by Joseph Lallo
Teyn was not the only one who learned things in those days. On a day when he proudly brought back a young elk and there had been more than either of them could eat, he showed her how a bit of the right kind of wet wood and a long, slow fire could smoke the meat and it would last for ages. He showed her what he'd learned of tanning skins and preparing furs. A needle fashioned of bone combined with some twisted sinew was even enough to cobble together a warmer pair of trousers and a sturdier coat.
From time to time, he checked her leg, crafting a better splint or checking that the healing was going well. It had taken constant scolding and reminders, but Sorrel hadn't put any real weight on her leg since the day it had finally broken. Of course, that didn't stop her from fidgeting, sliding, hopping, shuffling, and otherwise putting the rest of her restless body to work when she needed to get around.
#
At the end of a month and a half, Teyn's skills had grown to the point that he was able to provide a hearty meal two days out of every three, and on the lean days, preserved food kept the hunger at bay. It had been just such a day, a poor hunt and a salty meal of smoked meat behind them, when Teyn was inspecting the progress of her leg.
“I think maybe you did not use the right wood for this one, Teyn,” she said, tongue scraping against her teeth. “Maybe next time you use one of the needle trees. Maybe that will taste better.”
“No. They told me never to use pine,” he said, kneeling beside her leg. He pressed his fingers to her shin. “How does that feel?”
“It feels like you are pressing on my leg,” she said with a shrug.
“And now?”
“It feels like you are pressing harder,” she said, impatience working into her voice.
He grabbed at her. “Give me your arm,” he said, stepping quickly to her side and pulling her arm across his shoulders.
“What is this about, Teyn?”
“Two weeks ago you screamed when I pressed on that spot. Come on, try to stand.”
“You are sure?” The impatience was gone now, replaced with guarded excitement.
“Come on!”
He shouldered as much of her weight as he could manage, lifting her slowly and steadily from the ground until she was teetering on her good leg, the injured one bent at the knee with its toes lightly resting on the ground. He slipped out from beneath her arm and grasped it firmly to keep her steady from behind. She put weight on it for the first time since her panicked flight from the griffin. Her eyes squinted a bit, and her teeth bared, but she waved off any attempt to support her again. Bit by bit, she leaned on the favored leg. Finally Teyn stepped back. She was standing, unsteady but without help.
“How does it feel?” he asked, ready to catch her if she seemed ready to fall. She did not answer. Her head was lowered, and she was wavering slightly. Teyn stepped around to the front and found her staring at her leg, tears in her eyes.
“Does it hurt? What's wrong? Here, take my arm,” he said urgently, stepping forward to steady her.
First, she raised her hand, palm forward, silently instructing him to keep his distance. After a slow, shaky breath, she raised her eyes to him.
“It barely hurts at all, Teyn. It barely hurts at all!” She stumbled forward, tears flowing freely now, and threw her arms around him.
Teyn staggered back a step to steady himself before slowly returning the embrace. It was the first time in his life he'd ever received such a gesture of affection.
“It is healing, Teyn,” she wept, her chin on his shoulder. “I can feel it. It is actually getting better.”
“Of course it is. We took care of it. Why wouldn't it get better?” he asked, not sure what to make of her reaction.
Sorrel loosened her embrace enough to look him in the eyes. “Because never do things get better for us. Always they get worse. We are chased and we are hated and we are hungry and we are cold and we are tired. Each day another thing. It gets to be that you are afraid always. You are afraid to trust your own. You steal things from your own. The day I stepped in the trap, the day I felt the pain, I knew it always would be there, because never has anything that has gone wrong ever gone right again. Not until you,” she added, her tone a reverent hush. “Thank you.”
“It was the least I could do.”
“How long now?” she asked, wiping her eyes and sniffing. “How long until I can walk without you there to catch me?”
“It . . . it should be a week or two. Try a bit more each day and the strength will come back. And then . . . that will be that . . .” With his final words, his voice dropped, and his spirit with it.
“Why do you not sound happy to say this, Teyn?”
“Because that will be the end of this. The deal will be done. Once your leg is strong enough, you'll have no more use for me, and by now I've learned everything I need to know.”
She looked him in the eye, saw the earnestness there, and erupted into a bout of boisterous, howling laughter, fresh tears running down her cheeks.
“Teyn . . .” Sorrel managed to say when the fit had run its course, “Teyn, Teyn, Teyn. This you do not need to be sad about. You are a handy one to have around. I think I can find a use for you still. And if you think after all of this time together you will just leave,” she added with a devilish grin, “you have very much more to learn.”
She hugged him tight once more. He returned the favor.
“Let us go! Let us leave this place!” Sorrel declared when they finally separated.
The statement came suddenly, prompted by nothing in particular and yet spoken with the utmost of conviction, as though it was a decision arrived at after long debate and careful reasoning. Teyn furrowed his brow and tried to comprehend why she would say such a thing.
“Why do we have to leave? What's wrong with this place?” he asked, certain he was missing something.
