Chapter 16: The Hero of Angeau

Heroes in Angeau were made at the supper table, somewhere between the second helping and the blessing, and a man who had been made one was fed for the rest of his life.

Gaspard had held the post for years with nothing in it to do. The town kept a monster in the forest, as it always had, and had never been asked to produce him, and that suited everyone until Béatrice came home from the fence with a story.

The monster lived a long walk from that fence, and he had not yet heard that he was wanted.

I went to the tree line alone that morning and I didn’t tell Noëlle.

I had done it before. Since the lair I had gone out at first light a handful of times, while she slept, and been back at the den with a fish before the morning was half gone. I told myself I was going for fish. The town had been quiet since the fence, and I don’t trust quiet from people who have seen my ears.

That morning it wasn’t quiet. I woke before dawn with both ears already turned toward the town, and the town was coming through them from a long way off: wood being split, and a great many voices at once, more than I had ever heard from there. I got out of the nest without disturbing the furs, which I am now very good at, and she didn’t wake. I knew where she was the whole walk, the way you know where your own hand is in the dark. She was asleep in the nest, and near the end she was up and standing at the stream.

The last thick trunk was where I always stood. I put my back against the bark and looked across the stumps and the bramble to the fence and the cut grass going down to the roofs. The field was empty again, and after the fence I knew what that meant.

Astien came up it alone. I knew him by his breathing before I could see him, because he stopped several times on the way and each time went on again. He reached the fence and took hold of the top rail with both hands as if it might leave. He was sweating, though the morning was cool.

“Noëlle?” He said it to the trees in general, trying to keep his voice down and not managing it. “It’s Astien. It’s only me. I haven’t got anybody with me.” He looked back down the field and then at the trees again. “Noëlle, if you can hear...”

Nothing answered, and he swallowed.

“Or if it’s somebody else. If you’re there instead.” His voice cracked on the last word. “I’m not shouting at you. I’m saying it loud so it carries. I don’t know if it does.”

It did. Nobody in Angeau had ever spoken to me. They had screamed at the idea of me, which is a different thing, and I stood behind that trunk with my ears swung so far forward that they ached at the base. My tail was stiff against my leg. I had one hand wrapped around my own wrist to keep it from doing anything.

“It’s Gaspard,” Astien said. “He’s been at it for days. Every night in the lane, and last night half the town came out to hear him. He says you’re not yourself, Noëlle. He says a wolf has got hold of you and you can’t see it, and somebody has to be the one who goes in. He says he’s that somebody.” He wiped his face with the hand in the rag. “They cheered. I cheered. I didn’t want to be the one who didn’t.”

Somewhere in there the jays stopped. They had been shouting since dawn, and the wrens under them, and then I couldn’t hear one. A squirrel on the branch above my head flattened itself against the bark. I put it down to me, since it generally is.

“He says there’s a law. The Order’s, about a wolf that isn’t in their book. He says it means we’re allowed, and by the end of the night he’s saying it means we’re supposed to, and nobody remembers it was ever different.” Astien’s hands were clenched on the rail. “He says he’s sent word to the wardens. Godwin says it went days ago. Nobody’s seen it go. Godwin wants to wait for them and Gaspard doesn’t, and they’ve been making torches since yesterday. I’m meant to carry one. I said I would.”

I thought of the fence two moons back, and Gaspard looking at the beeches without seeing me. He still hadn’t seen me. Béatrice had told him about my ears, and he had made a speech out of them.

“It isn’t only him.” Astien’s voice had dropped, and I had to lean to catch it. “Noëlle, if you can hear this. Josette’s cough is back in her chest. Tobias was hot for two nights, and Jordane used up all the bark you left and then sat with him with a wet cloth and nothing else. Penda’s wrist isn’t right. Nobody is wicked about it. They’re frightened. They look at the trees and they think, it’s got her, and we’re next, and who is going to look after us.”

He stopped and looked at the trunks, along the whole dark line of them, and I was sure for a moment that he could see me.

