‘He set them on you. You’re hurting a lot, aren’t you?’ Another nod. ‘What happened?’
He looks around desperately, as if there might be someone else to either render aid or eavesdrop.
‘Orin, you’re ashamed, as you should be.’ I sound mean and I am mean, and the boy deserves it. ‘You were happy enough to hand over defenceless children, but you’re weeping for yourself. Now, I gave you your Merry-girl back…’ I feel ashamed of myself, to use the poor dog so.
‘Please help me,’ he whimpers. ‘It hurts so much.’
‘I’m sure it does. But here’s the thing: if I help you? It’s going to hurt even more. It’s going to hurt so much you’ll beg for the wish-hounds to return and finish the job, and you’llprobably pass out. So, the sooner you tell me everything, the sooner you’ll get to the relief of oblivion.’
And he whimpers again.
‘So, I’ll ask one more time: why did this happen?’
‘It – he – told me the baby would bringyouto him and he needed you. That’s what he said…’
‘Happy to hand me over too, I see. And then?’
‘And when it came to it, after she’d been in my arms, and so small – I couldn’t. I waited, thinking it wouldn’t find me before dawn, that I’d get a day to plan… But it was out searching, found me in the last of the darkness.’
‘You’ve been doing its bidding for months now. First Ari, Matthias, and five orphans all dead now, but this baby was where you drew the line?’ He looks away, and I grab his chin, reef his head towards me; the dog makes no sound. ‘What else, Orin?’
‘My father…’
‘It has Faolan?’ I rock back on my heels, hit the ground bum-first and hard. I’d thought he meant that I’d help because of my feelings for his father. But the huntsmanhasFaolan and now there’s a pain in my chest. The lad nods, tears making rivers through the blood on his face. ‘Why… why would you—’
‘I wanted my father to hurt! For every time he’s made me hurt! I just wanted him to suffer a little the way I have.’ Orin bares his bloody teeth. ‘And the huntsmansawme! Listened when I spoke, asked for my opinion. Said it couldn’t do without me. My da’s never said that. Without Mam, there’s no one else and he hardly acknowledges me. Then you came along again… Some days I wonder if I exist at all or am I a ghost, the way he stares through me. You don’t know what it’s like—’
‘Oh, Orin.’ I think of Faolan warm beside me, skin on skin; remember thinking,Our parents inflict our very first wounds. I think of him scarring his son so easily. ‘What else did it say?’
‘That we’d just scare Da. Just scare him, but it wouldn’t say how. Not until…’
‘You didn’t think it was a bad idea to keep going when it replaced Ari with a changeling? Then Matthias?’
‘They’re still alive! Just… sleeping.’
‘Have you seen Ari? Seen the hunk of her that’s missing?’Oh.‘It was you. You left the offerings at my door – you’re mortal, you could get past the ward-line. You tried to break into my home. You left Matthias in his garden. And it was you and Merry-girl who followed me through the forest that day…’When I hid inside the tree and saw only a dark grey hide stalking past.
He mumbles, ‘Yes. But I didn’t know what that meat was—’
‘And poor Anselm…’
‘He kept going to see you, interfering…’
‘And then the orphans, with no one but the Widow Wilky to watch over them and her attention split too many ways.’
‘By then I couldn’t… I couldn’t…’
‘Couldn’t stop without someone knowing what you’d done.’ I shake my head, lean back, tilt my face upwards to the branches overhead. He didn’t take Tieve, though, his friend; tried to stop at last to save the baby; wants to save his father in spite of everything. I speak more gently when I point and say, ‘And it did this when you refused to be obedient. But it has your father and the infant?’
‘The huntsman said I was a stupid child, that the only wayfor me to be free was by my da’s death and he would give me that. That he’d be a proper father if only I’d be a dutiful son and hand over the baby.’ Orin shakes his head, trembling. ‘When the wish-hounds attacked, he snatched her from me.’ He sobs again. ‘You’re the only thing he’s waiting on.’
‘Well, we’d best give it what it wants.’ The small cut on my forearm is still bleeding, so I put my hands on the rent in his torso, where there’s most blood. The dog looks at me for a moment, then shuffles away. ‘Orin, this is going to hurt.’
And it does, though he’s lucky enough to pass out before I get to the broken ankle.
***
In spite of being acutely aware of the sun moving across the sky, of my daylight hours bleeding away, I wait a few hours while he sleeps. I build a fire to keep him warm, find his coat and the missing boot, both chewed and bloodied, but otherwise relatively intact, and put them on him as best I can. But I’m also weary from the double healing and my own joints ache in the cold, so I eat more of the bread and cheese, drink water from the flask, and am only a little resentful about keeping the rest aside for him. And I try not to think of Faolan in the hands of the huntsman, because if I do I’ll become as irrational as I accused Rhea of being.
