Bitter Moon Saga Read online

  Take me. I am old. This is my purpose.

  His muscles bunched, his nerves realigned, and his body flexed and powered, possessed by the certainty of the snowcat and the absolute drive to feed his family. The deer was ready, his new, powerful body was ready, and the sound that rang from his feral throat plucked his sinews like a taut bow string. He sprang, ripping out the old doe’s throat and breaking her neck in less time than it took for her to take that last breath.

  He let his mouth fill with hot blood as the younger doe and her child disappeared into the forest, unaware of how far they themselves had really been from danger.

  He feasted on the throat and neck before his common sense and human mind reasserted themselves, and he realized he was far from in the clear.

  Oh gods… I have to dress this thing so Yarri and Aldam can eat too was his first lucid thought, and it was quickly followed by a sick realization. I’m using my gift. If I change, I’ll be too weak to move the goddessforsaken deer. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no….

  He paced, growling softly to himself and using his tongue to lick the blood off his whiskers and chest—at least he was thinking on a full stomach. Experimentally, he extended a claw, just one, and tested it against the soft midsection of the deer. A little more pressure… a little more… the skin parted, and, looking distinctly un-snowcat-like, he delicately ripped the belly open and awkwardly scooped the offal out onto the snow, severing it at the gullet and bowels with flicks of a razored claw.

  He cleaned himself off again, sticking his barbed tongue out when he got to the parts that shouldn’t be eaten by snowcat or human and rolling in snow when the taste got to be too much. Then, leaving the entrails like a bloody flag to lucky carrion, he grasped the back of the deer’s neck firmly in his jaws and began to tug on the carcass, hoping the snow would erase the blood trail so he didn’t have to fight off every predator between Clough and Eiran in order to keep their food.

  Three hundred man-sized strides later, he came to the conclusion that deer were much heftier animals than he’d first suspected.

  Three hundred more strides and he started painfully calculating how far from their camp he had wandered in order to hunt. The answer depressed him, so he stopped that line of thought and concentrated on the landmarks that would get him back to their little tent.

  Six hundred strides after that, he told himself that next time he was going to kill himself a couple of snow rabbits and save himself a lot of work.

  A thousand strides after that, he stopped to snack a little more off the deer’s neck—it was not nearly as tasty to his snowcat-self cold, but it did shore him up for the next half of the journey.

  Two thousand man-sized strides after his little snack, he smelled horses and was so happy he rolled on his back in the snow, growling happily to himself and churning his giant, useful, fuzzy-tufted paws in the air with distinctly feline glee.

  Two hundred strides later, the horses smelled him and began to whinny. He heard Aldam’s voice—sounding somewhat unnerved—calming them down, and he gave a loud, triumphant yowl that got them all upset again. Silently apologizing to Aldam for terrifying, well, everybody, Torrant sat his haunches on a log in the snow and thought very carefully about who he was.

  Boy. Well, not just a boy… getting close to man now. Moon had told him that manhood could be seen in his hands, the wide-palmed, square-fingered, useful, brownish hands that were not afraid of work. Manhood was also stepping quickly toward him in his feet, which both his mother and Kes had told him were twice the size of ocean ships, although Myrla Shadow had never seen an ocean ship in her life. Tal and Qir had told him he looked just like Ellyot. They had joked a lot about the two sets of twins in the Moon family: two boys with straight hair, pulled back into solid queues and bound by ties, with differently colored eyes. Ellyot’s had been blue, and Torrant’s were pure hazel, and their shape was a little different. Torrant’s eyes were the shapes of wide almonds; Ellyot’s had been tilted at the bottom. Torrant’s chest was wide, his shoulders stout—Ellyot had been taller, more graceful, more worthy….

  Abruptly the change stalled, even as Torrant allowed that thought to sneak into his tired mind. He scowled, looking at the backs of his wrists, peeping over the leather gauntlets with fluffy white fetlocks. His clothes were still on, he noted with surprise, and wondered where they’d gone when he’d been furry, but he was grateful, so he didn’t care. He did feel the snow melting on the back of his cloak from where he’d rolled on the ground in giddy glee, and that was unfortunate. He wondered what changes the cat had wreaked on him that he couldn’t see—and then, looking down at his lap, covered in trousers now—decided he had no wish to know.

