“I don’t know. Competition? We kill it or we are killed?”
“By a deer?”
“It has horns!” the child protested.
The deer looked up at the sudden noise. Kalindris and the child were still and quiet. The deer was too hungry to leave. It continued to gnaw and to make noise.
“Why does it have to die?” Kalindris asked.
The child thought carefully. She winced with the realization.
“Because we can only know who we are by who everyone else is. We can only know what it means to be us if we know that we are not the others. And so we kill them, to know that, to know who we are and why we are here and why Riffid gave us life and nothing else. We kill. And because we are the killers, we are who we are.”
She felt her ears flatten against the side of her head. Her father’s words. Her father’s words repeated to a thousand people who would never speak against him, never tell him no. She hadn’t told him no, either. Not when she first heard it. Not until it was too late.
“No,” she said.
“But Father said—”
“No.” She spoke more forcefully. “Look at it. Why does it have to die?”
And the child looked at the deer. And then the child looked at her.
“Does it have to?” she asked.
The sound of ears rising. The sound of eyelids opening wide. The sound of a breath going short. Realization. Acknowledgment. Resignation. Sorrow.
The child.
Listening.
Wordless.
“Why does it have to die?” she asked again.
“Because,” the child said, “I have to kill it.”
Kalindris nodded. No smiles. No approval. No sounds.
The child raised her bow, drew the arrow back and held it. She trusted only her eyes. She checked her aim once, then twice, then a third time. On the fourth, when her hands had started to quiver from the strain, she shot.
The arrow struck the deer in the tender part between the leg and the nethers. It quivered there, severing something that the deer needed. The beast let out a groan, its breath mist. It staggered on its hooves, turned to flee. But its legs didn’t remember anything before the arrow. It shambled, bleeding, toward the forest.
The child drew an arrow and shot again. She trusted only her heart now. The arrow flew too wide. She shrieked, her voice panicked, and shot again. Words befouled the air and the arrow sank into the earth, heavy with her fear.
The deer took another step before it fell. The arrow stood quivering in the deer’s neck and the beast lay on its side, breathing heavily, spilling breath and blood onto the earth.
Kalindris approached it, the child behind her. She reached behind and grabbed the child, shoving her forward. The child stared at the deer’s eyes, at herself reflected in the great brown mirror of its gaze.
The child looked to her.
Kalindris reached into her belt and pulled the knife free. She held it out to the child. The child looked at it like it was something that shouldn’t be there, something that she would only ever see hung upon the wall of her father’s tent.
She thrust the handle toward the child.
“Why?” Kalindris asked the child.
The child looked up at her. The sight of eyes wide and pleading. The sight of resentment. The sight of fear and hate and betrayal for making the child do this.
But no words.
The child took the knife and knelt beside the deer. She pressed it to its throat. She winced and she cut through the fur and the hide and the sinew to the root of the beast’s neck.
She opened it up and it spilled upon her. It spilled over her hands and onto her arms. And the child kept cutting silently.
As the brook babbled alongside them, she tried to keep up with her parents.
“Are you scared, darling?”
Senny wasn’t. She was trying hard not to be, anyway. She shook her head and held up the little knife. Father didn’t seem to notice.
“You don’t need to be scared,” he said. “Not when I’m here. We’re going to get through this, all right?”
She nodded. She wasn’t scared.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, darling. I was just irritated. Your mother was screaming so loud.”
Mother didn’t seem to notice that they were talking about her. Mother held on to her hand and kept pulling her toward the cottage. The brook was nearby, churning away. Vines of berries grew nearby, ripe and bright in the sunlight.
They could go to the forest to avoid the beast, maybe. They could run there and live together there. The cottage was nice and she would miss it and she would miss Eadne and she tried very hard not to think about Eadne because whenever she did she felt like she was going to throw up and then Mother would cry.
“Darling, everything’s going to be all right,” Father said. He wasn’t looking at her, though. “Everything will be fine, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, Father,” she said. “I’m not scared. I still have the knife you gave me. Look.”
“It’ll be all right, darling.”
“Father, we could go deeper into the forest. We could escape the beast there and come back when it’s gone. I’ve been there, Father. It’s not as dark as it looks. There are berries and food and we could go there instead of the cottage.”
“Yes, darling. The forest.”
“Father, Mother is scared. She’s holding on to my hand so hard that it hurts. Father?”
Father said the same thing again. Over and over. All “darling” and “mm-hm” and “fine, fine, all right.” She soon stopped talking. Father wasn’t listening. Because if Father listened, he would hear her voice starting to sound like it always did whenever her throat felt funny and she wanted to cry.
And then he’d be scared. And then Mother would be more scared.
He needed to say his words so he couldn’t hear her. And she needed to stay quiet. And Mother needed to hold her hand until it hurt. And she needed not to throw up or cry or do any of those things that a scared little child would do.
Maybe when Eadne was around, she could do that.
Eadne was dead.
When the sun began to scowl over their tent and the first wolves rose to the hunt, she hated herself like she hated him.
“I want to ask you something,” Rokuda had said.
“No.” Kalindris had replied.
