The market lay about a half day’s walk through the woods to a small valley. About ten families lived close enough to meet every ten days to trade when the weather remained bright. A fantastic day, full of sunlight and singing birds. Everyone would be out just to enjoy the day as much as possible.
While Fingin must trade his fish so he might obtain things for his own needs and comfort, he hated going to market.
He talked well enough to Bran and other animals, but his ability to converse with humans left much to be desired. His voice always stumbled and halted, making him sound like an idiot. No matter how much he practiced or tried, he barely got words out, much less whole sentences. Each word came like pushing against a riverbank.
He’d often wondered how much of this had to do with his grandmother. Before she left, he spoke as anyone else did—perfectly fine to humans, not at all to animals. At least, when he spoke to dogs then, they hadn’t answered back.
When she left, she took his human voice and left an animal voice. This left him unsuited to living in a village. Invariably, the locals would chase him away after he’d been there a little while. He didn’t know if the reaction stemmed from from fear, distrust, or plain dislike. Whichever the reason, he’d grown used to moving on every two or three winters to a new place.
Which is why he didn’t keep many things.
While Bran gleefully munched the growing pile of fish guts, Fingin gutted and cleaned each fish. When he’d finished, he stretched his arms behind his head and let out a long, low groan. His back ached from hunching over.
Bran glanced up from his meal, slime dripping from one side of his mouth. “Is my friend hurt?”
“Not hurt, just aching. I sat in one place too long. I shouldn’t do that.”
The silence which followed his statement pounded on his brain. He shook his head and cleaned his gutting knife. After wrapping the cleaned fish in birch bark and tying it with string, he placed it inside.
“No more fish?”
“You’ve had two. No more now. I have to cook some for myself.”
“Cook?”
“Make it hot with fire.”
Bran cocked his head. “My other friend did that. Why?”
“It tastes better. I’ll let you try a bite when I’m done.”
“He never let me taste any.”
Sending a silent curse to whoever had been Bran’s “friend,” Fingin poked the fire with a stick. He skewered the two fish on another and placed it over the fire, across two Y-shaped sticks staked into the ground for that purpose.
The sizzling of the fish made his mouth water. He realized he’d eaten nothing since yesterday afternoon, and the sun had risen to a zenith. When he judged the fish cooked, he pulled it from the flame to cool.
“More fish now?”
“Wait until it cools, Bran. Otherwise, you’ll burn your mouth. That’ll hurt.”
Again, Bran pouted with impatient eyes. When Fingin pulled the cooked flesh of the fish apart with his knife, Bran perked up, and his tail pounded against the ground in delighted anticipation.
Fingin placed a big chunk of cooked fish on the stone near Bran’s head. The dog sniffed at it several times before he licked the treat. He ate from the edge once and then devoured the whole thing in less time Fingin took to blink.
“I suppose that means you like the cooked fish?”
“I do. More?”
“Not just now, Bran. I have to finish my meal. Then I need to go to market with the rest of the fish. Would you like to come along? Or would you rather stay here and guard our home?”
“Home?”
“This place, where we sleep. It’s our home, yours and mine.”
“I like our home, but if you leave, I should be with you.”
The simple answer made Fingin smile.
Why had he never had a dog since he spoke to animals? It had been fifteen winters since his grandmother had left. In all that time, he’d seen several dogs, but they worked on someone else’s farm. He’d known a cat once, but she’d preferred to go her own way when he moved from that place. She’d been far too independent to attach herself to any human, no matter how well she understood his speech.
Birds, squirrels, rabbits, even the occasional deer, had conversed with him, but the simpler the animal, the simpler the speech. While he barely understood the speech of bees and beetles, the bits he did understand centered around food and survival.
Their conversation didn’t assuage his own loneliness.
Bran, however, might become a true companion, someone to help him through the long, lonely nights. Someone to watch his back when he slept on the road. Someone to share the sights and ideas he came across.
He ruffled the dog’s head until the gray, wiry fur stood on end. With a grin, he got up and gathered his wares.
* * *
The birds sang and swooped as Fingin and Bran walked along the bare trail from his hut. His new friend bounded after partridges and rabbits, delighting in the journey. The village lay a good walk away, but the distance seemed shorter with Bran at his side.
Once, after burrowing into a rabbit’s hole, Bran raised his head, and Fingin had to laugh out loud. A ring of dirt and clover surrounded his snout. After a sneeze and a violent shake of his head, Bran trotted next to him in quiet dignity, as if nothing of the sort had happened.
He glanced at the large, derelict roundhouse in the