  “Well, gods’ twin eyes!” he swore, hearing the animal rumble in his voice. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Torrant?” Aldam said from surprisingly far away, and Yarri echoed him. “Torrant, is that you?”

  “Yarri—you’re wet—stay in the tent with the blankets,” Aldam admonished, and Torrant felt a moment’s gratitude. Whether she’d fallen in a puddle or rolled around in the snow, for once he could be grateful for Yarri’s propensity to fall in whatever was the messiest or most troublesome.

  “Yarri, stay inside,” Torrant growled, and then, hesitantly, because he didn’t want to horrify Aldam any more than he wanted to terrify Yarri, he said, “Aldam, could you come here for a moment? Please?”

  Yarri came through the stand of brush first, barefoot in the snow, her bare body wrapped in a horse blanket, and Torrant groaned, the sound coming out a lot deeper in his snowcat’s throat.

  Without looking at him (she was looking at her feet!) she pattered through the snow and hopped onto his lap, and when his arms tightened around her automatically, she burrowed against him for warmth with chattering teeth.

  “Yarri!” Aldam protested, and then Torrant could hear him lumbering (Aldam was not very graceful) through the brush, and even Aldam’s unflappable presence was brought up short by what he saw in Torrant’s face. “Oh dear,” he said mildly, and Torrant shook his head.

  “Torrant….” Yarri was playing with the gloves over his hands. “Torrant—what is this fuzzy stuff on your wrists?” And with that, she tugged—hard—on a waving white fetlock, and Torrant let out a snarl that echoed off the treetops. Yarri turned to him, her eyes widening at the sight of his face. Then she smiled. “Ooohhh… Torrant—look! Your face is all furry, and your eyes are blue.”

  He made an expression even he could tell was not very human—his upper lip curled sideways, revealing his pointy teeth. “Wonderful!” he said through his half-open mouth. “Now how do I get my real face back?”

  Aldam blinked. He was older—Torrant had asked, and the boyish face and simple manner hid over eighteen winters of experience. That was at least two winters of using his gift that Torrant didn’t have, and Torrant had been learning as much from Aldam about magic as Aldam had learned from Torrant about horses, pitching camp, and general survival. Aldam knew how the magic worked—he understood it on a simple, soul-deep level that didn’t need words. The trick would be helping him find the words.

  “What were you thinking when you changed?” Aldam asked.

  “I was thinking that we were getting hungry and needed food.” Torrant grimaced.

  “What else?” He was listening intently, his large, china-blue eyes wide.

  Torrant sighed. “I was thinking that I didn’t have the heart to kill,” he said carefully, not wanting to give too much of himself out here in the snow, but not wanting to be a snowcat/human for the rest of his life either. “I was thinking that….” He shuddered, feeling as he would if he were naked without the fur. “I was thinking that I’ve killed men before—two of them—but they didn’t seem to have the heart of this poor old deer.” He gestured to the carcass, cooling on the snow. “I was thinking that I needed to be a predator for us to survive.”

  Aldam nodded and beamed at him. “You’re very smart,” he said with wonder. “I can only he
al, but that’s all my heart seems to want to do. Your head and your heart—they’re very busy. Your gift is busy too.”

  Yarri’s teeth started to chatter, and Torrant wrapped his arms around her. “I’m busy letting her catch cold right now,” he said unhappily. “How about we go into the tent?”

  Aldam shook his head. “You taught me about horses. They’re already restless because they smell predator. You need to change first. What were you thinking when you changed back?”

  “I was thinking about what I looked like. Ellyot and I… we looked a lot alike. I was comparing myself to him.”

  “You don’t look anything like Ellyot!” Yarri insisted. She’d said that since she could talk. Of all the family members, she was the one who hadn’t enjoyed the joke of the other set of Moon twins.

  “Was it working?” Aldam asked.

  “Yes… right up until….” Torrant grimaced. Aldam looked expectant, and Yarri shivered, and still Torrant didn’t want to finish. He suddenly had a lot more sympathy for the dead deer. His entrails felt like they were being spilled in the snow too.

