Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

Richard and Nancy, hunched by the fire with boulders at their backs – and days of hunger also behind them – barely singed their meat before lifting it away, dripping, spitting burned blood – and bit into it, ripping pieces from it as if the deer were still alive, and might escape them… Errol, apart at his usual distance, stuffed as furiously.

Baj found him less disturbing. Any hungry boy, poorly raised and rarely fed, might have done the same. But Richard and Nancy fed as any hounds might have, fangs flashing into meat, heads shaken to tear bites loose to swallow. And all quickly, quickly as if Baj or someone else might reach across the fire and snatch meat from them. There were no growls… no snarling, but those seemed ready.

Baj ate, and tried to avoid watching them eat. Those two – who had come to seem so richly human – now displayed again whatever portion of animal had been twisted into their breeding.

There was for him… a distaste. And some fear of them, that shamed him.

"What's the matter?" Nancy stared at him, her narrow face dappled with blood and juices.

"Nothing."

"Not nothing. You looked at us!"

"I didn't -"

"You looked at us." She elbowed Richard as he chewed. "He looked at us badly!"

"I did not."

"You lie. I saw your face, watching." Nancy threw her piece of meat into the fire with a small fountain of bright sparks. "Being disgusted was in your look, you nasty blood-human. And because of our eating!" Her face contorted with rage. "It's our mouths – our teeth. It's the animal that was stuck in us, you fuck-your-mother thing!"

"I wasn't doing that."

"lie, lie, and lie again like all Sunriser shits who think they're better!" She stood, tears in the yellow eyes. "He waits," she said to Richard, "- to see you lift your leg against a tree. He waits for me to sniff someone's bottom like a dog! To bend and lick myself."

"I don't."

"It's your doing! It is all your doing!" And she was gone out of the fire's light.

After a silence in which only Errol ate, Richard lowered a chewed venison rib, and said, "She didn't mean you, as you."

"… I know what she meant," Baj said. He looked into the fire's coals so as not to meet the big Person's eyes. "I know the only differences between Boston and the River Kingdom are place and custom and arms. The dangerous come-at-you's of both are blood-human… as are the Talents' cruel studies, also."

"Trouble," Richard said, "is made by all, Baj, who wish and want." He raised his rib-bone and took a tearing bite. "- And by Persons as much as any."

"I'm back," Nancy said from the dark. "I am back to eat – and if the Sunriser doesn't like it, he can lass my part-fox ass!" She stepped into golden firelight – red gold on her widow's peak of hair – sat in her place, snatched a chop sizzling from its spit-stick and bit into it, shook her head to tear a chunk loose. Brutish, but for tears still streaking her face.

"It's true," Baj said. "It… disturbed me a little, to watch you both eat. I suppose it always has, because it shows the blood in you." He cleared his throat. "Bears have always frightened human people. A wise old man, our librarian, told us once that men used to worship bears… And foxes and men have played hunting games forever – the foxes winning more times than not."

"I'm not listening." Nancy gnawed her bone.

"Those things are true, just the same."

"Talk talk talk," Nancy tossed the bone away, "- talk does not equal one bad look."

"Then forgive me," Baj said. "I apologize."

"You're forgiven," Richard said, "- and now, I suppose I can mention your smell without offense." He smiled a toothy smile.

"You stink," Nancy said. "You smell like an owl."

"I didn't know owls smelled."

Richard handed him a fatty portion, still sputtering. "They smell like humans," he said.

… That night, drifting in and out of sleep in his wrapped blanket, Baj, roused by a cold wind come south into the mountains, regretted the fire's warmth and warm ashes. Richard had insisted on moving their camp more than a bow-shot across the slope, in case the fire had given the Robins notice.

Sleeping and almost sleeping, Baj considered the difference between traveling from – as running from a furious king – and traveling to, as now he ventured toward the Shrikes and Boston's Guard, for vengeance, and perhaps the cold earth's good… It seemed to him, that direction made surprisingly little difference in journeys.

A smith, with spark-scarred hands and singed leather apron, roused Patience in early after-noon, gestured her up and off her pallet, and led her outside past a guard – a short tribesman bearing hide-shield and heavy hatchet, and looking almost strong as the smith.

A short thick iron-bound section of log was waiting, with a yard's length of rusty chain to what seemed a leg shackle.

Patience, having dressed that morning – with the help of Charlotte-doctor – in her boots, dirty blouse, trousers, and worn blue coat – stood a little stunned by sunlight and the busy murmurs of a village of wattle huts ranked steeply down to the left along a mountain stream. A considerable village, seen in daylight – more than forty small dwellings, and three larger ones. One, certainly bachelor quarters… All she could see were handsomely plastered light mud-brown beneath brighter painted scenes of hunting, and perhaps of war, the colors (berry colors, oak-leaf colors, under-bark colors) all oranges, dark reds… The village looked better than it smelled; sheep grazed between the huts, and Patience saw an open shit-pit seething with summer flies beside the nearest beaten path.

The smith, who appeared to speak no book-English, or very little, directed Patience with grunts and gestures, brought her beside the log-round, sat her on it, then tugged her right boot and stocking roughly off… set the shackle's hinged limbs just above her ankle, closed them – and tested the fit, turning the iron a little this way and that. It was painful enough that Patience noticed her bound shoulder now only ached, and not so severely.

It seemed the smith judged very well – shook the iron, checked for tightness to the bone – then, like an impatient lover, shoved Patience down along the log, and placed her leg where he wanted it across the round's iron band.

A rivet fitted to key the shackle closed, the smith produced a heavy hammer Patience hadn't seen, and – without pause for care – drew back and hit the rivet's head five clanging savage blows so swiftly she only had time to be frightened by the third.

Done, the smith took his hammer and walked away past two admiring naked little boys, and a small girl who needed to blow her nose. More children were gathering, but the adults – perhaps two hundred men and women, all kilted, feather-scarred, and bare to the waist – paid Patience no attention, but worked among the hutments, choring, tending small gardens.

She stood, found one boot awkward, and tugged it and the stocking off so she stood by the log-round barefoot. She tried a step, found the shackle griping, abrading her skin, and bent to tuck the stocking in around it for a cushion.

A second step proved that hauling the log-round would be constant labor. Even with two good arms, she would not be able to hoist the thing more than a few inches off the ground. And nothing that was not quite light could be carried while Walking-in-air. Chained, her traveling would be by dragging over earth, and no other way.

The tribe would keep her – for themselves or Boston – keep her from Maxwell forever.

Patience had wept only a few times in her life; easy weeping was simply not in her, but she would have wept in sunshine by the Robins' stream, except for being interrupted of the notion by a scatter of dung – sheep dung, she hoped – that was thrown and hit her in the face.