Close Kin by Clare Dunkle

Author:Clare Dunkle [Dunkle, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-20T00:20:46+00:00

Chapter Nine

Another boring night was almost over. Seylin studied his map to pass the time. He wanted to read the camp chronicle, but he didn't want Sable to start talking about goblins again. He needed to find a time to ask her about that when no one else was nearby.

Rowan opened the door, letting an icy draft in with him.

"We got that doe," he said to Thorn. Irina let out a groan.

Seylin followed the elves outside into the frost and found his little doe, dead. Rowan and Willow had already tied her feet up to the tree branch, and Sable was capably gutting her into a tub. Seylin struggled against his feelings of horror and sadness. That poor little mother, carrying her unborn fawn!

"Good work," said the blond elf to the two hunters. "We're eating well this winter. Get over here, Irina," he barked as the petite elf girl came slouching up.

"Oh, Thorn, do I have to?" she whined. "Why is it always me?" Seylin noticed that it was always Sable, too, but the scarred woman knew not to argue.

"I'll help, Irina," said Seylin. Thorn shot him an irritated glance as he walked away.

Seylin didn't know what to do, so Sable had to tell him, and that made Irina giggle. She couldn't imagine not knowing how to butcher. She'd been doing it her whole life.

"I guess you weren't ugly where you came from, either," she concluded. "I wish you were. Then I wouldn't have to butcher anymore, or haul the kindling, or burn the bones, or empty out the guts tub. We always have to do that kind of stuff because we're the ugliest."

Seylin studied her bright, pretty face, her green eyes and golden, if dirty, hair. "Irina, what's wrong with how you look?" he asked. "What's ugly about you?"

Irina's face clouded over with the unaccustomed effort of thought.

"Oh, you know," she said vaguely, "ugliness. But, anyway, I'm not as ugly as her." She gestured at Sable, who rolled her eyes and kept cutting. This reminded him that he needed to talk to her.

"Sable, why did you ask me about goblins?" he demanded. The black-haired elf paused.

"That's what happened to the woman you loved," she said shortly. "You lost her to a goblin. Your band was doing well, and then the goblins came. It's the only thing that makes sense."

Seylin was stunned by the conjecture. He couldn't deny it. Marak was right: he certainly wasn't fooling her.

"You need to leave," begged the scarred woman. "You must have seen the goblins, but you don't know what they're like. They'll follow you and find us. They'll capture Irina and me, and we'll die down there with them. They use elf women to make monsters. They -- they breed them to monsters, to make more. I'm sorry about the woman you loved. What a horrible way to die."

Seylin looked down at the meat he was cutting, thinking of the woman he loved. Emily had endless fun with her monster babies. A few weeks before he left, she'd been babysitting Bony's twins.

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