This scrap of a tale was the basis for Burrich’s decision to try to free me from Prince Regal’s dungeon by poisoning me.
The room was too hot. And too small. Panting no longer cooled me. I got up from the table and went to the water barrel in the corner. I took the cover off it and drank deeply. Heart of the Pack looked up with an almost-snarl. “Use a cup, Fitz.”
Water ran from my chin. I looked up at him steadily, watching him.
“Wipe your face.” Heart of the Pack looked away from me, back to his own hands. He had grease on them and was rubbing it into some straps. I snuffed it. I licked my lips.
“I am hungry,” I told him.
“Sit down and finish your work. Then we will eat.”
I tried to remember what he wanted of me. He moved his hand toward the table and I recalled. More leather straps at my end of the table. I went back and sat in the hard chair.
“I am hungry now,” I explained to him. He looked at me again in the way that did not show his teeth but was still a snarl. Heart of the Pack could snarl with his eyes. I sighed. The grease he was using smelled very good. I swallowed. Then I looked down. Leather straps and bits of metal were on the table before me. I looked at them for a while. After a time, Heart of the Pack set down his straps and wiped his hands on a cloth. He came to stand beside me, and I had to turn to be able to see him. “Here,” he said, touching the leather before me. “You were mending it here.” He stood over me until I picked it up again. I bent to sniff it and he struck my shoulder. “Don’t do that!”
My lip twitched, but I did not snarl. Snarling at him made him very, very angry. For a time I held the straps. Then it seemed as if my hands remembered before my mind did. I watched my fingers work the leather. When it was done, I held it up before him and tugged it, hard, to show that it would hold even if the horse threw its head back. “But there isn’t a horse,” I remembered out loud. “All the horses are gone.”
Brother?
I come. I rose from my chair. I went to the door.
“Come back and sit down,” Heart of the Pack said.
Nighteyes waits, I told him. Then I remembered he could not hear me. I thought he could if he would try, but he would not try. I knew that if I spoke to him that way again, he would push me. He would not let me speak to Nighteyes that way much. He would even push Nighteyes if the wolf spoke too much to me. It seemed a very strange thing. “Nighteyes waits,” I told him with my mouth.
“I know.”
“It is a good time to hunt, now.”
“It is a better time for you to stay in. I have food here for you.”
“Nighteyes and I could find fresh meat.” My mouth ran at the thought of it. A rabbit torn open, still steaming in the winter night. That was what I wanted.
“Nighteyes will have to hunt alone this night,” Heart of the Pack told me. He went to the window and opened the shutters a little. The chill air rushed in. I could smell Nighteyes and, farther away, a snowcat. Nighteyes whined. “Go away,” Heart of the Pack told him. “Go on, now, go hunt, go feed yourself. I’ve not enough to feed you here.”
Nighteyes went away from the light that spilled from the window. But he did not go too far. He was waiting out there for me, but I knew he could not wait long. Like me, he was hungry now.
Heart of the Pack went to the fire that made the room too hot. There was a pot by it, and he poked it away from the fire and took the lid off. Steam came out, and with it smells. Grain and roots, and a tiny bit of meat smell, almost boiled away. But I was so hungry I snuffed after it. I started to whine, but Heart of the Pack made the eye-snarl again. So I went back to the hard chair. I sat. I waited.
He took a very long time. He took all the leather from the table and put it on a hook. Then he put the pot of grease away. Then he brought the hot pot to the table. Then he set out two bowls and two cups. He put water in the cups. He set out a knife and two spoons. From the cupboard he brought bread and a small pot of jam. He put the stew in the bowl before me, but I knew I could not touch it. I had to sit and not eat the food while he cut the bread and gave me a piece. I could hold the bread, but I could not eat it until he sat down too, with his plate and his stew and his bread.
“Pick up your spoon,” he reminded me. Then he slowly sat down in his chair right beside me. I was holding the spoon and the bread and waiting, waiting, waiting. I didn’t take my eyes off him but I could not keep my mouth from moving. It made him angry. I shut my mouth again. Finally he said, “We will eat now.”
But the waiting still had not stopped. One bite I was allowed to take. It must be chewed and swallowed before I took more, or he would cuff me. I could take only as much stew as would fit on the spoon. I picked up the cup and drank from it. He smiled at me. “Good, Fitz. Good boy.”
I smiled back, but then I took too large a bite of the bread and he frowned at me. I tried to chew it slowly, but I was so hungry now, and the food was here, and I did not understand why he would not just let me eat it now. It took a long time to eat. He had made the stew too hot on purpose, so that I would burn my mouth if I took too big a bite. I thought about that for a bit. Then I said, “You made the food too hot on purpose. So I will be burned if I eat too fast.”
His smile came more slowly. He nodded at me.
I still finished eating before he did. I had to sit on the chair until he had finished eating, too.
“Well, Fitz,” he said at last. “Not too bad a day today. Hey, boy?”
I looked at him.
“Say something back to me,” he told me.
“What?” I asked.
“Anything.”
“Anything.”
He frowned at me and I wanted to snarl, because I had done what he told me. After a time, he got up and got a bottle. He poured something into his cup. He held the bottle out to me. “Do you want some?”
I pulled back from it. Even the smell of it stung in my nostrils.
“Answer,” he reminded me.
“No. No, it’s bad water.”
“No. It’s bad brandy. Blackberry brandy, very cheap. I used to hate it, you used to like it.”
I snorted out the smell. “We have never liked it.”
He set the bottle and the cup down on the table. He got up and went to the window. He opened it again. “Go hunting, I said!” I felt Nighteyes jump and then run away. Nighteyes is as afraid of Heart of the Pack as I am. Once I attacked Heart of the Pack. I had been sick for a long time, but then I was better. I wished to go out to hunt and he would not let me. He stood before the door and I sprang on him. He hit me with his fist, and then held me down. He is not bigger than I. But he is meaner, and more clever. He knows many ways to hold and most of them hurt. He held me on the floor, on my back, with my throat bared and waiting for his teeth, for a long, long time. Every time I moved, he cuffed me. Nighteyes had snarled outside the house, but not very close to the door, and he had not tried to come in. When I whined for mercy, he struck me again. “Be quiet!” he said. When I was quiet, he told me, “You are younger. I am older and I know more. I fight better than you do, I hunt better than you do. I am always above you. You will do everything I want you to do. You will do everything I tell you to do. Do you understand that?”