"Shut up," Duun said. And flicked cold water in Thorn's face. Thorn blinked and howled and clawed frantically at Duun's legs, not in rage. Pick me up, that meant.
Duun picked him up, armful that he had become, rocked him with a swinging of his body in that way he had learned the infant liked. A small face nuzzled its way to his neck; this did not always mean biting. This time it did not. Thorn clung to him and snuffled, soiling his cloak with running eyes and nose.
"You were bad," Duun said. To such simplicities the philosophy of hatani bent nowadays. He swung from side to side and the sobs stopped. The thumb went in Thorn's mouth, irrepressible, though Thorn ate meat now, which Duun chewed for him and spat into his mouth. ("Not advisable," the meds said, obsessed with disease. But he did it, which was an old way, a hill way, and easier than urging a spoon past Thorn's dodging mouth, or cleaning up when Thorn fed himself and smeared it everywhere. Duun's mother and father had done this for him. He took perverse pleasure in performing this dutiful service. It shocked the meds. That gave him perverse pleasure too. He smiled at the meds. It was strange. They had become familiar with him. They looked him in the eyes, at least more than once in the visit. "Elludmingi sends regards," they said. "I sent mine," he said in return. And perversely added: "So does my son."
That
sent them on their way in haste. Doubtless to take notes.)
14
Cuckoo's Egg
He rocked Thorn and sang to him, absently: "Wei-na-mei, wei-na-mei."
And Thorn grew quiet in his arms. "You're getting too big to hold," Duun said. "Too big to make puddles on the step."
That night, when they sat before the fire (the spring nights were cold) Thorn crawled into his lap and sat there a while; and got up on his feet in the triangle between Duun's crossed legs and touched Duun's face, the scarred side. Duun caught the hand with his maimed one. And let it go.
"It's a scar," Duun said.
He did not prevent the exploration. He made himself patient. He shut his eyes and let Thorn do what he liked, until Thorn pulled savagely on both his ears, which was challenge. Duun's eyes flashed open.
"Ah!"
Duun cried, drawing back his lips in a grimace. Thorn recoiled and stumbled on Duun's legs; Duun caught him in mid-fall and rolled with him, rolled holding him in his arms, never coming on him with his weight.
Thorn screamed, and gasped, and when Duun bit, bit back, and screamed and squealed till Duun clamped a hand over his mouth and held it there.
Thorn grew still. The eyes stayed wide with shock. So. So. Fright, not fight.
Duun gathered him to his breast and licked his eyes till Thorn had begun to pant, recovering his lost breath. For a moment Duun was worried. Small hands clutched at him.
He gripped Thorn by both arms and held him up. Grinned. Thorn refused to be appeased.
That night Thorn waked howling at Duun's side, short sharp yelps, gasps for breath. "Thorn!" Duun cried, and turned on lights and snatched him up, thinking he had rolled on the infant and hurt him in some way; but it was nightmare.
Thorn held to him. It was Duun Thorn feared. That was the nightmare.
15
Cuckoo's Egg
"Ah," Duun cried, falling back, dragging Thorn atop him. "Ah! you hurt me! You hurt me—" To give him the upper hand. He had no pride in this.
"Duun," Thorn cried and snuggled close.
Sometimes genes were truer than teaching. Alien. Thorn clung to what had frightened him.
"Duun, Duun, Duun—"
Duun held him. It was all Thorn understood.
* * *
Perhaps Thorn wanted to ask, if his young mind had thought of it, when his own pelt would begin to grow. The hair on his head was abundant, tousled curls, which had finally settled on a faded, earthy brown. The eyes had never changed. It was a dangerous time.
Duun took Thorn from the bath and held him in his left arm, hugged him close in front of the mirror. Thorn had seen mirrors. He had one for a toy.
He had seen this one many times.
