across the river. They knew that he could go in any direction...and he'd have too much of a lead on them for them to seriously give chase to him.
He did just that, doubling back on almost two miles of trail, then going into the trees and moving west. He did that all morning and well into the afternoon, past the point where his muscles burned and his breath came in hard, short pants. Every moment he kept moving was more time he could safely rest. That one thought, that goal, dominated his mind, kept him moving. Get out of danger, and then rest. Resting too soon will leave them too close. His whole thought process centered around the next branch. Find the next branch, jump to the next branch, walk across the next branch, climb up the next branch. He was afraid to stop, even a moment, fearing that that moment would become longer, and they'd be surrounding the tree he was sleeping in when he woke up, shaking him out of it.
It was a hazy, totally exhausted Tarrin who looked up a moment and realized that it was sunset. He moved the entire day, on a course that was as due west as he could manage in the trees. He was famished, thirsty, and totally drained, but hunger and thirst couldn't hold a candle to the bone-weariness that threatened to topple him out of the tree. Tarrin dropped to his knees on the wide branch, a branch even wider than he was, connected to a tree that had to be a thousand years old, laid out on its length right where he was, and fell into an instant deep slumber.
There had been no dreams. None that he could remember, anyway, and if there were, they were incapable of rousing him from his comatose sleep. Tarrin's eyes fluttered open, aware of the rosy light that was painting the green foliage in front of him, hearing and smelling the life of the forest that he had all but ignored in his mad flight the day before. It was quiet, peaceful, and there was no sound of Troll feet and no stench of Troll bodies.
He'd not moved an inch from where he had fallen to the branch, and he was sore in more places than he could count. His belly growled dangerously at him, and his throat felt like someone had stuffed wool against it. But he was alive, and he'd evaded the Trolls, and that made it tolerable. Even being lost and alone in the wilderness was more than preferable to his head hanging around some Troll's neck, as it jokingly exagerrated the difficulty of the spear cast that had killed him. Getting up onto his paws and knees, he yawned loudly and stretched, feeling his back crackle and pop from the long hours in an uncomfortable position, his claws digging furrows out of the bark.
His head snapped up. There was another smell, almost right on top of him, but it had been there so long he'd dismissed it, even in sleep. It was a smell very much like his own.
"Good morning," came an amused voice.
Tarrin looked behind him, and she was standing there. She was wearing clothes now, a white shirt and a pair of canvas breeches, but she was just as beautiful and terrifying as he remembered. The nightmarish memories of that chaotic battle washed over him, and his arm throbbed and burned in memory of her bite, the bite that had changed him. Her shirt was stained in many places, and the breeches were tattered about the ankles, but her skin and fiery red hair and white fur were clean, and her crystalline green eyes looked down at him with a guarded expression. He could tell that she was tense, as if expecting him to attack.
The thought did occur to him, but he was in no position nor condition to start a fight. He was still very weak from the long flight and lack of food or water, and he knew it. An indignant "you!" escaped his lips, carrying with it all the hatred and enmity he felt for her, a hatred that had flared up inside him like a bonfire. She had done this to him, had changed him. That it was not her conscious choice did not matter.
"I see you remember me," she said, a bit ruefully.
"What did you expect?" he demanded hotly, managing to get to his feet. He couldn't hide how much of an effort it was just to stand. "You have alot of nerve, woman. If I wasn't so tired, I'd kill you."
"You would try," she said flatly. "You don't bring enough to the table to kill me, cub, especially not right now. Be thankful I like you. I've killed others for less than what you just said to me." She crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts and leaned back against the tree trunk. "I'm not here to fight, anyway," she told him. "I'm here to meet you."
"We've met," he growled at her.
"Mind your manners," she snapped at him. "I'm not going to be able to do anything with you if you can't be civil." She pointed at him. "You are Tarrin," she said. "My name is Jesmind. "
"How did you find me?"
"Oh, come now, cub," she said in a flat voice. "Give me some credit. I've been watching you since the day you left Torrian."
"I didn't see you, or smell you."
"That's because I didn't want to be found," she told him simply. "You did very well getting away from the Trolls. I was about to put a paw in, but you got away on your own. I'm impressed."
"What do you want?" he asked bluntly.
"I want to teach you," she said. "Well, there's no 'want' involved in that. It's a matter of 'must'. For the time being, consider me to be your mother."
"Mother?" he said in a strangled voice.
