12.

Whispers

We moved on. Slowly our surroundings changed. The terrain grew rockier and more treacherous. The stand of pines that had been on our right thinned and finally ended. Every step, for both horse and guide, seemed to be a struggle.

The guide appeared tired. Yet he pushed on, urging the horse around outcroppings of glittering rock jutting so near that both the guide and I had to shift to avoid being scraped.

I studied the wind for something familiar, something knowable, and found nothing. It whispered and moaned but told me nothing of where I was or where I was going.

The wound on my side ached and burned. The crude bandage around my chest wouldn’t let me draw a full breath.

We crossed a chuckling stream, and I realized how thirsty I still was.

I heard the whispering wind, the stream, and perhaps—could it be?—something more.

My name on the breeze.

“Byx.”

I waited, and there it was again.

“Byx!”

I strained to listen but heard nothing else. Was it some echo of my mother’s voice? Did she still call to me from the land of the dead? But all I could hear was the clatter of the horse’s hooves on rock and the guide’s breathing.

You’re not thinking clearly, I told myself. Hearing what isn’t there.

And yet again it came.

“Byx!”

I was hearing, perhaps, what I wanted to hear: someone, somewhere, searching for me. Someone who knew I was still alive.

The wind whispered its eerie music, and another memory came unbidden. My parents had been talking softly, just a few days earlier. They were sitting in the far corner of our makeshift home inside the mirabear hive, whispering about us. About my siblings and me.

They thought we were asleep.

We weren’t.

When it comes to the subject of sleeping pups, parents are strangely skilled at fooling themselves.

“If trouble comes,” my mother said, her voice hushed.

“When trouble comes,” my father corrected.

“When trouble comes,” she continued, “I worry for them all. But especially I fear for Byx.”

I heard my name and startled. Still, I kept my eyes shut and my breathing slow and even. No one feigns sleep better than I.

“Why Byx, love?” my father asked.

“She’s so young. So small.” My mother’s voice trembled. “I had a dream, a terrible dream. They came for us. I dreamed she was the first to die.”

“The first to die.” My father was silent for a long while.

I remembered lying motionless, silent, scarcely breathing, waiting for more.

“I, too, had a dream,” my father said at last, sighing. “Worse in some ways. I dreamed”—his voice caught—“I dreamed she was the last to live.”

“No,” my mother said, and I could hear that she was softly sobbing. “Don’t even think such a thing.”

“They say humans have a word for it. Endling.”

My mother laughed bitterly. “They would have a word for it, wouldn’t they?”

My brother Reaphis, sleeping near the bottom of our tangled pile, nudged me with his foot. “Don’t worry, Byx,” he said. “They won’t waste arrows on a runt like you. You’re not worth the trouble of eating.”

“They don’t kill us to eat us,” my oldest sister hissed. She was the smartest among us, perhaps because she was the best eavesdropper. “They kill us for our fur. That’s what Dalyntor says.”

We’d all heard that rumor many times before. Not that it made it any less painful to hear.

“Are you asleep over there?” my mother called.

We knew well enough not to answer. My parents grew quiet, and so did we.

“Byxer?” my brother Jax murmured hours later. He couldn’t sleep either, it seemed.

“Yes?” I said softly.

“Don’t worry. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you.”

Jax was a year older. He was sweet and silly, and had one violet eye and one green one. He was my favorite, and I was his.

“I’ll protect you, too,” I said.

If I’d said that to any of my other siblings, they would have scoffed. Not Jax.

He reached for my hand.

When I woke up hours later, he was still holding on tightly.