The door opened and I stepped out into a new reality as fresh as the green-scented forest around me. It was that time in late afternoon when sunlight is an almost tangible gold and the most ordinary objects attain a mystic, primeval splendor. Hesitantly I took another step, then turned in a slow circle to take it all in. Pine trees with trunks thrice the width of my body towered like pylons. Maples fanned out into huge, irregular pyramids. Thousand-year old oak boughs snaked between neighboring trees with the vigor of new-grown vines. And all around and in between a dozen other species jostled for sunlight--and succeeded. None of their types were completely new to me, but I'd never seen such great variety in a single patch of forest, or seen so many trees packed so tightly and yet obviously flourishing. Even the dogwood blooms, pinned beneath the taller trees like earthbound clouds, spread wide as my open hand.
But trees weren't all that flourished in the primeval wood. Bands of puppy-sized squirrels scampered overhead, pausing just long enough to scold me for my intrusion. Invisible birds chorused higher up, and butterflies and moths wafted delicately from the undergrowth as I disturbed their resting places. The doorway itself had disappeared, but I'd expected no less. Getting here had been the hard part; getting back was a cinch.
Now I glanced down again, wondering if the forest was as ancient as it looked. Experimentally I kicked at the loam. A cloud of gold-dust pollen erupted amid a scattering of leaves, needles, and multicolored beetles (which burrowed out of sight as quickly as they had appeared). But there was no earth beneath my boot, just more loam, darker and damper than the layers above. I kicked again, and again, finally reaching soil a good ten or twelve inches beneath the mulch. How old that made the forest, I had no idea, but it certainly impressed me. I'd been playing in woods since I was a kid; in fact, that was probably the reason I'd been drawn to this particular door in the first place. But I'd never been in a forest this old--or this beautiful. I felt as though I could wander around in here for days, and when I emerged I'd be as healthy and peaceful as the trees around me.
Smiling, I gave the loam a final, absentminded nudge. Suddenly there was a burst of noise at my feet and a flat, reptilian head lunged upward, swiftly followed by an orange and gold whipcord of a body. I jumped backwards as the snake reared up, farther off the ground than gravity should have allowed, but it only hissed and dived back into the loam like the beetles before it. I let out a loud explosion of breath and willed my heart back to its regular rhythm. The Guardians had said I was immune to poison and disease, but it would take some time before my reflexes learned the lesson. And I'd probably never lose my fear of spiders, no matter what they told me. But to let myself be frightened by a snake, of all creatures! I shook my head and chuckled. Even as a child in R1 I'd kept them briefly as pets; and now....Well, I supposed it was time to start adjusting to what I had become.
Again I cast my eyes around the forest, this time less for enjoyment than experiment, and the change in my vision was immediately clear. Under boughs, between leaves, through sunbeams and shadows my gaze bored on, never dimming, never weakening, until I focused on a knothole in a tree about a quarter of a mile away. A pointy gray snout and a pair of sleepy, black-banded eyes peered out, almost as though answering my summons. The raccoon was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but I had seen the notch in its left ear and the sawdust on its whiskers. I'd even pierced the darkness of its hole and seen the scratches in the far wall, as though the animal had been sharpening its claws there. And with a little more concentration, I could distinguish the sounds of its scuffing as it rearranged its bedding and settled back into its nest.
Now I closed my eyes to take in more of the forest sounds: the beetles scratching in the mulch, weaving a solid carpet of noise beneath my feet; two dozen different birdcalls from a mile away or more; the buzzes, flaps and flutters of a million airborne creatures; and perhaps only half a mile away, the giggling of a little brook.
That, I decided arbitrarily, would be my destination. And overcome, finally, with the joy of attaining my long-sought paradise, I let loose a full-throated rebel yell and took off at a run, dodging between trees like a football player headed for a touchdown and leaping into the air to loop-the-loop over every convenient branch. Even as a ten-year-old I'd never had this much speed or agility. It was as though I carried some kind of bizarre, supernatural dynamo in my guts, feeding me more power than any human had a right to.
