Curious, Amos decided to follow him. He noticed then that the young thief had thick sideburns. The boy quickly turned around a street corner and walked toward one of the town’s fortified walls, located far from any dwellings. Once at the foot of the wall, he looked around furtively and promptly vanished. Amos could not believe his eyes. He approached the spot where the boy had stopped, and discovered a deep hole. The boy had likely jumped into the hole, which would explain his sudden disappearance.
In turn, Amos jumped into the hole. At the bottom he saw that a long tunnel had been roughly scooped out under the wall. He followed it and came out on the other side, in the high grass of the plain. Standing on his toes, Amos looked around, trying to spot the boy. He saw him for only one brief second before he disappeared again, at the far edge of the forest. How was it possible for such a heavy person to move so quickly? Amos wondered. In just a few minutes, the boy had crossed the field as fast as a galloping horse. Even more incredible was that he was still carrying his huge bag of stolen goods.
Running as fast as he could, Amos went to the edge of the forest. On the ground, under a canopy of trees, he noticed strange marks. These consisted of footprints-and also of handprints. Was the heavyset boy moving on all fours in the forest? Farther down, the prints changed to that of a young bear. Amos thought there was only one answer to this enigma: he had followed a humanimal. It was the only thing that could explain the boy’s agility, strength, and speed. Young bears were fast and powerful creatures. It would also explain why the strange fugitive had so much hair on his face.
Amos rejoiced to think that humanimals were not legendary creatures after all. They really existed! There truly were humans capable of morphing into an animal at will. He knew that very few humans possessed this fantastic gift.
Amos remembered the two humanimals who the sentry had told him had been burned in the town square of Bratel-la-Grande. He reached the sad conclusion that a young person who steals food to survive probably has no parents to take care of him. And he knew that only one explanation was possible: the Knights of Light had killed this boy’s parents. The knights had probably seen them change from humans to animals, and had wrongly assumed that if a human could transform himself or herself into a beast, he or she could also turn people to stone.
I must find this boy and speak to him, Amos decided.
With the mermaid’s trident slung across his shoulder, Amos entered the forest and followed the humanimal’s tracks. After an hour’s walk, he reached a small clearing. The prints in the ground led him to a cozy round cottage made of wood. All around the house were many beehives, with thousands of buzzing bees.
“Is anyone home?” Amos shouted in a friendly manner. “Answer me. I don’t come as an enemy. I followed your tracks, young bear, and I would very much like to talk to you.”
No one replied. In fact, with the exception of the bees, Amos didn’t hear a sound. He took the trident in one hand and carefully approached the house. To his surprise, it had no windows. He knocked on the door.
“My name is Amos Daragon! I would like to speak to someone!” he shouted again.
There was still no answer. Amos pushed the door open gently, took a look around the room, and went in slowly. A strong smell of musk-of a wild animal-hit his nostrils. On a stool, Amos saw the flickering light of a small candle. In the middle of the room, a dying fire was still smoking a little. Daylight came in through an opening in the center of the roof that let out the smoke of the fireplace. On a low wooden table were a piece of bread and a jar of honey. Near the door, close to him, Amos saw the large bag of food with its stolen contents.
Suddenly, in a great commotion, the table was whisked off its legs and went flying into the air. It crashed against a wall and came tumbling to the ground. At that instant, a blond-colored bear jumped over Amos and, seething with anger, pushed him out of the house with one paw. In less than a second, the beast was on top of him, crushing him with all his weight. As the bear was about to slash Amos’s face with its razor-sharp claws, Amos got hold of his trident and pointed it at the animal’s throat. With each one threatening to kill the other, both fighters stopped moving. The bees, now ready to fight, had gathered in a cloud right over the bear’s head. Amos quickly realized that the animal exercised a power over the insects. The beast was growling orders to his flying army.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” Amos said calmly as he tried to engage the bear in dialogue. “I’ve come to talk to you about your parents. Please… you’re crushing me.”
To Amos’s astonishment, the bear’s body regained some of its human shape. Its head was now that of the boy at the market. But he kept the huge, sharp teeth of a beast. And his right arm, still in midair as if ready to strike, kept the form of a bear’s paw, but his left arm had come back to normal and was pinning Amos against the ground.
“I don’t trust you!” the humanimal said, even though the trident remained aimed at his throat. “I’ve seen you several times with the knights. You even live at an inn that belongs to one of them. I noticed you well before you knew I existed. You’re a spy and I will kill you.”
“Well, if you’re going to kill me, get it over with. And since you know me so well, you must be aware that I am not from this realm and that I’m not a threat to you,” Amos said. “I advise you to eat me quickly. But if you do, you’ll never know what happened to your parents.”
On a signal from the humanimal, the bees flew back to their hives. The bear then became completely human again. He abandoned his aggressive behavior and became a mere fat boy sitting on the ground. He started to cry softly.
“I know what the knights did to my parents,” he said. “They believed that my mother and father turned all the villagers in the surrounding towns to stone. But I’m not a sorcerer and neither were my parents. I won’t hurt you. Actually, I would rather have you kill me. That way, I’d be free of my sorrow.”
As Amos got up, he noticed that his armor was ripped. The bear’s claws had gone through the leather, leaving four long tears. Without that protection, Amos knew he would have been seriously injured.
“You’re very strong!” Amos said. “Since you already know the fate of your parents, let me say how sorry I am. If there is anything I can do to help you, just let me know.”
The boy seemed satisfied. He smiled. There was no trace of vengeance in his dark eyes. His chubby pink cheeks, his long blond side-whiskers, and his plump body made him instantly likeable. He would have looked like a normal boy were it not for the whiskers, the thick eyebrows that met above his nose, and the hair that covered the palms of his hands.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a human show any kindness to a humanimal,” he said. “My name is Beorf Bromanson. Very few like me remain in the world. I belong to a people known as man-beasts. Some legends say that humanimals were the first beings on this planet. We had kings and magnificent realms in the depths of immense forests. Each family was linked in soul and in blood to an animal. There were man-dogs, man-birds, and a great number of creatures that had the ability to shape-shift into whatever they wanted to be. As for me, I come from the bear line. Sadly, humans never trusted us, and killed many of us. In fact, I’ve never met any other humanimal other than my parents. My father used to say that we were probably the last family in the bear line still alive on this earth. Now I’m probably the last of my race.”
Amos suddenly thought that since Beorf lived in the forest, he might know something about the mysterious and wicked force that was wreaking so much damage in the realm. So he asked the humanimal whether he knew who or what was transforming the villagers into statues.