Page 8 of Red in Tooth and Claw

After my vinegar bath, I had to dunk myself in the river. I considered walking into the bitterly cold water in my skivvies. They didn’t smell like skunk, but I figured a rinse wouldn’t hurt them none. Except I didn’t have another wrap with me, and eventually I’d have to rejoin Jesse. Despite having not figured out my ruse as of yet, Jesse was the observant type, and he’d notice if I suddenly sprouted breasts.

No one could see us at this bend in the river. I handed Tallis my strip of toweling. “I don’t suppose you’d close your eyes?”

He shook his head, no humor in his expression. “No, Little Fox. The water at this time of year is very cold, and while the river is fairly tame here, sometimes people freeze up in the chilly waters.” He flicked his chin at the river. “I’ll not let you drown just because you’re afraid.”

I scowled at him. “That’s not going to work twice.”

The edges of his lips curled, but he kept his mouth shut.

There was nothing doing. Not only would he not budge—I could tell by the set of his shoulders—but he had a point. It would be the height of silliness to demand he turn around to preserve a hint of modesty if it might lead to my death. “Fine.” I made fast work of my band, handing it to him before stepping out of my drawers. Then, quick as I could, I walked into the water, the round river stones making my steps wobbly.

For a second, the cold was so sharp I couldn’t breathe. Air locked in my lungs, my muscles seizing. Then I dunked myself, using my hands to scrub along my scalp, grateful to not have longer hair. As soon as I felt thoroughly rinsed, I stepped out. I kept my arms wrapped around my chest, more out of cold than any desire to cover myself.

I was too freezing to care.

Tallis held the linen out, and I stepped into it. He toweled me off roughly, making soothing noises, like I was a fractious foal. When I was dry enough, he wrapped the towel around me and grabbed for the bundle the lad had brought. A clean shirt was pulled over my head, the hem falling to mid-thigh. Tallis frowned at it. “You’re a tiny thing.”

“Maybe you’re just too big,” I said, my teeth chattering so hard, I was amazed he could understand me. “You ever think of that?”

He smiled but didn’t respond, pulling a warm sweater over my head next. He helped me back into my skivvies, much to my embarrassment. But I couldn’t get my fingers to work right due to the cold.

Tallis didn’t leer but worked with an impartial touch that I both appreciated and resented. He was doing exactly what I wanted, and it made no sense for me to be prickly just because I wasn’t a tempting enough morsel to him. He helped me pull on trousers, socks, and worn leather boots that were close enough to my size. I hadn’t needed help dressing since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and that Tallis of all people had to help me? Well. It was an effort not to slap away his hands, like an ungrateful lout.

As soon as I was dressed, Tallis bundled me off back to the camp. He was stopped almost constantly by people with questions, kids who wanted to show him something, and people who just wanted to say howdy.

“You’re popular.” I sounded sullen, which was good, because I felt sullen.

Tallis’s mouth twitched with humor as he looked down at me. “My uncle’s the head of this clan. My sister, Zara, and I, we help out a lot.” He shrugged. “People are used to coming to us for help.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

His brows crept up as he glanced at me. “They’re my people. Why would it bother me?”

I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t know what that felt like—I’d only had one person and he was gone. So I kept my mouth shut.

Tallis herded me into a smaller family tent, where I was reunited with Zara. She shoved a cup of hot tea into my hands, and quick as that, I was huddled in a warm blanket and set onto a thick pallet by a fire. The fire rested in a wide bowl of beaten metal, like a brazier, nestled onto several large, flat rocks in the middle of the floor. With the flaps closed, it filled the tent with warmth. I sipped the drink, my mouth filling with something sweet, like honey, and the slightly floral and green taste of the tea Rovers made.

As I drank, I took in my surroundings. A second sleeping pallet, nearly twice the width of the other, was rolled up neatly, lying against the side of the tent. Two knapsacks, a horse blanket—there wasn’t much. Zara had disappeared with Tallis as soon as I was settled, likely so they could gab without me listening. I sat peacefully and warmed myself, my quiet only broken by the occasional giggling child sticking their head into the opening. I was a novelty to them.

Now that I had a moment to think, I turned my mind to the bigger problem—returning to the Settlement. We could go back late, Jesse injured and me in foreign clothes, unless I wanted to bundle back into my cold, wet belongings. Which I might have to do. No matter what, trouble was coming our way. I grimaced into my empty mug. So much for keeping my head down and making no waves.

