They turned six that year, and the twins lost no time in taking over every form of 'helping' available. Their da said their help was questionable, but he smiled when he said it, and there were really so few helpers that neither Taydren nor Cunelet thought it was an actual complaint. Tay's three older brothers, Brei, Brene, and Branen, had all moved out before he and his twin were born, and even though they did visit often, they had their own families to think of now.
That was another thing good about being six whole years old; littler nephews had to listen. Right then there were only three, but Cunelet said there would be more pretty soon, because Brene looked fat. Tay had asked and asked why it was important whether Brene was fat or not, but Cunelet didn't know. With further questions it was revealed that he had been given his information by a cousin who had gotten it from another cousin who had gotten it from his older brother who refused to give up more, so Tay let it be.
It was more important that it was Brene anyway. Even Tay, who wasn't half as informed as his littermate, knew that. Brene had birthed twins already (Papa said he was 'following in his da's footsteps', which Tay thought meant that he was going to have lots of cubs; Tay's da was the only cub-bearer in years to give birth to threes); Brei had miscarried twice. Once when Tay's parents had thought he was sleeping he had heard them talking, and Da had said maybe Brei couldn't have cubs at all. He had cried about it. Papa had said it couldn't be helped, but he had sounded sad too, and upset.
It's the humans' fault, Papa had said. They took mates and abandoned them like we were belongings, and we did nothing about it until it was too late.
Maybe this is our punishment, Da had said to him, for doing nothing about it.
But Tay didn't know about that. For that matter he didn't know anything about humans, except that they were big and loud and they didn't have any cub-bearers, just women things with two lumps in front. He had asked Cunelet what the lumps were for, but Cunelet didn't know. He said maybe they were for carrying things in, like squirrels did with their cheeks.
Humans had come around a lot for generations. They had traded things with the Kindred elders, and sometimes they had taken mates from among the cub-bearers, but none of them had kept the mates, not even the ones who had cubs with them. That was a bad thing to do. When you had a mate you were supposed to keep them, and most especially if you had cubs, because cubs needed to be taken good care of. Papa said it was dishonorable to leave your mate.
Tay and Cunelet weren't quite sure what that meant, but it sounded important anyway.
That was why Tay's tribe had stopped trading and visiting with the humans, almost eight whole years before. When Tay and Cunelet had asked their da about it, he had told them that the bad things the humans did were because they had no respect for the Kindred or for anyone but themselves, not even their own kind.
Humans were no longer accepted.
Harvest neared, and the twins' birthday was long past. The year had been a bad one for crops, but a good one for cubs. Six cub-bearers had given birth, two in the spring, four in the summer, and another was due in a month. Only one of the cubs had died. Brene's own cubs had been one of the summer births-a fine, healthy pair, with big greyish blue eyes and a few soft curls of black hair on top of their little floppy heads. Tay thought they were adorable and had informed his da that he wanted one too, now he was six, so his da had told him a secret. It seemed that cubs were ugly when they were born. Tay had thought this over for a long time, and he had decided that maybe it was true. He had never seen a cub just born, because nobody but the corolaith and the cubs' papa was allowed to be there when the cub was born. And Tay's da didn't lie.
He still wanted one. But he decided he would wait, if his da wanted him to.
By the end of harvest-time, the wonders of being a grown-up had faded a little bit. Helping was fun, but things settled back into the comfortable old ways of meeting with the twins' best friend Ama and his littermate Bence to play under the sturdy, gnarled old pine tree that marked the halfway point between Ama's house and Tay's. Tay liked things better this way. Working was nice, but it was best to have something to look forward to after.
Winter had almost arrived when everything went wrong.
It was the yelling that woke him up. Later, when the worst was over and he was safe if not sound, that first minute would make its way into his dreams more frequently than any other part of the night-that screaming, and not knowing who it had been. Had it been his father? His da, perhaps? He would never know.
Cunelet was awake already, sitting on the edge of the bed and scrubbing sleepily at his eyes. Tay sat up too and looked around. His parents weren't in the house, and something inside him said danger already, though he had hardly heard anything.
"What's happ'nin'?" he asked blurrily.
His twin shook his brown head. "Don't know. Stay here, I wanna look." Still rubbing at his face Cunelet slid off the bed, taking half the bedcovers with him, and padded over to the front door. His shadow looked long and wavery in the light of the candle lit and standing next to their parents' bed across the house's one spacious room.
After a few hard tugs the door opened, and the sounds that burst in made Tay curl further under the covers, certain now that he had been right. There was danger, and it was right outside.
