by Jim Galford
In the faint glow of the moss, the wildlings’ eyes shone like they would on a moonlit night. In that low lighting, two of the kits’ normally-blue eyes shined white, like their mother, but Estin realized that one of the males’ eyes were glowing faintly orange, like his. Smiling at the tiny indication that they had inherited something from him, he bent over and nuzzled the kit’s cheek, making him giggle.
“We can’t send them away like this,” said Estin after a moment. He smiled at the other male kit, who was grinning broadly back.
Feanne frowned and looked up at him, asking, “You do not mean that you intend to bring them along?”
“No. I won’t leave my children without them at least having names. There’s a chance we might not…”
Touching his hand to quiet him, Feanne smiled with understanding, not wishing him to say what he feared in front of the kits. In her eyes, he could see that she agreed completely, both with his wishes and with his fears.
“How do we do this?” Estin asked, laughing at himself. “I didn’t go through it the first time.”
Picking up one of the children, Feanne set the male kit in front of Estin. The kit squirmed, unsure what was expected of him. He pawed anxiously at Feanne’s hand.
“What do you see when you look at him?” Feanne inquired, reaching over and grabbing the female by the scruff of the neck as she tried to escape. “A name is as much a thought of what they are to you as it is an identity.”
Estin leaned back and stared at his son, who stared right back at him, blinking his huge eyes occasionally.
“I’ll admit,” Estin finally said, “in all of them, I see hope for the future. I see our lives going on through them even if we die here. Even with that hope, I see my own fear at losing them. I even see trouble and mischief, but I don’t see names that we can use.”
Feanne grimaced as she struggled to pull the female back onto her lap.
“My father told me that saying the obvious in a language others do not know is as profound to strangers as actual wisdom,” she said, finally hoisting the female kit off the floor so she had no way to tug. “That was how I named the first two monsters, when they were still trying to gnaw on my fingers as they teethed.”
Still holding the female by the scruff, Feanne turned her around so that they were facing one another.
“Your father has named you ‘mischief,’” she told the kit, narrowing her eyes. The kit did the same and then tried to swat Feanne on the nose, but missed. “My father once traveled in the northeastern mountains. In the language of the Urishaani people, you would be called Alyana. Thus you are named, child.”
Feanne released Alyana and the girl leapt into Estin’s lap, sticking her tongue out at her mother as she did. A more fitting name Estin could not have hoped for…especially when he realized she was already going through his pouches.
“Maybe we shouldn’t name them such that they get ideas,” he said, eliciting a malicious grin from the kit. She giggled at him, pulling her hands out of his bags. “Or at least we shouldn’t tell them what it means.”
“My name means something along the lines of ‘muddy paws,’ for what it is worth,” noted Feanne, her eyes bright with humor, even in the dark. “How often has that been true of me? Perhaps she will rebel and try not to be her namesake.”
Alyana shook her head vigorously, announcing, “I don’t want my paws to be muddy.”
Reaching for the next kit, Feanne hesitated as he hunkered down, trying to avoid having his neck grabbed.
“I won’t run!” the male told them, putting both hands over the scruff of his neck. “I don’t wanna be choked.”
“None of us do,” offered Feanne, lowering her head closer to the kit’s. “Estin, what would you say here?”
“He’s really hoping you don’t grab him. Did your father have a good word for ‘hope?’”
“Rinam,” she said to the kit, who smiled back at her. “The word is of a river people in the southeast lands, though my father never visited there. He always meant to.”
The third kit looked around at the others, then up at Estin, waiting patiently for his name. This one was the one with the faint orange shine to his eyes.
“What do you think?” Estin asked the child, reaching down to lift his son’s hand in his own. Turning it over, he saw the thick little claws that lacked the sharpness of his siblings’. “Would you like to be ‘Theldis?’”
Nodding at him, the kit started to pull away his hand, but seemed to notice what Estin had been looking at. Quietly, Theldis tapped his claws against Estin’s, running the pads of his fingers over the uneven gouges in Estin’s claws, where he had shaved off the edges to sharpen them.
Without warning, Alyana yelped to get attention and took off running back into the house, with the other two chasing her.
“What does it mean?” asked Feanne, once the kits were out of sight.
Estin leaned back against the wall. “It was my father’s name. He gave up everything to save my mother and I. I can see a little of him in the boy’s eyes. Hopefully, Theldis has an easier life than my father did.”
Smiling, Feanne took Estin’s hand in hers, squeezing reassuringly.
“A good name,” she told him. “You did far better than I did with the first two.”
“What do their names mean?”
Feanne lowered her head slightly, looking away from him as though embarrassed. “I would prefer not to…”
Reaching out, Estin caught her hand and squeezed it. “Please?”
Sighing, Feanne answered softly, “Oria means, ‘love that was lost.’”
Stroking Feanne’s face with his free hand, Estin asked her, “And Atall?”
That seemed to embarrass Feanne even more.
