He stared up into the sky, and what looked back at him was an image of how he used to be. A very young, somewhat naive boy that had once been very friendly and outgoing, modest and thoughtful. A boy that would spend days wandering the unexplored tracts of the Frontier for no other reason but to see new things. A boy that was much too innocent for his age, whose life had been sheltered more than his parents realized. But he was dead now. There was no way to deny that. Tarrin Kael died the instant that Jesmind's fangs sank into his arm, and the new Tarrin was born. The change had taken time, as the newborn acclimated to new instincts and motivations, but that change was so terribly complete now. He was nothing like he used to be, like the way he remembered. Even if he could go back, to be human again, now it would be a hollow sensation. Too much had happened, had tainted him, and he could never be that way again.
And now he knew it. He'd said it to himself, but maybe some little part of himself wouldn't accept it, had clung to the hope that he could rebuild his life the way it had been. That was gone now. There was nothing left but stark reality, the blaring truth that he was a Were-cat, and that could never be changed. He had been thrown into the inferno, and finally he had admitted to himself that it had burned him.
But there was no comfort in that confession. There would only be the struggle to maintain some shred of his humanity in the face of his animalistic impulses, instincts that made him capable of killing. He'd never believed that animals could be cruel, but in a way they were. They weren't sadistic or evil, but they had little regard for the possible injuries they inflicted on others. The hunter killed to survive. It didn't relish inflicting pain on its prey-it didn't even understand that concept-but it was trained to kill, to inflict pain, from its earliest days. To the Cat, the end justified the means, and that the means may hurt someone else were of no matter.
And he had to live with that. In a way, he didn't have a choice. The Cat forced it on him, had changed him so that that concept of life seemed completely natural. But every time he hurt someone, he killed, it hurt the human inside him. And to isolate himself from that pain, he had buried that part of himself. He had tried so hard to hold onto his sanity, and had succeeded. But to keep from going mad, he had forced himself to sacrifice his humanity, to cast it aside and embrace the animal instincts that were the causes of the madness. He had kept sane, but the cost to him seemed more now than going mad would have been, because at least in madness there would be no feeling of guilt over what he did. Not like it was now. Every life he took brought with it the deep feeling that it was wrong, yet he was totally incapable of stopping himself.
Haley was right. He had truly become a monster. And what struck him hardest was that even now, with his realization and confessions of it, he really, truly, did not care.
There wasn't much left for him anymore. Just his sisters and his friends, and this intangible quest that made less and less sense to him every day. Every time he thought he had overcome what he was, had found a peace within himself, it was stripped away from him, and left him to start anew. This time, it had taken nothing more than an arrogant young man and the word freak.
Sometimes it only took one word.
The wind in his face made it hard to scent the approach of others, but the whispery footsteps that approached him from behind betrayed the presence. By the sound of the slippers and the measure of the stride, he knew it was Miranda. The mink came up beside him and put her hands on the rail, then looked up into the sky quietly. Neither of them spoke for quite a while, simply sharing each other's company. There was little doubt she knew. She was Keritanima's closest friend, and there was nothing Keritanima knew that Miranda didn't find out. Dolanna would have told Keritanima, and Keritanima would tell Miranda. And that put Miranda here. She obviously had something to say, so he simply waited for her to get around to it.
"Are you feeling better?" she finally asked.
"No," he replied in a quiet voice. "Where are the others?"
"Keritanima was very upset, so I put her to bed," she replied. "Allia is with her. I don't know about the others." She put her hand on top of his paw. "There's no need to be alone, Tarrin," she said reasonably. "We can help."
"Not with this," he replied gruffly. "There's nothing you can do, or anyone else." He looked down at the calm water, barely stirred by the lack of wind. "I woke up this morning feeling just fine. Then a single word makes me realize how angry I really am about what happened to me. And then, after that, I stared at myself in the mirror, and realized exactly what was staring back at me. It has not been a good day." He closed his eyes. "I've become everything I was afraid I'd be, Miranda. I'm not a rampaging beast. I'm worse. I'm a cold-blooded murderer, and the real kick is that I don't care. I know what I've become, but I don't care. Isn't that strange?"
"Hardly," she snorted. "I've never seen you kill someone that wasn't deserving. I've seen how gentle you are when you don't feel threatened, how tender you are with children. You're not evil, Tarrin, you're just frightened. And because of that, you react in an extreme way whenever you feel in danger. It's a very basic reaction among animals, and humans and Wikuni, for that matter. It's instinctual. The only thing that sets you apart from us is that you're so powerful."
In a strange way, that made him feel a great deal better. "Thanks, Miranda," he said sincerely.
"We're friends, Tarrin," she smiled. "Outside of Keritanima, Binter, and Sisska, you're my only friend. And I don't let friends go around being all mopey."
"Only friend?" he challenged. "Don't you like Allia and the others?"
"I know them, Tarrin. I haven't decided yet if I like them. They don't really understand me, and I don't bother trying to explain myself. You don't require things like that. You take me as I am, just as I take you as you are. No questions, no regrets." She looked down into the water. "I'm really not a very nice girl, Tarrin. I'm a spy, sneak, thief, and from time to time, an assassin. I have more skeletons in my closet than you ever will. People in my line of work have trouble finding friends, because we're all naturally suspicous and distrustful. But from the first time we met, I just had this feeling that we were going to be friends. Very good friends. And here we are."
"Here we are," he agreed. He put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against him comfortably.
They stood at the rail and stared up into the sky quietly. Nothing more needed to be said.
Despite the fact that Miranda had helped him feel much better about himself, it didn't change his restrictive punishment. For four days, he spent his days in the cabin, and was allowed to come out only at night. And even then he was restricted to his cat form. The days were long and almost insufferable, because everyone was kept up on deck to learn their routines for the carnival performances. They didn't have the leisure to spend time with him until well after noon, nearly sunset Tarrin spent that time the only way he could, reading. Keritanima had brought several books with her, two of which were the Sha'Kari language books. It turned out it that Keritanima had used Sorcery to create written words, and used that the laboriously translate every word of Sha'Kar she knew into the common tongue, and the other way around. The result was a dictionary of the Sha'Kar language, the closest thing to a comprehensive work on the Sha'Kar language that there was. The other book was the original Sha'Kar instruction scrolls transcribed into the book, which she still studied nearly every day. Tarrin didn't understand why she did that. Keritanima had the amazing ability to remember almost everything she read or heard, with an exacting recall that was astounding. Even things read or heard months or years ago were still immediately recalled whenever she needed it. She had admitted that her memory wasn't perfect unless she studied the material a while or she was paying very close attention when she read or heard it, but she had had that book for months. Certainly that was long enough for her.