Under My Hat: Tales From the Cauldron by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Anthologies, Fantasy, Young Adult, Childrens
ISBN: 9780375898815
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-08-27T14:00:00+00:00

The birds were singing when I woke, and the mist rose from the brook, pearly in the growing light. The man was still a man, and I watched him sleep, wondering whether I’d dreamed his transformation. The light warmed; the air shivered. Between one breath and the next, the man became a deer lying between the roots of the oak, his legs tucked up under his belly, my shirtsleeve bound around his haunch, and a crimson cord snugged around his neck.

Long lashes lifted, revealing liquid, nervous eyes. Cautiously I stretched out my hand. Cautiously he sniffed my fingers, licked them for the salt, then began to tear at the moss.

We passed a quiet day. I collected branches, bark, and vines, gathered grass and fresh leaves for the deer, shot a rabbit and put it to roast. While I made the litter, the deer nibbled, slept, lapped water from the pannikin, slept again. I wanted to stroke him, but it seemed unfair, when he could not escape.

Sometime during the long afternoon, a horn’s mournful lowing broke the forest calm. The deer started awake, floundered, and tried to rise, blowing and panting with terror. Dodging his flailing horns, I laid my hand on his brow.

“You’ve nothing to fear,” I said. “That’s further away than it sounds, and bearing to the west besides.”

He fell back onto the moss. For a moment I thought he had understood me. But he only mouthed at the leaves again, and I knew he was just a deer.

At sunset I was cutting up the rabbit when a sweet voice said, “Is that rabbit I smell?” startling me nearly out of my skin.

“It is,” I said, and gave him half on a dock leaf. “Eat up. We’ll have to leave before moonrise to make it home before dawn.”

“Home.” He sighed. “I can never go home again.”

I chewed rabbit and swallowed. “Why not?”

“Politics. Religion. Wizards.” He made a face. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I did not know those words, either, so I concentrated on finishing my portion of rabbit and thinking about how best to bind my awkward catch to the litter. It was not an easy task, he being alive and hurt besides. He called me a clumsy slut and I threatened to leave him to die. When he doubted, aloud, that a mere slip of a girl was strong enough to move him, I heaved the head of the litter up to my back and dragged it over the uneven ground at a fine pace, with him calling curses down upon my head with every bounce.

Before long, the curses trailed off and he began to moan. Repentant, I went more gently after that, but by the time I reached my home glade and my cottage, the bandage around his thigh was stained with fresh blood, and the man himself had fainted.

I made a nest for him by the hearth, stanched the wound, packed it with cobwebs, and bound it anew before he woke.

“If you were trying to kill me, you failed,” he murmured.

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