As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was exactly what was happening. Concentrating now, I could feel it, this thing which had been no more than a wish of the soul in R1. It lay within me like a pit beneath the soft fruit of a peach, dark and ovoid and sharp of edge. And as much as I had subconsciously desired it in my dreams, as right as it had felt when the Guardians interpreted my destiny from the roll of a single die, now I was suddenly afraid. With a start, I realized I wasn't running anymore, but jogging--out of anxiety rather than tiredness. The brook was just ahead now, though. Best to put my fears and doubts aside--for awhile, at least. I took a deep, mind-clearing breath and stepped out into the clearing.
It was just as I had pictured: a winding, sandy-edged stream cut into the forest floor as though by a doodling finger. I scrambled down the embankment, then cupped my hands into the chilly water and splashed my face for no better reason than I wanted to. And then, on impulse, I scooped up another handful and drank deep. Once, in R1, I had taken a trip to the mountains and sneaked a drink from a waterfall while out of sight of my friends. I had some crazy image of Grizzly Adams in my head at the time. Only later, when I confessed my little escapade, did I learn about the violent illnesses that can be contracted from "pure" mountain streams. I was lucky; the only sickness I developed was worry. But now, with this new body, I could eat and drink whatever I wanted. Smug with the assurance of invulnerability, I took another deep draught of cool, untamed forest water, relishing its piney aftertaste and imagining I could feel it fizzing on my tongue.
My uneasiness forgotten for the moment, I smiled at the sight of a nearby blackberry patch, rambling down the streambed like blue-black kudzu. I was on them in an instant, picking handfuls of strawberry-sized clusters and gobbling them down as though I hadn't eaten in days. Come to think of it, this body hadn't eaten ever; but I wasn't really hungry, just greedy to take in as much of this new world as I could as quickly as possible. Of course, I wasn't too greedy to taste. There wasn't a single sour berry in that bush; every mouthful was as sweet as if it had come from God's own garden.
As I burrowed into the vines, I only gradually became aware that I wasn't being scratched by thorns. They were there, all right, and they were at least as sharp as any in R1; but they brushed over my skin as harmlessly as flower petals--another advantage of what I had become. Not that I had any illusions of turning sword blows aside with bare flesh; the Guardians had made it clear that while my new body was tougher than my old one, it was nowhere near invulnerable. And with that though, I sobered again. As much as I might have wished it, I hadn't stepped into a Garden of Eden, and all my experiences here wouldn't be golden afternoons in the woods. I had a calling.
Sighing, I dipped my hands in the stream to wash off the berry juice, then took a good look at my reflection. The clothes, I'd noticed already: a soft leather vest and boots over light brown pants, and a blousy, moss-green shirt that laced at the neck. A complicated belt held pouches for money and supplies, plus a short sword I'd ignored before now because I had no idea how to use it; while a lightweight pack (hopefully containing a change of clothes or two) hung from my back. A loose, wheat-colored braid flowed down over one shoulder, but I'd already noticed that too.
It was myself as a whole that hadn't registered before now. I was short even in R1, but I hadn't been this slender since I was twelve: a pleasant surprise, and a blessing, too. To the undiscerning eye, I was little more than a petite young woman out for a stroll, an R2 gamine whose weapon was probably more used to cutting greenery than enemies. No one would suspect this fragile form of harboring a Fury, and that was just the way I wanted to keep it.
I nodded in silent satisfaction, then paused as I finally noticed my eyes. They were jade green, just like the pair in R1; but these irises held a subtle, inhuman gleam, as though emerald dust were embedded in their folds. Anybody who noticed that, I thought, wouldn't mistake me for an innocent country girl. Hell, they wouldn't even mistake me for a human being. Now, how was I going to disguise that, I wondered--wrap a handkerchief around my head and pretend to be blind? Groaning, I leaned back on my elbows to think it through.
