Page 5 of Red in Tooth and Claw

The next day dawned cold, the sunlight sickly. Otherwise, things stayed the same as the day before all the way through breakfast, with the exception that today’s prayer had been about the selfishness of denying the Shining God’s welcome. Sleepy as I was, I stayed awake, feeling as if eyes were on me the entire time, though I never caught anyone looking.

I kept my trap shut as I enjoyed another full meal, sitting next to the same folks as they passed their book back and forth. I tried to see what they were reading and failed.

Not that I was interested, just as a way to pass the time.

After breakfast, the guard Davens met me in the boys’ bunkhouse to outfit me with a canteen, a folding knife, and a canvas knapsack to bring back our quarry.

He watched me adjust the knapsack, a nasty grin on his face. “Those woods are going to eat you up.”

I opened my mouth to say something hotheaded, only to be cut off by the gunslinger as he ambled into the room.

“Naw,” Mr.Speed said, shaking his head. “Faolan has so many barbs, the woods would choke on him.”

Davens laughed, though he didn’t seem to find it funny. “What are you doing here?”

Mr.Speed sat on his bunk, stretching out his long legs. “I’m with you for the day. Harris has to do a supply run.”

Davens frowned as he dug his thumbs into the waist of his trousers. “Thought you’d want to go with him.”

I pretended I wasn’t listening as I finished adjusting my pack. It was curious, though, that Mr.Speed wasn’t taking this opportunity to borrow a horse to go along with Harris on his ride into town. He could hand over the reins once he was there and hitch a ride wherever he pleased.

Mr.Speed crossed his boots, squinting up at Davens. “I find myself intrigued by the Settlement. Quite an interesting place you’ve all got here. Thought I’d stay on awhile, see if it suits me.”

Davens’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pinching shut. Both of them watched each other like two hawks circling the same rabbit carcass. Personally, my coins were on the gunslinger.

Davens finally shrugged one sloping shoulder. “Suit yourself.”

Mr.Speed offered him a tight-lipped smile. “I usually do.”

I ducked my head down, hiding a grin. I may not be sure what all of the undercurrents were to their conversation, but I had a feeling the gunslinger had won.

Once I was outfitted, Miss Moon escorted me to the gate, pointing out my partner—my bunkmate and erstwhile breakfast companion, Jesse. I ambled over to him, my eyes down, my hat tipped. When I got close enough, I stuck out my hand. “Faolan. Miss Moon says we’re to be partners.”

He glanced over at her, grimacing as he nudged his glasses up with one knuckle. Then he looked me up and down, quick-like. Whether disappointed in me or the situation, I couldn’t tell. He sighed and took my hand, giving a firm shake. “Jesse.” His voice was quiet but steady, the kind of person who wouldn’t be pushed one way or the other but would make up his own mind.

Not exactly in my favor, but not the worst.

He gusted out another breath, adjusting the straw hat on his head. “Come on, then. We best hustle. We got a ways to go.”

I followed along without a word. It was clear that Jesse didn’t want me along, but I wasn’t sure why. He didn’t seem the superstitious sort. At least he didn’t step away from me and he didn’t drag his fingers across his heart.

I decided to hold my tongue, and managed until we were through the gates, over the flat lands, and into the forest. The other pairs had left us at the gates, scattering in all directions. Each twosome had been assigned a section of the forest, it seemed. I stayed quiet all the way until we stepped through the trees and onto a deer trail. Then, I must admit, curiosity got the best of me. It was forever my failing.

“You don’t want me along,” I said, my tone hushed.

His back didn’t tense, and he didn’t turn. “ Want has nothing to do with it. Miss Esther’s right, we’re safer in pairs.” He did look at me then, a backward glance. “But you’ve got trouble written all over you, and I don’t want any part of it.”

That seemed a sensible notion, and yet…

I should let it go. He’d given an answer of sorts. We didn’t need to be bosom friends. I should just watch and learn what kind of fella he was that way, but something in me wanted to poke at him just a mite more. Pops was right. I wasn’t born with a full measure of sense. That was the only explanation.

