That explained why we’d never seen Linnet before now, at the vaklok or any of the large meals in the hall.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said, impressed that she made her life out here alone this way.
“Only at night,” she said, “but I’ve got furs aplenty for that.”
I hid a smirk at the translation mix-up. “So it’s just you out here? And you watch over the brolka?” The brolka didn’t seem to need much in the way of care. They grazed on their own, munching on the stalks of silvery grass or peeling bits of bark off with their teeth. And they obviously had lots of water at their immediate disposal.
“Someone needs to make sure they don’t wander off down some dead-end valley or get picked off by a pattarak or harassed by the felkora during their mating time.” She raised her bowmeaningfully. For the first time I noticed the quiver of arrows on her back.Badass. “I keep them in this safe area and shoot at anything that might want to bother them. That’s my job, and mine alone since Arton’s grandfather died. Though I’ve still got Linnet.”
I knew better than to offer her my human condolences on the death of her mate. And, frankly, I was too stuck on the other thing she’d juts said. “You’ve still got…” I cast her a sideways glance, wondering if her earlier comments about having all her marbles maybe weren’t all that accurate after all.
“Linnet,” she repeated staunchly, glaring at me as if I were the strange one talking about myself in the third person. She jerked her bow in the direction of the braxilk that was now airborne, swooping lazily over the lake. “My braxilk. Linnet.”
“She’s also named Linnet? Did you name her after yourself?”
“Course I did,” Linnet said. “And why shouldn’t I? Mine’s as good a name as any other!”
I wasn’t entirely sure, but I thought I heard Fiona whisper, “Fucking iconic.”
Linnet’s question of, “And why shouldn’t I?” didn’t seem to require a response, so I lapsed into smiling silence, enjoying her crusty mountain lady energy immensely as we made our way around the last curve of the lake.
“Well, there they are. Now you’ve seen them,” Linnet grouched.
“Oh my God,” Fiona squealed.
“They look like walking dandelions!” Tilly added breathlessly. “They’re so cute!”
And, Jesus Christ, they really were. So many of the animals we encountered out here were spiky or spooky or tentacley or bitey. But the brolka looked like something a bored young child would come up with in the cozy, quiet moments before sleep. They were near-spherical with plush grey wool, just big roundpuffs on legs. Their faces were soft and not wooly, looking more downy, with long, floppy, anteater-like snouts and gigantic eyes that came in dreamy shades of purple and pink. I couldn’t tell the males from the females from this distance. They didn’t have horns or anything like that.
“That there is where they sleep,” Linnet said, aiming her bow towards a cave a dizzying distance up the side of the mountain the brolka currently grazed at the base of. It seemed impossible that cute plushies like these could traverse the steep, rocky side of the mountain that easily. Maybe the wind bore their fluffy bodies upwards each night, like the seeds of the dandelions Tilly had just compared them to.
“There now. That’s a brave one,” Linnet added, drawing her bow back down. “Not put off by your strange smell, I suppose.”
I followed her gaze and gasped as a little brolka wandered over to us on wobbly legs. It nosed at my knees, then stopped, seeming to expect something.
“Can I touch it?” I asked Linnet. “It’s not going to, like, bite my fingers off for trying, is it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Linnet responded flippantly.
Very reassuring.
I decided to go for it, figuring that Linnet probably had a store of Vrika’s blood in her cave if it did decide to get a little chompy with me. Slowly, I lowered my hand to its face, letting it sniff me with that funny, floppy snout. I suppressed a giggly yelp at the tickly sensation. Then, when it didn’t run away or bare its teeth at me, I carefully touched its downy head, above its eyes.
It made a soft, trumpeting sort of sound that I assumed was a happy one based on the fact it was now headbutting me for more pets. I grinned down at it, staring into its strawberry milkshake eyes, feeling like, at least for this moment, all was right with the world.
11
THALEO
I’d spent much of the day on braxilk-back, monitoring the borog’s burrowing. I had not yet seen the thing in person. Nor did it seem to be burrowing closer to my mountain. So this gave me some relief. But still, things were heavy upon me as I flew back. As I approached my mountain, flying over the lake where Linnet kept the brolka, I suddenly tightened my thighs and urged Yeralk to turn around in the air.
The new women were down there.
I saw two of them – Tilly and Fiona – wading around in the water with Zaria and Arton while their Sea Sand escorts watched them from the shore, unwilling to get wet.
Where was Nazreen?
Ah. There. She was seated near the shore, with what appeared to be a small brolka with its grey body laid across her lap.