I would need a good story, that much I knew. If I told them the truth, a many-headed hydra of trouble would be the result. I tapped my fingers along the side of my mug. What could I say that accounted for our late arrival, Jesse’s treated ankle, and my appearance? Beginnings of a plan began to form, but I’d need to find Jesse first and see what materials I was working with.

I left the mug by the pallet, but I kept the blanket wrapped around me as I stepped out of the tent, almost running into three women, one of whom carried a baby in a sling. They greeted me and kept moving past the brightly colored tents. There was no uniformity of clothing here—people wore whatever they wanted. My stomach rumbled as I smelled goat roasting over a fire while I sidestepped a young boy passing by me with a basket of fish. A boy and a girl laughed and giggled as they beat a rug, chasing each other around with the paddles. A few tents over, I could hear someone singing.

The Rover camp was happy chaos, and I couldn’t help but compare it to the Settlement. My current home was a collection of souls with a similar purpose but nothing holding them together. The Rovers were a family made large, everyone knowing their place and purpose. As I ducked under lines of washing, stepped around the occasional dog, and dodged one little girl carrying a chicken in her apron, my heart gave a little lurch. What would it be like, to be part of something so big?

Perhaps, when I had Pops’s land, I’d hire a few workers. Add some noise to my own house. But even with my abundant imagination, I couldn’t see it.

I found the healer’s wagon and knocked gently against the open door. The healer, Anna, waved me in before disappearing behind a bright purple curtain. The wagon was a tidy space—dried herbs hung from the rafters, and rows of jars lined the shelves on the walls like mismatched soldiers hemmed in by a carved wooden railing. A small iron cookstove stood in one corner, a copper teakettle settled on top. The air smelled of lavender, rosemary, and a riotous blend of other dried plants along with the sharp tang of medicines. Underneath it all hovered the musky scent of incense and tobacco.

There were two cots in the wagon, both full. Jesse lay sprawled in one cot, fast asleep, his injured foot resting on a cushion. In the other cot, a man lay on his stomach, twitching in his sleep. His blanket had fallen down, revealing a heavily bandaged back, spots of blood leaking through.

Anna stepped out from behind the curtain, the cloth likely demarcating the line between the clinic space and Anna’s own cot. She checked the man, tucking a blanket around him, before resting her fingers against Jesse’s wrist.

He looked so vulnerable like this. For all his quietude, Jesse was a big fella, sturdy and hardy, and it was a shock to see him brought low. Had the injury been worse than we thought? It had been pure luck to land us with the Rovers. As Miss Moon had reminded me upon my arrival at the Settlement, the smallest injury left untreated could lead to larger, deadly problems.

“He going to be okay?” I had to clear my throat before I got the words out.

Anna let go of his wrist, her face impassive. “Yes. He’s strong. Healthy. He’ll need to stay off his ankle for at least a week, but assuming he gives it rest and doesn’t reinjure it, he’ll be fine in no time.”

Relief flooded me, my shoulders relaxing suddenly. I had no idea I’d been tense until now. “Why’s he asleep?”

She shrugged. “Gave him something for the pain. He’ll wake in an hour or two.” She pulled a stool from under one of the cots and took a seat. “In a hurry?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets, trying to figure out how much to tell her, and realized with a start that Tallis had shoved Pops’s watch into my pocket without me noticing. “We need to get back to the Settlement. The sooner the better.”

She shook her head. “He needs rest. He won’t get it there.”

I frowned at her. “Nothing doing. We need to get back. We’re in a heap of trouble already.”

She crossed her arms. “And how are you going to get back without our cooperation, hm?” Before I could argue, the injured man next to her moaned in his sleep. She took his hand, murmuring soothing words to him. When he was settled, she returned her attention to me.

“What happened to him?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

Anna held her hands out, palms up, before letting them drop. “We don’t know. Something attacked him from behind. He was lucky—Tallis stumbled upon him while out riding. Chased off whatever it was. Otherwise, I don’t think he would have made it.”

“He didn’t get a good look at it?” I asked, frowning.

“He said it was a ghost,” Anna said simply. “Nothing but claws and hunger.”

Spectral fingers walked up my spine. “Do you believe him?”

Anna shrugged. “Yakob isn’t given to exaggeration, but whatever it was, it certainly had claws. I had to do a lot of stitching.”

“Where did Tallis find him?”

