The Story of Sorrel Read online

  The Story of Sorrel

  Joseph R. Lallo

  2019 © Joseph R. Lallo

  Cover by Nick Deligaris

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  From The Author

  Chapter 1

  The little creature sniffed cautiously along the ground. It had been hours since she’d seen another living thing in this fringe of the desert. Normally, it would be a simple thing to spend days without encountering another soul, but in this moment, it was a hard-won achievement. Even if there wasn’t a whisper or the tiniest whiff, she knew she was being followed.

  She moved low along the sandy ground, testing the dry air and squinting at the setting sun through the wavy heat. Small, cunning paws gripped the shifting ground as she scampered into the shade of a dune. She sampled a breeze with her snout and pivoted her pointed ears. Nothing. Not a sound, not a scent. She swept her tail to and fro and tried to remain calm, but she couldn’t. The giddiness was rising up in her. She’d done it. She’d actually done it. She’d slipped away, lost her pursuer. It couldn’t be more than a few minutes before the sun would drop below the horizon, and then…

  The sand behind her crunched, washing the giddiness away in a wave of panic. She didn’t even waste the moment it would have taken to see what made the sound. She already knew. It was the same beast that had been following her since sunrise. She sprang forward in a desperate bid for escape, but her ragged shirt pulled tight, and she was left dangling just above the ground.

  Her heart rattled in her chest as the creature turned her about. She came face-to-face with it, its sandy-gray eyes giving her a cold, measuring look. No amount of struggling could dislodge her from the clawed fingers that held her. Then, with a slow and deliberate motion, her captor reached out and grazed the clawed fingers of its other hand gently across the cream-colored fur of the little beast’s throat.

  “Slash,” the hunter said. “Dead.”

  “That’s not fair, Mama! How did you find me?” the little creature said, her tone more whiny than terrified.

  “Do not say to me that it is not fair, Reyna.” Her mother set the creature down and smoothed her fur. “Things will not be fair always. And they will never be fair unless you make them fair.”

  “And we don’t make them fair,” Reyna said, her eyes rolling and her voice taking on the singsong cadence of a piece of advice she’d heard a thousand times. “We make them unfair in our favor.”

  “That’s right,” her mother said, nodding. “Now tell me what it is you did not do that you should have done.”

  “I did everything,” Reyna objected. “I knew you were over there, so I kept the wind on that side to blow my scent away from you. And I stayed low and moved between the tall places instead of over them. I did everything.”

  “Everything?” her mother asked, tapping her cloth-wrapped foot on the ground.

  Reyna looked down and saw her own footprints and those of her mother’s.

  “Oh…”

  “It is the easiest thing, Reyna. And the most dangerous. A man cannot smell you. His dogs can, but he cannot. And in the dark or from afar, a man cannot see you. But a man will always see what you leave behind you, so leave nothing behind.”

  “But it’s sand.”

  “If you cannot hide where you go on sand, then you do not go on sand.” She pointed. “That way, there is stone. That way, there is dry earth. That way, there is short grass.”

  “The dry earth was level, there was no place to hide. And the grass is where you were.”

  “Things are not always easy. But if you want to be safe, you find a way. If the only place to go is a place where you leave footprints,” she crouched and swished her tail behind her, “then you do not leave footprints, and the ones who follow will be sure you did not go there.”

  Reyna peered at the sand behind her mother. It wasn’t just brushed aside, it was practically sculpted. With a simple sweep, she’d wiped away the prints. To any but the most trained eye, there was nothing more than a patch of ground swept about by the wind, the same as the rest of the fields and plains.

  “Show me again!” Reyna said.

  “First we get your brother. He did the same. Then I show you both, and then we eat.”

  “So you found him, too?”

  “I found him first. His reason was better. Not good, but better.”

  #

  Sorrel held her two young ones close to ward off the cold. Others might have needed a fire to cook their food and keep them warm, but not her little family. They were malthropes, creatures that shared as many features with foxes as they did with humans. A raw meal was no problem at all, and a thick pelt with a few layers of clothes would keep all but the harshest winds and most frigid nights at bay. Such were some of the benefits of their race. Some of the few benefits.

  She watched her children crunch messily through the scrawny desert hares that served as their evening meal. Her own meal had been a few mice she’d caught during the day, barely morsels, but enough for today. Better that the twins get the larger meal. They were growing like weeds. Wren was a bit taller than Reyna, but if they continued to grow as they had over the last few months, within a year or two they would both be taller than their mother. That was good. They got that from their father. In fact, but for having a shade or two darker fur, Wren was the spitting image of his father. His eyes were uncannily similar, and already he had the beginnings of the wiry-strong build. Reyna took after Sorrel, fur the color of wine and cream and a body built for sneaking. She was clever, too, but with enough curiosity to get her in trouble if she wasn’t careful.

