The wound on my side ached and burned. The crude bandage around my chest wouldn’t let me draw a full breath.
We crossed a chuckling stream, and I realized how thirsty I still was.
I heard the whispering wind, the stream, and perhaps—could it be?—something more.
My name on the breeze.
“Byx.”
I waited, and there it was again.
“Byx!”
I strained to listen but heard nothing else. Was it some echo of my mother’s voice? Did she still call to me from the land of the dead? But all I could hear was the clatter of the horse’s hooves on rock and the guide’s breathing.
You’re not thinking clearly, I told myself. Hearing what isn’t there.
And yet again it came.
“Byx!”
I was hearing, perhaps, what I wanted to hear: someone, somewhere, searching for me. Someone who knew I was still alive.
The wind whispered its eerie music, and another memory came unbidden. My parents had been talking softly, just a few days earlier. They were sitting in the far corner of our makeshift home inside the mirabear hive, whispering about us. About my siblings and me.
They thought we were asleep.
We weren’t.
When it comes to the subject of sleeping pups, parents are strangely skilled at fooling themselves.
“If trouble comes,” my mother said, her voice hushed.
“When trouble comes,” my father corrected.
“When trouble comes,” she continued, “I worry for them all. But especially I fear for Byx.”
I heard my name and startled. Still, I kept my eyes shut and my breathing slow and even. No one feigns sleep better than I.
“Why Byx, love?” my father asked.
“She’s so young. So small.” My mother’s voice trembled. “I had a dream, a terrible dream. They came for us. I dreamed she was the first to die.”
“The first to die.” My father was silent for a long while.
I remembered lying motionless, silent, scarcely breathing, waiting for more.
“I, too, had a dream,” my father said at last, sighing. “Worse in some ways. I dreamed”—his voice caught—“I dreamed she was the last to live.”
“No,” my mother said, and I could hear that she was softly sobbing. “Don’t even think such a thing.”
“They say humans have a word for it. Endling.”
My mother laughed bitterly. “They would have a word for it, wouldn’t they?”
My brother Reaphis, sleeping near the bottom of our tangled pile, nudged me with his foot. “Don’t worry, Byx,” he said. “They won’t waste arrows on a runt like you. You’re not worth the trouble of eating.”
“They don’t kill us to eat us,” my oldest sister hissed. She
was the smartest among us, perhaps because she was the best eavesdropper. “They kill us for our fur. That’s what Dalyntor says.”
We’d all heard that rumor many times before. Not that it made it any less painful to hear.
“Are you asleep over there?” my mother called.
We knew well enough not to answer. My parents grew quiet, and so did we.
“Byxer?” my brother Jax murmured hours later. He couldn’t sleep either, it seemed.
“Yes?” I said softly.
“Don’t worry. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you.”
Jax was a year older. He was sweet and silly, and had one violet eye and one green one. He was my favorite, and I was his.
“I’ll protect you, too,” I said.
If I’d said that to any of my other siblings, they would have scoffed. Not Jax.
He reached for my hand.
When I woke up hours later, he was still holding on tightly.
13.
The Cave
We came to a stop. The guide said something to the horse, a short, terse-sounding word in a language I didn’t understand. The horse shifted his weight.
A mossy, wet-stone smell filled the air, and the wind moaned like an old animal struggling to breathe.
The guide spoke again to the horse, this time in the Common Tongue. “Stay here, Vallino.”
Vallino did as he was bidden, standing still and dropping his graceful head to snuffle for the few bits of grass peeking out between the rocks.
I tugged at the knots holding my hands, but it was pointless. My captor was clever with ropes.
Moments later the guide returned and, with some effort, yanked me off Vallino. My feet hit the ground with a soft thud. Gently the guide directed me forward around the bluff. I smelled damp air wafting from the entrance to a cave.
I tried to jerk free, but it was a useless gesture. I stumbled into the cave, and as we rounded a bend, the light from the entrance was nearly extinguished. I struggled to make out shapes in the featureless dark.
“This is far enough,” the guide said, again using the Common Tongue.
He settled me down onto my rear, not a comfortable position for a dairne. “Wait here,” he said, as if I had a choice. “I’m getting Vallino.”
The clip-clop of hooves echoed against the walls. The horse was skittish, wary in the enclosed space. I understood how he felt. It was so dark it was almost like being blind. I could barely make out the guide’s form until he was right next to me.
Carefully he peeled away the bandage and the medicinal leaf. “That’s good,” he said. “The bleeding has stopped.”
That voice. Once, when I was just a pup, I heard men’s voices from a distance. We’d strayed too close to a village, close enough to hear the shouts and grunts as the men pursued us.
Yesterday, again, I heard voices like theirs: guttural, deep in the chest, booming.
But this boy’s voice was different. There was hidden music in it, like a lark’s call from a faraway tree.
He retrieved his water pouch and a blanket off the horse’s back. “Vallino won’t mind,” he said, but the horse’s angry snort said otherwise.
I caught a flash of white teeth and wondered if the guide might actually have smiled, but I couldn’t be sure.
He draped the blanket over me, tucking it around my shoulders and feet. “Caves are chilly,” he said. Raising the waterskin, he directed a stream of cool water into my greedy mouth.
I would have liked to throw the blanket aside—I was already well acquainted with the odor of horse—but I needed the warmth. I was shivering like a cornered chipmunk.
As night fell in the world outside, the cave came alight with a soft glow of moonsnails. They dotted the ceiling and walls, barely moving, but moving nonetheless. Their translucent shells slowly pulsed with light, changing color from pale pink to deep orange like tiny, traveling sunsets.
The guide returned to Vallino, fumbling around in a leather bag. He pulled out a canvas feedbag with straps and tied it over Vallino’s nose, then brushed the horse’s coat. After picking brambles from Vallino’s gold-streaked mane, the boy raised each hoof in turn and carefully pried out stones and dried mud with his knife.
Only when Vallino had been cared for did the guide sit across from me. He had a small slab of dried meat and tore off a piece to share. I would have refused, wanted to refuse, but if I was to escape, I had to stay strong. He ripped the hard brown meat into smaller bits and fed me like a pup.