“His name, I just made up,” she said even more quietly, glancing up the tunnel to be sure the kits were not within hearing range. “Insrin was pestering me to name the children so he could go out on a hunt. I had to come up with something quickly, or I would have found a way to strangle that male, even carrying two newborns in my arms.”
Laughing despite Feanne’s dour glares, Estin tried to put his arm around her, but Feanne shoved him back.
“Now is hardly the time for affection,” Feanne insisted. “We had best prepare ourselves. I do not want this to be our last little adventure just because we were too busy cuddling or watching Alyana torture her brothers, when we should be thinking of ways to kill our enemies.”
Despite her words, Feanne leaned close again, nipping at Estin’s ear playfully. She then hopped to her feet and went into the basement of the house, glancing over her shoulder at Estin before she vanished from sight.
For a few moments, Estin sat watching where Feanne had left, cherishing the thought of her. Then, shaking his head at his own behavior, he got up and walked toward the circle, drawing out the small notebook he carried in a pouch on his belt…though it was now in a different pouch, after Alyana had rummaged around in them.
Stopping at the edge of the circle, Estin nudged one of the stones back into place with his toe. He stood there a long time, turning the book in his hand over and over, wondering if he really wanted to do what he was considering.
He finally made up his mind and stepped fully into the circle, kneeling at the middle of the marked off area. Voices stirred unbidden, but Estin walled off his mind to them and opened the notebook, turning to a page he had marked several weeks earlier.
This was a particular page that had caught his eye, but the magic was obscure, the instructions giving few clues as to what it would do. It had taken him almost a month to determine what its true purpose was and he was still not entirely sure how it worked.
The spell written on this particular page was meant to pull the spirit of the deceased close to the caster, letting them speak directly rather than as a distant whisper. To Estin, it seemed risky, but the information a spirit might have far outweighed any risks.
After slipping out of the dream with Lihuan and Asrahn a week
prior, Estin had wondered if it really was a dream, or if it had been something more. He knew something in him had changed—if only based on the fear he had seen in the elves’ faces as he freed Feanne—but what exactly was a mystery to him, as most of that fight remained a blur. To figure it out, he could think of no better way than this particular spell.
Estin finished going over the notes in the book and closed it, setting it aside as he concentrated. Drawing strength from within himself, Estin channeled it not toward the world around him, as he normally did, but back into that vague place from which the voices spoke to him. From what he could gather, if the spirit he targeted was willing, they would answer him almost immediately.
“What are you doing?” asked a female voice behind him, snapping Estin’s delicate concentration.
Groaning as the magic slipped away, Estin turned to answer, but found the dark tunnel empty behind him. Twisting back, he looked around the room with the circle, finding nothing. A sniff at the air confirmed that he was alone.
“Who’s there?” Estin asked, getting a foot under him in case he had to move quickly. “Identify yourself.”
“You called me, child,” the female said, laughing somewhat hoarsely. “That, I did not teach you. A lesson from elsewhere, it would seem.”
“Asrahn?”
“Who else would have come to that whining call into the afterlife? Your magic sounded like a child begging for its mother. If you wish to call spirits, you will need to be more confident, Estin.”
Sinking back to his knees, Estin was at a loss for where to look. The room was empty, but the voice seemed to always come from one side or the other, as though Asrahn were moving around the chamber.
“What happened down in that tomb? One second I was trying to drink tea with two dead people, the next I was ripping Feanne’s attackers apart. I don’t even remember how I got from the tomb to her. You did something down there and I need to know what it was.”
Asrahn made a tsking sound that he could picture accompanied by a disappointed shake of the head for not figuring things out on his own. “You have allies who have fallen. Every one of them had strength left in their spirits when they passed beyond and we have tried to give you as much of that through your magic as they could, but it was not enough,” she explained. The voice drifted around behind Estin and then back along his other side. “We just gave you a way to draw on their strength directly. You will need that if you wish to fight a Turessian and not be butchered. Especially this one.”
“What am I?”
“Estin, last I checked. Fool of a question.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“No,” Asrahn answered, “but it is how I choose to interpret it.”
“How do I control it?”
“Control? Who said you had control, child? The power comes when it must, no sooner and no later. It cannot be taken from you like a sword, but it can be twisted if you use it wrongly. What it becomes is up to you. What you do with it then is as much a part of you as your tail.”
An icy chill brushed across Estin’s tail.
“Feanne can choose whether her powers are dormant or not,” he argued. If only he could see her, he expected she would be looking at him as though he were a fool. “That is what I meant by control.”
“I am well aware what you meant. Feanne has lived with her…gifts…for many years. You have not. When she was younger, she had no control, either. Had you met her back then, she would have been more than happy to kill you if you had been in her way during the change. I spent a good deal of time tending to those who were underfoot, or who had tried to help her calm down.”
After having seen Feanne’s transformation several times himself, that did not entirely surprise Estin. She could barely control her rage now, years after she had been given that power by the fae.