I watched my feet, my face hidden by my hat. “I can see that a big fella such as yourself would be comforted by my presence. Mountain lions will be shakin’ in their fuzzy boots.”

He snorted a laugh, pausing on the deer trail we’d been following. “You’re smaller, easier prey. It does me good to bring a snack with me so the mountain lions will leave me alone. I can scoot home while they chew on your gristle.”

My mouth wanted to smile, but I managed to keep it straight as I looked up into the treetops and assessed the light. “You may be big, but I reckon I’m faster. We’ll see who ends up being the snack.”

That earned me a grin, a quick flash of even teeth. We were quiet after that, but then quiet was necessary. Jesse had a rifle strapped to his back—partially as protection but mostly in case game presented an opportunity. Despite my joke about mountain lions, they didn’t come down into the lower forests much, and I hadn’t seen evidence of bears. I frowned. In fact, I hadn’t seen much evidence of anything bigger than the deer that had blazed this trail, despite what Davens had implied.

We had to go much deeper into the woods than I would have thought, but after a few hours, the woods revealed they hid some creatures as Jesse showed me where the traps were set. By noon, the canvas sack on my back included a pheasant and a rangy hare.

We stopped for a short meal around midday, and I got a hint of why Jesse might not want company. We’d found a picturesque clearing for our use and settled in for lunch. A small brook bubbled through for us to fill our canteens, and a fallen log made a proper chair. Light cut through the treetops here, and I tipped my face up into it, my eyes closed. The cook had wrapped us up some cold pheasant, a thick slice of bread, a wedge of cheese, and two apples. A veritable feast.

While I dug into my meal, Jesse brought a leather-bound journal out of his bullet bag, along with a pencil case, and took to sketching some of the local fauna. He tucked in idly, not paying attention to what he was eating, more focused on his task.

I studied him from between my lashes as I ate my food a little too quickly. I will admit that though my mind had started to believe my hungry days were over for a spell, my body wasn’t as sure. It would probably take a week or more before I stopped stuffing my cheeks like a varmint at every meal.

Jesse, on the other hand, wasn’t as interested in food as he was with his sketching.

“You an artist, then?” I licked the last of the pheasant off my fingers. No one cared if you licked your fingers when you were a boy. It was one of the small joys I cherished. I didn’t think I was missing nothing not wearing pretty frocks or braiding my hair. Course, I didn’t know any other way, but I was dead certain that sort of life wasn’t for me. Though I will admit the braids were a temptation. I liked the color of my hair, for all it caused me problems. I might like to try my hand at longer locks, given the chance.

But for now, short was better.

Jesse glanced up at me, taking in my mood. I kept licking my fingers.

“A bit.” He went back to sketching.

Fine, then, I didn’t want to know anyway.

Except I was fair itchin’ to ask him again. I shoved a hunk of bread into my mouth to keep from saying anything.

Jesse’s pencil moved easily over the paper. “You hold it in much longer, you’re going to puff up like a bullfrog’s throat.”

I wanted to throw my bread at him. Instead, I shoved another hunk in my mouth and washed it down with my canteen. I repeated this method until my bread was gone.

Jesse looked up, blinked, and started laughing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone out of nappies eat like that. Like you want to throw a fit, but you’re too hungry to stop eating.”

I was going to catch a whole mess of crickets and put them in his bed.

He just laughed and finished his food.

We were not going to be friends, Jesse and I.

We spent another hour or two out in the forest—Jesse showing me the traps, the game trails. The woods were starting to come alive slowly, green buds on the bushes and trees. Despite that, my feet were fair frozen by the time we got back to the gates.

“I don’t see why we had to go so far,” I groused as I stomped my feet to get warmth back into them.

“Animals don’t come close to the Settlement,” Jesse said, walking around a cluster of chickens. “Could be they don’t like people much, but I think something’s spooking them off.”

“Like what?”

Jesse shrugged. “Don’t know. Some of the others have seen some tracks, is all.”

