Passager Read Free Page B

morning he saw, through the bare ligaments of trees, the thin line of chimney smoke.

    House.
The word came unbidden into his mind. And with the thought of house came the idea of food. Not berries and mushrooms and nuts and the occasional silver-finned, slippery fish torn open and devoured bones and all, but
food.
He was not sure what that meant anymore, but his mouth remembered, and filled with water at the thought.
    So he crept back down the path to the edge of the trees and squatted on his haunches, to stare avidly at the house.
    There was a stillness about the house, except for that thread of smoke that seemed to unwind endlessly from the chimney.
    At the prompting of his stomach, which ached as if it had suddenly discovered hunger for the first time, the boy left the sanctuary of the forest and ventured into the clearing. But he crept cautiously, like any wild thing.
    There was a sudden flurry of sharp, excited duckings. A familiar word burst into his head.
Hens!
He mouthed the word but did not say it aloud.
    A high whinnying from one of the two outbuildings answered the hens. “Horse!” This time the boy spoke the word, his own voice reminding himself of the size of the beasts with their soft, broad backs that smelled of home.
    He edged closer to the house, sniffing as he went, almost drinking in the odors, his chin raised and quivering.
    Then the dogs began to bark and he turned sharply to run.
    â€œNot so fast, youngling,” said the man who loomed, suddenly, by his side and picked him off the ground by the shoulders. The man’s voice was soft, not threatening, but the boy kicked and screamed a high, wild sound, and tried to slice at the man’s face with his nails.
    The man dropped him and grabbed both of the boy’s hands with almost one motion, prisoning him as deftly as he had hooded the falcon.
    The boy stopped screaming, stopped kicking, but he pulled away from the man, cowering, as if expecting a blow. His face was white, underneath the dirt, but his eyes were so dark as to be almost black, and hard and staring, the green-black of winterberries.
    â€œNow hush ye, son,” the man said in that soft, steady voice. “Hush, weanling, my young one, my wild one. Hush, you damned eelkin. I’ll wash your face and hair and see what hides under that mop. Hush, my johnny, my jo.” The soft murmuration continued as he marched the stone-faced boy all the way to the house and kicked open the door.

8. WILD THING
    â€œMAG, FETCH ME A GREAT TOWEL. NELL, MY GIRL , put water in the tub. I’ve caught a wild thing that followed me home through the wood.” The voice never got hard, though it got quite loud. “Quick now, the two of you. You know how it is with the wild ones.”

    Two women with kerchiefs binding their hair and long clay-colored gowns seemed to spring into being from the vast fireplace to do the man’s bidding.
    â€œOh, sir,” said the girl as she hauled the kettle full of water, “is it a bogle, all nekkid and brown like that? Is it a wodewose?” Her eyes grew big.
    â€œIt is a boy,” said the man. “A sharp-eyed, underfed boy not much older than your own cousin Tom. And as for naked, well, he’d not been able to make clothes for himself after his own wore out, there in the middle of the New Forest, poor frightened thing. There are more than one of them put out in the woods nowadays. The nobles can send their extra sons off to a monastery as a gift of oblation, their hands wrapped in altar cloth and their inheritance clutched therein. But a poor man’s son in these harsh times is oft left in the altar of the woods.”
    Mag appeared then with the toweling, shaking her head. “He looks not so much frightened, Master Robin, as fierce. Like one of your poor birds.”
    â€œFierce indeed. And needing taming, I suspect, just like them. But first a bath, I think.” The man smiled as he spoke, ever in that soft voice,