Boelik (9 page)

When it was finished, Boelik motioned for
Ryan to sit by him in front of the fire. He moved the wood and
removed the rods, testing the heat of the metal by the venison with
his hand. “Ow,” he growled, tearing his hand back. “That was stupid
of me. Don’t touch hot metal,” he warned Ryan, taking out his flask
and pouring half of the water onto the rods, cooling them. “We’ll
need more water,” he sighed.

As they sat around the hearth and ate, Boelik
asked, “So, how did that man from the other day find you?”

Ryan swallowed a bite. “Well, I think he saw
me watching his flock. Actually, I was watching the dog work. He
shouted and ran away to his house, and I just ran. He probably
tracked me.”

“
Have you been chased
much?”

“
Not really. My first, um,
ten years, I think, I lived with my da. I remember he killed my ma
when I was little. He kept me inside and treated me like dirt, but
I guess he never had the heart to kill me. He was the only one left
who even knew I existed then.”

“
After that?”

“
He died,” Ryan said with a
shrug. “I took the chance to run away then, and I ended up on the
step of a blind old woman.”

“
What did she
do?”

Ryan’s mouth twitched into a smile. “She
thought I was the stray dog she’d been feeding at first, I think.
She was out in her chair by the door and went to pet my head. It
was pretty quick after I began eating the dog food that was put out
she actually got to petting me, and she said, ‘Oh, you’re a boy?’
And when I didn’t answer she said, ‘Come now, talk to me.’”

“
I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ My
da never took less than sir, and he pounded that and ma’am into my
head. She and I talked for a while, though I couldn’t really talk
all that well. She managed to make me admit that I was alone. Then
she let me live with her.”

“
Let you live with
her?”

Ryan nodded, staring into the crackling fire.
The orange light brightened his face, glinting in his black eye.
“Yeah. And whenever her daughter came by I always hid and stayed
quiet while she brought in supplies and talked with her ma. She
taught me how to talk properly, too: my da only ever taught me the
simple things.”

“
What was the woman’s
name?”

“
Nora.”

“
She didn’t find it strange
that you hid?”

“
O’ course she did. I ended
up telling her that I was afraid of strangers.”

“
She didn’t notice the
lie?”

“
Well, it wasn’t a lie, but
she did know something was off. Actually, that’s probably why she
let me be.”

“
I see,” Boelik said,
taking another bite of deer. “Why aren’t you still living with
her?”

Ryan’s eating slowed visibly at the question,
and it took him a minute before he swallowed. “She, uh… she died,
too.”

“
Long ago?”

“
The middle of
spring.”

Boelik nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“
What about you?” Ryan
asked, turning his gaze from the fire and shaking off his
melancholy mood. “Where did you live before?”

“
Well, I lived in England
until recently.”

“
Before that?”

“
I think it was…Germany,
maybe?”

“
And before
that?
” Ryan continued to stare at Boelik expectantly,
and he sighed.

“
I should start at the
beginning, I think. That’s where all of the important things are.”
He took a deep breath and sighed again, looking despondently at his
meat. Alas, story time would have to interrupt eating
time.

“
Well, to start, I was born
in a land called Nippon—Japan to you—to a demon fox and a Russian
man. My father died after giving me this,” he said, raising the fox
clasp on his cloak more to the light, the gold reflecting onto the
walls.

“
My mother had him make
this cloak with some of her fur and had him dye it, so I’d always
have something to carry around and hide under.”
And always it has been,
he thought, glancing at the
old thing, covered in blood and dirt. It was a good thing his
mother’s fur was difficult to destroy.

“
Later, I was careless and
went into a nearby village to play with another child. Needless to
say, other villagers found me an abomination and chased me back to
my mother. She had to wipe out the entire village.”

Ryan glanced down at himself.