Any other questions I had for him disappeared as we stepped into the kitchen. We handed our sack over to the cook’s helper, a skinny little lad named Simon. Miss Lita had us hauling wood before we were ordered to go scrub up and clean the muck of the day off our hands and faces.

We spent the hour before dinner in the dining hall at the tables, helping the littles with their sums or reading, depending on what they needed. Jesse’s reading companion was in charge of those assignments. While not the actual teacher—apparently Miss Honeywell handled that chore—she must have helped out in the schoolhouse during the day.

She frowned at me, her brow furrowed. I felt like a fish pulled from the water, waiting to find out if I was big enough or declared a minnow and tossed back.

She crossed her arms. “Can you read?”

I nodded.

When I didn’t elaborate, I expected her to get frustrated. Instead, she relaxed a fraction. “Math? Geography? Arts?” The little furrow between her brows deepened. “I know you can talk.”

“Yes. Some. Does music count?” Sadly my drawing skills weren’t near as good as Jesse’s.

She perked up, eyes alight. “What kind of music?”

“I’m a fair hand at the fiddle.” Get me near anything with strings, and I could make it sing like to make you weep, though I was best with the fiddle.

She planted her hands on her hips. “We have a small piano. I’m getting better at it, but not great.” She looked at me regretfully. “You’ve seen the fiddle in the chapel, but I’ll warn you, they only let us play praise songs.” She glanced over at Miss Honeywell and Miss Lita—whose apple cheeks pushed up in a smile—before she leaned close enough to me to whisper, “We get a mess of hymns, but that’s it.”

From her tone, I could tell she wasn’t a devotee.

“C’mon.” She pinched the cloth at my shoulder and dragged me over to a little boy with a runny nose, big brown eyes, and soft brown curls that made me think of a baby lamb. “I’m Dai Lo. This little fellow has been yoked with the name Obedience Praise Jones.”

I grimaced in sympathy.

Dai Lo used a handkerchief to wipe the poor mite’s nose. “We call him Obie, which we can all agree is an improvement. Obie, this is…” She looked at me.

“Faolan.”

“Fa-wyn?” Obie garbled my name, his hair sticking up like a baby bird’s.

I reached out and smoothed one of the downy tufts. “Fway-lawn.” I broke up the sounds until it was easier for him to say.

“Fway?”

“Good enough, chickabiddy,” I said, earning me a drooly grin.

Dai Lo raked her hand through the tufts, somehow getting them to lay down smooth with one swipe. “Faolan will help you with your letters.”

Obie grinned around the fist he had half shoved into his mouth and held out his other hand. I sighed, swooped him up with one arm, and went to find a slate and chalk.

The woods around me were hushed, and though I couldn’t see through the dense tops of the trees, moonlight had somehow filtered in, making the tree trunks white as bone and the shadows around them like bruises. I padded along the forest, my feet making little sound. I’d forgotten my boots. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but something was pulling me forward. Something like hunger, but not.

I only knew that I wanted the feeling to stop.

I climbed over fallen trees, crossed the stream, and delved out of the territory I’d spent the day traversing. I was getting closer to the foothills, the ground winding up in a slow but steady climb. The forest was quiet, hushed in a way that wild places rarely are.

Nature can be peaceful, but it is rarely truly quiet. Streams burble. Twigs snap. Bugs hum, and birds make an unholy racket. Except when a predator stalks the woods. Then it’s quiet, like now, the only sound my own feet.

The hunger pulled me along until I reached a small cave opening—so small I’d have to get on my hands and knees. I needed to crawl through that hole. I didn’t want to. It would be too easy to get stuck, trapped.

I dropped down onto the ground, my knees in wet, oozing mud. My stomach cramped with hunger, driving any caution from me. I placed one hand on the cave floor, expecting cold rock or sand. It wasn’t cold at all. The cave was warm and wet as my fingers closed down around…something.

Slowly, I drew back my fist. Blood coated it all the way up to my wrist, like I was wearing a glove. Drops splattered the ground as I opened my hand. I never got to see what was in it. Something shot out of the shadowed entrance, clamped onto my arm, and dragged me into the cave.

I screamed.