And that's when I understood the real significance of my first Gift. The Guardians had told me I would blend in perfectly with humankind, that my Fury persona would come out only at my call. So that meant that either everyone in this world had eyes like mine, or else ordinary humans couldn't see the sparks. The second option seemed by far the more likely. Remembering how sharp my vision had become, I checked my reflection again and sighed with relief: the sparks were more subtle than I'd first realized. Maybe an eagle could have seen them, or another supernatural being with eyesight as keen as mine. But the average man- or woman-on-the-street couldn't have detected them even with a magnifying glass. I was safe.
Relieved, I climbed to my feet, thanking God, the Guardians, and my own subconscious for rolling me such a useful Gift. I'd have been a lot lonelier if I'd had to roam R2 looking like a monster out of Greek mythology. Of course, the human shape I'd been blessed with was no guarantee of companionship, either, but at least it was a start.
And I still had two other Gifts, as well. I'd have to wait until dark to get the full benefit of one of them, but now was the perfect time to try the other, especially since I wanted to leave the woods as quickly as possible. Grinning already, I found a relatively straight stretch of riverbank and ran a few brisk steps, then leaped into the air with arms outstretched. Something flexed in my back and shoulders, and my weight dropped away like jettisoned baggage. Another second and I was soaring over the treetops like the world's largest bird, a cross-shaped shadow printing on the greenery beneath me. My clothes snapped like flags against my skin, keeping time with the beating of my heart, and my braid streamed out behind me like a tail.
Exhilarated, I speared my way up into a cloud and looked down to see mini-whirlwinds scatter in my wake. Then the world went white. I hung silent a moment, awed, as fine droplets of mist condensed on my face. Then I arched backwards and upwards until I'd come out on top of the cloud bank, and lay back as though on a bed, letting the motion of the wind carry me wherever it willed. Beneath me I could still feel my wings, slowly fanning. But there was nothing to see, not even a stirring in the clouds around me. My second Gift was to have use of nearly all my abilities in human as well as Fury form.
I allowed myself a few more minutes of basking, then rolled over and descended to an altitude where I could easily survey the ground. The wind had carried me beyond the edge of the forest, but looking backward, I could see it stretching all the way to the horizon, broken only by my little stream and its cousins. If I hadn't been able to fly, I thought, I really might have wandered in there for days. On the opposite horizon loomed a range of jagged blue-gray mountains, forbidding even from this height and distance. And in between, treading a careful line between extremes, stretched a wide, well traveled dirt road. A medium-sized town squatted far down its length, visible from here as a collection of wood, thatch and brick buildings, closely packed and walled in with stone. Much closer was a sprinkling of farms, their lands marked off by low stone walls straight out of a Robert Frost poem. Cows, horses, and sheep grazed placidly in the fields, oblivious to the anomaly above. I thought of buzzing them, but guiltily pushed the idea aside. What I most need to concentrate on was finding people.
At this height, even my new supernatural sight was stressed to its limits, but eventually I noticed a pair of human figures working in a garden beside an especially large farmhouse. Two smaller forms chased cattle in the field behind them, their movements just erratic enough to make me wonder whether they were herding the poor beasts or just teasing them.
It was as good a place to start as any. Making sure I was well out of their range of vision, I drifted down to the roadway, feeling my weight settle back into my bones the moment my feet touched ground. It was a slightly depressing sensation. Then I set out to meet my first natives.
I'd been walking for about fifteen minutes when the farmhouse rose into view again, a pleasantly blocky building of gray stone, one-storied, with a steep, freshly-thatched roof. The people I had seen from the air were still in the garden: a man and a woman, both in baggy pants and boots like my own, but vestless, with bands of embroidery around the necks and wrists of their shirts. The man wore a shapeless, wide-brimmed straw hat over graying hair, and the woman had a tightly woven braid which stretched nearly to her waist. "Good afternoon," I said confidently as I approached. If it wasn't proper in this society to greet strangers, I'd already decided, I'd just go on down to the next farm and try a different tack. But somehow I'd already equated this part of R2 with my homeland of the South--maybe it was the dogwoods in the forest--and back home, it would have been ruder to say nothing than to speak.
