Hunter's Moon (6 page)

‘Why in the name of all the angels and saints would she not?' snapped Verakina. ‘Now, I don't think that kindling will chop itself, Grim!'

He shot her a sharp glance. ‘As if I have to be told,' he grumbled, but slid off his stool and stumped off without another word.

‘You mustn't mind Grim,' said Verakina. ‘He's a good man, but can be a little crosspatch at times. And his leg plays up every so often, especially at hunter's moon. That's when he lost it, years ago, you see. The flesh one, not the wooden one.'

‘Oh. I'm sorry,' I said.

‘Why should you be? It wasn't you who set the dogs on him,' she said, making an icy shiver slip down my spine. She spoke of such hideousness so matter-of-factly. Until yesterday, evil of that sort would have seemed like something out of a newspaper report: horrible but far away from me, like the stories of the beggar killings. Today, I knew that I'd been living in a fool's paradise, and the crushing weight of that knowledge was suddenly too much
to bear and I wept as I sat there at the table, my head in my hands. Verakina made little soothing noises and patted my shoulder, but did not try to stop me from crying.

It might have been the crying, or perhaps it was simply the shock of all that had happened, but I found myself so tired again that I had to hobble back to bed. I lay there beside the fire of the stove with the patchwork quilt pulled right up under my chin, watching the shadow of the flames on the ceiling, listening to Verakina softly bustling around the room, and the peace of that strange place gradually settled in me so that at last I was able to fall softly into sleep.

When I woke again, it was to the sound of many voices. Though I did not know it, night was falling outside, and the other haven dwellers had returned home. From my bed by the fire I couldn't see their features properly – and some I could only see from the back – but from the features I could see, I thought that all but Verakina were men.

Verakina must have heard me stir for she came over. ‘That was a long sleep,' she said.

‘Yes. It was. I feel much better.' And I did, for throughout those blessed hours I had felt no pain, no heartbreak. I had felt nothing but quiet and peace.

‘Good.' Her smile was as sharp-toothed as ever but it did not disturb me in the least, now. It was just a part of this kind woman who had taken me in without question. ‘Now, do you feel up to meeting everyone?'

I looked over at the table, where I could sense that everyone seated there was carefully not looking at me. ‘I … I think so,' I murmured.

‘Excellent. Now let's get you wrapped up again,' she said, as she helped me with the dressing-gown, produced the slippers and crutches, and smoothed back my hair. ‘There, now. You look wonderful, my dear.'

Her words and gestures reminded me of my dear late Babina, my grandmother on my mother's side. Babina had died a year or two after Mother, and I could remember that as a little girl I had been very close to her. She had read books to me, sung songs and played games with me. She had been nothing like Grandmother Dalmatin, Father's formidable mother, who had scared me a little. And although their appearances had nothing in common, it wasn't strange to me that I put Verakina and Babina together in the same thought – the heart has its own reasons and in Verakina's presence, I felt that same sense of unforced sweetness that I had felt in my beloved grandmother.

Six pairs of eyes regarded us coming, or rather five and a half, because one of the people sitting at the table had a black patch over her left eye – I'd been wrong about the others all being men. Despite her short chestnut curls and man's clothes, that one most certainly was a woman, and a young woman at that, a little older than me but not, I thought, by much. With her delicate features and shining hair she would have been very pretty indeed had it not been for that patch and a livid scar that bisected one side of her face, running from under the patch almost to her lip.

I tried not to stare – at her or at the others – but I could not help but look around at my hosts. There was a bony man with a gaunt, smiling face; a big man with a harelip and large blue eyes; a scrawny man with a scarred face and a soft voice; and a tall man with webbed fingers and shining
silver hair. All the men including Grim, of course, were a good deal older than the girl and me, and one, the tall silver-haired man, looked to be almost as old as Verakina.

It was she who quickly made the introductions: the girl was Lisbet, the smiley man was Rasmus, the blue-eyed man was Carlo, the silver-haired man was Mattias, and the soft-voiced man was Tofer. They all seemed friendly and even though Lisbet hardly said a word, she flashed me a shy smile. Each of them, it appeared, had their own special work within the haven. Grim, as I'd already learnt, was the healer. Verakina was the cook and main housekeeper, though everyone pitched in to help her with household tasks. Rasmus was the hunter and had brought back two rabbits for dinner. Carlo was the fisherman, and had brought back a clutch of river oysters. Mattias was a woodcutter, and had brought back a pile of new logs. Tofer gathered mushrooms and berries and made baskets and nets. Lisbet, it turned out, was the haven's scout, who travelled hither and thither keeping an eye on what was happening in the woods so that she would be able to warn the group who lived in the haven if danger came close. And she also sometimes brought back goods from outside that the outcasts could not make themselves, such as tea and flour. Today, she had been in one of the forest villages for the arrival of the weekly market barge that brought much-needed basic groceries to the isolated places in these parts.

They did not speak about what had brought them here, only about what they did now. And they did not ask about what had happened to me, though Verakina had clearly told them that my father was ill, for there was already a plan to deliver a message to him in Aurisola.

‘Rasmus is going tomorrow to Sarmest, the market town on the other side of the forest, to sell some game,' said Verakina. ‘The person there who buys from us is entirely trustworthy. There's a telegraph office in Sarmest and our friend will send a telegram to your father, if you will write the words for it. He will also wait for a reply. How does that sound to you?'

