Pait couldn’t believe it, but she was getting used to this bizarre, wall-less camp far above the forest floor, where she lived with the Mother-fucking Traitor Prince. She was so used to it that she didn’t even blink when she walked into the kitchen that morning and found Julius, who had taken up temporary residence in Daivad’s kitchen ever since they’d gotten back from Broken Earth, hanging upside down from the kitchen window. He and Daivad were engaged in their now-regular morning debate.
“Snack, please!”
“You already ate.”
“Snack, please!”
“No.”
“Butter apples, please, sir!”
“I fried you two apples in butter already.”
“Yum, snack! Cinnamon fry butter apple!”
“That’s right,” Daivad said, sounding a little surprised. And impressed. “Good boy, Julius.”
Pait nearly popped her ears holding in a snort of laughter—if Daivad had any idea she’d heard him say that—
“Snack, please!”
“If I return you to Nyxabella so weighed down with ‘cinnamon fry butter apple’ that your wings can’t keep you up, what then? She’d kill me.”
While Daivad was occupied, Pait snuck into the kitchen and swiped the cloth napkin piled with slabs of thick-cut bacon next to the sizzling skillet on Daivad’s hotstone. She was already out the door by the time she heard him shout, “Ay!”
She snatched her basket from the front landing and plopped the napkin down inside—it was already soaked through with warm grease—before taking off down the branch bridge into the village. There was no need for Pait to forage—after a trip to Urden yesterday, camp was well-stocked. Hence the bacon. And the train crew was supposed to return with the spoils of their robbery any minute. But this had been her routine for a while, and when she just shut herself in the workshop all day like she wanted to do, Daivad bitched at her. If she pretended to go out and be around people for a few hours in the morning, he’d leave her alone after that.
Just as Pait reached the nearest lift terminal and threw the switch to call it up, her vision clouded and for a moment she thought she was about to pass out—until she realized it was just Julius’ smoke swirling around her head. It gathered on one of her shoulders, and his weight settled on her as he solidified. He shouted, “Kid Pait!”
With an exasperated sigh, she said, “How many times must the name pass my lips? It’s just Pait.”
“Just Kid Pait!”
“No ‘kid!’ Just Pait.”
Gripping her hair to steady himself, Julius leaned forward to look her in the face and blink that one enormous pale eye at her. She tried to recoil but his claws tangled in her hair held her head in place—she’d gotten used to having Julius and, to a much lesser extent, Kitten around over the past few days, but being this close to Julius’ squashed nose, odd grinning teeth, and bulging eye still made her skin prickle. Julius was harmless, if vulgar, she knew. But still.
Julius straightened again as the lift finally arrived, and announced, “Just Pait!”
It made her smile. “Close enough.”
The Duxon crew seemed to have the same attachment to their morning routine as Pait did, because most of them still gathered on the forest floor each morning, clutching their own baskets and looking to Edgar for direction.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The others gave Pait and Julius a wide berth as they passed into the forest, which settled heavy in Pait’s belly. Why was it no matter where she was, no matter who she was with, she didn’t fit? She shot a resentful side-eye at Julius on her shoulder and found him bobbing his head in time with some music she couldn’t hear.
He was hard to stay mad at.
They were supposed to stay in pairs when out on the forest floor, but Pait was sure no one would be eager to pair up with her since she had a monster on her shoulder, so she just counted Julius as her partner for now and headed off.
The beast would have made an excellent assistant for foraging—he could sniff out the best berries in a mile and would help her pick them—except that more berries or nuts made it into his mouth than into her basket. And he didn’t have the same definition of edible as she did. Since he’d begun helping her, she’d return to camp to find twigs, pebbles, small leaves, and even worms and grubs mingled in with whatever she’d gathered that day.
Pait made quick work of her bacon, and got to picking.
Julius sang while they worked, in a dozen different voices both monster and human. It had taken her a while to pick up on it, but he had certain songs for certain situations. If it was raining or if they were near a stream, he sang what Pait thought of as “The Drip-Drop Song” where he would create a melody out of water sounds—bubbling and dripping and rushing. Often she had to tell him to stop because it was making her have to pee. And if they were foraging for one of his favorites, raspberries (or as he called them, “sparkle reds”), he would sing in a bright, chirruping voice a melody that Pait thought sounded just like raspberries tasted. Usually while spitting raspberry pulp all over her.
The beast was always chattering, chirruping, singing, squawking, so when he went silent and rigid on Pait’s shoulder, her heartbeat skittered before she’d even registered the change. She glanced up at Julius to see his eye trained on a spot off to their left and all his fur standing on end. Pait followed his gaze, and her brain snagged on something—but what was it? Something she hadn’t noticed she’d noticed. She scanned the area again. A third time. Some instinct in the base of her skull told her to run—but why? It was daytime. The only waking beasts in this forest should be the one on her shoulder and the one no doubt chewing on Maxea’s leg at the moment.
Her eyes couldn’t spot what was wrong until it moved. A pair of hands gripping the edge of a tree trunk not twenty feet from her, partially shrouded by the ivy creeping up the bark, suddenly and silently retreated behind the trunk.
Several things struck Pait as very wrong about that. The first was that the owner of the hands had gotten so close without Pait hearing. Even with Julius’ singing, she’d always been able to hear anyone approaching from a ways off. The second was that the hands had been much further up than they should have been. Not even Daivad could have reached them from the ground, and there was nothing to stand on beneath where she’d seen the hands, as far as Pait could tell.
But the final and most troubling thing was that the pair of hands had been two very different colors and sizes. And they had both been right hands.
“AY!” Daivad shouted in Pait’s ear, scaring her bad enough that she yelped and dropped her basket, scattering its contents. She looked around, but saw only Julius, his one eye still locked on the spot where the hands had disappeared.
“FUCK YOU, SIR!” Julius said in Daivad’s voice, and dissolved into smoke.
“Wh—!” Heart in her throat, Pait squeaked, “Don’t leave!”
The smoke melted through the undergrowth and swirled around the tree. Shaking, Pait scrambled after Julius and rounded the tree—
Nothing—aside from Julius’ smoke which searched around and around the tree, just as confused as Pait. She’d been right—there was nothing to stand on here, though she supposed the owners of the hands could have been hanging from a higher branch. But that didn’t explain how they’d disappeared so quickly. And noiselessly.
Had she imagined the whole thing? Some shared delusion from hanging out too much with this monster?
“Julius?” Pait called, ashamed to find her voice still wobbly. “Come back!”
The smoke obeyed, gathering once again on her shoulder before solidifying into the odd beast she’d come to … tolerate. Julius huffed angrily out of his squashed nose and let out a string of what Pait assumed to be monster swears, glaring above them.
“What was that?” she asked.
Julius was quiet, still glaring. He had no answer for her, it seemed. Pait scanned the branches above her again, and again, listening for any rustling leaves and looking for any waving branches. But whatever she had thought she’d seen was gone.
But it turned out Julius did have an answer for her. It had just taken him a minute to locate it. Pait could never have spelled the sound he made, but if she tried she might have written it: Oa-krsht.
“The fuck does that mean?”
He took another moment to consider…
“Hungry.”