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The kid, obviously shocked to see her, jumped to his feet, eyes wide, face filled with fear.
Kandace held her hand out. “Whoa, sorry. It’s Kandace. Remember me?”
He stared at her another few beats before bobbing his head and swallowing. “Yes. I remember you.”
“Okay, good.” She didn’t lower her hand, still attempting to calm him, to wipe that startled expression from his face. He looked like a frightened animal who’d just been cornered in the wild. Could she really blame him? If he’d grown up at Lilith House . . . Geez. She didn’t even want to think of what sort of life he’d led. She’d be a chronic nervous wreck if she’d spent her life in that hellhole too.
He swallowed again, his eyes darting to the ground and then back to her. She followed his gaze to the place he’d just looked. “Holy shit. What is that?” She lowered her arm, going slowly to her knees so she could get a better look.
The boy dropped down beside her, still looking at her warily. “A baby fox.”
Kandace tilted her head. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Twisted leg,” he murmured. “Probably born that way. His mother abandoned him. Nature doesn’t tolerate imperfection. It’s a weakness. And in nature, weakness equals death.”
She stared at him for a moment. He had mumbled it, but his eyes shone with passion as though the words he’d said were very personal. “How sad,” Kandace murmured, her heart giving a small twist as she took in the tiny creature with what looked like a miniature splint on its leg. She knew what it felt like to be motherless, despite that her mother was very much alive. And maybe that made it worse. She looked from the small, curled-up creature to the boy. “Where’d you find it?”
He glanced down at the baby animal he’d been mending and then back to her before shrugging. “They come to me.”
Kandace frowned. “They come to . . . what does that mean?”
He shrugged again. “They seem to . . . find me. Sometimes here . . . sometimes closer to the back door of my room. They’re sick or injured—imperfect—and I help them.”
“How often?”
His eyes met hers. “All the time.”
Confusion swept through her. Had no one ever seen this boy? The others he’d mentioned? Or if they had, had they been explained away as one of the staff member’s children? She thought of the crawl space where he’d helped her hide. Were they the whisperers in the walls? The source of the sounds she’d heard on her first night at Lilith House, convincing herself it was merely the wind? As she stared at him tending to the baby animal, she felt both disturbed and . . . awe-struck. As though the forest sent its faulty babies to be mended by this dreamy boy who sometimes existed as nothing but a hidden whisper. Weird and . . . wonderful, especially considering the trauma of watching the bird be tortured and killed in Ms. Wykes’s office. It was like the discovery of Dreamboat here and what he did on a seemingly regular basis, righted a terrible wrong, if such a thing were even possible.
Even more, to find anything gentle and kind in the midst of such depravity felt like a small miracle.
Kandace raised her head and looked deeper into the forest. She swore she heard the soft beat of a drum but wrote it off as the wind or the soft pitter-patter of hooves somewhere far away.
“I wouldn’t touch those if I were you,” he said.
Her gaze followed his to where her hand was on the ground, her pinky finger next to a cluster of white mushrooms. She hadn’t even noticed them in the midst of the scattering of pale, dead leaves and other forest floor debris. She pulled her hand away, looking at him questioningly.
“Toxic,” he said. “I ate the tiniest piece of one once out of curiosity and was sick as a dog for a day and a half.”
Kandace frowned, moving aside. She’d be sure to wash her hands the moment she went inside.
He looked away from her, petting the animal. “Don’t tell, okay?” He nodded down, and with his words, his voice broke slightly, his thickly-lashed eyes imploring her.
Sensitive kid. Too sensitive for a place like this. She suddenly felt scared for him.
“I won’t tell, Dreamboat.”
He smiled a bashful smile before scooping up the injured baby and holding it to his chest. They both stood. “I have to hide this one in the old shed until it’s healed. If it heals.” He touched the splinted leg gently. “Some things can’t be fixed,” he said, his face troubled.
Kandace didn’t ask him what would happen if the helpless thing couldn’t be healed. Truthfully, she didn’t really want to know. “What if they find it?” she asked, nodding to the animal, a shiver of worry making its way down her spine. To her limited knowledge, animals didn’t fare well behind the walls of Lilith House.
