Likari was crouched in front of the cabin by the small fire he’d kindled earlier. He looked miserable and alone, and at the sound of Soldier’s Boy’s approach, he looked up fearfully, the whites showing all around his eyes.
“What are you doing out here?” Soldier’s Boy asked him severely.
Likari squirmed. “Waiting for you.”
“Then it has nothing to do with being afraid of bad luck? With doubting what I told you was true?”
The small boy looked down at his bare feet as he crouched by the fire. Did Soldier’s Boy feel pity for him? His tone was gentler as he asked, “Did you do all I asked? Is there water and firewood? Did you clean the hearth stones of moss and earth?”
“Yes, Great One. I did everything that you told me to do.”
“Well. We are in luck. My hunting went well, and I have a nice hare for us to eat tonight. Do you know how to skin a hare and make it ready for the pot?”
The boy hesitated. “I’ve seen Firada do it. I could try.”
“Another time, perhaps. I’ll show you how it’s done tonight.” Privately he thought that he didn’t want any of the meat wasted by a clumsy skinning job.
“We don’t have a pot to cook it in.”
“You’re right. Perhaps. Come inside with me. Let’s see what we do have.”
Lisana’s memories told him that she had had a stewing pot of fired clay. It had been a favorite of hers, glazed a creamy white on the inside and adorned with black frogs against a dark blue background on the outside. It had been just the right size for cooking. He went to the place where she had kept it. Beneath a rumpled carpet of thick moss, his seeking fingers found only fragments of fired pottery. He pulled one from beneath the moss and wiped it clean. Half of a leaping frog remained on the shard. Next to it, a greenish half-moon of badly corroded copper was all that remained of a once-gleaming pot.
It saddened him unreasonably. What had he expected? How many generations ago had Lisana lived here? It was irrational of him to hope that her possessions had endured. I was surprised to find that her cabin and its contents had survived at all. How could he be so disappointed that a fired pot had not lasted?
As he crouched outside alongside the boy and they gutted and skinned the hare for roasting, the answer came to me. He carried Lisana’s memories and the grief he felt now over the destroyed pot was as much her grief as his. It had been a cherished possession, and somehow it had been important to her that it still existed. As if, I slowly reasoned, the survival of her possessions was the continuation of her life.
As the thought came to me, I could suddenly experience Soldier’s Boy’s emotions as he felt them. As if I were a traced overlay of a sketch, I came into synchronization with him. For a fractional moment, I was Soldier’s Boy. If I had relaxed, I would have merged with him, would have dissolved like salt stirred in water. For one paralyzed moment, I felt lured by that. In the next instant, I leapt like a hooked fish and tore myself free of him. I retreated from him, heedless of fleeing into darkness. I sank myself deep, beyond his reach, beyond Lisana’s memories. Or so I tried. I could not quite escape the sound of his voice.
He smiled slowly and spoke softly. “Eventually I will win.”
“Win what?” Likari asked him.
“Everything,” Soldier’s Boy replied. “Everything.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRADE GOODS
Unwillingly, I was drawn back to watch them. The boy ate one hindquarter of the hare and Soldier’s Boy devoured the rest. He gnawed even the gristle off the ends of the bones, and the smaller bones he ground between his teeth and swallowed.
I felt almost like myself as he scraped the small hide and pegged it out to dry. He’d hunted, fed himself, and now had the simple chores of a man responsible for himself. Scraping the hide put me in mind of how I had done such tasks for Amzil, and how that simple life had once beckoned me. I suddenly missed them just as much as Soldier’s Boy missed Lisana. I wondered if he could feel my emotions as I did his, if he could understand that I loved Amzil as he loved his tree woman.
Beside me, Likari watched me work on the hide in awe.
“I never saw a Great One do work before,” he said innocently. “Jodoli does nothing for himself. He does not even pick a berry or wash his own body. Firada does it all. But you hunt and cook and scrape the skin.”
Soldier’s Boy smiled at the lad’s amazement. “There are many things I can do. It is good for a man to know how to do things for himself.”
“But you have magic in you. If you have magic, you don’t have to do hard work. I wish I had magic.”