Sorrow and Song: Part 3 | Starlight Under Clouds

Chapter I

"Bossa!"

The boy stretched out a cautious hand toward the wild-eyed, shaggy-coated cow. "Bossa!" he said again softly, coaxing. "Come, lass – come, Bossa. Come-come-come..."

He leant forward as near as he dared, tense with the fear that she would startle and dash away into the trees. The woods arched all around them, tall and tangled and littered with fallen things, no place for a cow – how had she survived here for months? Her hips stuck out like a rakish hat on a beggar boy under her sunken, matted hide, and she favored her left fore hoof as she edged away from him. She might not even be theirs, under that filthy, overgrown hide, but Da would know.

"Come," he urged her again, insistent, gentle, thinking of the taste of milk on his tongue, even though she would be long dry by now, without a calf to suckle or regular milking. "Come-come-come, lass, here, easy now, that's right, come this way..." A steady, soothing stream of talk, never stopping, not too loud or too uncertain, just the way Da did it, and the animals were always quiet for him.

She lowed uneasily, dancing with that lame foot towards him, and then back. She wouldn't be trusting of people, not after the Wild Men roaming and burning and killing, not after three months in the woods. But she was hesitating, too, wanting to come back to the kindly voice, to the hands that had food and water and safety. And the boy was counting on that hesitation to win.

The cow took another hobbling step, and another. Her rough poll touched the boy's outstretched hand, and she submitted willingly to his arm descending in place of a halter around her neck.

"That's good," he told her, as they made their slow way back out of the woods, rewarding her with more encouraging words since he had no other reward. "That's good. You'll stay right here now, with us, as long as no-one else comes to claim you. I wasn't looking to find a cow, but now I found you, well, Da won't be sorry, nor will Mama. Why, they'll be proud of me – maybe as proud as I am! Now if we can only find a way to milk you."

Leon Kenhelm leaned back, looking at the cloudy autumn sky as he shepherded his newfound prize back to the waiting house. The wind picked up outside the cover of the trees, and spurts of rain tossed back and forth, chilling him through his thin, frayed clothes, but the confident smile on his face never wavered. There was nothing, in his young, contented mind that could make this day better.

He struck the path, came down it towards the house, and stopped, for he could not reckon up any fair reason why there should be a dragon sitting on its haunches in the front yard beside the ash-tree.

~

Jedediah Crayes gingerly avoided the squealing bundle of wiry red curls and limbs that came out in a clear effort to bowl him over.

"Mista' Crayes!" Linnetta Kenhelm howled in tones that he preferred to think of as unlawful. With all dexterity, he continued to evade her efforts to seize him around the knees in an outrageously familiar way. "Mista' Crayes!" she persisted, chasing him in circles around the yard as he attempted to keep ahead of her without breaking into a run. "Why did you come back? Where were you? Daddy's not here. You shouldn't have come when Daddy wasn't here!"

"If," said Jedediah Crayes sourly, "you're attempting to escort me off the premises" – he dodged an unexpected leap of Linnetta's, and set off with quickened strides around the ash-tree – "I'm sorry, but I have every intention of waiting until your father gets back."

"Good!" Linnetta shrieked. Jedediah Crayes winced. "I want you to stay a long time, Mista' Crayes. Can I play with your dragon, Mista' Crayes?"

"It's not my dragon," said Jedediah Crayes with painstaking severity, "and you most certainly may not. Good grief, how did that boy live with eight of you brats at once?"