Cunelet shut the door quickly and snapped around.
"Get up," he told his twin urgently, running forward on bare, pattering feet to grab Tay by the hand and pull him out of bed onto the floor so fast that Tay barely got his feet under him in time. "We gotta hide. There's humans out there, on horses. Where'll we go to?"
Tay's lower lip started to tremble. "Papa and Da's out," he told his brother, tears of panic starting to swell in his throat.
Cunelet made a pained face. "They'll be okay, Tay. C'mon, don't cry, we gotta find someplace to hide! Papa and Da'll be okay."
"Okay," Tay echoed. He swallowed the tears, but his voice still quavered. "We could hide under th' bed," he suggested. "The covers'll fall down an' hide us. Humans 're tall, they won't see us."
"'S a little cramped," Cunelet debated, then shook his head. "It's th' only place. Table won't hide us. C'mon, hurry, let's get under Papa an' Da's, there's more room under that one." Without waiting for an answer, he pulled his twin over to their parents' bed and started wriggling underneath. As soon as his feet were out of sight, Tay followed.
Cunelet had been right about it being cramped. Their backs were pressed right up against the leather straps crisscrossing the underside of the tick, their faces pushed into the floor, and with the two of them underneath there was barely enough room to wiggle fingers and toes without shoving each other. Tay was glad now that his da had made them clean the house so often; it was hard enough to be quiet without dust.
He stretched a trembling hand out in the almost-dark under the curtain of covers, and Cunelet slid his own over it.
They waited there for what seemed like hours, but no one ever came inside. Not parents, not friends, not humans. Tay's muscles started hurting from being squished and still too long, and he was about to ask Cunelet if they could wiggle around just a little bit without anyone noticing them when he realised that the house was brighter than it had been before.
"Cunelet," he started shakily, and his brother groaned.
"Fire," he whispered back, and as he said it Tay heard the noise that he had overlooked. Above the bed something was crackling greedily, popping softly, and it wasn't the candle anymore.
"Cunelet-" he started again, squeaking this time and trying to get up, but Cunelet grabbed him by the wrist and wouldn't let go of it no matter how much he pulled. Now he did start crying.
"Cunelet, we gotta get out, they'll burn us up!" he sobbed, lying on his stomach, half in and half out. "Let go!"
"Be quiet!" Cunelet hissed, and it was the quiver in his unshakeable brother's voice that made Tay shut up. "You can't run out all scared, 'cause they'll catch you! They can run faster than we can, so we've gotta think of a place to run to."
Cunelet gulped in a long breath. His grip on Tay's wrist relaxed, but Tay no longer wanted to pull away. "Remember, when Papa took us hunting?" the older twin started over. He sounded a little more calm now, and in spite of the ominous crackling noise Tay felt himself calming down too.
"The rabbits, they run and they hide. We've gotta be like rabbits, a'right Tay?"
Tay nodded.
"Good. So where can we get to?"
"Our house is burning up," Tay whispered. Cunelet's face started to darken impatiently, so he finished in a hurry. "I mean, if our house is, then Ama's 'll be burning up too, right? An' all the other houses?"
"Prob'ly," Cunelet muttered thoughtfully. "But they won't burn the tree, will they?"
"Maybe," Tay agreed hesitantly.
"We could run to the tree, and then to the woods. We're quiet in th' woods, they won't find us there. We'll hear them coming," Cunelet reasoned breathlessly.
The roof chose this moment to fall in.
Tay couldn't help it; he screamed with all the power his small lungs had. His bare legs yanked back under the shelter of the bed faster than they had gone out, but this time there was a different resistance; instead of pulling him in, Cunelet used the grip he had on Tay's hand to drag him bodily out from beneath the bed. The floor was hot with fallen thatch, some burning, other parts only smoldering, and the air was thick and hot with grey billows of smoke, but Cunelet refused to let go until their stumbling feet had taken them beyond the door.
Outside was so much worse than inside. Tay's assumption had been right - almost every house in the village was burning, roofs and walls engulfed in flame, and the air was full of screaming. The horses that Cunelet had told him about were stampeding back and forth across the grass-carpeted spaces between one house and another, trampling over dark lumps that Tay saw in a sort of fuzzy disbelief looked like bodies, and as they stampeded, the men on their backs cut down Kindred like the grain in the field had been cut just the day before. Some of the Kindred were just running, screaming, others dodging as long as they could, still others turning and fighting until the swords and the torches the humans had swung down on them.
The number of lumps grew.