I'd made the right choice. "Afternoon," the woman smiled pleasantly, and her husband nodded. Both immediately went back to their work.
Well, I hadn't expected anything more from such a brief attempt. At least I'd confirmed my hunch that I wouldn't have any trouble communicating. Neither of us was speaking English, I realized right away, but whatever it was, I knew it as well as I knew my native language. Now I just had to see how far I could go with it. "Any idea how far the next town is?" I asked, coming up to the stone wall but not actually leaning against it. That would have been presumptuous. The woman stopped hoeing and looked up, considering. "About half a day's walk, I guess," she said, then added, "It's called Dirss. That where you're headed?"
I shrugged and smiled--charmingly, I hoped. "I'm not heading anywhere in particular, just exploring."
"Oh, one of them," she nodded knowingly, and leaned her hoe against the wall as though settling in for a long break. Her husband glanced up briefly, then returned to his planting with an ear cocked toward our conversation. Obviously, he trusted his wife to dig out all the interesting bits without his help. "Where you from, then?" she asked, not bothering to mask her curiosity.
This was a question I'd anticipated, chewing over the possible responses on the way to the farm. Assuming most people in R2 knew no more about R1 than those in R1 knew about R2, I'd finally settled on an abridged version of the truth. "America," I told her. "It's a long way from here."
"America," she mused. "I think I've heard that name before, in Dirss. We get a lot of foreigners there, lot of adventurous types out to slay dragons and all that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure at least one of them was from America."
I didn't dare ask her if "slaying dragons" was just a figure of speech. I had enough trouble hiding my surprise that she knew of other Americans. My mind exploded with possibilities of meetings, shared information, partnerships and quests.
"Most of them are a lot bigger and better armed than you, though," the woman went on, looking me up and down with care. "Hope you're not their type; a dragon'd eat you up in one bite and not even bother to burp."
I laughed along with her. "Oh, right now I'm content just to look around. I've never been this far from home before."
"'Right now,' eh?" she asked, her sharp glance telling me I wasn't fooling her at all. The woman gave a single disapproving cluck, then decided to let the matter drop and glanced at the sky instead. The clouds I'd noticed at the beginning of my flight were thickening now, their white replaced by a gloomy gray-green. The woman turned back to her husband. "Hain, gonna storm soon. You about done for the day?"
"About," he answered. He pulled off his hat and wiped his hand across a sweating bald spot. "Close to dinner time anyway." Their eyes met for a moment; then the woman smiled and I knew what was coming even before she spoke.
"Listen, dear, you wouldn't make it to Dirss before dark in any case, and we've got a real roarer coming up, looks like. Why don't you just stay here for the night?"
This was far more than I'd expected when I spotted the farm. I was delighted, but a little nervous, too. At least part of the motive behind their invitation was curiosity, and I wasn't at all sure I could answer the questions that were put to me without arousing suspicions. But there was no way I could turn down such a fortuitous offer. "Thank you, that's very kind of you," I smiled. "My name's Kyriel, by the way."
That was something else I'd pondered on the way to the farm. My R1 name would sound alien in this world, and a new body deserved a new name, anyway. I'd started with the idea of a mutation on the Greek word for Furies, Erinyes, but abandoned that for fear some other dual might catch on and spoil my cover. In the end, I'd opted for a name I'd used once in a game that had to have been created by a dual. It was slightly Greek, as well, and I liked its connotations.
My hostess apparently liked it, too. "Kyriel...what a beautiful name. Well, honey, I'm Frenna and this is my husband Hain. The boys are out back." She turned around and gave a healthy yell. "Jerris, Len, dinner time!" The two dark-headed kids I'd seen in the field came scrambling toward the house, clambering over a dip in the stone wall rather than taking the trouble to open the gate. About twelve and eight years old, respectively, they looked me over with open curiosity and grinned their approval as their mother told them who I was. Then she led us all inside.
