school.”
“Here, children learn that a haunted forest lies on your side of the border. Scary stories dissuade the curious better than stone walls.
Glenn …”
Aamon took a step closer but Glenn scrambled away.
“How do you know my name?”
Aamon held up his hands, palms out.
“Please,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid. The way I was earlier, in the woods, with those men …”
Glenn saw the agent again, prostrate and bleeding in the snow.
“They were trying to hurt you. I had to stop them. I had no choice.
That’s not … it’s not what I am.”
There was a strange delicate quality to his voice, tremulous, like someone trying to convince themself of something they hardly believed.
“Then what are you?” Glenn asked.
“A friend,” he said. “You should try to get some rest. We’ll have to leave here tomorrow morning. If Garen Tom returns and sees what you have — ”
“I don’t have anything.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
Glenn rubbed at her wrist where the bracelet pressed into her skin.
She looked over Aamon’s shoulder to the glow of the house where Kevin lay.
“Where will we go?”
There was a creaking of wood as one of the town’s watchmen
approached on the wall above. Aamon tracked him as he went by, staying silent until he was out of sight.
“Somewhere safe,” Aamon said. “Someplace where we can
figure out how to get you two home.”
Aamon turned to go.
“How did you know my name?” Glenn called out.
Aamon stopped, studying the dusty road at his feet, then turned until their eyes met. There was something about them, and something about the way he tilted his head to watch her that was familiar. Glenn couldn’t place what it was, but the moment she saw it, a strange calm descended on her. How was that possible? What — who — was he?
The door to Garen Tom’s house opened. Calloway stood in the doorway, framed in firelight, head down. There was a large serving tray in his hands.
“Come,” Aamon said as he turned to go.
“No, wait. How — ”
But Aamon was already stepping up into the house. After he
passed through the doorway, Calloway stood there waiting for her, but Glenn turned her back to him and soon the door closed and she was alone again.
All around the empty street moonlight glinted off the silver-tipped feathers that hung from every door and danced in the wind.
11
Late that night, Glenn lay on the floor next to Kevin’s pallet, covered in a heavy quilt Decker Calloway had brought. He insisted there was a free room and a bed down the hall, but Glenn refused them.
Kevin was still unconscious. His chest rose and fell weakly. Glenn peeled back the poultice that Aamon had set over his stitching. The flesh around the wound was puckered and wan but the bleeding had stopped and there was no sign of an infection yet.
There was a rustle as, behind her, stretched out before the embers of the fire, Aamon turned over. Decker had offered him a room too — Garen Tom’s own — but Aamon had refused it. He slept at the foot of the hearth, his brutal face slack.
Glenn sat up, letting the blanket roll off and pool at her feet. The house was quiet except for the crackle from the fire and the deep vibration of Aamon’s breathing. He lay on his side with his back to her, a nearly seven-foot mass of muscle, his long tail curled behind him like a viper. Again, Glenn was overcome by the feeling that, despite the overwhelming strangeness, there was something familiar about him.
Glenn’s knees shook as she made her way across the room. To her, the fall of her bare feet on the wood floor sounded like a hammer crashing onto stone. Her heart pounded as she anticipated Aamon’s smallest twitch, the slightest movement, but none came.
Once she reached Aamon the heat from the fire washed over her, blazing hot despite its size. Sweat formed on her forehead and ran along the length of her arms.
Glenn marshaled her fear and knelt down beside him. Being so close brought the sheer impossibility of him into bold relief. She searched along the fur that covered his head and the surprisingly delicate lines of his mouth, examining, cataloging like a good scientist.
But she couldn’t find the root of the familiarity she felt. He was completely alien to her. She tried to draw together a plausible theory.
Radiation was tempting, but the mutations it produced made creatures deformed and sickly. There was no way a random genetic defect could produce something so extreme. Genetic engineering? As far along as Colloquium science was, even they hadn’t achieved anything close to this level of bioengineering. And if the Magisterium was capable of such a thing, why did their people still live in walled towns and use bows and arrows for weapons? None of it made sense.
Aamon shifted again. Glenn jerked away, but he didn’t wake. He simply turned over, exposing the thick fur at his throat.
That’s when Glenn saw it.
It was as if the entire room tilted on some invisible axis and a wild, sick feeling welled up inside her. Was this what her father felt like that night in his workshop when he explained the Rift and her mother’s disappearance to her? Was this what it was like to go suddenly and irretrievably mad?
Glenn forced herself to look again and sure enough, at the base of Aamon’s throat, his gray fur stopped and formed the border around a circular patch of perfect, snowy white.
Feeling as if she was in a dream, Glenn reached out, anticipating the patch’s downy softness. The sound of her six-year-old voice rang in her ears, the sound of a princess knighting her bravest soldier.
Aamon’s eyes snapped opened. Glenn snatched her hand back
with a gasp, but Aamon made no move toward her. She sat back, wary, and for a second their eyes were locked. Aamon’s head was tilted to the side and in the glow of the fire the warm green of his eyes bloomed.
“You know who I am,” he said.
“No, I don’t. I …”
Aamon drew himself up so he sat across from her, his clawed hands poised on his knees.
“When you were eight years old,” he said, “we sat on your bed and you whispered to me the chronicles of the great explorer Glenn Morgan and her faithful cat, Hopkins. Together they explored the red canyons of Mars. Did you ever tell anyone else that story?”
Suddenly the fire felt hot on Glenn’s face. Aamon was right. She had never told that story to anyone else. She looked again at the patch of white and then up to the arrow-shaped nick in his right ear.