“
I left a few years after
that and sailed overseas to…I don’t even know where. But I found a
little village there and grew accustomed to living in the forest
nearby. I even grew to be happy there, eventually.” Boelik turned
his own gaze to the fire, memories flooding his vision. He closed
his eyes and tried to drown them out so he didn’t fall into a place
he didn’t want to be as he remembered the next part of the
tale.

“
But that did not last as
long as I had hoped. And after that, I started living as a sort of
nomad. Which is what brought me here.” He opened his eyes to look
at Ryan once more.

“
A nomad?” Ryan asked,
lifting his gaze.

“
Someone who travels a lot,
to put it simply. They don’t really stick to one place,” Boelik
explained as he tore into his meat, his story finished. It was
getting cold already.

The two were silent for a while. As the meal
was almost finished, Ryan ventured to say something. “Hey, um,
Boelik?”

“
Ryan?”

“
If those townspeople saw
me, and came after me, would you have to kill them?”

Boelik shook his head. “No. We could both
outrun them in a heartbeat. My mother just knew that those people
would have set the forest ablaze had we run, and she had to protect
it. But that doesn’t mean to be careless,” he added, seeing Ryan
slump a little in relief.

“
I know that. But I wanted
to know ‘what if’.”

Boelik nodded and put his clean rod down.
“It’s good to know ‘what if’. But it’s best to just be careful.
People are afraid of what they don’t understand, and they certainly
don’t understand us. At least, the majority don’t.”

“
There are some who
do?”

“
Of course,” Boelik exhaled
as he rose, putting his rod on the table. “There are those who
would mate with demons, so naturally there are those who would
tolerate us.”

Ryan stared at the empty rod in his head.
“Boelik?”

“
Another question?” Boelik
asked, turning his head. Ryan glanced at Boelik for a moment before
turning his gaze away again.

“
Is that okay?”

Boelik shrugged. “I don’t know unless you ask
me.”

“
Do nomads leave their
friends behind?” Ryan kept his gaze on his rod. Boelik walked over
and put his right hand on Ryan’s head and took the rod with his
other.

“
No; normally they take
them along.”

The two spent the rest of the day talking.
Ryan wanted to know more about what Japan was like—Boelik indulged
him, though he was four hundred years out of date. Boelik wanted to
know more about prey animals (and if there were
any
forests in this country—and there were, much to
his pleasure).

In the end, they both found themselves more
comfortable in each other’s company. When they were ready to go to
bed, Ryan gestured over to his bed of grass-filled potato sacks.
“You can sleep here,” he offered, and the two shared the bed for
the night.

***

Boelik woke in darkness. He held still to
listen for whatever had awakened him, and he heard a ticking noise
like claws on wood. He strained his ears more and heard a snuffling
sound and realized that something must have smelled the deer meat.
Beginning to move, he noticed that Ryan was awake and holding his
breath in fear. Boelik put his furred hand on Ryan’s side behind
him in reassurance, and he heard the boy breathe out quietly.
Boelik let his eyes adjust to the dim light as he stared out at the
source of the noise.

In the slight moonlight filtering through the
solitary window and the door frame, Boelik could make out the dim
form of the creature. It seemed like a big cat, with an even larger
tail. He tapped the wooden floor next to the bed, making it whip
its head around. The muzzle was longer than a normal cat’s, though
just as square.

The creature turned away from the meat and
began stalking towards the two. As its form passed through the
doorway, the moonlight fully illuminated its silhouette. That made
it clear why its muzzle was so large: it had four canine teeth
protruding like tusks from its jaws.

It came over to the bed, tail swishing back
and forth. Its tongue crept out of its mouth to lick its lips as it
lowered itself into a pouncing position. Ryan was holding his
breath again, and Boelik thought he felt him trembling. “I don’t
think so,” he said to the cat, shooting up and darting for a spot
near it.

On all fours now, he shot forward to get
beneath it, twisting onto his back and trying to put his claws
under its chin. However, it had already begun to look down at him
and open its jaws, so instead he found his hand in its mouth.