  Sorrel tugged at the hoods she’d fashioned for them, pulling them up over their pointed ears and smoothing them down. She smiled. That, at least, was one benefit of how quickly they were growing. She was getting plenty of practice with her needle and thread. It was so much easier to steal a bolt of cloth and some thread than to steal clothes that would be small enough that her little ones wouldn’t trip over them but not so small they wouldn’t outgrow them in a few weeks.

  “I can’t believe you caught these,” Reyna said, her cheeks stuffed with a healthy mouthful.

  “Uh-huh. Both of them at the same time!” Wren said proudly. “I could have had three, but I was afraid these two would get away if I went for the third.”

  “Your brother is a good hunter, but he chooses bad times to hunt,” Sorrel said. “He charged right out into the open when he chased these. It is why I caught him so fast.”

  “It was just the game, Mama,” Wren said. “I knew it was you that was after me.”

  Sorrel narrowed her eyes.

  “Wren!” Reyna hissed in reprisal.

  “Why do we play the game?” Sorrel asked the question with all of the power and solemnity of the beginning of a prayer.

  “We play the game so that we will know how to keep away from those who would kill us,” the twins replied
together.

  Sorrel continued. “And who wants to kill us?”

  “Everyone, always,” they replied.

  “And how do we stay alive?”

  “By being faster,” Wren said.

  “And by being smarter,” Reyna said.

  “Why?”

  “Because being faster doesn’t help if you don’t know where to run,” Wren said.

  “And being smarter doesn’t help if you can’t do what needs to be done,” Reyna said.

  “And for as long as we’ve played the game, what has happened?”

  “You catch us.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “You’re faster and smarter than us.”

  “And what does that mean.”

  “Someone else could be faster and smarter than us.”

  “And if they catch you?”

  The twins drew their fingers across their throats. “Dead.”

  “That’s right,” Sorrel said, mollified. “Don’t you forget that. And Wren, you play properly, or what happens to you isn’t my fault, it is yours.”

  “I know, Mama. Sorry, Mama,” Wren said, eyes cast down.

  “You caught a meal for you and your sister. That is enough that you should not be sorry. But learn from it. Always learn from it.” She leaned low and uttered in a conspiratorial whisper, “And what do we learn at suppertime?”

  The twins playfully tried to pull away, knowing what came next, but Sorrel was too quick. She wrapped her arms around them and hugged them tight, tickling their bellies through the layers of earth-tone fabric they wore. They giggled and squirmed.

  “Fill a hungry belly and grow up strong,” Sorrel said. She released them and tousled their hair under their hoods. “Fill a hungry mind and grow up smart. Do both and you’ll live long enough to do the same for your young. Now come, in front here.”

  Sorrel raked their unruly hair into submission and cleaned their faces with a few quick licks. With the children thus tidied up after supper, she threw her outermost cloak around them and pulled them tight to her. “Today you both lost the game, but Wren lost first, so Reyna chooses the story.”

  “For once,” Wren teased.

  Reyna looked sagely into the middle distance, considering the matter carefully.

  “If you don’t know what to ask for, I do,” Wren blurted.

  “No! I earned it,” Reyna said. “I just want to pick something good.”

  “This is good. This is a thing you should do. But do it quickly, because we should sleep,” Sorrel said.

  “Um… Did you play the game when you were little? Or is it just for us?”

  “It is not for you. It is for all of us. When I was your size, every day I played the game. And all the time. And though it was the same, it was not the same. Because sometimes it was mother or father. But sometimes it was someone else. Sometimes the game was not a game. And that is how always you must treat it.”

  “Why was it sometimes not a game?” Reyna asked. “Why was it sometimes a real hunt?”

  “It was not so long ago that we were there. You should remember it.”

  “The place before the boat?” Wren said.

  “Yes. That place. That is what it was like. The place it was so dangerous I did not even let you play the game.”

  “That’s where you grew up?” Reyna said.

  “It is and it isn’t,” Sorrel said. “I grew up someplace different. Someplace colder. But it was much the same. Many men. Many things that are as bad as men. Man-type things. And always wanting to hunt a malthrope.”

  “But you grew up strong,” Reyna said. “You were the fastest and the smartest.”

  “No, I was not. Always there is someone who is faster. Always there is someone who is stronger. The strongest thing you’ll ever see fears something.”

  “But you never lost the game,” Wren said.

  “Who told you this, that I never lost the game? You would not be here if I did not lose the game. We would not be in this place if I did not lose the game.”

  Reyna shook her head, hair tumbling into her eyes again. “I don’t understand. You said where you came from if you lost the game…” She drew her finger across her throat. “Dead.”

  “Most times this is true. But sometimes the beings above us, they have other plans.”

  “So there was someone faster and smarter than you?”

  “Smarter than me? No. Not in the ways that matter. But on that day, and only that day, yes, he was faster.”

