Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
One day, while working together to turn your land into a garden, you ask: “Why did the wolf pelt upset you so much?”
“What wolf pelt?”
“I had it with me when we met.”
“You had a wolf pelt when we met?”
You smile and shake your head. “Yes, Cyrus, I had a wolf pelt when we met.”
“Are you sure?” He rubs his chin and smears dirt all over it without noticing. “Well, if you did have a pelt… It’s quite a thing to walk up to someone with a wolf over your shoulder. Bit startling, Hans.”
“You didn’t seem merely startled, though.”
“Ah, well.” He scratches his head, and he’ll need to scrub that later to get all the grains of earth out. “Can’t say it’s logical, but I always think a dead animal is actually a dead human-cursed-to-be-an-animal.”
“What?” He shrugs.
“I know it’s not likely. But I was always afraid someone was going to kill me, or my brothers, and we had no way of telling anyone ‘Stop, no, don’t hunt us, we’re people.
’” He shakes his head. “I’ve met humans cursed to be deer and one goose who was actually a princess.
Mostly I try not to think about it. It’s just…
Once you’ve been an animal, once you’ve known you can be hunted, that sort of fear doesn’t leave you. Hasn’t left me, at least.”
“I never…” You set down your shovel. You wipe sweat from your brow. “Sorry, I just… I never considered…”
How much more blood is on your hands? Is it possible you’ve killed people without even knowing you’ve killed people?
“Hey,” he says. “Hey, stop. Don’t think about it. That’s the only way I get through Gertie’s dinners, honestly. I just don’t think about it. Not like we can do anything about it, and not like there’s any way to tell the difference.”
You pull off your gloves and drag your palms down your face. “If anyone had ever hurt you, Cyrus…”
What would you have done? Thinking about it makes your hands shake.
He wraps his arm and wing around you and squeezes tight.
“If I’d been hunted as a swan, I would have died a swan,” he says. “There’s no sadness in that for me.”