Lyrec Read Free Page B

pity’s sake, leave me alone, will you?”
    Lyrec sat back on his haunches. “What?” he asked. “What did you—you’re not hurt at all!” He got to his feet.
    “Hurt!” cried out the voice. It had an odd, nasal twang to it. “What does hurt have to do with it? You should see me. It’s horrible.”
    The high grass shook. Lyrec crouched down again. He saw a dark shape move behind the wall of grass, and dove forward. “Bo—ah! What’s this?” He withdrew a feather the size of a writing quill from the bushes. The feather was brown and blue and green, and opalesced into gold when the light lay directly upon it. Lyrec twirled it, and a memory not his own passed through his mind. “Good luck charm,” he murmured. The exact meaning of this escaped him. He removed his hat and placed the feather in its band. He held the hat out to admire it, but his eyes focused on some movement in the bushes beyond and a look of exasperation set over his black-bearded face. He brushed a hand through his silver hair and scrunched the hat back down on his head. With a final tug on the brim, he stood and began slapping at his clothes, raising dust like a plague of gnats.
    “Now, look here,” he called out. “There’s nothing wrong with you at all, is there? You’re just annoyed at your appearance again, like the time before last, aren’t you? I’m sorry for you—you know I am. You know I want to do what I can to help you. But that doesn’t include sitting here by the roadside until you see fit to reveal yourself. So, I’m going without you. Right now. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll take you with me. If I pass this way.”
    “Wait a minute!” the nasal voice whined. “You can’t leave me here! Where is this place? What kinds of things live in these woods?” A large freminiad shook momentarily, as if itself terrified of the prospect. “I could be killed!”
    “So could I. There really isn’t anything else to say. You can stay in the forest and meet some ignominious end at the mercy of a—a rabid squirrel. Or you can come with me. We may be too late, you know. He had a good lead on us and I’ll be damned if I’ll waste any more time on your conniptions. Good-bye, Borregad.”
    The yellow bush was jostled again. Then the voice cried, “Drat! This thing’s covered in some kind of sap. It’s all over my pal—paw. Paw! Lyrec! Don’t you leave, you hear me. Wait a minute, I’m coming with you.”
    From behind the bush a huge black cat appeared, waddling on its hind legs. It was a punchinello of a cat, its coarse fur standing up as if in anger. Its blue eyes were twice the size of a normal cat’s eyes.
    The cat frantically rubbed one forepaw against the other as it waddled up to the man named Lyrec. Its tail dragged in the dirt. “Here,” it said and thrust out its afflicted paw. “Do you have a cloth or something? I can’t get this stuff off.” The cat stumbled and caught its balance. “How do these creatures manage to walk?”
    Lyrec shook his head. “Borregad, you’re a waste, do you know that? In the first place, you don’t need a cloth, you just lick it off. If you weren’t so damned busy flapping that tongue, you’d realize that it has certain properties. In the second—”
    “Lick it off? Do you have any idea what it tastes like?”
    “I won’t until you taste it.”
    The cat gave him an up-from-under look of smoldering doubt, then tentatively brought its paw to its mouth and licked the rough pads. Its thin lips smacked and its eyes narrowed. “Nuh, fuine. Nuw is snuck nu my nungue.” Its whiskers twitched angrily.
    “Oh. Well, maybe I got that part wrong. But I do know that you’re what they call a f-f-feline. Your family group walks on all fours. You’re not meant to walk on two legs alone.”
    The cat spat. “I refuse to walk on four legs. It’s demeaning.”
    “Fine. Maybe we can find a little wagon to put your front feet in and you can just trundle along behind