It was a noise Rokuda only heard from her. He had no idea what it meant. “Why aren’t you bothered by this?” he had asked, undeterred.
“By what?”
“By how they see her, by the fact that they think she’s not one of us. Not a shict.” He forced difficult words through a snarl. “Not mine.”
“I don’t pay attention to what she does.”
“Why not? Haven’t you seen what they think of her? How they look at her?”
“No.”
“They look at her like … like she’s … like she isn’t …”
His words had failed him and he had begun to snarl. He hated it when words would not work for him, because when his words would not work, neither would the Howling speak for him. And when he couldn’t speak, he started snarling, because people couldn’t agree with him. People could tell him “no.”
And that was when he started making scars.
“She reaches out to try to hold on to your hand when she’s scared. She … she asks them things, instead of knowing what the Howling tells her.” She heard his nails rake the fur and find that insufficient for his rage. She heard strands of his hair snap from his scalp as he pulled it. “She cries when she gets hurt. She snarls when she gets angry.”
“Children do that.”
“Not my heir.”
“Your heir is a child.”
“Not one of our children. Not one of our people. We don’t … do that.”
“She does.”
“And you don’t even care! You don’t even look at her. Don’t you know what they’re saying about us? How they look at us?”
“Don’t care.”
“You used to.”
“Don’t anymore.”
And she had heard it. Silence before a crack of thunder. Grains of earth falling after a drop of rain kicks them up. Moan of wind over hillsides. The moment before he drew a breath, before he spoke with the intent of being heard.
“You used to stand with me in front of them, remember? You and your bow, the proud huntress next to me, so strong and brave. They looked up to us as I spoke. They listened to me and I cared only if you heard me.”
Honey fermenting in a skein. Dandelions flying on the breeze. Steam after the fire had been doused. The words he spoke that had made her listen, the words he spoke that made him powerful, the words he spoke when he had been Rokuda and she had been Kalindris and they had no need for words.
“You used to listen to my words, you used to nod when they nodded and cheer when they cheered. And when I was done and I looked out over all of them smiling, I looked beside me and yours was always the biggest smile and the best.”
The words he spoke when she thought those were all she ever needed.
“You had a lot of words,” Kalindris had said.
“I still do. I still have everything. Everything except that proud huntress that stood beside me. Where did she go?”
Kalindris had waited at the flap of the tent. When she opened it to the cold dawn light, the world was silent. She looked briefly over her shoulder and saw his eyes, so vast and green. And out the corner of her eye, she saw only a glimpse of it. But the scar on her collarbone, the one he had given her, was still there.
“She fell in love with someone silent and gentle. They ran away and died somewhere far in the woods and left you and I behind.”
She had spoken briefly. And then she had left.
“You’re not doing it right. You’re not doing it right.” Teeth coming in through a cub’s mouth. “You’re supposed to talk to me. You’re supposed to be able to do this.” Claws digging for something in the earth that wasn’t there. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it and do it already.” A leg in a snare, being gnawed off.
The child.
Talking to the earth.
Still.
She watched, arms folded, impassive as the child crawled through the riverbank, following a flayed line through the mud. The child followed it over the bank, through the ebb, around the trees, back to where it began. The child cursed at it, made demands of it, whined at it and now simply spewed words, to the tracks, to the earth, to herself.
The child’s hands were thick with mud, belly smeared with it, face painted brown where she had clutched her head in frustration. And she crawled with her hands upon the ground, as though she could strangle answers out of the earth.
The earth wouldn’t talk to her.
The child wanted everything. The child wanted the tracks to tell her without listening to them. The child wanted the land to yield to her because she wanted it to that badly. The child wanted. The child spoke. The child whined and demanded and she never listened.
Like her father.
Kalindris was surprised to find her hands clenched into fists at her side.
“He said it was supposed to be easy,” the child whined. “It’s supposed to be easy. Why didn’t he—” She slammed the heel of her palm against her forehead. A muddy bruise was left behind. “No, no. It’s you, not him. You’re doing something wrong. It’s you, you’re the failure, that’s why they hate you.”
His legacy. In the mud. Striking herself in the head.
In some wordless part of herself, Kalindris tried to convince herself that the child deserved this. The child who couldn’t listen, the child who always spoke, his child belonged in the mud.
Kalindris was surprised to hear her own voice.
“It’s metaphor. The earth doesn’t actually talk to you.” The child continued to paw at it and plead to it. “Look. You’ve ruined the tracks. We can start—”
“Shut up!”
The child.
Baring teeth.
Snarling.
“I don’t want to hear it or you or anything, I just want to find the beast and kill it and bring it back and show it to him and then he’ll talk to me and I don’t need you or anyone else to talk to me if Father will so I never have to see you again!”
The child was liquid. White flecks of spittle gathered at her mouth. Tears brimmed in the corners of her eyes. Viscous mucus dripped from her nostrils. The child was melting, trembling herself to death. The child turned away, looked back into the silent earth.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
And Kalindris had no words for the child. The child who had just spoken to her like it was her fault the child’s ears couldn’t hear. The child who presumed to dismiss her. The child who acted like it was her fault, her problem, her flaw that made this moment of mud and tears and spit.