Then I bolted upright in bed, my sides working like bellows. I was covered in sweat. The fire had died low, and I could just make out the room and the littles curled up on their pallets. One of them cried out in his sleep, likely the sound that had jarred me from slumber.

I collapsed back on my cot, shivering, my skin clammy.

Last year, just before Pops got sick, I had to bury my dog, Ranger. He’d been an old dog and a good one. When Ranger was a younger pup, he’d followed a scent trail into our neighbor Mrs.Leigh’s croft. It was a sizable plot of land that she leased from one of the Rover clans, and I didn’t know it well, Mrs.Leigh not being the friendly sort. I hadn’t been properly looking where I was going, my eyes on my dog. I didn’t see the hole until I fell into it.

It was a good-sized hole—deep, the sides steep enough that I couldn’t climb out. Couldn’t get a handhold. Then a storm came up from the east and the clouds broke and poured their bounty down upon me. The hole took on water so fast I was worried I’d drown. I shivered there like a drowned rat until nightfall, when the neighbor came across me.

I was lucky to just get a fever from it. By the time I recovered, Pops’s anger had fizzled, and I didn’t get the verbal hiding that I knew I deserved for not paying attention. Since then, I didn’t like getting trapped, and I didn’t like tight spaces.

I tried to settle back into my bunk. To calm down. I’d just clamped my eyes shut when I heard it—an eerie, rasping howl. The merest ghost of a sound, but it shook me all the same. Not a wolf. It wasn’t a mountain lion, either. I’d never heard the like.

There was absolutely no chance I was going back to sleep after that .

I peered down from my bunk. Jesse slept uneasily below me, but the gunslinger’s bed was empty. I climbed out of bed, quiet as the shadow of a mouse. Keeping my movements slow, I grabbed my boots, sliding into them only after I’d gone out the door, leaving it cracked behind me.

The grounds of the Settlement were quiet, nothing stirring during the late hour. From my place in the shadows, I could see one of the guards moving along the walkway of the palisades. The moon hid behind clouds, so I couldn’t tell which guard was doing the rounds. All I could make out was his lantern as he continued his patrol.

I kept my ear cocked from the shadows, trying to hear that strange howl again. As the minutes ticked by, I began to wonder if I’d heard it right. Maybe I’d imagined it, tight as an overwound watch from the nightmare. It could have even been the guard having fun or trying to scare the kids.

I was fair tempted to sneak from shadow to shadow, looking for another way out. The nightmare and following howl had spooked me, and I wasn’t thinking straight. I wanted out .

Only a fool would build a palisade without an escape route. I didn’t have anything with me except my grandfather’s watch and the long underwear I’d slept in, but I was wily. I could figure it out.

I’d only made it to the edge of the bunkhouse before someone hissed at me.

“Surprise.” William Speed pulled me around the corner of the building. Only luck kept me from screaming. “What are you doing out here, Faolan?”

I smacked his arm away. “What on earth is wrong with you? You damn near gave me palpitations.”

Mr.Speed didn’t seem worried. “You’re not supposed to be out of your bunk.”

“Why not?” I asked belligerently. “You’re out of your bunk.”

“That’s different,” he said.

“Not to me.”

He grunted, annoyed. “Guards are going to catch sight of you.” He peered up at the bobbing lantern light, his next few words coming out irritated. “Fools are making themselves targets up there, hauling that lantern around.”

“I wanted to check on Gertie,” I said, thinking quickly.

“I wanted a cigarette,” he said.

I thought about calling him on that fib—he didn’t smell like tobacco, and he didn’t need to lurk in the shadows to do so—but then he might call me out on my fib, especially since I hadn’t been going in the direction of the barn at all.

“You better get back to bed,” Mr.Speed rumbled, “before the guard catches you.”

“Yes, sir.” With resignation, I let him herd me back into the bunkhouse. I was disappointed that I hadn’t heard the howl again and was feeling more and more certain that I’d constructed it from dream cloth. It wasn’t until I was back under my quilt that I wondered—if the gunslinger hadn’t been smoking, what had he been up to, lurking out there in the dark?