“Bah, what is right about this place? It is too windy, and too rocky, and too gray. There is little food and no place to stay but holes in the mountain, and I am sick of it. It is time to go.” As she spoke, she was gathering what few possessions she had, snatching up stones and bits of cloth, even going so far as to pull aside a well-concealed stone and fetch a satchel of jewelry that, until that moment, she'd never allowed Teyn to see.
“But it is safe here. It takes some work, but we can find enough food to survive.”
“Teyn,” she said, with a sad shake of her head, “I do not want to survive. I want to live. It is very much a different thing, and you do not know it because you've only done the first, never the second. One taste of life and survival will never be enough for you again.”
“But where will we go?”
“Wherever we want! Those stories I tell of the Great Forest. Always you are eager to hear them. Don't you ever want to see the place? Don't you want stories of your own?”
“But . . .” he objected, though now he was not sure he knew why.
Her words fizzed and sparked with energy, and steadily those sparks began to flare in his mind. So much of his life had been lived in the rigid confines of the farm. Large though it was, the boundaries were never out of sight. He never tried to leave, because he knew that beyond those walls was a world with no place for him, and if he were to go there, he would have to face terrible consequences. It was now dawning that, in a way, he'd never truly escaped that place. When he ran, he was moving only because if he didn't, those consequences would catch up with him. His life had been nothing but a desperate search for a safe corner to hide away, and though he'd left the plantation behind, he'd taken the walls with him.
As she so often did, Sorrel saw the flicker of life in his eyes long before he found the words to express it.
“Come on,” she said, holding out her hand. “We'll see how far this leg can take me in a day, yes? And the next day, we'll try to beat it. When we find a place that looks like home, then that will be our home until we decide to find another. It isn't an easy life, but it is a life, and that is better than the other choice. You s
ay soon I will be able to run again. When I do, I want to feel grass beneath my feet.”
A part of him resisted, the part that was still the frightened little whelp cowering behind the legs of the one man who wouldn't strike him. For once, though, the fear was countered by another voice, a louder voice that cried out for all that it had heard but not seen. More than that, for once he had a friend, someone who stood by him not because they shared a plight, but because she wanted to. And he knew that where she went, he would follow.
He took her hands and, together, they walked into the sunlight.
#
What followed was a glorious time in their lives. Sorrel's leg recovered completely, and shortly afterward, they reached the Great Forest of Tressor. Never had Teyn seen a place so filled with life. The ground was an emerald carpet of lush vegetation. Trees of every type towered over them. Most days the sun beat down upon the woods. Others times the driving rains that had fed the fields of his youth hammered down, but it didn't matter. Fine, broad leaves provided shade and shelter such that even on the worst of days there was someplace cool and dry to stay.
Hunting had never been easier. Herds of deer lived and thrived there. There were plump birds that Teyn had only ever seen while they were being prepared for the master's table. The air was heavy with scent of prey, and for once there was more than enough to eat. Steadily, Sorrel's withered and malnourished form regained the muscle and curves it had lost, and similarly Teyn ate well enough to replace his wiry frame with one that was healthy and strong.
But all of this bounty came at a price. Whereas the barren waste of the mountain was theirs alone, humans and their like frequented the forest in search of all of the same things that had drawn the malthropes there. Evading the eyes of humans was a skill that Teyn had learned quite well over the years, and Sorrel had raised it to an art form—so much so that when the rare need arose that could not be fulfilled by the forest alone, the two would venture out to the surrounding villages and cities. There, Sorrel would inevitably “find” what they were after, often with a few shiny baubles to show for her trouble as well. Teyn learned these lessons with the same hunger for knowledge he'd shown when learning to hunt and track. Soon, the city was just another hunting ground, no more dangerous than the woods if they took care and didn't linger.
Those hours that were not spent hunting or exploring were spent learning all that the other had to teach. Teyn picked up what he could of Crich, and after that the beginnings of a language she called Varden, which he soon learned she spoke nearly as poorly as Tresson. She eventually gained a firmer grasp of that language as well, though it was largely the consequence of their long conversations than any hunger for knowledge. Her interests tended toward whatever talents and skills he'd gathered during his time on the plantation. His miraculous treatment of her leg had sparked a fascination in any other talents he might have “stolen” from the humans. Most things he tried to teach her were not enough to hold her interest, but fashioning tools, weapons, and clothing soon became a passion of hers.
The weeks and months marched quickly by until in the blink of an eye two years since had passed, by far the best of Teyn's life. He and Sorrel seldom left each other for more than a few hours. Many warm days and wonderful nights were spent together. For all of his life, even when he was with Ben and the other slaves, he had never been anything but alone. Now he had someone. Not just someone to keep him company, but someone to call his own. His heart belonged to her, and hers belonged to him.
