turn to snow, and about some wren that couldn't be found.
Wren? The wren… The squirrel wanted to think about the wren, he knew he SHOULD be thinking about the wren, that the wren was somehow important to him. But all he could manage to concentrate on was the man as he went about poking up the fire in the cold hearth and dropping, from time to time, terrified mice from some hidden pocket in his robe.
To the man's great amusement, the cat promptly dispatched the first mouse, took his time with the second, and only knocked the third one witless.
Saving it for later no doubt, the squirrel thought sourly. He smelled acorns, bitter and likely woody and thin. All his patience fell away. Chattering furiously, berating the man for his cavalier attitude toward his starving condition, he threw himself against the wooden bars.
'Ah! Yes, yes, I was getting around to it, noisy one.' The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of winter-dull acoms. Dark eyes coldly alight in a craggy face, he slid them, one by one, into the cage.
Getting around to it! Getting around —! The squirrel dove for the acoms. He lashed his tail here and there, stopped once or twice to glare up at the man, and finally managed to get the nuts all into a pile.
'Hungry, eh!' the man said. There was a hard light in his black eyes that made the squirrel even angrier.
Hungry? Oh, yes, you hind end of a mule! I'm hungry! I'm starving! And I've had to spend all day trapped in here with that murderous villain of a cat!
The cat snarled and twitched the tip of his tail. Enjoying both the tabby's reaction and the squirrel's anger, the man laughed and stuck his finger between the bars of the cage to taunt the squirrel some more.
Gleefully, the squirrel sunk his sharp little teeth into the soft flesh of the finger. He almost didn't care that his brains were nearly rattled out of his head when the man's fist knocked the cage into the wall.
Caramon was certain that if it had been Tanis who'd heard the wren's cry for help, or Raistlin, or Sturm, packs would have been out, provisions gathered, and swords and bows checked for readiness. As it was, he was the one the wren had chosen to cry to this time, and Flint was not having any of his story.
'But, I tell you,' Caramon insisted, 'I heard it!'
Flint sighed. He had been listening to this tale all morning, and he was growing more than a little tired of it. 'Have done, now, won't you? It was barely a decent joke when Tas tried it.'
The brawny youth was not noted for his patience or for any great skill at cunning or strategy in matters other than martial. But his instincts were often good, and they served him well now. He took a long breath, clamped his teeth down on the loud protest he'd meant to make, and poured another cup of ale. He looked around the deserted inn, heard only Otik in the kitchen, and sighed heavily.
'Flint, listen,' he said in what he hoped was a calm and reasoning manner. 'I was the first to laugh at Tas. I was still laughing at him last night. I'm not laughing this morning, because I heard the wren.'
'The gods know,' Flint muttered, 'I will be more than glad when winter is over. You youngsters are like colts chasing the wind these days; you hear the call to run in every stray breeze.'
'Flint, the bird was asking for help. That's what Tas said, and off he went. He's been gone for three days. And now the bird is back.'
'And you can tell one wren from another, can you?'
Caramon could not keep the mischief from his grin. 'When they speak, I can.'
'Hah! You're starting to sound like your brother now.'
That stopped the young man short, left him wondering to what he must reply now: Flint's implied insult (though he wasn't quite certain that he HAD been insulted), or the dwarf's still patent disbelief. He was spared the need for any retort when the door to the inn swung slowly open.
'Caramon, I think you'd better find your brother.'
Sturm's was not the voice to which Caramon responded. He heard, and from the comer of his eye he could see that Flint had, too, the small piping of the wren. She rode Sturm's wrist with serene confidence. The late morning light glinted along a chain of tiny gold links around her neck.
Help! Oh! Help!
All the morning's trial of disbelief was worth that one moment, Caramon thought as he bolted for the door, worth that one, stunned look on the old dwarf's face. Laughing, he clattered down the wooden steps from the inn built high in the mighty vallenwood to the bridgewalks.
Around the town women looked up from their washing and baking, merchants abandoned their customers to run to windows, and children came flying from their games, all wondering what it was that caused the big youth's bellowing summons of his brother and his friend Tanis Half-Elven.
When the squirrel awoke he was confused. He slept a lot, it being still winter and he having some deeply rooted NEED to sleep. But when he slept he dreamed. And there was the source of his confusion: no squirrel ever dreamed during long winter sleeps. And, as though the fact of the dreaming wasn't enough, the dreams themselves were decidedly odd.
He dreamed about people. Not the gray-furred, broad tailed squirrel people. Humans walked in his dreams, and a dwarf, and a long-eyed half-elf with hair the color of a fox's pelt. In his dreams he knew who they were; sometimes he spoke with them and they with him. And when they spoke with him he knew — though he didn't quite understand how he knew — that they were not speaking to a squirrel.
It was almost as though he were having someone else's dreams.
Yawning now, stretching first his hind legs and then his front, he poked among the neatly piled acorn shells for some left-over tidbit. There was none.
He looked around the cottage, noted that the man was gone again, though his scent still clung to everything in the place, and then felt a sudden tightening of alarm: the cat prowled restlessly from window to door to window.
Not hungry again, are you?
Always, the cat murmured without looking around. You sleep a lot, squirrel. He's off again, looking for the Wren.
The wren… Yes, well, I'd like to find her myself. I think I might have some unfinished business with her.
The tabby did look around then, his green eyes alight with a certain careful curiosity. With the Wren? And what business might that be?
The squirrel wasn't sure, and said so. Again he felt confused and uncomfortable. He remembered thinking the night before that the wren meant something to him. Now, though, when he tried to recall what it might be, he could not. His attempts to remember were as distressing as his dreams had been.
The cat padded silently across the room and leaped easily onto the table. When the squirrel scolded and skittered to the back of his cage, the tabby only yawned and smiled.
