Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
It was nearly dark now, the crescent moon slipping out from behind the clouds on one side of the sky as the last light of the sun was still shining from the other.
There, down at the water, was a small girl, wearing some tattered rags that could scarcely be called clothes. She was crouched near the rushing waters, her wee hands darting into the stream as the red flash of salmon bodies swam by, unsuccessful each time.
Mo and Juniper exchanged a look.
This was new territory.
But Mo, true to form every time, took a breath in and stepped forward.
“Bear,” Mo said, soft but not so soft his words were lost to the river.
Bear jumped, scrambling backward, her wide eyes visible in the fading light.
Juniper stepped forward, too, hands raised. “Bear,” he said gently. “We’re here to help.”
Bear’s skin rippled with scales, shifting toward dragon again.
Then she darted into the cover of the forest and disappeared.
Juniper dropped his pack on the ground and nodded in Mo’s direction. “She’s hungry,” he said.
When he was her age, the most terrifying-looking being in the land could have offered him a morsel of bread and cheese, and he would likely have followed them home. Juniper dug in his pack for a moment and then withdrew some of the jerky he’d brought with.
Mo watched him carefully. “I can get some of mine?” He said it like a question.
Juniper ignored him. “We don’t have to agree about everything to agree that hungry children should eat,” he said sharply.
Mo’s sigh was so soft that Juniper nearly missed it.
Nearly.
Juniper set some of the meat on a rock—Bear was still nearby, he was sure of it, because he hadn’t seen or heard her fly, and a child her size couldn’t get very far. Not on those tiny little legs.
Then he withdrew, gesturing for Mo to do the same.
Mo settled on the bank beside him, staring out over the water as if he was settled, as if he had no worries hanging over him.
Juniper pretended to do the same.
After several long moments, there was a rustling. A pair of eyes, peering from the dark.
And then the sound of small footsteps on fallen leaves and sticks, Bear retreating again.
So it would cost more than a bit of jerky, then. Bear’s childhood experiences must differ from Juniper’s in that regard.
Now, what Juniper regretted most (other than picking that fight during náiriú poiblí) was that he had not had the foresight to pack an entire cheese wheel. With the deepest and heartiest of sighs, Juniper withdrew the very last of his hard cheese.
Beside him, Mo’s look was one of astonishment. “That’s your favorite,” Mo mouthed at him.
Juniper grumbled under his breath and set the cheese beside the jerky. Then he returned to Mo, who offered him a hand when Juniper slipped on the packed mud of the river bank. Mo squeezed his hand, sending a warm current up Juniper’s arm with the touch.
Divona have mercy.
She must, because only a moment later the shrubbery parted and Bear stepped out slowly. She glared at both of them, but darted forward and snatched both meat and cheese, shoving them into her mouth.
“Bear,” Juniper called softly. Just loud enough to be heard, nothing more.
“Mama,” Bear growled in his direction, her sharp teeth showing as she spoke. “I want my mama.”
Juniper had an uncomfortable flashback to facing down that badger earlier in the day, but he crouched in the mud next to Mo, hoping he looked as calm and steady and patient as Mo.
“I’m sorry about your mama,” Juniper said, as gently as he could. “That wasn’t fair. This must be really scary, huh?”
His knees were already aching, so this was a colossally painful choice, but he was going to stick to it, because fuck it, Mo was.
To his horror, tears appeared in the little girl’s eyes.
“Oh, dear,” Juniper said. “Oh no. No need for that.”
“Juniper,” Mo stopped him with a word. “It’s all right, Bear,” he said. He held out the meat he’d pulled from his pack earlier, his movement slow. “I have some more food for you. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Bear scooted forward and snatched it, then dove backward out of reach. She devoured the meat in about two bites, and then eagerly looked at Mo for more. Then to Juniper.
Well, fuck.
Juniper swallowed his resignation and his hunger (he might be starving to death, actually) and his general distaste for the whole situation and withdrew some meat and, yes, more cheese, too. He held them out until Bear returned, snatching both from his hand.
When she ate the cheese, her eyes went wide and round.
He realized then that they were wide and brown, not quite as dark as Mo’s, but a warm hazel, and she had long lashes and she did look so very young that Juniper’s chest squeezed as if grasped in a giant’s fist.
When he had been her age, he had sometimes been sleeping under bridges or in the back of butcher shops or even out under the trees, hadn’t he? In all those finely locked away memories he never looked at?
