~ 5 ~

A long time passed while Yuk squatted in the chicken-cage. He had been squatting in the dark for so long that half his leg had regenerated, as had some of his tail. A stronger master might have sent him on a quick jaunt back to the Abyss to heal, but Toren was no such master. Doubtful the boy had the resources for a second ritual at all.

Unsurprisingly, the human children did not own many possessions. To keep Yuk contained, they had stolen an ugly, basket-like cage meant for a some sort of food-bird. It was no more a barrier for Yuk than a handful of twigs, but Toren’s command bound him as though the wicker were iron. His only solace came from his bulltoad form with its long tongue with which to snap up wandering crickets and myriapods.

Unable to leave, Yuk had explored other options to pass the time. Yet despite Toren’s misunderstanding of how their bond worked, the boy’s rules were frustratingly airtight. Yuk was explicitly barred from damaging anything in the kids’ hideaway, which left absolutely nothing to distract himself with.

Yuk did not know who had first found the hidden culvert, but the pair had worked diligently to ensure it remained undiscovered by the rest of the humans in the slum. A safe place to hide was worth more than even the most luxurious tent. Yuk’s experience in the Abyss proved it was better to hide quietly in some squalid crag than to call attention to oneself with comfort.

The long, subterranean pipe afforded the kids just enough room to stretch out side-by-side for sleeping, plus some room at their heads for packing away the spoils of their thieving. A dark cloth that might once have been a muddy green color hung where their feet would rest, fooling any unobservant passersby with a false back to the culvert’s shadowy depths.

A scuffling from the culvert’s mouth brought Yuk back from his thoughts. He slid his tongue over his unmoistened eyes to help clear his vision, then tensed in anticipation of danger. A moment later, the curtain admitted Lina’s small, dirt-caked form.

“Hi,” she said. She moved into the safety of the lair and let the curtain drop behind her feet to block the scant light creeping in from outside.

Yuk relaxed, but remained unmoving.

The girl felt her way past him and made herself comfortable on the thin mat that separated her from the dirt floor. Yuk twitched an eye toward her direction. Her own gaze roamed around Yuk’s corner, her eyes too weak to pierce the shadows. Even bound in the dark, he was the superior creature.

“Toren says we’re not allowed to light any candles or anything, because then people would see through our curtain,” she said, followed by a heavy sigh.

Or because you’d asphyxiate, Yuk mused.

“But, I bet you can see me just fine, huh? Lots of things can see in the dark, you know. Elves, and dwarves, and goblins. Not humans, though.

“Anyway, we’re only supposed to come in here to sleep. But I thought maybe you would want some company. Besides, it’s kind of cozy, back here all alone. Nobody but you knows I’m here. I can even stick my tongue out, like this, and nobody in the whole world would know I’m doing it except for me. And you, of course.”

Yuk remained still. Lina searched about for him again, her eyes widening and squinting in intervals, trying to adapt to the dark. Then she gave up and rolled onto her back to stare sightlessly at the low ceiling.

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“Toren was supposed to let you go, you know. Once we got mother’s necklace back. I think maybe he’s mad, because of how the guards noticed something was going on. But it’s not like we got in any trouble, you know?”

She kicked a foot up, bouncing the toe of her grubby shoe off the ceiling. Yuk noticed with some surprise that it was made of some sort of warped, gnarled wood. Elven-make.

“But, anyway, he gets like that,” Lina continued. “If you don’t do exactly what he says, in exactly the way he wants you to, then you’re an idiot, and a waste of effort. Blah, blah, blah. It’s like he thinks I can read his mind or something, and know exactly how he wants me to do things.”

Yuk tuned her out and looked from her shoe to the hovel around him. Lina’s shoes and plain dress were obviously spun by the humans from the slums, as was the curtain and chicken basket, but the other items clearly had a wealthier origin. Though simple, the sleeping mat’s intricate weave belied craftsmanship far exceeding anything the humans here could produce. An eating utensil with a bent tine and crusted in spots with old food had endured neither rust nor scratch. The pearl necklace, too, had been crafted with techniques exceeding anything the humans here could work

A story took shape in Yuk’s mind while the girl prattled on.

“… like I’m some halfwit or something. Hey, Toren said you could talk to him. Can you talk to me? Like in my thoughts?” Lina shifted onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow. She tried to look at Yuk, but her eyes stared a few inches above Yuk’s.

Yuk looked at her, and something like understanding wriggled its way through his mind. They were worlds apart, and yet for all the differences of the material plane and the realms of the Abyss, the hierarchies of power remained the same.

She frowned at Yuk’s silence and changed the subject. “I guess you’re probably hungry by now, huh?”

Food. Yes. The demands of a physical body were never-ending.

Lina sighed again. “Well, me too. What do you even eat? Bugs? Or like… rocks, maybe? Charcoal? Wait here, I’ll go find you something.”

She twisted about to leave and crawled on hands and knees to the curtain.

Yuk growled a single word from the lips of his wide mouth. “Wait.”

Lina paused, a hand outstretched to the curtain, then turned to him. “Did you just say, ‘wait?'”

“You,” Yuk said, returning to his true form and trying to shape his tongue’s slithering into something resembling Common. ”You are… stuck.”

“What?”

“Stuck, like… like me. Captive. Pris-o-ner.”

“Oh.” Lina’s eyes dropped to the sylvan mat. “I guess so. The elves don’t really bother us too much, you know. They mostly need the adults. Adults go to the mines. Unless you've got magic--they hate that. Kids with magic get taken away. Actually, if they knew about me or Toren, we’d probably be forced into creche. Probably to learn about mining. Toren and me, we’re more like, um, like the word for when you’re running from someone all the time.”

Fugitives. Yuk flicked his tongue in annoyance at the misunderstanding, but he stopped himself from spitting any of the half-formed insults he’d brewed. “Toren. Toren traps you.”

“My brother? He’s mean, sometimes, but he still looks after me.”

She put too much faith in her brother’s bond to her. The boy kept her around only because she proved some use to him. Yuk would have to amend that.

Lina waited for Yuk to say something else, and after a few moments of silence from the dark corner, moved to leave. Gloomy light stole into the culvert hideaway as Lina moved the curtain aside and left Yuk to his thoughts.

Alone once again, he wondered at Lina’s bizarre kindness, turning it over in his mind like a bobble locked up tight. She was bound to Toren, at the bottom of her species’ pecking order, which itself was at the mercy of the elvish overlords. Yet she considered her brother an ally, and even seemed to like Yuk. She was finding him food, when some masters merely let their thralls starve to death before summoning a fresher minion!

It made no sense. The sooner Yuk perished or otherwise became useless to Toren, the sooner the boy would lose his strongest tool. He would be vulnerable. Was she some mindless thing, intent only on serving a higher power?

The curtain pulled back and Lina stuck her head in. “Do you like your food better if it’s rotten?”