  “Up until what?”

  If Aldam’s eyes hadn’t been so open and accepting, the three of them might have stayed there until night fell and they froze to death, but Aldam looked unflustered by Torrant’s embarrassment, and so he felt safe to continue. “Until I thought that Ellyot would have had more sense than to kill a deer two miles from camp when he was the only one who could dress it and haul it back,” he snapped at last.

  “Rabbits would have been easier,” Aldam agreed guilelessly.

  “That occurred to me,” Torrant said dryly, looking mournfully at his fetlocks.

  “What else were you thinking?” Aldam asked, and Torrant looked at him sourly. He seemed harmless enough, but Torrant had learned that this simple man had a core of pure steel.

  “I was thinking that Ellyot would have done a better job keeping us alive,” he said reluctantly. “I was thinking that he was a better hunter and a better camper and a better horseman, and that you and Yarri would have had a better chance with him. I wished he had… he had lived instead of me,” he finished, feeling like roaring into the lowering twilight.

  “No,” Yarri said miserably, and he wrapped the horse blanket more firmly around her shivering body. “No. That’s not true. Take it back.”

  “Yarri….” Well done, he thought miserably. Now she was freezing to death and in tears.

  “The Goddess picked you!” Yarri yelled. “The Goddess picked you, and you’re all I have, and you’re all I’m going to need, and you take it back!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes… take it back! Take it back, take it back, take it back!” Yarri had tantrums as a toddler—small surprise, since most of the Moon children had been obstinate and strong willed—but Kes had always said that Yarri’s tantrums were the worst. Her face flushed; her entire body, in fact. She mottled bright red, her eyes scrunched, and she hollered at the top of her lungs until her voice cracked for days. Those had stopped when she was three or so, and Torrant was surprised now to see the onset of a tantrum. Oh Goddess, no… anything but a tantrum. Just like when she’d been a toddler and the whole family had scrambled to give her something—anything—and usually somebody else’s anything at that to stave off the impending lightning storm, Torrant struggled to give her what she needed now.

  “Take it back, take it back, take it back….”

  “Fine!” he shouted to get her attention. “Fine! I’m glad I’m alive! I’m glad I survived!” His voice broke. He was glad… he was, he was, he was, and he was so ashamed of being glad that it almost made him sick. He had to earn it. He had to make it right, that he was alive and their family was not. “I’ll do a good job taking care of you,” he finished brokenly. “I’ll do better than anybody else in the whole world, I swear. Don’t cry, Yarri… don’t cry. I’m glad I’m here with you, all right?”

  “Promise?” She hiccupped, and he nodded, his breath shuddering out of him like breeze through a canvas sail.

  “I promise,” he murmured, shivering. “Are you happy now, Yarri? Can we get out of the godsdamned cold?”

  She nodded, recovering in a remarkably short time, and then said in a little voice, “Look, Torrant, your fuzzies are gone.”

  At that, the exhaustion swamped him, a wave of physical darkness so intense he almost fell off the log. “Gods,” he murmured. “Aldam… take her… please….”

  Yarri protested—of course—but Aldam told her Torrant would be along in a minute, and that pleased her, and as soon as her weight was gone from his lap he fell on his side in the snow.

  A few moments later, he was dimly aware of Aldam pulling him to his feet and half dragging him back to the tent. “The deer… I should help with the deer….”

  “I know how to dress a deer,” Aldam replied serenely. “And I know how the gift feels when it leaves you. I think you should sleep instead.”

  “I’ll help with the deer,” Torrant decided, feeling surprisingly lucid, but then they were inside the little tent, and Aldam’s fire was burning merrily in the middle of it, and he was falling, falling onto the pad of horse blankets, murmuring, “I’ll help… I’ll help with the deer….” Until there was only Yarri’s little body, snuggled in next to him for warmth, and sleep.

  THEY KEPT camp the next day. Yarri’s clothes and her cloak had been soaked through when she’d fallen through the ice of the meadow pond. You could see the fish underneath, Torrant—I had to look! She couldn’t travel without either, so they were stuck inside the tent while the fire dried them out.

