“How do you do that?” a little boy demanded, wiping his runny nose on the back of an already crusty mitten.
By way of answer, Alec fell over onto his back and fanned his arms and legs, making the wings and tail as Illia and Beka had taught him during a winter visit to Watermead.
The children were delighted. Soon there was a large flock of snowbirds on the slope and everyone was dusted with snow.
Everyone except Sebrahn.
“How come your little boy doesn’t play?” the girl, whose name was Silma, asked. Sebrahn was standing where Alec had left him, looking down at the first bird Alec had made.
“He doesn’t know how,” Alec replied. “Maybe you can show him?”
Silma and her friends gathered around the rhekaro, then fell back and flailed around, crying, “You, too! Like this!”
Sebrahn looked to Alec, who smiled and nodded. Sebrahn immediately fell on his back across one of Silma’s birds and slowly imitated what the others were doing.
“He ruined mine!” Silma cried, offended.
“He didn’t mean to.” Alec pulled Sebrahn to his feet and directed him to a patch of smooth snow. “There, do another one.”
Sebrahn fell facedown this time, but made a passable bird.
“Very good!” Alec picked him up and dusted the snow from his coat and leggings, then helped the children make more up and down the hillside.
He’d assumed Sebrahn was doing the same, until Silma asked, “Why doesn’t your little boy have any boots?”
Sure enough, Sebrahn had gotten them off when Alec wasn’t looking. There they lay, up the slope, and there Sebrahn was, barefoot again.
“My mama would be angry if I went barefoot in the winter,” another chimed in. “She says your toes can break off just like icicles. How come his mama didn’t give him any boots?”
“He doesn’t have a mama,” Alec told her, and the words seemed to stick in his throat. Seeing Sebrahn among real children like this, he could no longer hold on to the fantasy that Sebrahn was anything natural. Sebrahn was something else entirely, and no more Alec’s kin than the clouds in the sky.
He trudged up the slope to get Sebrahn’s boots, blinking back sudden tears he didn’t want the children to see.
He picked up the boots and knocked out the snow that had gotten inside them.
Sebrahn had followed him. He stared up at Alec, and then the boots. “Bad.”
“No, they’re not!” Alec growled. Sitting down heavily in the snow, he pulled Sebrahn into his lap and wrestled one boot back on, tying it tightly.
Sebrahn looked up at him and said again, “Baaad.”
Alec understood this time and let out a soft, bitter laugh. “You’re not bad. You’re not anything, except … Except …”
“Are you crying?”
He forced a smile as he looked up at Silma. “No, I just had something in my eye.”
He got Sebrahn’s other boot on and quickly distracted the children by proposing a contest to see who could do the most somersaults to make the longest path in the snow. Sebrahn copied them, and once he’d mastered the basic movement he was off, rolling like a wheel, blond braid flying. Faster than any natural child could go. The others looked slow and clumsy compared to him. The thought filled Alec with a mix of revulsion and guilt. What did he feel for Sebrahn, really? Was it love? Could you love such a creature? Or was it just neediness on his part? Pity? Duty?
Silma came back and squatted down beside him. “You’re sad.”
Alec wished the child wasn’t quite so perceptive. “Maybe a little.”
She reached out and took his hand in her snowy mittened one. “How come you and your little boy has yellow hair? Are you Tírfaie?”
“I’m half Tír. My mama was ’faie.”
“Is she dead?”
Alec nodded.
“Did you cry when she died? Mynir cried and cried and cried when his mama died, and his father cried, too.”
“Uh, yes.” He’d cried after the vision of her death.
“What clan was she?”
Alec was spared answering when a woman in a shawl came hurrying down toward them. “Silma, you come in now.”
“But I’m playing!” the girl whined, still holding Alec’s hand.
The look her mother gave him made Alec gently free himself and stand up. “You’d better do what your mama says,” he advised.
“Can we play with your little boy again?” asked Silma.
“That’s enough of that, Silma,” her mother said firmly. “The rest of you, come with me. There’s hot honeyed milk for you in the kitchen, and apple tarts.”
Sebrahn came up the hill with the rest of them and started to follow them to the house.
The woman cast a meaningful look over her shoulder at Alec, half frightened, half warning. Alec wondered what she’d heard, and how.
Alec sighed, sitting there in the midst of the birds and paths the children had made with him. “Sebrahn, come here.”
Sebrahn squatted down next to him.
“It’s all right. We don’t need any hot milk, do we?” But it would have been pleasant to join the others in a warm kitchen with women bustling around, fussing over them. He missed Kari Cavish, maybe even the way he would if he really were her son. He wished again, more strongly than before, that Sebrahn was really the sort of child who got invited into warm kitchens.
He was sitting there, just staring out at the waves on the lake, when he heard the crunch and squeak of boots on snow behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Seregil coming toward them, bundled up to his chin and carrying a steaming mug in each hand.
Alec relieved him of one and took a careful sip. It was honeyed milk, with a generous lashing of rassos. He gave Seregil a grateful look. “Are you done with the elders?”
“Yes. They want to speak with you next.” Seregil paused. “I saw what happened with the children. I thought you could use a little company first.”
“You thought right.” Alec held the cup in both hands, watching the reflections of clouds drift across the milky surface.
“Don’t take it too hard, talí. People are protective of their children.”
As I am of Sebrahn, he thought. But if he’s no child, then I’m no father.
It made his head hurt. Taking another long sip, he asked, “So, what are the elders saying?”
“So far I’ve done most of the talking. Some of them aren’t convinced there’s no risk, having him here.”
Alec’s heart sank a little lower. He’d felt accepted by many of Seregil’s kin last night, and thought he might make a few friends here, too. He was going shooting with Kheeta and some others later that afternoon. “I thought we were going to be welcome here.”
“We are, for now. But some rumors are spreading already.” He pointed at Sebrahn, who’d already worked his way out of one boot again. “We have to be more careful. The more ordinary we can make him seem, the easier it will be.”
“Ordinary? He never will be that. Not ever. He’ll always be exactly as he is.”
Seregil gave him an odd look.
Alec set his cup in the snow and lashed the boot more securely onto Sebrahn’s foot. The rhekaro didn’t resist, but he began to pick at the laces as soon as Alec was done.
“No!” Alec told him sternly. “Just sit there.” He retrieved his cup and downed the last of the milk, glad of the bite of the rassos burning his throat and belly. “What about Micum? He said he’d go home when we were somewhere safe.”
Seregil took a swallow of his own drink and licked the lingering drops from his upper lip. “He hasn’t said yet.”
“It will be snowing in Skala before long. He’d better make up his mind.”
“About what?” Micum asked, coming down the slope to join them. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Alec.”
“We were just talking about you,” Seregil told him, passing him the cup. “We’re here. We’re safe. You need to go home.”
“Let me be the judge of that, eh? They’re waiting for you three inside. Adzriel sent me out to fetch you.”
Seregil stood up and pulled Alec to his feet. “Don’t worry, talí. They just want to see him.”