“Will I be able to keep from hurting my family?” Estin asked her, realizing that using Feanne’s powers as a model, any change might threaten them.
“You will control yourself, but not the power. What you do with it is what you would do with any other form of magic. Do you murder your family with the power over life and death I taught you? Do you raise them as zombies with that same power? Do you inflict disease and misery on the world with your magic? All of these are within your reach.”
“No.”
“You have all the magic that the Turessian people had as a starting point for all they did. Are you then like them?”
“No, Asrahn.”
“Then why think it would change now?” she replied testily.
The room was quiet for a minute, though Estin could feel the faint chill of the spirit moving around him still.
Finally, Asrahn’s voice came again, very near his left ear, “I will go back to Lihuan now. You have all you need to protect them. I cannot help you further, child.”
As the last word was uttered, the chill of the spirit faded away, leaving Estin alone in the room again. He closed his eyes, thinking about what Asrahn had told him, while going over what he could remember of freeing Feanne.
The day he had changed was a blur of anger and magic, but he could remember almost nothing after leaving the cavern and having woken up, holding Feanne’s battered body in his arms. The dozen ravaged men around the valley were testimony to what he had done.
Distant sounds of an argument soon cut through his introspection. Getting up, Estin followed the voices out to the basement room.
“…I’m just saying that it’s best that way,” pleaded Lorne, standing near the hall out to the staircase. “Our kind do not belong in battle. Be sensible about this.”
“Your kind, not his,” snapped Oria. She sat on the floor beside her mother, who was using a small utility knife to sharpen her toe-claws. Atall sat nearby, quietly watching the others. “You and Estin aren’t that alike and you’re just proving it by asking.”
“I do not make decisions for him,” Feanne added in a tight voice as she ran the knife along her claw again.
Estin eased back into the hall, trying to be sure he was not seen. He wanted to know what this was about, lest they hide something from him. Lorne he knew would hide it and if it was upsetting Oria and Feanne this much, they might as well.
Lorne tried to step closer to Feanne, but Oria bared her teeth, making her stop.
“Feanne,” Lorne went on, though she watched Oria nervously, “I think I can speak to some of Estin’s feelings…”
“And why would you believe that you can?” asked Feanne, keeping her eyes on the knife. She appeared to be considering its use as a weapon.
Estin started to step out and object, but deep down, he wanted to know what game Lorne was up to. Feanne was more than capable of defending her beliefs, so waiting was looking like Estin’s best plan.
“You were gone a long time. Estin and I spent weeks together. Take that for what you will.”
Oria started to stand, but Feanne grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down.
“What my mate—and do not think for a second that he is anything less than my mate, no matter how long I was gone—did while he thought I was dead is none of my concern,” Feanne explained as she released Oria’s wrist. She kept her eyes down as she talked, as though she were trying not to look at Lorne. “If he bedded you, then I am happy that he found some amusement while mourning me. Consider yourself lucky for the experience.
“Now, I am back, and our life-mating stands. His actions while I was gone are a concern for another time, if at all. They are not your concern.”
“Perhaps it gives me some claim on him as well, though.”
Feanne shook her head, answering, “He will go where he wills. This is not my decision or yours.”
“You practically control everything he does, even when you aren’t around!” exclaimed Lorne, throwing her hands up in frustration. “He deserves better out of life.”
“You will stop, right now!” Oria practically roared, though she stayed beside her mother for the moment.
“You would send your mate to his death and doom our kind, rather than see reason?” Lorne still had not noticed Estin standing just inside the dark tunnel. Atall had looked in his direction, so Estin knew the boy at least was aware of him listening in. “Stop being so selfish. You will all die. Do not sentence him to that as well. I would ask you to give up this task too, but I know better than to ask.”
Oria leapt to her feet, growling loudly, while Feanne nearly took her own toe off with the knife.
“I can speak for myself,” offered Estin, coming into the room. He waved Oria back, but the girl continued growling as she took another step toward Lorne.
Grabbing Lorne by the arm, Estin led her toward the stairs, making sure to keep himself between her and Oria. A glance over his shoulder revealed that Oria was not pursuing them, but had begun pacing around the study, while her mother watched.
“What was that about?” Estin demanded, once they were a little ways out of earshot.
Lorne looked embarrassed, but tried to step in close to him, which he prevented her from doing.
“I…I don’t think the only two of our kind out here should be separated,” she told him, standing on her tiptoes to look over Estin’s shoulder toward Feanne. “You’re becoming like them. It’s not right and it’s not what you are. I want them to let you come with me. It’s better for our breed and your life.”
“That’s not their call.”
Blinking her large eyes at Estin, Lorne said, “Then please come with me. We should not be at the forefront of battle. That’s not who we are. Our kind are meant to run, so run with me. Even if you don’t go with me, at least run away. Then I can think that someday I’ll find another of my people, even if we never meet again.”
Sighing, Estin pushed Lorne gently away as she tried to get closer to him again.