hundred years ago. She haunts this place still. They say she was a powerful and wicked woman, Lucia Kante, and that she eats children. That's what my mam told me when I was wee and inclined to go wandering off. I'm sure it's not true, because only the savages who live in the Barren Lands eat babies, and they're not civilized enough CO have jellies. But it's still better to keep your distance. You know how jellies and bards will mock you if you don't give them what they want.'

'Oh,' I said, displaying my gift for fluent and clever speech. The buzzing of bees spiked until it rattled in my head, then ceased as abruptly as if a door had shut.

Suddenly, it seemed I had got my bearings and could see beyond dun and oak and well. Some paces past the well ran a load. A pair of wagons, one coming and one going, rolled along, their occupants paying no attention to us. The road led to a town sprawled from the height down a gentle slope that led to the flat Levels below. A very old stone wall contained the town, and even from here I marked its arched gate with the name LEMANIS carved across the lintel.

'I'm Emilia,' she added, lowering the pole. 'It's cold weather to be traveling.'

'Well met,' I said, 'and the gods' blessings on you. I'm called-'

She shrieked.

A striking young man sauntered out of the ruins. He had a reddish brown cast of skin; his coal-black hair, straight and lovely, fell unbound halfway down his back. That he was lithe and long, well muscled and well proportioned, was easy to see since he was stark naked.

She stared for one long breath, then grabbed the buckets and ran away toward the gate.

'Who are you?' I demanded.

'Cat,' he said, looking quite put out. 'How can you say such a thing? You know me.'

'I've never seen you before in my life. How do you know my name?'

'Have not seen me before in your life? None of that mattered, that we came when you called? Tracked you down far out of our normal range so we could protect you from that high-strung pretty boy prancing around in all his flash and conceit? That means nothing to you?'

I groped for and found solid stone. I sat. Hard. 'You're looking pretty flash right now yourself,' I choked out. 'You're naked.'

He did not even have the decency to look down at his exposed body. 'I'm not naked. I'm in my skin.'

I untied my outer cloak and threw it at him, and he caught it and flung it around his shoulders with a grin, as if he enjoyed the fabric's rippling flare.

'Who are you?' I demanded again, as my heart sank like a stone cast into the sea. The cursed creature had followed me over from the spirit world. This could not be a good thing.

He had a pout that would make your hair stand on end, a look that accused you of not doing exactly as you ought to know was right in regard to his comfort.

'Cat,' he said, with a sigh that shuddered through the length of him and contained the entirety of his disappointment in my stubborn blindness, 'I am your brother.'

25

'I have no brother.'

The young man man'drew a hand over his glossy hair exactly as a cat might preen. I thought he would lick his own hand, but he did not. 'It's true we weren't birthed from the same womb, but the same male sired us. How am I not, then, your brother?'

'You are either mad or deluded.'

'It is so tiring to watch you being stubborn. And I admit, I feel a bit of a chill. Is it always this cold in the Deathlands? How does one cope?'

'By wearing clothes, for one thing. In your current state of undress, you'll be hauled in by the local wardens.'

'How complicated this all is!' he said with a grin that, despite my shock, made my lips twitch. 'How very exciting! Will I wear something like you have on? I thought maybe that was your skin, rather wrinkled and smelly, but you never know with creatures over here, do you?'

'I am wearing women's clothing. You will wear men's cloth-ing.

'Is there a difference?'

'Yes. Now be quiet and let me think. Come over here by the oak so we can stand out of sight of restless eyes.' He followed me obediently enough and trailed a hand along the bark. I rested both hands against the trunk, palms flat, and shut my eyes, but all I heard was a buzzing sound, as if thousands of bees were confined within. The sound made my flesh tingle and my mind fill with insane thoughts.

We came when you called. What had the eru had me do? Call for my kin at the stone pillar. I'd thought my call had somehow broken the mansa's hold on the carriage, and maybe it had, but what if my voice had reached farther yet into the unknown expanse of the spirit world? What did I know of the chains that bind kin in the spirit world or how far they might reach?

His face resembled mine, although his eyes had more of a yellowish orange tinge while mine were commonly described as amber. His hair was so thick and silky, as black as if swallowed by night, that it alone would capture people's notice, as mine often did. His skin was darker than mine, but that was not uncommon here in the north where the progenitors and grandparents of siblings and cousins could range from the palest of Celts to the darkest of Mande and might include forebears of Roman, Kena'ani, or other ancestry as well.

Yet looks are not everything. At this moment I felt rather massively annoyed by him in a way that reminded me of being annoyed at Bee. If I were a cat, I might have said he had the right scent, if by scent one embraces a larger concept having to do with smell, taste, heart, bond, well-being, and a sense of belonging.

1 stepped back from the oak. 'For the sake of argument, let's say I believe that you believe you are my brother. What am I to call you?'

''Brother'?'

'Haven't you a name?'

He pulled his long hair through his fingers as if surprised and delighted by a new toy. 'I know who I am, but I can put no name to that. Others know me, but that relationship is not reducible to a word.' He dipped his head toward my ear and inhaled deeply, audibly, as if inhaling me and who I was. He winced and drew back. 'Whew! You need cleaning.'

'Why did you call me Cat? You cannot have known that is the pet name I've been called by my'-family-'by others.'

'But you are Cat.' He clearly seemed to expect I would treat him in the manner of a long-lost relative, when in fact he was just another chance-met stranger on the road. 'You don't believe me,' he added. 'Why else would we come to aid you, and be able to find you, if you did not call for us?'

'We?'

'My mother and aunt and sister and cousins and niece.'

'I met your mother already?'

'Of course you did.'

'She was the djeli?'

He laughed. 'Cat, you are not stupid. So I wish you would not pretend to be.'

I cast my gaze at the sky. Clouds softened the horizon; the sun sank, and soon it would be night and deathly cold even for a denizen of the spirit world masquerading in human form in the mortal world. The cold air congealed my words, or maybe I did not want to say them, because saying them would make it true. Or make me believe it could be true.

'Are you saying you are one of the saber-toothed cats who came to my rescue?'

He sighed as if, having told me all along there was a view to the outside, he was forced to confirm it by opening the shutters himself.

'Are you saying my father is a saber-toothed cat?'

He waved a hand dismissively. He had the most absorbing way of moving, like beauty made flesh. 'Oh… him.

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