“And if you’re there. Whoever you are. I’m not saying you did anything. Nobody says you did.” He took a breath. “They say you could.”

My ears went down before I could stop them. I put my free hand over one.

“Tell her it isn’t too late,” Astien said, to the trees, to nobody, to me. “Tell her if she walks out on her own, in front of everyone, Gaspard will take her home and say no more about it. That’s what he says. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know what to call you. I’m sorry.”

He went down the field fast and looked back twice.

I had my mouth open. I had a sentence, and it was I would never, and I knew exactly how it would sound coming out of the dark between two trees. Anyone can say that. I shut my mouth and stayed there until he was a small shape at the bottom of the grass.

When I could, I made myself say the plain thing in my head, where nobody could correct me. Astien was right about could. Three nights a month I am exactly what they are afraid of. I had stood in a clearing with my claws in my own ribs so I wouldn’t take one more step toward her, and the only reason Noëlle knew I could hold still was that she had been on a rock watching me do it. If I had been a father in Angeau with a boy burning up in my lap, and the only healer for a day’s walk had run into the forest and a wolf had been seen beside her, I would have been in that lane with the rest of them. I tried to hate Gaspard and managed only the part where he was enjoying it.

At the stream, a long way behind me, Noëlle was crouched with her hands in the water, and she hadn’t moved since I got to the trunk. I started back.

I took the long way home, by the goblin ground, and I’ll admit that was because I was putting off the den.

I could smell it from the ridge before I saw it, or rather I couldn’t. Every goblin camp I have ever passed announced itself a long way off with smoke and spoiled meat. This one smelled of rain on old ash. I came down into it slowly. The fire pits were cold, and the ash in them had clumped, so the rain had been in it more than once and nobody had stirred it since. The lean-tos were still up. The bone heaps were where they had been. A hide hung on a line between two posts, stiff at the edges, and under it a knife with a bone handle lay in the mud. They had gotten up one day and walked out of it without packing. I went round the whole clearing, and then round it again, and no tracks went out, not one, from a camp that size. My tail had come down against my leg by then, and it stayed there.

On the ridge above it, a doe stood in the open at midday with her head up and her whole body pointed north. She didn’t look at me. I walked within a few strides of her and she did not run. I watched her until the hair on my arms lay down again, and she never moved.

By the time I reached the den ridge the light was lower. The wind had swung round to the north, and it brought a smell of cold mud, and under that an old sweetness, like fruit left in a cellar through a winter. I stood in it. I know what the forest smells like. This wasn’t in it.

I had always been calm about the wardens because there was nothing in my life they could take except me, and I had called that courage. I had practiced being found for as long as I could remember, and I was good at it. I had never had anything worth being afraid for, and now I did, and my hands would not stay still against my sides. Below me at the stream there was a person who was alive and had chosen me, and the torches and whatever had made that smell were both coming toward her.

She was at the birch by the stream, with her palm flat on the bark and her knife in the other hand. The hollow on the north side was pale with new cut wood. My tail came up as soon as I saw her, whatever kind of day I was having. She did not turn around.

“You went to the line,” she said.

My tail dropped. “How long have you... known?”

“The mark goes cold when you get that far from me. It does it every time.” She turned then. She had a streak of sap on her cheek. “I figured you’d tell me when it was something. Is it something?”

I had a sentence ready about fish, and I let it go, because I had learned what keeping things from her costs, and the last time she found out from my forearm.

“Yes,” I said. “Sit down. I’ll tell you all of it, in the order he said it, and I need you not to say anything funny until I’m done.”

She sat on the bank with her boots in the dry leaves and her knife across her knees, and I sat down facing her and told her. I didn’t improve any of it. Gaspard had made himself the hero and the town was calling it a rescue, with a law of the Order behind it and word sent to the wardens that nobody had seen go. I told her about the torches, and that Godwin wanted to wait and Gaspard didn’t. Josette and Tobias came next, and Penda’s wrist came after them.

She was up before I reached Penda.