“Not far from the fringes of our camp.” She took out her pipe, tapping it idly against her leg. “Whatever the reason you need to go back home so soon, I have no wish to endanger my patient’s life. Or yours. Tomorrow, if you promise to abide by my instructions.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, my expression rueful, “but I’m not in charge.” And I hadn’t been at the Settlement long enough to know what kind of reckoning we had coming, despite Jesse’s stories. I watched the injured man twitch in his sleep, like maybe he was trying to outrun his nightmares. The healer was right. Going back to the Settlement tonight was too risky. I would just have to come up with a whopper of a tale to explain our absence.

To thank her for her care, I spent what remained of the day with Anna, helping her with whatever she needed—whether it was hauling wood for her or assisting her with her work. Jesse slept soundly, but the man in the bunk woke a few times, muttering and shrieking in garbled Rover.

“What’s he saying?” I asked. I was fair fluent in Rover, but I didn’t know some of the words he was using.

“He speaks of ghosts,” Anna said, dipping a cloth in cool water and applying it to his forehead. “Of claws and blood and angry spirits, coming for the living.”

The man’s voice shifted tone, and I didn’t need to know the words to understand he was begging whatever demons haunted his sleep. Some things don’t need words.

I was dead tired by the time the evening meal came around. Most of the camp was in the large tent, settled around on camp chairs and pillows, talking. We feasted on a soup of cabbage and potatoes as well as an herbed bread stuffed full of spiced meat, which we washed down with red wine. Several people brought out guitars, mandolins, and a few fiddles. I tried really hard to watch them and not Tallis, who sat across the hall from me, once again the center of his own small hive of activity.

I failed and he caught my eye. He said something to the older man next to him before climbing gracefully to his feet and ambling over. I don’t think I’d ever met someone as comfortable in their own skin as Tallis. It was both impressive and irritating.

He dropped onto the cushion next to me. I ignored him and sipped at the last of my wine.

“You play?”

I nodded.

His eyes narrowed on me, and it was like I could feel his stare digging beneath my skin. “You play well?”

“Fair enough.” I could call the birds out of the trees with a fiddle—that’s what my Pops said. When I held something with strings, everything else fell away. It was just the music and me. A calm, quiet place to just be . It was the best feeling, and I missed it.

Tallis stood and walked over to one of the women tuning a guitar. He whispered to her, then disappeared for a moment from the tent. In no time he reappeared, a battered case in his hands. He held it out to me.

I watched him, my hand hovering over the case.

“It won’t bite you,” Tallis coaxed.

I opened the case, and my heart almost stopped. Inside was a fiddle. A very fine fiddle, maybe the grandest I’d ever seen. The wood was rose-colored, the sides of the body engraved with thistles and leaves in a winding pattern. The fingerboard was embellished with a golden inlay in a floral design. I was both afraid to touch it and overwhelmed with the desire to pull it close. I glanced up at Tallis.

He grinned at me. “Go ahead, Little Fox. You owe us a song at the very least for saving you and your friend.”

“And if I’m terrible?”

“Then I guess it will be a short performance, won’t it?” He moved the fiddle closer to me, and I couldn’t keep myself from setting aside my wine and reaching out, taking it reverently from the case. I grabbed the bow, set it in my lap for a second, and used my fingers to pluck the strings and fuss with the pegs until the pitch sounded right. Then I perched the fiddle between my chin and shoulder and drew the bow over the strings. The fiddle answered, its tone sweet and rich. Perfect. It was perfect .

I stood, forgetting about Tallis and the crowd around me. I closed my eyes again, drew in a careful breath, and let loose on the strings. I played Pops’s favorite song, and it was like the music had been hiding in the fiddle, ready to jump out as soon as I touched it and set it free. The tune was quick, the kind of thing you danced lively to, the notes high, twittering.

In a distant part of my mind, I heard other instruments join me. Guitars and a mandolin. The thump and slap of a hand drum. The song curled around their notes, and I chased after them. The entire world held its breath for me as I played.

All of a sudden it was over, and I was standing in an oasis of silence. I blinked, the lamplight in the tent shocking after having my eyes closed for so long. Tallis stared at me like I’d reached up, grabbed the stars, and spun them into jewelry. I’d managed to shock him.

“Again,” he croaked. “Play something else. Please.”

This time I started slow, the song melancholy and bittersweet. It was a common tune, a folk song most people around these parts knew. People started to sing, parsing out the story of loss and heartache. Tallis sang next to me, and I was right—he had a stunning singing voice. I could listen to him until the moon crashed into the sun, and it wouldn’t be long enough. I closed my eyes again, putting my whole heart into the strings. It was the kind of song that ached, the kind of song that called out to the universe with want.

I couldn’t help thinking the song felt like me, hollering out to the universe that I was alone.

And no one would answer back.