A teenage girl met us at the door, with sleeves rolled up and apron fragrant with fresh gravy stains. So that's how Frenna could call us all to dinner so quickly when she hadn't spend any time in the kitchen herself, I thought. My hostess introduced the girl as her daughter Mirrimi and told me I'd be sharing a room with her. Mirrimi looked less than happy with this arrangement but politely kept her mouth shut.
She was a quiet girl, taking after her father, and a more than adequate chef. Sitting around the table on stiff-backed wooden benches, the six of us feasted on tender, delicately spiced roast beef; a goulash of beans, tomatoes, and okra; warm, fat biscuits slathered in butter and honey; and baked, syruped apples for dessert. Recalling the near-poverty of so many farmers in R1, I couldn't help but be surprised at the middle-class abundance of Frenna and Hain's table. Then I remembered the vitality of the forest and the wealth of blackberries I'd found by the stream, and I began to understand. No matter how I tried to explain it, whether by lack of pollution, more intelligent use of the land, or just a difference of natural endowments, the fact remained: R2 was a richer world than R1. Or at least, I reminded myself, this part of R2 was richer than R1. For all I knew, other parts of it could be as desolate as Mordor.
As I was finishing the last of my dessert, I heard a subtle rattle to my left and Len, who was sitting next to me, accidentally nudged me with an elbow. Looking down, I saw that he was playing a small hand-held game beneath the table, trying hard to avoid his mother's eye. At first glance, it looked like a million other games I'd seen in R1, a simple round maze with a marble inside, the object being to get the marble into the open center. This maze was made of wood, covered with a thin sheet of glass, and the marble was crystal clear--nothing terribly unusual. But what amazed me as I looked closer was the way the boy made the marble move. In his hand was a stick about twice the size of a toothpick, tipped with gold or some like-colored metal, and carved with runes. Moving it back and forth in his hand, he seemed to be directing the marble in its path through the maze. The reason he'd bumped me was that he had to hold his pointer roughly a foot away from the maze in order to make it work. Any closer, and the marble refused to move. Frowning, I studied the toy closer, trying to figure out what made it work. It couldn't be magnetism if the marble was really solid crystal.
Suddenly Frenna's hand reached out and jerked the toy away. "How many times have I told you not to play that at the table?" she chided. Len shrugged and colored. Frenna was unimpressed. "I'll give this back to you in a week's time," she announced, ignoring the boy's protests. Then she caught me staring at the toy. "You've never seen one of these?"
I shook my head. "How does it work? It's not a magnet, is it?"
Frenna looked surprised. "Of course not. It's just magic." She demonstrated by twiddling the pointer herself, with considerably less skill than her son. "Len got it at the fair a couple of months ago. Cost him three week's allowance, but he had to have it, didn't you?" She frowned at the boy, then couldn't resist ruffling his hair. "And now he just can't let it go, even at the dinner table."
"Sorry, Mom," Len muttered, clearly more embarrassed than repentant. Jerris snickered, and Len favored him with a glare of brotherly hatred. I, meanwhile, could only be grateful Frenna had overlooked my misstep in her displeasure with Len. Of course I'd known there was magic in R2; how could there not be in the land of my dreams? But displaying my ignorance about it now was akin to asking what made the sun come up in the morning, or why our feet stuck to the ground. Hastily I bent back to my dessert, hoping I wasn't blushing too hard.
By this time the storm had kicked in earnest, and the wind was roaring around the house like a hungry wolf. When my face had regained its normal color, I decided to test the local waters a bit further. "You know, when I was little, my mother used to tell me that noise was the Furies, trying to get inside."
Hain let out a noisy breath. "Pray Chresta we never see such a visitation," he muttered, and began a motion that made me think he was going to cross himself. But after he'd touched his forehead and chest, he brought his hand back to his mouth and kissed his fingertips. Frenna and the children followed suit, and so did I, after the briefest pause. I wasn't about to look ignorant a second time. Yet I couldn't help but be disappointed at his reaction, even though I'd expected no less. Would he kick me out if he knew what I was, I wondered? Or would he just be so afraid that I'd shame myself into leaving? Or worst of all, would he try to kill me? These feelings, I realized, were what I'd have to deal with for as long as I lived in R2. And if they were a heavy weight now, what would they be like after years of this life?
