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 clothing.”
“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.
I 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.”