Like her father. Every bit.
She was surprised to find tears in her eyes.
And she, too, turned. The earth spoke to her, though. Told her where the beast had gone. Told her how to deny the child and how that made sense that she should be angry and vengeful against a child.
The child.
Weeping.
And she shut her ears and walked away.
Mother was scared. And Father was scared.
Senny knew this because no one was yelling anymore.
Mother wrapped her hands tightly around her and held her close in the corner of their cottage. Father stood with his hatchet in his hand, peering through the windows. Mother had her. Father had his hatchet. And they were both still scared.
She wasn’t, though. She had her little knife. Father had given it to her so she wouldn’t be scared. She couldn’t be scared with the little knife, even if Father was.
She thought about giving it to Father, to see if it would help. But she pulled it back when she heard a voice, even if it was Father’s.
“I’m going out there.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“To look for that thing. It might not even be around. We didn’t see it when we found—”
“No. Don’t go out there,” Mother said. “It already got Eadne. You can’t let it get your daughter and me, you have to stay here, you have to, you have to.”
“I have to protect you,” Father said. “I have to keep you safe. We can’t live like this. We can’t let that beast chase us away. We have to …”
To not be scared, Senny wanted to say. We have to be brave.
“I’m going,” Father said. “Not far. Not long. Just stay here. I’ll be back.”
Senny nodded. She held her little knife tightly. Mother held her tightly. So tightly it hurt. She leaned into it, though, let Mother hold on to her because Mother didn’t have a little knife.
Father pushed the door open. Birds were singing outside. The sun was shining that orange way it got when it started going beneath the trees. The brook was babbling outside, talking loud and wondering where the little girl was that talked back to it. Father walked out two steps from the doorway and looked around with his hatchet in his hand.
The birds kept singing. The brook kept talking. The sun kept shining.
And Father was dead.
She knew it. She saw the arrow in his shoulder, pinning him to the cottage door. She saw another fly out and hit him in the wrist. He dropped his hatchet. Mother screamed. Father screamed. Father bled all over the door. And Senny held on to the little knife.
The beast came up. The beast was a lady. Her hair was long and wild and she wore dirty clothes and her ears were huge and she had big teeth and a scar on her neck. Her knife was big. Her knife was shiny. And she brought it up and against Father’s neck and opened him up and his blood spilled all over her.
And the birds just kept on singing, even though Father was dead.
When the birds kept singing and the woman would not stop weeping, she looked at the Beast.
There were many names for them: intruder, human, monkey, kou’ru. It was Rokuda that had began calling them Beasts, to make them a threat instead of a people, a word instead of a thing that had children. It had made the tribe nod in approval and mutter how they were Beasts, these creatures that came and threatened the shict lands.
She had killed one already, left the body swinging in a tree as warning to these two. But she had known, even then, that she would have to kill them, too. She had killed many.
Even before Rokuda gave them a new name, she had killed them. They were the enemy, they were the disease. Killing defined a shict. And these kills were meant for the child. The blood that poured down Kalindris’ hands should have been on the child’s. She was supposed to have come back to the tribe with her hands red and her eyes shut and the tribe would know she was one of them and her father would be proud of his heir.
The child’s kill. Rokuda’s glory. Kalindris denied one through the other.
The little human girl stood in front of her cowering mother, holding up a little knife like it was a match for the broad red blade in Kalindris’ hands. She looked up at Kalindris, trying her hardest not to show fear. Kalindris looked down at her, trying to decide how best to end this quickly. A clean blow through one, then the other, she thought, in the heart to end it quickly.
Clean and quick.
Just as soon as the child stopped staring at her.
Like she owed her an explanation.
“Do you know why?” Heavy, choked, weak. Kalindris’ words.
The human child did not say a thing. Her mother wrapped her arms around the child’s tiny form, tried to hold her back. The child would not lower her knife.
“Why I have to kill you?” she asked again.
The child said nothing. Kalindris opened her mouth to tell her. No words came.
“Your knife is too small,” Kalindris said. She held up her own blade, thick and choked with red. “You can’t do anything with it. You aren’t meant to hold it. Put it down.”
The child did not put it down. Kalindris raised her weapon, took a step forward, as if to step around the child. The child moved in front of her, thrust her little knife at Kalindris like it would do something. Like she could use it. Like she wasn’t scared.
Kalindris hesitated. She looked over her shoulder, as though she expected the child—her child—to be there.
“You don’t have to die here,” she said, without looking at the child—the human child. “Your … your father isn’t you. Your mother isn’t you. I’ll take them. You can run.”
She looked at the child and her little knife.
“Go. Run away.”
The child did not run. The child did not move.
“Why aren’t you running?”
“I can’t.” The child spoke in a terrified voice.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s my mother.”
The pages of a book fallen from a shelf, turning. Ashes in a long-dead fireplace settling beneath charred logs. A mother weeping. Birds singing. Blood pattering onto the floor from a hole in a soft throat, drop by drop.
Slow sounds.