by catch » Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:13 am
He stood above the pit, a pit of limestone and smooth, curved walls. It was the Lord's zoo, his personal and private collection. Papa had done well, and this had been his request, a chance to bring his boy and show him the beasts. There had been a tyger, and a great, sabered snow-cat from Derry's high mountains, and a thing Papa called a unicorn, though it was ugly and scaled and didn't look at all awful or dazzling. There had been something called a stone-bear, some terrible beast from far away, and it had looked ill and Papa said it would die, because it wasn't hot enough for it. That was something you had to look at, he said; you had to look at the places the beasts came from, and you had to mimic it, or else they would pine.
The Lord wasn't good at that; he didn't care. The men he hired for this aspect of his riches were scholars, academics on one side, and a slew of dumb ignorants on the other, the ones who actually tended the beasts and kept things clean. It meant stone floors and straw, and thick, iron bars, or pits - like this one - too deep for them to emerge. The Lord wanted to see his animals; there might be a bare plant, here or there. This pit was strewn with sand and gnawed, splintered bones, and there was a single, giant tree-husk.
'These are the whar-wolves,' Papa said, his hand on the boy's shoulder. He was proud, and Son was proud with him, his heart swelling as he looked down at the awful beasts. They were quiet, and they gazed up, twin, blunt faces staring, like they were intelligent. Son could see the glittering, baleful malevolence in their eyes, and he had shuddered. He knew the story, how the Female had managed to escape this very zoo, and how she had terrorized the lands around. She called men and women from their beds, mimicking someone they knew, and when they came out, she devoured them whole. How Papa had taken his dogs and his crossbow, and he'd had her cornered in front of her den.
It had been the pups, Son knew. Papa had been fortunate, because she was mad to protect her pups. And here they were, living and breathing and proof, with their thick jaws and necks and sloping backs, a build like a man's and a dog's combined, the worst of both held inside spotted hides. Son couldn't look away from them, and they, he thought, couldn't look away from him. Papa was gone; a man had come up, angry, one of the scholars, asking what they were doing. The Lord hadn't mentioned the permission. Papa was gone to tug at his hat and soothe the man's ego.
"Hello," they said to him, they spoke, their voices like a man - one of them, the bigger one, like a woman. "Hello. We remember you. Come back to us, to us, mother's boy-boy-boy."
Then they both laughed, and laughed, horrible and high-pitched, and Son threw rocks at them, and they had to leave, leave right this instant, what did he think he was doing, these beasts were worth more than the hide of some ugly boy and stupid, unlearned hunter -
Son fought through the haze of drugs. He struggled because he hated this nightmare, because that wasn't how it had happened. Of course they hadn't spoken to him, of course they hadn't called him brother and laughed. Stubborn. He was always stubborn, and he clawed his way through a red mist. It hurt to do it, but there was something important. Something he needed to do, or see, or something had happened that was terribly important. He became aware of the hunger, first, the hunger that came on the tail-end of that mingled memory and nightmare.
Under Cat's hand, the boy stirred, and abruptly tried to rise, immediately curtailed by the stabbing pain that banished all hunger, and left only a dizzying nausea. He made a noise, wordless past a tongue too thick with sleeping-draught to speak. It was loud, but - fortunately for Cat - his room-mates were similarly drugged, exhausted. They had put him in with the dangerous ones, the people who were certainly altered, and thus kept quiet while wounds healed and debate raged.
He tried, again to speak, but at least his eyes peeled back, and he stared straight at Cat, pupils mere pinpricks, uncomprehending, even as his fuzzy mind narrowed immediately on the urchin's face.
Cat.
And his arm thrust out, trying to grab the urchin roughly by the collar.