“I’ve got more,” Juniper said, and it wasn’t quite as hard to reckon with the knowledge that his cheese supply was going to be gone by morning, after all. “We can share.”
He dropped his pack onto the ground and rummaged for more cheese, while Bear watched him, scales rippling back and forth across her arms as if she could not quite decide whether to be dragon or girl.
When he withdrew the rest of the cheese he’d purchased only yesterday from the merchant, she leaped forward, faster than any normal child.
“Hold on,” Juniper told her firmly.
Mo watched him steadily, his eyes flicking back and forth between the little girl and Juniper. “You’re really sharing all of your cheese.” He sounded impressed, which made a star of warmth bloom inside Juniper’s chest.
Juniper didn’t give a shit if anyone else was proud of him.
In fact, once a teacher at the village school had told Juniper she was so proud of him, and he’d promptly decided he wouldn’t do any more schoolwork that whole year, just to prove he didn’t care that she was proud of him.
Didn’t care that anybody was, or wasn’t.
But the pride in Mo’s eyes made Juniper’s head spin.
And it was only cheese, after all.
Juniper sat down on the bank and ate a little bit of cheese, holding more out to Bear.
She sidled up to him, her eyes wide. This time, she took the cheese a little more slowly, more careful not to scrape him with those wee, sharp nails of hers.
“See?” he said. “Nothing here to be scared of. Just some cheese and some new friends.”
At that, Bear settled next to Juniper with a thump, reaching boldly into his pouch to get more cheese.
“What?” she asked, through a mouthful of cheese. “What is it?”
“Cheese,” Juniper answered, also through a mouthful of it. “Soft cheese, nutty cheese, goat and sheep cheese. Burren cheese, some of the best in the realm. You know, anything you could ever hope for, except the hard cheese, which I think is all gone now.”
Bear giggled, a sharp, strange sound.
The last of the sun had vanished, the darkness shrouding them, even the river barely visible a few marks away as the moon hid behind clouds again. Mo moved, slowly, from where he had crouched, with more meat and a few berries and green leafy vegetables in his hand.
Bear watched him carefully but did not scamper backward when he moved.
Mo settled next to Juniper, so close their thighs were touching. Juniper forced himself not to react to his best friend’s proximity.
Mo leaned across Juniper, making everything worse, because now Juniper could smell the scent of him, woodsmoke and pine and river and chamomile and maybe even that lemongrass scent of that tea he loved so much. He held out the meat first, which Bear grabbed and devoured.
Then he held out the berries, which Bear took with more hesitation.
She ate the berries, but when Mo held out the green leafy vegetables, she shook her head, lip curling to show those unsettling teeth again.
“Ew,” she said.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Juniper said. “But look, Bear, let me show you.” He reached for more meat, and held a bit of it next to some cheese, holding it up so she could see. “Eat them together, and it’s even better.”
Bear’s eyes widened further. “More,” she said. When Juniper held out the meat and cheese, they were gone in a flash.
They ate in mostly silence, Bear giving them a stray word here or there, and Mo and Juniper staying quiet as they all ate.
She didn’t believe Juniper when he said his cheese was gone, either, and he had to shake his little sack upside down to prove it to her, something that delighted Mo so much he leaned back against his pack and howled with laughter.
“You do that,” he said through gasps of breath. “Juniper O’Reilly, you go around shaking containers of cheese to make sure they’re empty.”
“Shut up,” Juniper said, elbowing him. “What happens between me and my cheese is personal, Mo Elmthorn, and I’ll thank you to mind your business.”
On the other side of him, Bear watched them with wonder on her face.
“Yeah,” she said finally. She poked her elbow against Juniper, imitating him, except her elbows were bony and sharp and hurt more than any elbow had ever before, but Juniper had to just grin and bear it?
Parenting (even temporarily) apparently required great sacrifice. “Yeah, shut up.”
At this, Mo laughed even harder. “Well, then,” he said when he could breathe again. “I’ll set up camp upstream, and we’ll get settled in for the night. Tomorrow we’ll make a plan to get you home, Bear.”
“Home,” she repeated as they gathered their bags. She followed them, light on her feet, soundless as she walked. “I don’t know how to get there.”
“That’s okay,” Juniper reassured her, stomach sinking. “We’ll figure it out together.”
As Mo dropped his bag and started setting up his tent, Juniper felt a small hand slip into his, tiny fingernails with sharp claws, a few scales on the back of the wee hand.
And just like that, Juniper and Mo had a dragon.