“Two nights hot, did he say whether he’s drinking? Because if he’s drinking I’m less worried, and I only left Jordane the one bundle, I should have left three. Nana’s salve is half gone, and the willow along the fence is nearly bare.” My ears jumped at Nana’s name, and she didn’t see. She was walking a short line back and forth along the bank with the knife in her fist. “I could cut tonight and leave it on the post like before. I’d be back by morning. Penda’s wrist is the one that worries me, if it’s setting wrong I’ll have to look, and I can’t look from the post, can I, and Josette...”

“Noëlle.”

“...Josette needs someone’s ear on her chest, I can’t do a chest from a fence, and anyway Gaspard has made himself a hero, hasn’t he? Well, he does have the hair for it.” She laughed once, quickly, and nobody helped her.

The knife shook. She looked at it and put it down on the root of the birch, and her hands stayed open in front of her. They were still moving, the fingers working against nothing, looking for a pulse.

“They’re hurting,” she said. “And I’m not there.”

“I know.”

“And he’s telling them it’s my fault. Or yours, which is worse.” Her voice was steady. “Say the wardens part again.”

“He says he sent word. Nobody’s seen it go.”

“So it might not have gone. Or it might.”

“Yes.”

She crossed the bank in two steps and sat across my legs, facing me. She put both palms on my face and tilted it, first one way and then the other, looking for a fever. “You’re freezing,” she said.

“I’m... fine.”

“You’re not.” She kept her hands where they were. “Tell me the rest. You’ve got more. I can see it on your ears.”

So I gave her Astien’s message, with my ears down: if she walked out alone, in front of everyone, Gaspard would take her home and say no more. She said a word I won’t repeat. I told her about the cold ash and the knife in the mud at the goblin ground. I told her about the doe who wouldn’t run, and the jays that had stopped at the fence and hadn’t started again, which I did not think was me. I told her about the smell on the ridge. She lifted her chin and breathed in, and her nose wrinkled before I could finish.

“What is that?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“It isn’t the forest.”

“No.”

“Okay.” She said it over my shoulder. Her fingers had stopped moving on my jaw. “I’m not going to the post tonight.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I know you didn’t. I’m saying it so I hear it.” She breathed out. “Don’t say anything about leaving. I can feel you getting ready to.”

“I wasn’t.” I wasn’t, quite. “I was going to say I’m afraid.”

“Of the wardens?”

“I was never afraid of the wardens, Noëlle. Not like this. There was only me to lose, and I’d made my... peace with that.” My tail had come around her hip without my permission and wrapped there. “Now there’s you. I don’t know what to do with it.”

She didn’t answer. She put her forehead against mine and held it there, and the bark of the birch creaked behind her as the wind came round again.

We went in when it got dark. She lit the fire herself and I put the pot on it, and neither of us said anything about supper, so I made it. I hadn’t burned anything in weeks.

I sat against the wall with my legs out and she lay back against my chest, in the furs, with the maple leaf from her pocket turning in her fingers. Her shirt was off, because it was warm there, and her shoulder was against my ribs, and the ring of small dents on it was warm. Over her head I could hear the town.

I hadn’t meant to. My ears had turned toward the town on their own, as they do, and from the den on a still night it came to me thin and far: a lot of voices in the lane, and under them the long slow sound of a file on metal.

“You’re doing the thing,” Noëlle said, without lifting her head.

“Which thing?”

“Where you listen to the town.” She turned the leaf over. “Last time I told you to stop it. I’m not going to this time. What do you hear?”

I took a while. I wanted to say that it was nothing, and I had said that to her enough already.

“They’ve stopped arguing,” I said.

“Is that bad?”

“It’s what it sounds like when they’ve agreed.”

She was quiet. Her free hand came back over her shoulder and found my wrist, and held it against her chest, where her pulse went fast and even, which is how she keeps it when she is frightened and won’t say. My tail lay across her ankle. The fire ticked. Out beyond the ridge, where the smell had come from, no bird had said one word all evening.

Neither of us said tomorrow.