Today there was distress in young Thorn's eyes, and thoughts were going on. Thorn had never seen a shonun child. He had never seen other shonunin, except the meds. Perhaps some terrible thing was dawning on his mind, put together of little wordless pieces, images in mirrors, smooth bellies, a facility for making water in a long, long arc, which was for a time his nuisancefully chiefest talent. He spread his five-fingered hand at Thorn-in-the-mirror, in a way that should bring claws and did not; he grimaced at this Thorn as if to frighten him to flight. (Go away, ugly Thorn.) He flexed the fingers yet again. Made faces.
16
Cuckoo's Egg
Duun turned them both away. Bounced him to distract him.
After that Thorn did not mention the difference of their skins. Only from time to time there were small moments which Duun caught: a moment of rest when Thorn, lying beside Duun, reached and stroked his arm, turning the fur this way and that. Another when Thorn, finding Duun's hand conveniently palm up, dragged it closer to him across Duun's lap and played with it, fingering the dissimilar geometries of the palm, working doggedly at the fingers to make the claws come out. Duun cooperated. It was his right hand. It was not the deformity Thorn explored, but an ability which surely Thorn envied; and Duun was suddenly aware of a silence within the child, a secrecy which had grown all unawares, that small walled-off place which was an independent mind. Thorn had arrived at selfhood, a self which came out to explore the world and retreated with scraps of things which had to be examined with care, compared (sign of a complex mind) against other truths: Thorn had arrived at self-defense, disappointed in his body, it seemed. Aware of his own deformity. And not, truly, aware of Duun's. Duun was Duun. Duun had always had scars; they were part of Duun as the sun was part of the world. There was no past.
Thorn had not been in it: therefore Thorn could not imagine it.
But Thorn's hands were not like Duun's. His skin was not. And Thorn had begun to take alarm, suspecting imbalance in the world.
Duun gathered him close, as he had done when Thorn was smaller, rolled him into his lap and poked him in the belly, which Thorn resisted for a moment, and writhed, and finally gave way to, in squeals and laughter and abortive attempts to retaliate in kind. Duun let him have that victory, sprawled backward on the sand before the fire, belly heaving under Thorn's slight weight, in laughter which was not reflexive, like Thorn's. To be touched on throat or belly went against instinct. There was a sense of peril in that abandonment.
But a child had to win. Sometimes. And lose sometimes. There was strength in both.
* * *
17
Cuckoo's Egg
"Follow, follow," he urged the child, looking downhill. The rocky incline was a great trial for small legs, and Duun's stride was long. Thorn stood with legs apart, arms hanging, and staggered a few more knock-kneed steps. "Keep climbing," Duun said. "You can."
A few more steps. Thorn fell and cried, a weak, breathless sobbing. "I can't."
"You have breath left to cry, you have breath to get up. Come on.
Up!
Shall I be ashamed?"
"I hurt my knee!" Thorn sat up, clutching it and rocking.
"I hurt my hand once. Get up and come on. Someone is chasing us."
Thorn caught his breath and looked downtrail, still hiccuping.
"Perhaps it will eat us," Duun said. "Get up. Come on."
Thorn let go his reddened knee. Limbs struggled. Thorn got to his feet, wobbled, and came on desperately.
"I lied," said Duun. "But so did you. You could get up. Come on."
Sobs and snuffles. Wails of rage. Thorn kept walking. Duun walked with shorter strides, as if the way had gotten steeper for him as well.
* * *
"
You
do it."
Duun threw. It sailed up and up and struck near the top of the sheer face.
The child's mouth stayed open in dismay.
"That is what I
can
do," Duun said. "Match that."
18
Cuckoo's Egg
"I can't."
"My ears are bad. Something said can't."
Thorn took the rock. Tears welled up in his eyes. He threw. The stone fell ignominiously awry and lost itself among the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.
"Ah. I have frightened you. Thorn is scared. I hear
can't
again."
"I hate you!"
"Throw at
me,
then. I'm closer. Perhaps you can hit
me.
" Duun gave Thorn another stone.
Thorn's face was red. His eyes watered and his lips trembled. He whirled and threw it at the cliff instead.
So.
"That was your highest yet," Duun said.
19
Cuckoo's Egg
III
The meds came back. Ellud was with them. "Ellud." Duun said.
