He went silent, momentarily talked out. They plodded on for a few moments without saying anything more, flushed with the heat of the argument and its genesis. Hawk watched Cheney as he stalked ahead of them, his shaggy presence no longer as comforting as it had once been. In the city, Cheney would have warned them of unseen dangers. He would have guarded and protected them; he would have kept the bad things out. But out here, with no doors or windows or walls, what could he do? There was too much open space, too many ways the bad things could get at you.
He felt a sudden pang of regret, thinking of Cheney this way. He had saved them so many times, and still it wasn’t enough. It was unfair to expect more. He expected it of himself, though. Even knowing it was taking on more than he could manage. Especially here. Panther was right; sometimes there was nothing you could do to save people; sometimes you just had to let go of them.
He broke away from Panther and Sparrow and sprinted up beside his dog. Cheney didn’t so much as glance at him. He just kept walking, one paw in front of the other, big head swaying from side to side, heavy muscles rolling beneath his shaggy coat. Hawk walked next to him, keeping pace, his mind awash with unrealized expectations of how he had envisioned things would be and stark memories of other tragedies that had claimed the lives of other Ghosts. Mouse and Heron. Squirrel. Each time, he had felt like this—bereft, helpless, furious with himself, frustrated with his inability to act.
Behind him, he heard Sparrow and Panther whispering. They were all wondering the same thing: if he was as magical as he was supposed to be, then why couldn’t he do more? Could he even do the one thing he had promised? Could he take them to a place where they would all be safe? He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure of anything. All he could do was try to follow through and hope that somehow he would find a way.
But telling this to himself didn’t make him feel any better. So much depended on him. Even when he could stop thinking about Tessa and their unborn child, even when he could reduce the numbers of those he led to only those who were his immediate family, he was confounded by the enormity of his task.
His instincts guided him, just as the King of the Silver River had said they would, just as they had from the moment of his return. But his instincts were all he had. It didn’t seem like enough.
Cheney veered suddenly and brushed against him with his big head. Hawk sidestepped, thinking he was the one who had veered out of his path, caught up in his musings. Then the big dog did it again, a deliberate act that conveyed an unmistakable meaning.
Tears filled Hawk’s eyes, and he wiped them away quickly. He reached down and rubbed the grizzled head, smiling faintly. “Me, too,” he whispered.
HE IS NEVER a good fit for his family, he tells his best friend not long after they meet. He is an outsider almost from the beginning, for as far back as he can remember, seemingly forever. It isn’t that anyone wants it that way. It’s just how things work out. He isn’t like them. He isn’t a worker, a toiler, a committed survivor. He barely cares about the world around him. His mind is always somewhere else, never on the task at hand. He is unreliable, they say. He is a dreamer.
He knows this is so and that it isn’t a good thing in the eyes of the others, but there is nothing he can do to change it.
His family is a large one, so the care and protection of the whole take precedence over worrying about the one. His mother spends time with him when he is little, fussing over him the way mothers do over small children. These are his fondest memories. She encourages his artistic pursuits, indulges his talent, his creativity. No harm in letting him be a child for just a little while. She thinks it will all drift away as he gets older, that he will move on to other things as he matures.
But he doesn’t. He isn’t like that. He isn’t the sort of kid whose passions ebb and flow with the years. He is formed early on, shaped by his devotion to his artistic discoveries, by his need to explore things that no one but he can see. It is a useless talent in a world where everything is about being pragmatic, about staying alive and staying safe. He doesn’t worry about such things; he worries about how he will make his drawings turn out the way he sees them in his mind. He does his work, and he fulfills his family obligations. Most of the time, at least. But he doesn’t do anything more than that. He doesn’t go the extra mile, as his older brothers keep telling him he must. He doesn’t prepare himself against the unexpected. He doesn’t live in preparation for what might happen. He lives in the moment.