"There are things that you have to know," she told him with a challenging, cool look. "It's my responsibility to teach them to you. Until you're old enough, or experienced enough, to be out on your own, you are my responsiblity. What you do will come back to me, because I'm the one that is responsible for you being what you are." She gave him a moment to let that sink in. "There's no choice in the matter, Tarrin. You must know these things. But as soon as I'm confident that you understand them, and I'm sure you won't go mad, then you'll be free to do as you will. You'll never have to see me again. Unless you want to, that is."
Tarrin steadied himself, considering her words. He hated her, but there were things that he wanted to know. "I don't mind, not all that much," he said in a quiet voice, "but I'm travelling west. If you're going that way too, then we can travel together."
"Is that so?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "My home lies to the east, cub. That's where we need to go."
"I can't," he said. "I have to go to the Tower. The reason I left home was because I can do Sorcery. They were taking me to the Tower. If I don't go there, I'll do magic and hurt someone without knowing what I'm doing. Besides, someone out there doesn't want me to get to the Tower," he told her wearily. "Those Trolls were after me, and it's not the first attack. You should know that," he said. "The only place I'll be safe is in the To
wer."
"I'll worry about keeping you safe," she told him. "Once we get out of human lands, nobody will ever find you."
"Didn't you listen at all?" he demanded. "I don't have a choice. I have to go to the Tower. That's more set in stone than anything that has anything to do with you. Now if you're willing to travel in that direction, then we can travel together, and I'll learn what you have to teach me. If you're not, then we'll just part ways here and now and hopefully never see each other again."
"Don't dictate terms to me, boy," she said in a dangerous tone. "You'll go where and when I say you'll go."
"Then you'd best either let me go or try to kill me now," he shot back, standing straight and tall before her. He realized how tall she was as he faced off against her. Her eyes were on the same level as his, and she was only on very slightly higher ground. He hadn't noticed that before; his memories of her didn't include any where she was standing up straight, or very many that included her by herself or without pain involved. In his memory, she was twice as big as he was. It was reassuring that she was his own size.
She gave him a dark look, then she laughed ruefully. "Oh, my, this is going to be interesting," she said. "Mother always wished for me to have a child as stubborn as I was. Well, I think she got her wish. Both of us have to travel south," she said. "Let's travel south for now. When the time comes when we'd have to part, let's take this up when we get there."
"I don't object to that," he said, after a moment of weighing her offer carefully. "Just answer me one question. Who sent you after me?"
"I don't really know," she sighed. "I was careless, and someone managed to use magic against me to hold me still while someone put the collar on me from behind. It was on a deserted street in Goram."
"That's in Tor," Tarrin objected. Tor was a small kingdom on the southern coast, not far from Arkis. It was also almost a thousand leagues to the south and east.
"I know," she said. "I don't have any memory of much after that. Just little images. I remembered you, though, because the Sorceress took off that thrice-damned collar with you in the room. If she'd have left it on, I probably would never have known you existed."
"A pity," he grunted.
"No, lucky for you," she snapped back. "You seem to be dealing with the dual nature of our kind, but there are things about us that you need to know. There are rules that we live by, rules imposed on us by the Fae-da'Nar. If I wasn't here to teach you, then you wouldn't know these things, and that would hurt you later on."
"Fae-what?"
"Fae-da'Nar," she repeated. "Think of it as an association of intelligent beings of the forest," she told him. "Centaurs, the other Were-kin, Faeries, Pixies, Dryads, Sylphs, and many others. We all live with a very loose communal government, so there's very little friction and we can all live in peace, and we don't irritate the humans and cause trouble that way. Look, there's a great deal I have to teach you, and it's not going to happen right here, right now. You're about to fall over, and I'm tired from tracking you down over the last night and day. Let's get something to eat, get some water, and we'll start south."
"Alright," he said.
They climbed down out of the trees, and Jesmind led him towards the smell of water. It was a large stream with large rocks littering the shores. "Ah, water, and it looks like we have breakfast too," she said.
"Where?"
"Don't you know how to fish?"
"Of course, but I don't have a hook."
"Humans," she sighed. "You have to make tools for everything. Come on, I'll teach you how to really fish."
Tarrin watched as Jesmind laid down on a rock by a large, deep pool, then slithered up to the edge. He stood just behind her, watching as she watched the water. Tarrin could see several silvery shapes moving about under the water. Jesmind lifted up one paw, watched intently for a second, then her hand shot into the water so fast it sounded like the surface of the water was ripped. She snatched her paw back just as quickly, and a rather large fish sailed over his head, then hit the bank and started to flop around.
"That's all there is to it," she said. "Just make sure that you aim below where you see the fish. The surface of the water bends what you see, making the fish look like it's somewhere else. Here, you try."