Len, recovered now from his embarrassment, pulled me back into the present. "Tell us about the Furies, Dad," he urged, his eyes lighting up with the fearful fascination R1 children reserve for ghost stories.
"Absolutely not," Frenna cut in briskly, even before Hain could get his mouth open. "You're too young to hear that sort of thing. Now, you and Jerris help your sister clear off the table, and we'll have some happier tales before we go to bed."
Sighing, Len did as he was told, while I helped Frenna and Hain slide the table out of the way and pull out throw pillows and footstools to make the benches more comfortable. The children left the dishes and silverware in a pail of soapy water and returned to their seats, then looked at their mother expectantly.
"Now, let me see," Frenna murmured, pretending to ponder, although it was obvious she already had a story picked out. "I know. I haven't told you the one about Pimipatapilkerin." And as she launched into her tale, I realized almost immediately that I'd heard it before. Frenna was telling the story of Rumplestiltskin, with only minor variations, that I'd heard ever since I was small. The fact that Pimipatapilkerin was a green-furred cat and the king an elf in this version only added to my delight.
Frenna followed that one up with a mutation of Aladdin where the hero was a heroine, then rounded things off with a variation on the King Arthur legend with the adultery left out (on purpose, I strongly suspected). I was feeling particularly mellow and cheerful when she turned to me and said, "Now, Kyriel, it's your turn."
"Me?" I sat up a little straighter and blushed for the second time that night. "Oh, I don't know."
"Yes, you do," Frenna replied, in a tone that brooked no argument. She smiled to soften the command. "You can consider it payment for the room and board."
"In that case..." I shrugged and laughed uneasily, my mind flashing through stories of my childhood: Cinderella, Robin Hood, Beauty and the Beast. It was likely that Frenna, at least, would have heard them already--and probably the rest of the family, as well. But if I was going to be forced into a story, I wanted it to be something new to them. After all, I was the exotic foreigner; I had a reputation to uphold. Then it hit me. I smiled and leaned back against the hard bench.
"In a far-off land, even farther than America, lives a race of people only about four feet high, called Hobbits. Now, the Hobbit I'm going to tell you about was named Bilbo Baggins, and he lived in a very nice hole in the ground in a place called Bag End...."
By the time I had finished, some forty-five minutes later, the children's eyes were alight and Frenna had the look of someone frantically making notes in her head. Only Hain seemed unimpressed. He frowned and nodded for a moment, a faraway look on his face. "Seems like I've heard about this race before," he mused, folding his arms as if that would help him think better. "Only they were called something else: half-something. And they lived on an island called Medlertha."
My heart felt as though someone had given it a good quarter turn. Hobbits were real here? Then Tolkien himself must have been a dual, and his stories must have been based on real events! This was almost as exciting as finding R2 in the first place. "Do you have any idea where this Medlertha is?" I stammered. If I could go there....
"No idea," Hain drawled, instantly dashing my hopes. "I figure it's just a legend that's gotten passed around. 'Course, the dwarves are real enough, and the wizards."
Wizards, I thought. If Tolkien had indeed been a dual--and I couldn't believe now that he hadn't been--what role would have suited him better than that? And if he had been a wizard, what name could he have used but Gandalf? It was such a delicious thought that I had to repress a shudder. Gandalf the Gray might have been a real person, and if I looked in the right places, I could even find traces of him. Now I had a quest.
"What are you thinking about so, Kyriel?" Frenna asked, the look in her eye making me feel like a butterfly on a pin.
I scrambled to find a coherent reply. Anything too far from the truth, and I was sure she'd know I'd lied. Anything too close to the truth, and I'd give myself away. "I-I'd just always thought the Hobbit stories were a legend," I stammered, "and they were always my favorite. I even used to imagine I was one of the characters in them. So when Hain said he thought Hobbits might be real, I just got a little excited. I thought I might even be able to find a way to get there."