‘I'm so grateful,' I said. ‘And I hope …' I looked at Rasmus. ‘… I hope I'm not putting you … putting you at risk in any way … attracting undue attention.'

‘Not at all,' he said in his deep, slow voice, giving me one of his beautiful smiles. ‘I go to market every month, always around this time. People have grown used to seeing me. And as I will not be going to the telegraph office, there will be no undue attention whatsoever.'

Once that was settled, I felt better knowing that there was a plan in place for me to contact my father.

At dinner that night, making a conscious effort to banish thoughts of the dark things that had happened to me, I began to ask the outlaws about their home and the other outcast havens, a topic about which, out of pride, it seemed, they were very happy to expand on.

And so I learnt that there was a network of such havens all over the country, in various remote spots, and that nearly all were underground, sometimes in caves and sometimes, like this one, in man-made shelters hollowed out of the earth itself. Long ago, this haven had been carved out as a wartime shelter but it had been abandoned many decades ago and forgotten until it came into use again for the outcasts. Though the havens themselves were new – the first one had opened just under three years
ago – the concept, which originated with the mysterious modern Prince of Outlaws, was built on a long tradition of outcasts seeking shelter in remote locations.

Previously there had been nothing systematic about it, nothing organised – the shelters were haphazardly built and easily discovered, and very often such outcasts had not survived long. These havens were quite different. They were well run, strategically located, and communities were kept small to help members avoid attention. Though they operated independently of each other, each haven kept in touch with the others. Twice a year, at midsummer and midwinter, a Haven Council was held involving all haven members, where matters of mutual interest were discussed. These meetings were always presided over by the man whose idea had brought this extraordinary parallel world into being: the Prince of Outlaws, who was relied upon, loved and revered by all.

When I asked what the prince's name really was, though, each person said they didn't know, for he always came in darkness, and was always masked. By his voice and his manner, they knew he was a young man, but they did not know his true name, or his story, or what had driven him to become their protector. All that mattered to them was that he had given them a home and a full life, when before they'd had neither.

As the evening wore on, they talked, and revealed more and more about themselves and what had brought them here. It was Verakina who started it, for after declaring that she felt I could be trusted, she confirmed what I'd suspected: she was a werewolf. Her story was that she had been attacked by hate-filled neighbours one night on
hunter's moon and had been left for dead before being rescued by the Prince.

After that, other tongues were loosened. For all of them, ‘up top', as they called it, had been a place of sadness and fear. Two of them – Rasmus and Carlo – had been abandoned children, brought up in cruel orphanages where not a kind word had been spoken to them but where, because of their looks, they'd endured a life of torment both from the staff and their fellow orphans, who laughed at them, reviled them and called them freaks. After leaving the orphanage as soon as they could, they had found the world outside just as harsh, fallen in with bad company, and ended up in prison for a spell.

Mattias, meanwhile, had grown up in a family, but they had been no kinder to him than the orphanage had been to Rasmus and Carlo and Mattias' family had kicked him out of home by the time he'd turned eleven so that he had been forced to beg for a living. Tofer had been accused of a theft he hadn't committed and been beaten so severely that he'd been left scarred for life. As for Grim, he'd been found as a seven-year-old child in a bear's den, unable to speak or walk properly. It had taken years for him to become what the villagers called human and even after that, he'd been shunned by most, and he'd taken to thievery to support himself until the day came when some villagers set the dogs on him and he had lost his leg. Lisbet was the only one who did not even hint at what had happened to her. But I knew just by looking at her pretty but scarred face that it must have been something so dreadful that she could not bear to voice it.

They had trusted me with their stories. Now it was time to trust them with my own. So, haltingly, I told them my full name and my story. It was a strange thing, because although I felt that the terror and heartbreak of Bella donna's betrayal would never leave me, voicing those things aloud helped to lessen the horror a little, just as hearing the others' stories of pain did.

All of the outcasts here in the haven had been lost – and, somehow, all had been found. They'd suffered through hell, but had finally come to their own paradise. They'd made their own family, from people who understood what it was like to be outcast. They'd found hope and purpose. They'd formed a new life. And this was the gift of the Prince of Outlaws, who'd found each of them at the moment of their greatest, darkest despair, and brought them into the light. To them, the Prince was more than a man. He was a hero. In fact, some stories they told made it seem as if he had some kind of supernatural power. Grim, who scoffed at the idea that the legendary Prince and their own prince were one and the same, was actually in the minority: his friends clearly felt differently and hinted that the modern Prince of Outlaws was a reincarnation of the ancient one.

‘You are under his protection now, too, so you need never be afraid again,' Lisbet told me, giving me a shining blue glance out of her one good eye. I didn't say anything. I was grateful for the Prince's protection but I did not know him. How could I put my trust in appearances again? How could I trust someone so mysterious? None of them even knew who he really was. I also could not help but feel a little afraid of a shadowy figure who was as secret as the
night itself, a masked man who never revealed himself, not even to his most loyal friends, whose very existence was a kept secret from the outside world. What was the reason for his secrecy? And was the reason an innocent one or was there something darker behind it?

But if I could not fully trust this shadowy figure, I felt differently about the seven outcasts. They had taken me in, welcomed me into their home, looked after me, accepted me without question. They were even willing to take risks for me – I suspected that, whatever Rasmus had said, there must be some risk to them in organising for my message to be delivered to Father. These people I was certain I could trust. And for the first time since that terrible moment in the clearing with Drago, I felt truly safe.