Through all of that time, though, despite having Sorrel by his side, more freedom, and a better life than he'd ever had before, Teyn could not shake the feeling that there was something missing. He didn't feel unhappy. Far from it. Until these precious years of freedom, he'd hardly known the meaning of the word happiness. What he felt, he could not describe. Something at the edge of his mind felt wrong, as though there was something important that had been left undone. He did his best to put the feeling out of his mind, to enjoy this rare and treasured string of good fortune, but whenever he had a moment of solitude, it was there waiting for him. It was no surprise that Sorrel sensed his troubles. Her concern surfaced from time to time, but she had the unique and admirable ability to set such things aside to live in the moment. Teyn could do little more than try his best to follow her example.
Most of their time had been spent in one corner of the Great Forest or another. On this day, the two malthropes were winding their way along the bank of one of the handful of rivers that flowed through the forest. While Sorrel was well-versed in the names of every little hamlet and glade on the northern side of the steadily smoldering war, she'd made it a habit of classifying Tresson landmarks by their meaning to her. Thus she spoke of “our mountain,” “the place where we usually find the fat birds,” and in this case . . .
“The river where the trap was,” she said with a sneer. “Watch the ground. We are close to where it happened.”
“I know. We were here last spring.”
“And if you did not step in a trap, then you can thank me for this.”
She tugged at the neck of her shirt and brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes. In the mountains, she and Teyn had weighed themselves down with layers of clothing to ward off the cold. As they made their way down to the fields, Sorrel had shed one layer after another, bundling each up and carrying it along rather than wearing it. Since they'd reached the forest, she had whittled her wardrobe down to a faded green tunic with frayed gold embroidery and pair of worn brown leggings, each of a thin fabric made thinner by age and use. Teyn wore a vest and trousers he'd made himself from crudely tanned deer hide. Each carried a pack of the same material, bulging and dangling with their belongings.
“Why are we coming back this way?” he asked. “Hunting parties come through this patch of woods all the time.”
“Here, yes, but that way for a while was a place I liked very much, remember? That place where the men never seemed to go? There wasn't very much to hunt, but there were places near to it that had plenty. The rain was never very bad there. It is a place that we could stay for a long time without having to move.”
“You've never been interested in staying in any one place for a very long time.”
“Yes, well. Sometimes there are reasons to. Sometimes it is nice to know that you can be safe somewhere, in case—What are you looking for?” Sorrel asked impatiently.
Since they'd reached the river, Teyn had been glancing at the surface every few moments, and for the last hour he had hardly taken his eyes off of it.
“It was something you said once, while your leg was recovering.”
She put her hands on her hips. “If I said something back then that would make you ignore me and look in a river, I think I would remember it. It must have been quite a thing to distract you so much. What if I had something important to tell you?” she asked, adding under her breath, “Something you would not need to be told if you had grown up with other malthropes . . .”
“There!” Teyn said, suddenly dropping his pack and bounding it into the water.
“What are you doing now?” she called out, confounded. “There aren't any fish worth going after. Certainly not if you splash around like that.”
He ignored her, slowing his pace as he waded waist-deep, his eyes trained on the rippling surface. Finally, he plunged completely below the water, emerging a moment later with a handful of gravel and sloshing back toward the bank. He blinked water out of his eyes and shook it from his long hair, unwilling to take either hand from the double scoop of stones to wipe them.
“What did you find?” Sorrel asked, now interested.
She peered down at the assortment of water-smoothed stones as he laid them out on a patch of moss and shifted through them. Shifting one or two aside, he uncovered something that made Sorrel squeal with excitement. There, among the glossy river rocks, about the size of her palm and roughly the shape of a flattened egg, was a deep purple stone. Her eyes gleamed as she held it to the l
ight.
“The color, it is perfect. How did you know where to look for one like this?”
“You said you'd thought you'd seen one in the river near where you were hurt. I thought there might be more.”
“Sharp eyes,” she cupping his dripping wet cheek with her hand, “Sharp eyes, sharp mind. That's my Teyn. These other stones I carry, but this one I will wear. I think something around my neck, yes?”
She held the stone to her chest, where it might hang if it were set in an amulet. Her mouth opened to speak, but a shift of the wind snapped her attention to the east. Teyn had turned at the same moment. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say. The scent of humans was on the air. What came next had been reduced to a reflex. Find cover until it was clear why they had come and what they were after—and, if they were seeking malthropes, run. It didn't matter how large or how well-armed the hunting party was, there was no catching a malthrope in the woods without surprising it or surrounding it, and neither Teyn nor Sorrel were careless enough to allow that to happen.
It was the work of moments for each to find a place among the bushes, disappearing into the shadows and flora to watch and wait. A few short minutes passed and there came the quick steps of a pursuit. Next there was the crunch of gravel, the splash of water, and finally the thunder of hooves. A man burst into sight; at the first glimpse of him, dark thoughts from long ago gripped Teyn's mind. It was a slave, dressed in the same distinctive tunic he'd worn for most of his life, and bearing a two-stripe brand. Below the stripes was a brand he'd never seen before—a plantation owner from nearby, no doubt. His feet were bare and battered from a long run over rough ground. There was a madness in his eyes, a terrified need to escape that Teyn knew all too well.