She went to the wagon outside and climbed up into its back. Helen had hidden Port and Imp farther down in the smokehouse. Wynn pulled aside a canvas tarp used to pitch a lean-to tent on the wagon's side and began rummaging through their stores.
Back in Soladran, Leesil had sent her to purchase supplies. Tired of biscuits and jerky, especially since she did not care for meat, Wynn had purchased dried lentils, barley, onions, and carrots, as well as late pears and smoke-dried fish. She acquired a lidded clay pot, a small cauldron, and an iron hook pole for use at a fire. And she found grain and seed-oil for making flatbread.
At first Magiere was furious over what she spent in coin. But the following night Wynn hung the cauldron from the iron hook and made an herbed lentil soup for supper. She heard welcome sounds of satisfaction from Leesil as he took his first bite. Magiere did not comment, but she said nothing more about the money. This type of cooking was time-consuming, and Wynn tended to make large amounts during the nights. The clay pot was used to store the extra, and it was still half-full from the last meal she had prepared.
But now she dug through the supplies with a different purpose in mind, and hauled all that she could carry back into the smithy.
"Have someone fetch the largest cook pot any of you have," she told Helen.
"What're you doing?" Helen asked.
"Making supper. There are lentils, onions, and carrots. I have parsley and marjoram as well. We need to get water boiling, as it will take time to make enough for everyone."
Helen stared at the bounty Wynn pulled from burlap sacks, as if treasure were being poured out on the floor. She shook her head.
"This must be your whole supply. You can't mean-"
"No, she doesn't," Magiere said, striding over. "Wynn, what are you doing? We're trading for a night, not settling in until spring."
Wynn had tiptoed around Magiere until her own anger and anguish got the best of her. She was tired of being polite or bursting into bitter disputes that made her feel petty. In this moment she did not care about broken trust or good manners.
"Oh, yes, I mean it!" she snapped back. "We need only enough to get us to Venjetz, and we can replace all of this. Look at that little girl. She is having a decent supper tonight, and we will provide it!"
Wynn expected Magiere's assault to begin, but instead she cast a glance toward Leesil and fell silent. Chap trotted to Wynn's side and barked once at Magiere for "yes." Wynn flinched, almost pulling away from the dog's closeness before she could stop herself.
"He is on my side," she said to Magiere.
Helen and the other women looked on in tense silence.
Leesil got up from his stool and came to Wynn, quietly whispering in her ear, "The next village will be exactly the same. And the next."
His expression was dispassionate, but the sadness in his eyes washed away Wynn's anger.
"I do not care," she told him. "You said we should do what we can in the moment."
"All right." He stepped back. "Magiere?"
"Why ask me? You three have made up your minds."
Despite Magiere's annoyance, Wynn knew she would help and then never bring it up again.
Wynn turned back to Helen. "We need knives for chopping as well as the pot."
The village women set out to fetch the necessary items. No one smiled or muttered thanks, but rather hurried in a way that suggested this miracle might vanish if they did not move quickly enough. Leesil picked up a bucket and went to seek a well or rain barrel for water. Wynn followed him, and, alone outside, she grabbed his arm.
"Why is it so hard for you to assist these people?"
"Because I helped do this to them." He turned away, and Wynn saw only his tan profile in the dusk. "And nothing we do here will change anything."
He pulled free of her grasp and turned his back to her. Wynn watched him walk a slow and even gait down the village's main way. She was silent only because she did not know what else to say.
Chap slipped out the smithy's back door as meal preparations heightened to a flurry. Wynn had returned to oversee the work, but Leesil had not come with her. Sad frustration on the little sage's face made Chap wonder what passed between them while outside.
He circled around their wagon and along the smithy's side until he spotted Leesil walking slowly up the main way. A quick touch upon Leesil's mind found it empty.
Chap could not read thoughts, only memories surfacing to consciousness, and Leesil's mind was devoid of such. Most sentient beings had brief flickers of the past passing just below their awareness at any time. But even those were not present in Leesil. He held them down, shutting out everything.
Which was worse-suppression or immersion-to block all that was past until it welled up to consume one, or to dive into it and drown? Leesil was becoming a danger to himself, and Chap was at a loss for how to care for one of his charges.
Grass and leaves rustling and the sound of clicking branches chattered in the wind.
Chap lifted his head with perked ears and stared across the main way to the woods beyond the village. He felt them again. His kin, the Fay, called for him, demanding his presence among them.
He wrinkled his snout.
More talk was not needed. Perhaps he was corrupted by flesh, as they claimed. How could he not be, living encased in it, limited by it as compared to what he had once been among his kin? Or perhaps he had gained a perspective they did not possess. Either way, now was not the time for more of their admonishments.
Before their presence touched his spirit, Chap clung to the world around him. From sounds the wind made in the trees to the gritty touch of earth under his feet and the smell of the smithy's forge fire, Chap filled up his senses. With these he shut out his kin.
The presence of the Fay thinned and hided from around him.
Chap look backed down the main way. Leesil was gone, perhaps turning aside through the village to wherever the common well was located. Anxious concern over Leesil's foray into his past brought Chap his own memories.
He remembered being "born" into flesh.
The majay-hi were an old breed that ran among the elven forests. Intelligent compared to other animals, and intuitive beyond most, they were marked by long silvery fur of varied shades and crystalline blue eyes. They were sensitive to life and its balance or imbalance, and thereby sensed its unnatural opposite-the undead. But there had not been a majay-hi like Chap for so long that even the elves did not remember.
Not since the humans' Forgotten History and the war between the living of the world and the Enemy.
In the conflict's final days, a number of the Fay chose to defend the world of their making by taking flesh. They also wished to keep their presence unknown to most. Some of them entered the unborn young of animals, so they might live in flesh and blood. Among other forms chosen were the wolves of the forestlands. When the war ended, the conflict won but the world in ruins, the born-Fay remained bound in flesh. Some took solace in one another.
For decades they drifted near many forest settlements, and then gradually gravitated toward the varied lands of the elves. Rarely, a small group lingered near an elven clan for a time. One night, a female ready to give birth lumbered into an elven village, and they took her in. Her puppies were not Fay, but neither were they wolves. The first litter was born with coats of varied shades of silver-gray and crystalline eyes, unlike the wolf forms of born-Fay.
And these first ones mated, and the females gave birth to a second generation.
From these descended what were called the majay-hi, an ancient elvish word Wynn simplistically translated as "Fay-hound" or "hound of the Fay." The original born-Fay, though long-lived, passed away once [heir mortal flesh gave out. The descendants or their flesh still thrived in seclusion, roaming the elven forest as one of its natural guardians. Though more than animals, the majay-hi were but a shadow and a whisper of the original born-Fay.