Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Juniper was six the first time he slept outside.
It was, incidentally, how he had first really met Mo.
His father had not yet begun to kick him out for the night, but he had sent Juniper down to the local tavern to get him an entire bucket of ale (he had in fact taken a wooden pail usually used to haul water and instructed Juniper to have them fill it).
And then Juniper’s useless father had promptly forgotten to leave the door unlocked and had been in such a drunken stupor that he had not heard Juniper pounding on the door.
An embarrassing incident all around, but he had crashed into Mo while looking for a place to sleep in the woods behind his father’s house.
Mo was out with his grandmam, on a late-night journey gathering mushrooms for some ceremony she and six of her closest female friends were to engage in. Juniper was young, and very much alone, and if Mo’s grandmam and her friends were a bit odd, he didn’t ask questions.
Of course, Mo, ever the adventurer, had suggested that—since they both would likely be out there all night anyway—they make a good time of it.
He’d set up camp, lain out two blankets (one for him, one for Juniper, which was kind, because six-winter-old Juniper had not had the forethought to bring a blanket when he left the house at noon that day), and then they told stories until the night around them did not seem so cold.
It was not the last time Juniper would be left out in the cold. And as he got older, he stopped bothering to come home at all.
And now, tromping through the forest as the sun was rapidly setting, Juniper couldn’t help but think of each time he had ended up outside—and how each time, it was Morningthall Elmthorn who had always invited him inside, or if he could not, he had at least made the nights more bearable.
And Juniper had solved this, protected Mo and himself, so why did his stomach feel like a stone that was sinking to the bottom of an icy river?
He rounded the last bend, and there was that little cottage, and through the window he could see them both. The whiplash of feeling—from the cold dread to the excitement at seeing Mo and Bear.
Bear was fast asleep on Mo’s lap, and Mo was leaning against one of the moss-covered walls, head tipped back against it, also fast asleep.
“Mo,” he said softly.
Mo’s head snapped up. “You’re back,” he said, excitement in his tone. “Are you all right?”
He must have read something in Juniper’s face that Juniper was trying desperately to hide, because he moved Bear gently onto a nearby bedroll. She snored a little, a tendril of smoke rising as she did, and wiggled further into the blanket, but did not wake.
“I’m all right,” Juniper said quickly. “Mo, I…”
“I see I’m going to have to wrestle you,” Mo said, very somberly. “You’re stewing again, Juniper O’Reilly.”
“You insufferable, kissable oaf,” Juniper said. “Why did you have to be so good?”
For perhaps the hundredth time that day, Mo gave him a look of absolute confusion. “I’m a what?” he asked. “Did you just say I was kissable?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Juniper told him. “I’m pretty sure you’re on that list of Most Kissable Farmers back in Tús.”
Juniper set down the provisions. “I think we should take the trail that follows the river,” he said. “And you and I need to talk. About the best way to help Bear. Because when I was in town—”
“We’re going north,” Mo said. “Or I am. Juniper, if you decide to go back home, you’ll—”
“I’ll go alone,” Juniper cut him off. “I know.”
He didn’t need anyone rubbing salt in that particular wound, thank you very much.
He looked around them, taking in the empty room that Mo had, somehow, transformed.
Mo had laid his bedroll out flat on the moss- and lichen-covered floor, and used it as a table where he’d set out the remaining provisions—some dried plums, three rolls of rye bread that were only a little squashed from being carried around in Mo’s pack, and a skin of water.
Juniper’s bedroll was laid out carefully next to it, one of Mo’s long-sleeved wool shirts folded to use as a pillow.
“You made it…” Juniper’s voice trailed off.
Mo had made it seem homey, even here, even like this.
Mo reached out and took Juniper’s hand in his. “Trust me,” he said. “We can do this. I can feel it. Bear doesn’t deserve to be on her own out here any more than you did all those winters ago.”
Juniper’s eyes stung. “I know,” he said.
“I know. I’m not trying to leave Bear behind.
I’m trying to talk to you about a better way to do this.
One that doesn’t involve two lads from Tús without a winter cloak between them setting off for the high northern mountains right before Samhain and the winter season sets in. ”
Mo huffed a little, and then Bear’s eyes fluttered open, and whatever Mo had been going to say evaporated like mist in the sun. He held out his arms wordlessly, and Bear clamored to her feet before climbing sleepily in.
“I can hear you,” she said as she curled against Mo’s shoulder. “All the times, even when you’re far away in the woods.”
“Fuck,” Juniper said eloquently.
Mo fixed him with a look. “Juniper.”
“I can hear the words you don’t want me to say.” Bear sounded rather proud of herself. “Even the bad words.”
If it wasn’t Juniper’s curse words she was eavesdropping on, he would have been proud of her himself.
“We need to watch what we say,” Mo said.