The grass under his feet was cold with the late autumn dew as he ran, tugged along by his brother. Twice he tripped and almost fell, but he couldn't take his eyes off the dying ones. He wanted to be dreaming, and as if the gods were answering him, the whole world started to go sort of dim and flat, just like a dream. His heart thumped loudly in his ears, but the screaming fell away into the background, and the stark fear pooling in his chest felt suddenly congealed. He didn't have to be afraid anymore because before long he would wake up, and when he did he wouldn't be running behind his twin with his eyes squeezed shut, shrieking at the top of his lungs because one of the lumps had looked just like his da, who he would know anywhere. Because nightmares were like this and he would wake up.
Except that they reached the tree, and he didn't. Cunelet pulled him back out into the rush of frantic feet trying to escape death, and still he didn't wake up. In the distance, someone screamed his brother's name, and for the first time that night Cunelet slowed and turned to look. Tay looked too.
Ama was running across the grass toward them. In the light of the torches and the burning houses, Tay could see the tears on his face, the blood on his clothes, and for a split second Tay felt his brother falter and start to swerve to meet their friend, but the horse chasing Ama was faster. Blood spattered the animal's pale hide.
Cunelet screamed. Tay couldn't. His throat hurt, and his eyes felt huge, and he had the horrible feeling that it wasn't a dream at all, but everything seemed to have dried up inside of him. Even his hand could only hang limply in his twin's grip as they stumbled to a halt.
He wondered distantly why Cunelet was stopping when there was a horse chasing them. Maybe he didn't know, Tay decided.
"Cunelet," he heard himself begin vaguely, tugging his brother's sleeve. A few yards away, the man on the horse swung his long sword and yet another scream cut cleanly off. Cunelet lifted his head. His mouth opened, but nothing came out of it.
They started running again.
Thoughts began jumbling one by one into a messy heap in Taydren's head. Horses were faster than Kindred. Maybe Cunelet had liked Ama, because Cunelet never cried, and now there were tears on his face. They would have had pretty cubs. Brene's would probably be dead now, and Brene and Brei and Branen too, because horses were faster than Kindred. His lungs hurt. He hoped there were daisies where the gods lived; he really liked picking daisies with his da. Maybe the new cubs would like picking daisies too...
"Tay, run!!" his twin screamed at him.
He didn't have breath enough to tell his brother that he couldn't. There was a catch starting in his side, and his chest felt like somebody very large and with a tremendous grudge against him was squeezing it shut just on purpose so he couldn't get any air. Even the hoofbeats catching up with him couldn't make him go any faster than he already was.
At the last minute he tried to call out, to who and for what he wasn't sure. It didn't matter. His throat let out a horrible sort of gurgling noise, but no words. He wondered suddenly whether it would be nicer to be ridden over with the horse or to have his head cut off.
He wasn't really sure.
Then everything seemed to speed up until there were only blurs and the screaming. He didn't see Cunelet go past him, but that had to have been how it happened, because how else would he be able to shove him from behind? He landed flat on his face, and although quite a bit of skin tore off his knees and the palms of his hands, he didn't notice it right then. His ears caught the sound of Cunelet growling behind him: that was when he realised that his twin wasn't in front anymore, and he was so confused by the thought that he had to get up and look behind him.
Cunelet was in mid-leap, halfway up the heaving brown side of the horse, and Tay had only enough time to scream in before his brother's head was bouncing into the grass.
But it was too late for the horse and rider. The attack had been sudden and had thrown the animal off its balance, leaving nowhere to go but down.
It bought Tay enough time to reach the forest.
He didn't know how long he sat there, curled up under the bush he had found, staring at the leaves and trying not to see blood and Cunelet's brown hair flying free with no neck to rest on, or Ama's white, panicked face, or his da sprawled so bonelessly on the ground Tay had been playing on just the day before. He had gone as far into the forest as he could before he had to sit down, and then he hadn't been able to get back up. Part of him was afraid that the humans would come after him, but the foremost part just didn't care.
Cunelet wouldn't have sat here and waited for them, but Cunelet was dead.
The sun came up on a new day, cold with the sharpness that meant the end of autumn, and he sat there watching the shadows thin on the heaps of fallen leaves around him and on the living leaves that still crowded his bush, even so close to winter. It had been a cold night, too; his hands felt frozen, and the sunlight looked warm...
Once he was up he couldn't sit down again either, and the sunlight did feel good on his arms and his stiff hands. So he walked, and kept walking, until all at once he was clear of the forest, standing in the full sun.
On a little hill with a cup in the top.
