“Cairn,” Tarin growled. “Now.”
He turned and walked into the village.
It took all of five minutes to construct a cairn of stones. It took all of three quarters of an hour for Tarin to return for his inspection.
“Good. Now put the stones back into the pack.”
“But what about their protection?”
Tarin looked genuinely puzzled.
“You had said they were invested with power.”
Tarin threw his head back and laughed, his hands on his belly. It was a parody of a laugh. Voran wanted to strike him.
“So I did,” Tarin said, wiping his eyes of the tears of laughter. “Well, I lied. Get on with it, then.”
Tarin only let Voran into the village after midnight, and by that time he was obviously the worse for wear. Voran didn’t look at him, hoping the churning annoyance—so thick he was sure it would eat him before he ever had supper again—would be obvious. He wanted Tarin to apologize, or at the very least, to notice his displeasure. Tarin hardly seemed to notice anything.
As a final insult, Tarin let Voran no further than a mudroom that smelled of old furs, wood, and rats. A plate of bread and dried meat sat next to a clean straw pallet. Voran tried to console himself with the blessed warmth of the room, but it did little good. He silently promised himself that he would not sleep all night. That would show Tarin.
Voran was awoken by a laughing Tarin. The door was open and a nearly midday sun streamed into the mudroom.
“Well, you proved your point, Raven Son,” said Tarin, and erupted into his lunatic laugh. The crowd of children cheered and jumped and laughed with him. Voran found his resolve to punish Tarin—for what, he had already forgotten—fading at the sight of the children. In the daylight, they looked much worse than last night. Most of them were stick-thin, the whites of their eyes more like yellows. Some had bellies protruding even through the furs. With a rush of shame, Voran realized that Tarin was probably the only joy this village had experienced in months. And all Voran had thought of all night was his own comfort. He swore and promised to curb his pride better next time.
In the center of the village, Tarin climbed a rickety table that shuddered every time he moved, and he moved constantly. Voran was just about to utter a curse about breaking wood and fallen warriors when he remembered his promise. Grumbling, he moved closer to the assembled throng. It seemed the entire village was present.
“In a certain kingdom, in a certain land,” declaimed Tarin with a flourish, the table reeling like a drunken man underneath him. The children all hopped up and down, clapping and screaming their delight at the top of their voices. Even Voran, in spite of himself, felt propelled into the energy of Tarin’s speech. For all of his madness, the old goat had a way with words.
The Tale of the Cub’s Hunger
It was spring, the time for a new-born bear cub to attempt the hunt for the first time. The cub was, as you might expect, excited and full of energy. He left in the morning, sure he would bring something big home—a badger maybe, or even a buck—but the figure he cut when he returned that evening was not what his mother expected. He was bedraggled, wet, and utterly miserable.
“Well, my boy,” she said, “did you bring anything to comfort your old mama?”
“Oh, Mama, it was horrible! Even the squirrels laughed at me. I gave them my best roar, but they threw nuts at me. I came to the river; the fish were lazy, sleepy in the summer sun. Easy picking, I thought. I made my attack, and suddenly they were all gone. One fat porker of a salmon actually jumped out and smacked me in the face with his tail. I saw a perfect berry patch—the berries were so perfect, Mama! —glistening and nearly popping with ripeness. But as soon as I came close I was viciously attacked by a stinkbug. It sprayed me! My eyes are still crying from it.”
“My poor boy. So much to learn still. You can’t conquer the forest in a day. Try again tomorrow. Be patient and careful, but do not let your poor mama go hungry for a second day.”
For four days, the cub caught nothing. On the fourth day, he waddled through a birch glade, his stomach grumbling. Suddenly a finch, all yellow and obnoxious—all of their species have that unfortunate deficiency, I’m afraid—took it into its little brain to torment the cub. Around and around his head it flew, screeching always at the moment it passed his ears—for maximum effect, you understand. Finally, the cub had enough, and he swatted the bird with his paw. His swipe was mortally on target, and the bird fell at his feet, its wings awkward and its neck snapped. The cub looked at the bird and felt a savage kind of pleasure. It was the killing itself. He liked it.
That evening, he brought his mother a rabbit. She praised him, but something about his manner—maybe it was his eyes, she could not tell—frightened her.
After that, he killed more and more, starting with small animals like squirrels, and sometimes even bringing down a mountain goat or two. But the more he hunted, the more he began to kill for the mere pleasure of it. Sometimes he even wounded small animals and left them in the forest to die. The kill dominated his thoughts day and night. His mother saw the macabre series of dead creatures from afar, but she was a wise old bear. She bided her time.
One day, the cub came to her, shaking and crying inconsolably.
“Mama, Mama, I’m so miserable!”
“What is it, my sweet cub?”
“I can’t stop killing. The desire for blood is huge inside me. It’s so big now, it has nowhere else to go. Maybe I should jump off a cliff, so the forest will be rid of me.”
She cradled him in her warm embrace, like she did during his first months underground. He cried and he cried, until he could cry no more. Then she looked deep into his eyes, and he felt the pieces of something broken inside him come together again. Drying his eyes, he went out on the hunt again.
Two squirrels were playing in front of their cave, completely oblivious to the bears’ living in the vicinity. The cub felt the now-familiar, groping desire to kill them. He was not even hungry, but he could imagine the warmth of their blood and the feeling of power it gave him.
He looked at them for a long time, then sat on his haunches and bellowed. The squirrels nearly left their bushy tails behind them, so far they jumped, and began to chatter at him angrily from the safety of a high branch, though neither was brave enough to throw anything at him. He laughed at them and turned back inside. It was time to sleep.
“They loved it,” said Voran as he and Tarin enjoyed a quiet repast, sitting on the ground, leaning on one of the houses. “I didn’t think they would understand it, but they seem to have understood more than I did.”
“Does that surprise you?” Tarin’s voice was only slightly sarcastic. He seemed younger and in better spirits after the telling.
“How much of that story was intended for my ears?”
“You do think much of yourself, don’t you, Raven Son?” Tarin shook his head, apparently genuinely disappointed in Voran. “It was a story of the darkness that lives in the heart of every man, not merely the great Voran, son of Otchigen of Vasyllia.”
Voran’s face grew hot, and he was grateful for the sound of approaching footsteps. It was a little boy, hardly more than four or five. His face was pockmarked, and there was something wrong behind his eyes. The realization pained Voran more than he expected—the little boy’s mind was damaged, probably by some kind of disease.
He approached Voran, not Tarin, which surprised Voran, even as a kind of panic began to itch at him. What does one do with a damaged child? His instinct was to ignore the boy or to shoo him away. Actually speaking to him, interacting with him was more frightening than walking off a precipice in the wild. The boy looked at Voran’s shoulder, never at his eyes, but still he shuffled nearer. He had no shoes, only rough leather slippers tied together in a slip-shod manner. It suggested that the boy had an older sibling, but no parents.
“Is he an orphan?” whispered Voran to Tarin, unwilling to look at the boy, feeling the unwelcome revulsion, yet unable to look away.
