Owlflight

most prone to themselves. For instance, the rudest man in the village, Old Man Gulian, tended to harp on how rude Darian was, and Erna Dele, who never spoke or showed a thank you for any favor and always expected more than she got, would go on at great length on how he didn’t appreciate what he was given. He learned a lot by listening to what people thought they saw as deficiencies in him.

Regardless of who was giving the lecture, it always ended with a homily on gratitude, obedience, and humility. That is, how he should daily demonstrate how grateful he was to everyone in Errold’s Grove by thanking all and sundry on every occasion for their generosity toward him - how he should show that gratitude by instant obedience to anything anyone wanted of him - and how he should be properly humble and prove that he knew his place in the scheme of things by groveling before everyone he came across.

How I should be so happy to have been permitted to become a bound-over slave that I should demonstrate that gratitude with humble servitude to anyone over the age of fifteen.

“It takes a village to raise a child,” was the old proverb, often quoted to Justyn when someone came to complain about Darian, and it certainly seemed as if everyone in the village had his or her own ideas of the proper way for Darian to behave!

Each time he heard the lecture, he was sorely tempted to kick the orator in the shins. He never did, though, because there was always that doubt that they might all be right and that he was in the wrong. After all, everyone here seemed to be in agreement on his behavior and worth except he himself, and after all, he was only a boy. What if he was entirely in the wrong? What if he was a bad person? What if he did deserve to be punished - what if Justyn was too tolerant of his behavior and he really deserved to be disciplined?

What if the reason his parents got swallowed up by the Forest was because he was a bad person, and this was how the gods had chosen to punish them for how he turned out?

That was the possibility that gave him a cold lump in the bottom of his stomach, and made him squirm with distress whenever he thought of it.

And that, of course, just made him want to be loud and wild and try some of the magics that Justyn talked about, just to show them all that he was not to be trodden underfoot like a weed and he was not going to take all their lectures and disapproval lying down.

Which, of course, always got him into more trouble. In fact, it seemed as if ever since he’d arrived in this place, he was in trouble to one degree or another - or thought to be in trouble.

And it wasn’t fair! The other boys pulled as many pranks as he did, or more - they were just slier about it, and they didn’t get caught because no one was trying to catch them the way everyone seemed to be trying to catch him.

Hellfires! he thought rebelliously. When everyone’s watching you all the time to catch you doing something wrong, they’re going to get you, no matter how hard you’re trying to do right!

And meanwhile, just because everyone in the whole town expected Darian to be the one who made trouble, that meant they weren’t going to catch their own boys at it, and Darian would get the blame for things they did. It happened all the time, and even when he could prove he hadn’t had anything to do with the mischief, no one ever apologized to him or made things up to him. They just said that he deserved to get into trouble for all the things he did that he hadn’t gotten caught at! Now, there was a prime bit of logic!

And just suppose the beans got pecked a bit by birds, or a deer wandered in and ate some of the young corn, things that he couldn’t possibly have any control over - why, that was all the fault of his Dad and Mum. It was the Pelagiris-beasts come to take revenge on the village for the terrible trappers who had invaded the Forest. Even the most normal of beast depredations was always blamed on some monster from the Pelagiris that had followed Dalian’s parents back to Errold’s Grove. Though what self-respecting monster would pull up carrots and eat them, or trample down a hill of beans, or pick at ripe strawberries - well, that was beyond him. Must have been a monster with a singularly vegetarian appetite.

Funny how they all forget those coats and rugs and bedcoverings they all have that Dad and Mum traded for food and supplies, he thought sourly, looking up from his rock and noting one of those bedcoverings hanging out on a line to air. A soft shade of subtle cream it was, too, with markings and mottlings of a darker shade of pale brown. Quite a handsome fur, thick and warm, and probably a fine thing to have on the bed in the dead of winter. Darian even remembered what the beast had looked like when they’d caught it - a terribly dangerous beast, it was, completely unable to defend itself, much less attack anyone. It had looked like a huge hassock; with four tiny little legs and a head the size of an apple all stuck on a body easily the size of a fat cow, and certainly much wider. If anything had been born to become a tanned hide, that thing surely had been. It was a wonder it had survived long enough to be trapped in the first place.

Poor Justyn hadn’t even gotten the benefit of having furs traded to him in return for taking Darian as an apprentice. He didn’t get anything at all, not even other peoples’ cast-offs, and he was the one who probably deserved some kind of repayment the most. Widow Clay of the bad leg that kept her from hard physical labor had been appointed to make him bedcoverings, which she knitted from odds and ends of yarn that she unraveled from worn-out sweaters or scrounged from leftovers or other projects. She also made quilts of scraps that no one else wanted because they were stained, or faded and threadbare, or too drab to be desirable, even as a patch for a quilt. Poor Justyn! He always got the tag-ends of everything. He was the last person in the village to get a share of meat, of clothing, of anything. Who-ever’s turn it was to supply him always gave him what they didn’t want. Take now, for instance; there was an abundance of turnips, beans, and peas, so their meals featured either turnips, beans, or peas, depending on how the donor herself felt about those vegetables. Mostly, they got turnips, and he was not looking forward to the time when the squash ripened.

Now his mood turned to guilt, as it always did at this point, for the worst part of it was that in his heart he