The beast saw its chance and took it,
clamping its jaws on Boelik’s hand. “Son of a…!” Boelik shouted
before pulling himself back together.
“Die
already!”
He used his other hand to punch the beast between
the eyes. It had little effect, and the beast just clamped harder,
making him cry out.

“
Boelik!” Ryan
cried.

“
Ryan, stay ba—agh!” Boelik
cried out again as the beast stepped forward and put one of its
paws on his chest, the claws digging into his skin, pressing its
weight onto him. He thought he could hear something crack. “Get
off
of me, you stupid beast!”

Boelik kicked out and up, hitting the cat in
the forehead. It snarled at his retreating boot, and Boelik managed
to pull his hand out of its mouth and close to his chest. As it
snapped back and tried to catch his face, he grabbed a tusk-like
tooth with his uninjured hand and used it to redirect the jaws
again and again.

With a sudden shriek, it broke away from
Boelik. He noticed then that Ryan was watching the cat from the
other side, near the door, his eyes wide and his body shaking. The
beast roared and lifted its paw off of Boelik’s chest as it began
to go after him.

“
Oh, no you don’t!” Boelik
growled, grabbing the beast’s foreleg. It whipped its head back
around to snarl at him. Boelik took his chance then.

His injured hand shot out and found the soft
tissue underneath the cat’s jaw and tore into it. The beast made a
gurgling growl at him as its blood dripped onto the floor and out
of its mouth. Boelik didn’t move as his hand was soaked except to
stab deeper. It did not take long for the cat to collapse. Getting
up and removing his claws from the carcass, Boelik saw one of the
metal rods in the creature’s back between its shoulder blades. He
pointed at it and asked Ryan, “Did you do that?”

Ryan blinked back from his own world where
he’d been staring at the body with wide eyes, and looked to where
Boelik was pointing. “Uh? Oh, uh…uh-huh.”

“
Good work. Thank
you.”

Ryan continued to stare at Boelik, and
responded rather blankly. “Uh…uh-huh.”

Boelik gave a little laugh, a sympathetic
smile crawling onto his face. “You really aren’t used to this, are
you?”

Ryan seemed to come back to his senses,
shaking his head. “Uh…no. Not really.” Boelik laughed again, his
laughter turning into ‘ows’ as he folded over and clutched his
injured hand and rib cage.

“
Are you okay?” Ryan asked,
stepping around the cat’s body and coming close to Boelik, hand
outstretched. He was as tall as Boelik now.

Boelik mused as he noticed he could look
straight into the boy’s eyes, now that he was hunched over in pain.
“I’m fine,” he replied, sucking air in between his teeth as his
ribcage throbbed. “But that reminds me…take off those bandages on
your shoulder.” Ryan looked confused but did as he was told.

“
Oh,” he said, seeing that
his wound was healed. Boelik nodded at the result.

“
Good. You heal quickly as
well. Less to worry about. Now, hand me those strips,
please.”

“
But…” Ryan said, glancing
down at the bloodied strips of cloth, “they’re dirty.”

“
Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.
I just need to staunch the bleeding right now,” Boelik replied
calmly, holding his hand where he had been bitten across the
knuckles. Ryan reluctantly handed him the strips, and Boelik
wrapped them around the wound.

After his hand was wrapped, Boelik sank to
the floor. He felt his rib cage and quickly determined it was just
bruised. “Well, that was exciting,” he sighed.

“
Terrifying’s closer,” Ryan
muttered, staring at the creature. Boelik looked at the cat and
over at the empty doorway. He noted that the wood moving was
probably the reason he woke up upon the cat’s entrance.

“
I take it these aren’t
normal?”

Ryan shook his head. “No big cats in
Ireland.”

“
It’s a demon, then. I
thought as much.”

Ryan’s form, outlined by the moonlight, moved
closer to Boelik again and sat on the floor next to him. “What do
we do with it?”

Boelik stared at the carcass and remembered
Dayo’s instructions, not for the first time in his many years of
solitude. “We burn it.”