Owlflight

And - maybe - that was why they hadn’t come back.

That was the stuff his nightmares had been made of for the last year. He kept thinking of times when he’d been there when they’d needed him - when they needed a third set of hands on the rope in a blizzard, when he’d spotted large carnivores stalking the camp - even when he’d been up a tree and had seen the signs of a bad storm coming up without warning. Had a pack of some magic-twisted horrors ambushed them, attacking them until finally their defenses were all gone? Had a terrible storm overwhelmed them? Had it been simply accident, the falling branch, the hidden crevice, the slip in the dark that left one or both of them crippled and helpless? Was that why they didn’t return? Because they’d counted on his eyes and ears to warn them, his extra hands on a knife or a bow to help fight off danger, and he hadn’t been there? He’d never been bad with a knife, and he was even good with a short bow . . . could it have made the crucial difference?

Or was it something else? Had they been caught by bandits, eager to steal their precious furs? Had there been an avalanche, or had one or both of them fallen through the ice while crossing a river? Horror of horrors - had they been caught in a Change-Circle and Changed themselves? Were they out there even now, rooted to the spot as half-human trees, or wandering in some shape not even he would recognize?

He couldn’t shake the conviction that if he had been along, they would have all come back to the village as usual. Somehow, some way, his mere presence would have made the difference. He knew better than to try and tell this to anyone in the village; he’d tried once to tell Justyn, and the old wizard had told him that he was overreacting, that whatever had happened to his parents had nothing to do with him. After that, he had kept his guilt and fears to himself.

But he couldn’t help but think that if he had been along, his parents would have had that extra set of hands and eyes that would have kept them safe, and brought them through whatever it was that took them away.

And that was what made it all the more horrible.

Here, in this refuge, away from the fools who didn’t understand, he could let his real feelings out.

Why? he cried in silent anguish, face turned up to the canopy of leaves, both fists grinding against the back of the tree, Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me all alone?

His body shook with silent sobs, and tears coursed down his cheeks, soaking his patched and much-mended shirt. It was too small in the arms for him by far, but he wouldn’t let anyone take it from him, nor would he give up the leather vest that went with it. She had made him the shirt, and he had cut and stitched the vest, and those two articles of clothing were all he had left of them.

Why? he asked them again and again, until there was nothing left in the world but sorrow and guilt. Why did you leave me alone?

Finally, his body trembling in every fiber, he collapsed in on himself, curled into a ball, and sobbed, muffling the sound of his weeping in his arms and the bark of the tree. He wept himself dry and exhausted, until there was no more strength left, even for a single tear.

Before Justyn was satisfied that Kyle’s injury was no longer life-threatening and was as clean as one herbalist could make it, there was a great deal of blood spilled on the stone floor of his cottage. It wasn’t the worst wound he’d ever tended, but it was definitely one of the messiest. Justyn had finally stopped the bleeding with a compression bandage, and after liberally dosing the woodcutter with brandy and poppy-powder, began stitching the wound closed with a curved needle and fine silk thread. Kyle was a stolid enough fellow, and in a way it was a blessing for both of them that he was so very insensitive (and, one might as well say it, stupid), for he didn’t seem to mind the ugly wound and the stitching half so much as the two farmers who’d brought him in. Vere and Harris grimaced every time Justyn put a stitch in, and Harris, who had no livestock at all but a few chickens, relying on the loan of his brother’s oxen to plow his own land, was looking a bit green about the face. Kyle had just sat quietly, as if he were a good plowhorse waiting for a new shoe to be fitted. The brandy and poppy concoction made the muscles of his face go slack and relaxed, and he leaned back in his chair, propped up by Harris and Vere, blinking sleepily whenever the needle went in.

I could be generous, Justyn thought. I could suppose that he’s in shock by now. Except that he hasn’t any of the symptoms of being in shock.

Such stolidity in the face of serious injury had been the hallmark of some of the mercenary soldiers Justyn had tended in the past - the long gone past, so removed from what he was now that it might be the past of another person altogether. There were just some men who never felt much of anything, either physical or emotional. In general, they got along well with their fellows, and they made good enough soldiers, for although they never displayed the least bit of incentive, they always obeyed orders without question. And, if a woman didn’t mind being the one to make all the decisions, they made perfectly amiable husbands and fathers. Certainly their phlegmatic temperament never led to beatings or other abuse. There had been times when he envied them that easy acceptance.

Virtually everyone in the village was cast from the same mold, and it wasn’t at all difficult to tell that Vere and Harris were Kyle’s cousins. All three of them were husky, light-haired, and brown-eyed, but Harris and Vere were darker than Kyle, and Kyle had features that were much more square. Justyn sometimes wondered if the reason he and Darian had never quite been accepted by the villagers was a simple matter of appearance; both he and Darian were thin and dark, in stark contrast to everyone else here. Or at least, he amended mentally, I was dark until my hair started going gray.

“He’s gonna be laid up a couple of days,” Vere said with irritation, his thick brows furrowing in a decided frown. “That means we’ll have to spare someone from field work to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t get into trouble, all juiced up with that poppy like he is. Can’t you magic him, ‘stead of sewing him up like usual?”