  It was just as well, because Torrant was exhausted from his time as the snowcat, and the most he could manage was carving up the deer into steaks and strips and cooking them or drying them by the fire. It was not a bad time—the meat smelled good as it cured. Aldam cooked the smaller bits in some melted snow with the withered last of their carrots as well as some tubers and herbs that he’d found the day before, which made a tasty broth that they packed into their skins for later. They talked quietly, told stories—Aldam talked about helping his mother and aunt at the inn. He knew lots of inappropriate stories about visitors who swapped beds when they weren’t supposed to. The best one was about a man who tried to escape out of his lover’s window just as her husband decided to empty a chamber pot, and Yarri and Torrant laughed as they had not laughed since….

  Since they didn’t want to talk about it.

  “What happened to your family?” Aldam asked gently when they had finished laughing and lapsed into a melancholy silence.

  Torrant looked away. He didn’t want to say it, because he was afraid to hurt Yarri, so Yarri took his hand and said it for them.

  “They’re dead,” she said gruffly.

  Aldam nodded. “How?”

  “I didn’t see,” Yarri replied. “Torrant knows.”

  “Rath’s men,” Torrant told him in a flat voice, ruthlessly shutting the door to the room in his mind where the memory lurked in full-color pictures. “They… herded the family into the barn to… kill them. We escaped out the hay door.”

  “I don’t understand,” Aldam said quietly, looking away. “I’ve hid my hair since I was your age…. My Gift is for healing. I don’t understand why the Goddess is bad.”

  “She’s not,” Torrant said, with a sudden hard conviction. “The Goddess isn’t bad. Rath’s bad. And the people who do what he tells them to without question are worse. I don’t know what poison infected Rath, but if everyone knows he’s twisted, it’s their job to untwist him.” His eyes narrowed. “And if it doesn’t happen by the time I get a chance at him, it’ll be my job too.”

  “Your job is to keep me safe,” Yarri said stubbornly.

  “If I kill Rath, you will be safe,” Torrant replied levelly, and they regarded each other for a moment, as though aware the seeds of an important disagreement were in this conversation, but not sure how to root them out.

  Finally, Yarri smiled, her sweetest, most
winning smile. “Sing me a song, Torrant,” she murmured. “Something pretty and sad.”

  Torrant smiled a little and launched into “The Ballad of the Goddess’s Sons.” Yarri hummed the chorus with him, and their respite continued in peace.

  A Nice Warm Coat

  THE VENISON lasted them a good two weeks. That was two weeks of wading through the swirling snow, of the horses picking their way through drifts that went up to their fetlocks, and two weeks of camping and never really getting warm. They stuck to Torrant’s map and never saw any of the dreaded pits and snow-covered sheerfalls that Torrant increasingly feared had devoured many of the Goddess’s refugees who had tried Hammer Pass in recent years. Maybe it was paranoia, but he confided to Aldam that he suspected this alone was the reason for the false map.

  “They want us dead,” Torrant said bleakly.

  “I don’t,” Aldam replied so blandly it took a moment for Torrant to realize he was being ironic. As his mouth quirked in a smile, he felt his affection for their newfound brother grow.

  Eventually, Torrant had to go hunting again, and they made plans to camp for an extra day in a stone hollow that faced away from the wind. It wasn’t quite a cave, but it was sheltered enough to not have snow on the ground, and Torrant was relieved. Yarri had been fighting a stuffed head and runny nose since her dunk in the frozen river, and Torrant was worried for her. She spent much of her time dozing in the saddle in front of him, huddling into his warmth, clutching Anye to her like a boneless rag of comfort. Aldam cured her of a fever every evening, and using his gift so frequently was exhausting him as well.

  “It’s not good for her, either,” the young man said worriedly through bleary eyes. “It makes her body and her spirit tired to be sick for so long.”

  Torrant nodded, fingering the divot in his ear. It had healed in the weeks since he’d received it, but it still pained him. He worried it when he was nervous, or thoughtful, or anxious. “You two stay in camp tomorrow and sleep,” he said decisively. “I know how to hunt for tubers—I’ll do that first. The broth won’t be as tasty”—he smiled at Aldam to praise him for his work last time—“but it will fill us just the same.”