Frenna smiled kindly. "Well, it sounds like a safer destination than some places you could get to, though I wouldn't pack my bags just yet. But tell me, child, about America. It must be a very long way away from here if I've barely even heard of it."
So now the lying would have to begin in earnest. I was sorry, but not surprised. Taking a deep breath, I began my tale. America was several weeks' journey away, I told her, then jumped quickly to details of the country itself before she could ask me how I got here. I made my homeland a tiny, backwater place, mountainous and clannish, lacking in heroes or magic or culture or anything else worth talking about. This was to give my hosts the impression that while I was polite enough to answer their questions, America wasn't a subject I was keen to discuss in detail. I even "let slip" an allusion or two to an unhappy childhood, just to deter them from probing any further.
Eventually Frenna took the hint and announced that it was time for bed. By this point I was exhausted--mentally, at least. My body felt as fresh as it had when I'd been running in the forest, and I had the sense that the Fury inside was feeding me energy, and would continue to do so for as long as I needed it. I just hoped it wouldn't keep me from sleeping, although the way my brain felt, I didn't think that would be a problem.
"Let me show you to my bedroom," Mirrimi offered, and I followed here gratefully down the hall. It was a small room, sparsely decorated, the only bits of color a couple of ceramic vases filled with wildflowers and a patchwork quilt on the double bed. "I used to share with my older sister," Mirrimi explained, a touch of rebellion in her voice, "but she got married. So now I'm the only one with a room to myself. It's been pretty nice." She turned her back as she began changing into a long nightgown, and I rooted belatedly in my pack to see if I had anything to sleep in. I didn't.
Turning again, Mirrimi saw the problem, if not the reason behind it. Her petulance melted instantly. "Oh, you've been sleeping in your clothes, haven't you? Here, you can borrow one of my nightgowns." And so I ended up sharing a bed and bedclothes with another girl, as if I was twelve again and sleeping over at a friend's house. It was more than a little embarrassing.
As I lay there in the dark, trying hard not to jostle Mirrimi under the sheets, I could hear the boys giggling in the next room. At first I struggled to ignore them; then I heard a word that jerked me immediately to attention: Fury. It sounded like Jerris was explaining something to his younger brother. Closing my eyes, I focused my full supernatural hearing on the room next door.
"...monsters," Jerris was saying. "They have hair made of snakes and big yellow eyes, and they're so ugly, one look at them and you either go crazy or die."
"That's not true," Len said scornfully.
"Oh yeah? Then how come Dad got so scared when Kyriel just said the word? I bet he's seen one." His voice turned sly. "I bet when he was a kid he was out behind the barn one day doing like you were that time, and it came screeching down out of the sky with a big old sword ready to cut--"
"Stop it!" Len exclaimed, so loudly Mirrimi rolled over in her sleep. "Furies don't come after you for stuff like that."
"I thought you didn't believe me," Jerris smirked.
"I don't," Len muttered miserably. "But even if I did, I still don't think they'd come after a little kid. They go after robbers and murderers and stuff." Silently I congratulated him on his discernment, but Jerris wasn't through yet.
"Then why do you think so many babies die in their cribs, huh? It's the Furies, coming in after dark and cutting their lifelines, so when their parents find them in the morning, they're all blue and purple with their eyes bugging and their tongues hanging out. And they get older kids sometimes, too. You just don't know that's what happened to them. Remember when Bricco drowned? I bet that was a Fury."
I'd heard enough, and pulled the pillow up around my ears. If stories like this were being passed around, it was no wonder Hain had such a bad reaction to my comment earlier. Even after he'd matured enough to discount the lies of childhood, the undercurrent of dread would have remained. And in a world where the monsters really were real, a Fury was a fact of life as deadly and unpredictable as a tornado. Now I knew that there was no way I could reveal my nature to anyone but my closest allies...and my quarry. Unfortunately, so far I had neither.
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