  “Oh… oh… You’re talking about Papa,” Reyna said.

  “That is right, little kit,” she said, nuzzling her young one.

  “We know that story,” Wren said. “That doesn’t count as the story.”

  “I know. I know the story I want,” Reyna said. “Why didn’t Papa come along?”

  “Yeah… Yeah, he was in the boat with us at first. Why didn’t he stay?”

  Sorrel released a breath through her nose. “Teyn was… I said he was not smart. That is a part of it. But there is more… What are the words?” She shut her eyes and twisted up her face, searching her mind for the proper way to phrase it.

  “Why don’t you just speak Crich, Mama?” Reyna asked.

  “I do not speak Crich because today I speak Tresson. And also you. For practice.”

  “But you’re bad at Tresson,” Wren said. “We speak Tresson better than you.”

  “Yes! I know this, because I make sure the way you are speaking is a right way to be speaking.” She paused and attempted the sentence more slowly. “Because I make sure you are speaking the right way. It is easier to learn right than learn wrong and change.”

  “But why do we learn all these languages?” Reyna asked. “There’s only ever the two of us. We only ever talk to each other.”

  “Because that is the way it is today, but tomorrow? Maybe not. What did I say? Feed a hungry mind. So we practice Crich, and we practice Varden, and we practice Tressor language.” She shut her eyes tight. “We practice Tresson. If I knew how to speak the elf language and the dwarf language, we practice that too. So you, my little ones, are smarter than me. … Now what did I talk about before this?”

  “You were saying why Papa didn’t come with us.”

  “Yes, yes. And it was a good reason, I think. Who are we most afraid of? Who do we play the game to be ready for?”

  “Man,” Wren said.

  “And elves,” Reyna said.

  “And dwarves,” Wren added.

  “And—” Reyna began.

  “Yes, yes. It is all of this. It is all the same. These are the ones we fear. And I said just now that always there is someone smarter and faster and stronger. Someone they fear. Teyn… Teyn decided there were things he had to do. Things that if he did not do, no one would. It was important to him. Maybe more important than me, maybe not, but I did not wait for him to decide. I let him go. And then, just before the boat, I lost the game again, and he won. And he was different. Now he was the thing man feared. And man hates the things man fears. Even more than man hates you or me. Even more than man hates any malthrope. I think… I think maybe it was important that he be that thing. Man deserves a thing to fear. And to be that thing, he made himself faster. And stronger. … And I think also smarter. Because he knew that what he was, he could not stop being. And that thing would bring dark things with it. He decided it was best that we be safe, and for us to be safe, we could not be with him.”

  “That’s silly. Even if he couldn’t keep us safe, you could,” Wren said.

  “I am not so sure this is so. Something in him changed… He was… more… Always his eyes had pain. I do not know a malthrope with eyes that don’t have pain. But when I saw him last… his eyes... he had seen things. He had done things. The things that could darken someone as strong as Teyn… if they left their mark on him… if for a moment I thought such a thing might find its way to you through him… no. Many things he did wrong, but this he did right.”

  Sorrel took a slow breath
and pulled her arm from Wren to wipe her eyes. “This is not a story. If you do not want a story, then it is time for sleep.”

  Wren hissed across to his sister. “Ask for the story about the purple stones.”

  “If you want your story, you win the game,” Sorrel said.

  “No, Mama. I like that story too,” Reyna said.

  The little malthrope tugged a cord around her neck to reveal a palm-size purple stone, polished smooth and wrapped in a carefully woven net to hold it in place. Sorrel cupped her daughter’s stone pendant in her hand. As she stared at it, a smile came to her lips, and a dash of pain came to her gaze.

  “Always I tell you this story.” Sorrel tugged Reyna’s shirt out and tucked the stone away. “You know it by heart.”

  “Please?” they said in unison.

  Sorrel sighed. “Very well. Next time, you should pick from me a different story.”

  She gathered them a little closer. When she spoke again, it was with a sweeping, airy tone. Her twins wriggled closer and shut their eyes to enjoy the scenes the words would paint.

  “A long time ago, before my father or mother or their fathers or mothers were born, there was a little malthrope named Swift.”

  #

  If there was ever a malthrope better than all the rest, that was Swift. He could run very fast, but that was not the reason he was called Swift. They called him Swift because he could think very fast, something every good malthrope should learn to do. He lived in a place called the Great Forest. It was a wonderful place, filled with fat deer and foolish hunters. Swift lived his life the way a malthrope should. He stalked and he hunted. He ate and he rested. When danger was near, he hid, and when danger found him, he ran.

  One day, Swift was drinking from his favorite place. It was a stream where the water was clear and cool and the elves were far, far away. Only today, something was wrong. Today, the elves were not far away. There were many of them, and they were close. Too close. They used evil magics to get near this place, or else the sharp scent and keen hearing of Swift would have let him know they were coming for him.