Tarrin traded places with her, watching the darting shapes, a bit nervous now, with tail-twitching interest. His first few attempts were badly off the mark, but he swallowed his frustration and concentrated on the task at hand, analyzing how much he had missed with the different attack angles he'd used. He got a pretty good idea how much he was off from his past attempts, so he adjusted his trajectory, waited for the right moment, then struck like a viper. His paw slammed into the water, his claws hooked into something that gave, then he yanked it out. Tarrin looked back to where it was falling, and saw a rather large silver-backed fish flopping around next to the one that Jesmind had caught, which was already starting to go still.
"Not bad," she praised. "Catch us a few more, and then we'll eat."
"Alright," he said, turning his attention back to the pool.
After about ten minutes, Tarrin had six trout laying on the bank. Jesmind used her claws to gut and clean each fish as it bounced onto the bank, her claws like knives as she cut off the heads and tails and fileted the remainder with precise skill. Tarrin stopped to drink deeply from the pool after fishing, then returned to her where she was sitting on a rock at closer to the trees. "I usually don't eat it raw," she admitted, "but it's well enough in a pinch."
"Raw?" he said with a shudder.
"Don't knock it til you try it," she said, holding out a fileted strip of fish.
Tarrin was surprised. He expected to gag the instant it his his mouth, but it actually wasn't that bad. He wolfed down his meal quickly as Jesmind watched him, his ravenous hunger coming back in a rush. "It's not like we live in the woods and act like animals," she told him as they ate. "I live in a nice cottage in about the center of the Sylvan lands. What you Sulasians call the Frontier. I hunt, and fish, and just live, and when the urge hits me, I wander around the Twelve Kingdoms and see what's going on with the humans. I built the cottage myself," she added with a bit of pride.
"Why doesn't anyone know about you--us?" he asked.
"Because there aren't very many of us," she said. "We're the rarest of all the Were-kin. And because of this," she said, holding out her arms, "we're often mistaken as exotic Wikuni."
He looked at her face, closely. Take away the ears, and she was the twin of the sailor that was on the ship. She was even wearing the same clothes. "You were the sailor on the ship," he accused.
"Yes, I was wondering when you would figure that out," she said with a smirk.
"How did you--"
"It's not easy," she cut him off. "So don't even think about trying. The human shape, it's not natural to us anymore. At one time it was, but that was long ago. We've changed since then. We can take the human shape, but it's very painful, and it's also very exhausting. I seem to have a knack for it," she shrugged. "I can hold the human shape for over four days, but it leaves me sore and aching for a week. My mother can't hold the human shape for more than six hours, and she's been practicing for over six hundred years."
"Six hundred years?" he said in consternation.
"Oh, that," she said. "We don't age like humans do, Tarrin. How old do you think I am?"
He looked at her. She had a youthful glow about her, even though her features were obviously mature. It made it hard to put an age on her. "I don't know," he said. "About twenty-five, I think."
She laughed. "You're trying to be sweet on me," she accused. "I honestly don't know how old I am. I think I'm somewhere around five hundred. Maybe more."
He gaped at her.
"I lost track," she shrugged. "The next time I see the Red Comet, I'll know. I was born two years before it passed, and it passes every fifty-nine years. I've seen it eight times, and it's going to be coming around again fairly soon."
"In two years," he s
aid absently, doing the math. "That makes you five hundred and thirty-one years old," he said soberly.
"Something like that," she shrugged. "My mother is over a thousand. She's the oldest of us."
"How?" he asked.
"It's just our nature," she replied simply. "Once we reach a certain age, we just stop aging. We live until something kills us."
He continued to eat, wondering over that information. That meant that he was the same. He would live until he was killed. But the way things had gone lately, that could be at any time.
"Any other questions come to mind?" she asked calmly.
"No, not at the moment," he said, chewing on another strip of fish. He was still in a bit of shock over the concept that Were-cats didn't grow old, or die of age.
"I think you understand the basics," she said absently. "I have the feeling that that Sorceress managed to give you a little instruction. You certainly understand your physical gifts," she noted. "We'll start with shape-shifting. It's not that hard, and you should be old enough. You look it."
"You don't know?"
"I've never worked with a Changeling before," she said with a small frown. "Kimmie was a Changeling, but Mist was the one that acted as her mother. Mist is like that sometimes," she mused. "There are things we can and can't do that depend on our age," she told him. "We can't shapeshift until puberty, and taking the human shape isn't possible for a couple of hundred years afterward. I don't know about you, because you weren't born into it. And I can't remember just when Kimmie had managed the human shape." She finished off her strip of fish, and leaned back against a rock. "We'll try this evening," she decided. "You need to understand what all goes into it, and it's easier to do it when we're stopped."
"Why?"