“Come to our house, that we may tend this wound. Nay, I know you dislike roofs, and I will not ask that you remain beneath mine—only that you come, so that I may use my lotions and balms upon this ugly cut.”
The Wilding had started at mention of the house, but he calmed and nodded. The two women assisted him to walk, not forgetting their store of provender. The Grack was astonished to see two of humankind leading a Wilding, and he peered so interestedly that he well-nigh lost his balance upon his perch and was forced to flap his ebony wings desperately in order to remain aloft. Then despite pain and anxiety, the three whom he watched laughed together and went on their way with lighter hearts.
The wound was soon cleaned and tended, and the Wilding consented to eat beneath their roof, which was a great concession from one of his kind. And strange did he look indeed, with his cunningly knotted fiber cloak and kilt draped upon his lithe and earth-toned frame, sitting with the frame of a firelit room, surrounded by all the artifacts of man. The light ran rampant through his silver hair, making it seem to burn upward in a close cap, then stream into its roached ridge down his spine to the shoulder. Yet his ways were easy and his manners unembarrassed.
Cara smiled as she moved back and forth in the firelight, watching her mother and the Wilding as they talked. So unlike were they in appearance and bearing that it was instantly apparent that they were of differing species: yet so similar were their inner selves that their kinship seemed to glow through the cloaking flesh. They seemed, to her knowing eye, two twilit creatures of the quiet places, soft and gentle to look upon, but steely in their inner strength.
As she watched, Tisha leaned forward and laid her slender hand upon that of the Wilding. He started, his strong ivory-colored digging claws appearing and retracting as a reflex. But she spoke quietly to him and he smiled and relaxed in the chair. The air of tension went from him.
“You might even come to like a roof,” teased Tisha, as she saw this. “Yet all to their own ways. The problem we must now solve is this: what one among humankind is walking our forested hills with death in his heart for those unlike himself? This concerns more than your people, Loor, for the People of the Heights are also unlike. Even we, human though we be, are utterly unlike, beneath our skins, and might well run afoul of this killer-for-pleasure. What manner of man was he to look upon?”
Loor’s eyes seemed to turn inward, as he looked again upon that figure. “Not over-tall was he,” he said at last. “Far below the height of our kind. His hair was dark as old moss upon a stone, and it was cut short below his ears. His eyes were two holes into darkness. He was clad in a way of men—richly, it seemed to me. But you will know him by his smile. He laughs when he kills. Aye, he laughs....” And Loor spoke no more.
The woman nodded slowly, her hand beneath her rounded chin, her gray eyes narrowed as if she looked into the past. Long she sat in silence, until Loor shook himself and stood.
“Far must I go to reach my own,” he said, touching the sleeve of Tisha’s robe shyly. “Yet I must give you thanks for your aid. None other is there upon this side of the mountains who can help those who need a healer. From henceforth you have only to call in the forest, if you have need. One of the People will hear you, however lonely the wood may seem, and I or one of mine will come.” Then he was gone, leaving behind a gentle swirl of air and a faint scent of fernwood after rain.
Tisha drew a long sigh and her head bent into her hands. Cara came at once to kneel beside her. “How is it with you, my mother?” she asked.
“Well enough, Cara, yet this is just another such as was your father. One who laughs when he hurts, when he kills. And that, my dearest one, is the reason you and I sit here in the lap of the hills, girded round by forest.”
“Did he hurt you?” asked Cara, her mouth stern.
“Not with whips, nor with hands,” her mother answered. “But with word, oh yes, and with fell deeds against man and beast and bird. I came from the garden one day and found him teaching you to beat my whimpering puppy. You were crying, and he looked as though he would next begin beating you. Then I knew my father had made a marriage I could not keep. That night I took you from your cradle and left the house and town and the world that I knew, seeking only for a place which contained none of his kind. At last I found my way to the place of my forefathers and it sufficed.”
“But all were not like him, surely,” said Cara. “Were there no kindly folk who would aid and shelter you?”
“In your ‘world’, youngling, men busy themselves with wealth and position and power, women with luxury and frivolity, in the main. The humble are fearful and the powerful callous. Had your father beaten us with whips there would have been aid—not otherwise.”
They sat silent, hand in hand, for a time. Then Tisha stood decisively. “Let us to bed, for the morning will bring labors for us. We go to seek out this slayer of ‘beasts’, wherever he now hunts. If he can be taught, we shall teach him. If not, I shall slay him.”
Cara blanched. “But is this not the same carelessness of like that you fled?” she asked.
“Not carelessness, care,” said her mother sternly. “Would you have the Wildings slaughtered until the forest reeks with the scent of rotting flesh? Would you have the hills and the wood paths empty of life? Among all kinds, as well we know, there sometimes occur rogues that prey upon all that lives. Our unfortunate kind brings them forth with great regularity. You must understand that death is no terrible gift, but the wasting of life is sin. The secret lies in knowing when to bestow the gift of death—whose life will spill into the earth as enrichment, not as waste.
“I was not ignorant when I went from my father’s house in Lirith. Your grandparents were learned in the lore of mankind, mind and body, and the healing of both. I was trained as you have been, to set my hand with thoughtful care to whatever task the gods brought. Had my father not been far gone down the road to death, where he followed my mother, he would have seen into the heart of Ranith, your father, and would never have urged me to wed with him. Knowing this, I did not hesitate to break the bond my father forged, for his own teachings forbade me to continue in such a soul-destroying place as the one in which I found myself.
“Now I am no longer young and impulsive. What I do, I do after deep thought and in the service of the gods. Though my course may seem ruthless to you, tender as you are and inexperienced in the ways of our kind, yet remember that I have lived long and suffered much, but have not grown sour and hating. I am filled with pity for the man whom we shall hunt, yet I will do that which it is good to do, whatever it be.”
Cara sat, gazing upward at the face of her mother. In the flickering light, it was still, as if cut from ivory, but from those gray eyes flashed utmost resolution, utmost courage. The girl sighed, then said, “You have wrested life from the wilderness these many years. You fled cruelty and are always just, with kindness a part of your spirit. You have taught me to weigh all things in the balance of my mind, then judge. Thus I must find that you are most likely in the right, as much as mankind can be without a clear sign from the gods. I will go with you, and we will hunt this killer in the fastnesses. I shall aid you in whatever seems just.” So they turned to their couches and slept deeply.
The stone house dreamed under frosty starts and the leaves drifted onto the roof, softly as snow. The moon-trees glimmered in the hills and the valleys, and in the gentle darkness slept Wilding and beast alike. But on a far outcrop of stone there shone a ruddy star of fire, and in its glow lay a man, propped against a pack, who sharpened a spear with a saw-toothed blade. The red light danced on the shaft and dripped like blood from the bright blade, lighting the quiet smile of pleasure on the face of the man as he drew the whetstone over the steel.
Night flowed over the rim of the world, and dawn followed on its heels. In the stone house, Tisha and her daughter donned stout clothing and footgear. Food they packed, and medicines, and they chose staffs with steel points to aid them should they need to ascend the heights.
The rising sun, peering