"You look well," Ellud said, with one long searching look. With a furtive sliding of the eyes toward Thorn, who stood his ground in the main hall of the house, where the hated meds prepared their discomforts. Thorn scowled. The sun had turned his naked skin a golden brown. His hair, which Duun cut to a length that did not catch twigs or blind him when he worked, was a clean and shining earth color. His eyes were as much white as blue. His nose had gotten more prominent, his teeth were strong, if blunt. He stood still. His poor ears could not move. Only the regular flaring of his nostrils betrayed his dislike.
"Thorn," Duun said. "Come here. This is Ellud. Be polite, Thorn."
"Is he a med?" Thorn asked suspiciously.
Ellud's ears sank. A rock might have spoken to him in plain accents and shocked him no less. He looked at Duun. Said nothing.
"No." said Duun. "A friend. Many years ago."
Thorn looked up and blinked. A med came and got him and prepared to take his pulse.
"Come back to town," Ellud said. "Duun, come back."
"Is that a request or an order?"
"Duun—"
"I'd remind you that you promised me anything. Not yet, Ellud."
That evening Thorn was silent, gloomy, thoughtful. He did not ask about Ellud. Did not discuss the meds.
20
Cuckoo's Egg
Thorn slept apart now. There were changes in his body which made this advisable. He went to his room of the many rooms in the house and curled up into his privacy. Duun came to check on him.
"Are my ears going to grow?" Thorn asked, looking at him from the pillow as he stood in the doorway.
Ears. Maybe that was the easiest, least painful thing to ask. Duun stood silent. He had planned how he would answer about claws and hair and the shape of their faces and the difference of their loins. He had planned everything but ears.
"I don't think so," Duun said. "I don't care, do you?"
Silence, from the small shadow in the bedbowl.
"You're unusual," Duun said.
A snuffle.
"I like you that way," Duun said.
"I like you," came the small, disembodied voice. Another snuffle. "I like you, Duun."
Love
was, Duun recalled, not a word he had ever used in Thorn's hearing. Like you. As one liked a warm fire. The sun on one's back.
"I like you too, Thorn."
"I don't want any more meds."
"I'll talk to them about that. Do you want to go hunting tomorrow? I'll give you a knife of your own. I'll show you how to keep the blade."
"Hunting what?" Snuffle. Shadow-child wiped his eyes with a swipe of an arm; nose with another. There was interest in the voice.
21
Cuckoo's Egg
"I'm hatani, Thorn. That's something hard to be. That's why I push you hard."
"What's hatani?"
"I'll show you. Tomorrow. I'll teach you. You'll learn to do what I can do.
It's going to be hard, Thorn."
Another wipe of the eyes.
"Tomorrow, Thorn?"
"Yes."
"Get to sleep, then."
Duun went back to the fire. Wind howled outside, in cold. The fire leapt.
The last of the old countryfolk lumber was gone. They began to use an old log from downslope. He cut it with the power saw he had ordered with supplies and brought it up, bit by bit. None of the countryfolk from the valley would bother the pile he had made on the roadside below. They kept out of his sight and left no sign near the house. But he knew that they were there.
They would know hatani patience. Countryfolk had patience of their own.
Perhaps things would change. Perhaps the hatani would die. Perhaps the alien would meet with accident. Perhaps their title would become valid again.
Perhaps they had bad dreams, down in the valley, on the other side of the mountain, out of his sight and mind. Perhaps they dreamed nightmares, imagining that their woods were no longer their own.
Or that the woods might not be theirs again, forever.
He had asked for the house and lands of Sheon. He had not used the lands, till now.
22
Cuckoo's Egg
He took his weapons from the top shelf of the locked cabinet where they had remained out of the way of curious young fingers. He had taken them out many times to care for them, and never let Thorn touch them, to Thorn's great frustration. A child should have unfulfilled ambitions; should know some things forbidden. Doubtless Thorn had tried. Children were not always virtuous. That was to be expected. And dealt with.
* * *
"No," Thorn said.