He bit his lip. “I get the feeling Rose doesn’t like me very much anymore.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “I get the feeling you don’t either.”
“I…” She swallowed. “I’m fine, Bobby, I just?—”
He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her again. This time when she struggled he held on, kept kissing her, and the more she fought, the more certain he was that this was the answer. She had the power. Touch her. Kiss her?—
She kneed him between the legs.
He gasped and fell back. “You little?—”
“What’s happened to you, Bobby?” she said as she scooped up the bird and backed away. “You never used to be like this.”
“I just wanted to kiss you. You didn’t need to?—”
“That wasn’t kissing me. That was hurting me. You want to know why I don’t like you as much?” She held up the owl. “Because they don’t. The animals. You scare them and you scare me.”
She cradled the fledgling against her chest and ran off, leaving him there, gasping for breath in the playground.
Hestarted walking, not knowing where he was going, spurred by the fire in his gut, a fire that seeped into his brain, blinding him. When the rage-fog cleared, he found himself on Hannah’s street. And there, crossing the road, was what he’d come to find, though he only knew as he saw it.
The black cat. Hannah’s matagot kitten. A middle-aged cat now, slinking arrogantly across the street without even bothering to look, as if no car would dare mow it down.
He followed the beast, waiting for it to get to a secluded spot. In Cainsville, though, there weren’t any secluded spots. When he’d been young, he’d felt as if he was being merely observed, someone always watching over him, keeping him safe, and he’d loved that. Now it felt as if he was being spied on, judgmental eyes tracking his every move. As he moved, he’d sometimes see someone peek out from a house, but they’d only smile and nod. He might be thirteen, but here he was still a child, innocently out playing hide-and-seek or tag with his friends. He could cut through yards and steal behind garages and no one would ever come out to warn him off as they would in the city.
Eventually, the cat stopped prowling, and did so in one of the rare secluded spots—the yard of an empty house. Cainsville had a few of them, not abandoned but empty. This one was surrounded by a solid fence for privacy, and once Bobby was in that yard, he was hidden. That is where the beast stopped to clean itself, proving that whatever airs cats might put on, they were very stupid beasts.
As he crept up behind the cat, his hands flexed at his sides. He had to grab it just right or it would yowl. Pounce and snatch. That was the trick. Scoop it up by the neck, away from scrabblingclaws and then squeeze. It was simpler than one might think, particularly when the beast was so preoccupied that it didn’t turn even when his foot accidentally scraped a paving stone.
He got as close as he dared. Then he sprang.
The cat whipped around and leaped at him. The shock of seeing that stopped him for a split second, and before he could recover, the cat was on him, scratching and biting, and it was like Rose and Hannah all over again, fighting like wild animals, only this animal had razor claws and fangs, and when he finally threw the beast off, blood dripped from his arms and his face.
He ran after the cat, but it bounded away, leaped onto the fence and turned to hiss at him, almost half-heartedly, as if he wasn’t worth the effort. He glowered at the beast, then stomped toward the gate. When he swung it open, someone was standing there. Three someones. Mrs. Yates and two of the other elders.
“What have you done, Bobby,” Mrs. Yates said, her voice low.
“Me?” He lifted his blood-streaked hands. “Ask that damned cat. I was trying to rescue it for Hannah.”
“No,” she said. “That isn’t what you were doing at all.”
“I don’t know what you mean. If Hannah told you?—”
“Hannah told us nothing. She doesn’t need to. We know.”
He looked at her, and then at the other two elders, andheknew,too. Knew the truth he hadn’t dared admit. The girls weren’t tattling on him. It was the elders, burrowing into his head, reading all his most wicked thoughts, seeing all his most wicked deeds.
He managed to pull himself up straight and say, “You’re all crazy.” Then he pushed past them and raced back to his mother.
Itwas the old story. The one where he’d first heard about the screams of dragons. It was coming true. All of it. First the dragons. Then his stomach, twisting and hurting so much these days that he couldn’t eat—just like the king couldn’t eat because his food went missing. Now the people who could hear everything. The elders and Rose. They knew what he was doing even when he didn’t speak a word. He could not escape them, again like the king in the story.
That’s why he used to dream of castles. He wasn’t a changeling child. He was a king—or he had been—and the old story was replaying itself, consuming him and his life.
After that last trip to Cainsville, the elders were no longer content with the occasional call to check on him. Twice they’d shown up at his house. Hishouse. Mrs. Yates had taken him aside and tried to talk to him, prodding him hard now with her questions, telling him she was worried,so worried. If only he’d talk to them, they might be able to help.
Liar.
They didn’t care about him. They came as a warning. Letting him know they were in his head, watching and judging. Letting him know they were going to win. He was still a little boy. He would be consumed by them—the dragons—as Rose’s dreams predicted. It all made sense now, or it did, the more he thought about it, obsessed on it, dreamed of it. It was like a puzzle where the pieces don’t seem to fit, but you just had to be smart and twist them around until they did.
He went to the library and dug until he found the story in an old book of legends. He’d vaguely recalled that the king had stopped his enemies by feeding them something. According tothe book, he’d fed them food made from very special insects. Bobby read that, and he went home to sleep on it, and when he woke, he knew exactly what he had to do.