“If you weren’t holding the child, I’d tackle you,” Juniper told him. “You curse, too.”
“Divona’s sake!” Bear imitated, deepening her voice as much as she was able in imitation of Mo’s tone. A little flutter of flame came out when she did, and she coughed, scrubbing at the fine layer of soot left behind on her cheek.
Juniper reached over and pulled out the handkerchief he knew Mo kept in the front pocket of his pack and dabbed at the remaining soot.
“Well, eavesdropping isn’t nice,” Juniper, who had eavesdropped on a prince earlier that day, told her.
“Even if your hearing is eerily good. Sometimes Mo and I need to talk.”
Bear stuck out her tongue at him. It was forked, something he should have realized, but it still made him startle, a movement he quickly tried to cover up.
“Are you going to stay here while Mo and I go for a walk?” Juniper asked her.
Bear shook her head. “No. I’m comin’ with.”
Mo shifted her on his lap and looked over her head at Juniper. “We’ve said all we need to say, Junebug,” he said. “I’m going to—to try to hunt so she can have some supper. And then we’ll leave tomorrow morning after breakfast.”
“I’ll bribe you with cheese,” Juniper told Bear. “The good stuff. Hard cheese, cut in those little cubes just the way you like. Mo, I’ll bribe you with—”
What could he possibly offer Mo?
Bear held up all of her fingers. “This many,” she said. “This many cubes.”
“Deal.” He held out his hand to shake hers, a common custom across their lands these days, though not one their people had practiced before the current line of kings. Bear spat soberly, though whether that was an old custom Juniper was simply unfamiliar with, or just Bear being Bear, he was unsure.
Mo offered him the handkerchief to wipe his hand on.
“Junebug, I don’t think we need to take a walk.”
“I still get cheese,” Bear said. “Even if you don’t go.”
She drove a hard bargain.
“You still get cheese,” he said. Juniper rummaged through the sack of provisions he had hauled back from Filleadh, pulling a loaf of soft white bread from his pack. “And we all get some of this for supper.”
He added it to the food Mo had set out, along with some berries he had found along the trail, and pulled the small brown sack of cheese cubes from his pocket, where he’d had it for safekeeping. And sampling.
It was long after supper, the moon risen and Bear fast asleep, when Juniper finally managed to corner Mo for a conversation.
“I need to tell you something,” Juniper said. “And I need you to listen.”
They were standing just outside the cottage, Bear within sight. Mo’s shoulders were tight, his jaw set, as if braced for Juniper to whine and demand to be let out of the quest he’d saddled them with. It ached somewhere deep in Juniper’s chest that this was what Mo thought of him.
“I’m listening,” Mo said as they started walking away from the cottage into the forest. He hadn’t sounded so weary since he had left ten winters ago. He hadn’t sounded so weary since the night Juniper had kissed him.
“We really should go a little farther,” Juniper said when Mo paused. “She has an uncanny ability to hear whatever we say, even when we’re far away.”
Mo chuckled. “She’s a handful,” he said, leaning one hand against a nearby oak tree and grinning down at Juniper. “Like you.”
A blush climbed Juniper’s face like wildfire spreading through a thicket of dry brush. “Standing like that is why you end up on the Most Kissable scrolls,” Juniper informed him. “And I think we should get some help bringing Bear into the mountain. Someone with supplies, and expertise, someone—”
And then the forest around them exploded with light and sound, and it was too late to explain anything to Mo. It was too late for anything at all.
There were dozens of mercenaries in the clearing near the cottage, swarming through the door, swords out, and someone was screaming, and Mo was running—tearing through the forest to the cottage—and Juniper was following, but he was never fast enough; he was never ever going to be fast enough.
Three—no, it was taking four—men restrained Mo, and then two men were on Juniper, and more were grabbing Bear from inside the cottage and they were muzzling her and—
“No,” Mo was screaming. “Leave her alone; she’s just a kid! She’s just a kid! SHE’S JUST A KID—”
There was a muffled thump, and then Juniper couldn’t see him. The mercenaries had him on the ground—they’d hit him—Juniper was flailing against his guards, landing a good stomp on someone’s foot before they had him on the ground, too, face down in the mud.
Bear woke up as they were muzzling her, shifted just as the wrought iron trap clamped around her small mouth, keeping the fire inside. She let out a muffled roar, panic in her eyes.
And then Prince Edward stalked through the throng of bodies, his sword drawn, looking just as epic as he had that first morning they’d met him.
“I hear there are more where you come from,” the prince said to Bear, who writhed against the captors who were holding her.
She was shifting as they held her, but the muzzle was on securely. Her eyes, though. Those were as human as could be and just as panicked.
“You’ll help me find them,” he said, reaching out one finger and running it across the scales rippling over her arm, an expression of disgust on his handsome face. “And then my army will help me kill them.”