“Ah, yes,” Tass said. “The importance of the ostrich. Of my ostrich. On the second day the blurred man—after killing my people along with two seasoned warlocks I’d hired to defend my property—sat down with Samantha.”

  “He sat down with an ostrich?” I tried not to sound skeptical. It was far more believable than most anything else that’d happened to me since finding the door in my old bedroom.

  “Yes. For the better part of an hour. They seemed to be talking. Or, he was talking and Samantha was frozen. Paralyzed. Occasionally he would pet her. In the end he did her no harm, though he murdered Felne, the woman who’d raised Samantha from the moment she pecked out of her shell. Felne died running out to protect the ostrich. Brought down by foxes made of shadows that rose from the soil.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I don’t approve of the language, but I agree with the sentiment. The important thing, Mr. Hester, is that I believe the blurred man dropped his blur when he was talking with Samantha. I believe she’s seen his true face. I don’t know if that’s meaningful. I have no idea what information she could impart. But I thought you might ask.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I might.” We were only ten feet from the tree. Samantha was still hiding behind it. Now and then her head would poke out from one side or the other.

  “She’s been timid ever since the incident,” Tass said.

  “I guess anyone would be. Even a bird.” I stood wondering what to do. How to activate my ability. Did I just start talking? I heard a rustle in the leaves above us. Looking up, I met the eyes of a cat, looking down. Tass saw where I was looking and glanced up.

  “Oh, that’s Hindrance,” he said.

  “Hindrance?”

  “A markeen. Markeens are winged cats. Hindrance is, I suppose, a part of my menagerie. Though she comes and goes as she pleases. Mostly she pleases to spend her days stealing food from our kitchens.”

  “Is that where the name comes from?”

  “That’s where the name comes from, yes.”

  I stood below, looking up at the cat, well aware that I was emulating the earlier actions of Samantha. Now that I was looking, I could see the cat had wings folded along its sides. Hindrance stalked along a branch, looking down at me, at Tass, at Samantha. The cat yawned. Expansively. Cats yawn very well, winged or not.

  “Hello,” I said to the cat. But I didn’t just speak; I concentrated as I spoke, thinking of a link between us. Thinking of understanding. Communicating.

  “Hello,” Hindrance said. Her voice was a silken rasp. I felt my reality waver. Cats don’t have wings. Cats don’t talk. But, too bad. Here it all was.

  A thought hit me.

  “Can Hindrance talk?” I asked Tass. “Can you understand her?”

  “What? No. Markeens have no speech.”

  I nodded in reply. So it was definitely me. My ability. I looked back up to the cat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Mischief.”

  “Wow. You are such a cat.”

  “Make her go away,” Samantha said, poking her head out from behind the tree. Her voice was watery, but with added ticks of her tongue. I shivered as she spoke. I’d spent the entire walk mentally preparing to talk with animals, but the reality still caught me by surprise.

  “Make her shut up,” Hindrance said, adding a very cat-like hiss.

  “Seriously?” I said. “I have the ability to talk with animals and I find out that you’re all as petty and lame as people? I’ve always thought animals would be full of wise advice.”

  “Why the hell would you think that?” Hindrance asked, mocking me. She flapped her wings and floated down from the tree, bouncing briefly off my head and shoulders before settling to the ground. “The wisest thing I can tell you is that nothing is wise.”

  “Cats stink,” Samantha spat out. “Go away! No hunting! No hunting on the lawns!”

  “Wherever there is a cat,” Hindrance said, winding her way through my feet, “there is a hunt.” The cat looked up to see if I had a comment, but didn’t give me much of a chance before she flapped her wings and took to the sky, a cat in the air, leaving behind a bird that couldn’t fly. Goncourt was a strange world. It would be easy to spend all my time amused or fascinated, but if I didn’t pay attention then I would end up dead, which would not be amusing.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I want to ask you some questions about… a man,” I told Samantha. She walked out from behind the tree. Circled me. Kicked the tree.

  “Hindrance was in the tree,” she said. “That isn’t right. This is my tree. I won’t give it up.”

  “I understand,” I said. Maybe I even did. “But forget the cat. Do you remember the man that sat and talked to you?”

  “Samantha remembers that bad man. Samantha wanted to kick. Could not. Stolen. Frozen. He told Samantha stories about his time in a shell.”

  “A shell?”

  “Egg. Birth egg. He came from egg. You do not all come from eggs. You are the eggless.” Samantha bumped into me. A solid thwack, nearly bowling me over. I couldn’t tell if she was mad. I don’t know anything about how ostriches interact socially. Maybe she was challenging me to a fight. Maybe it was a greeting between friends. I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with mating.

  “We don’t have eggs, no,” I told her.

  “Except the eggs you steal. Upright thieves. Featherless wings that grab. No flight. That cruel cat laughs that I cannot fly.” Her voice held sorrow, and even what I think was a sob.

  “I cannot fly,” the ostrich whispered.

  “Me either,” I said.

  “No, Eggless, you cannot. The man from Farmhaven could not, either. He killed my eggless mother. Shadows leaked from soil. Chewed her. I miss her. My legs ache. I want to kick the Farmhaven man until the eggshell of his head crumples.” Samantha raced around both Tass and I as she spoke, the circle widening as her anger grew, until she was racing around the tree as well, her little wings held out to her sides, pumping, flapping.

  “Farmhaven?” I asked her. But it was Tass who answered, after grunting like he’d been struck.

  “Farmhaven,” he said. “Why did you mention Farmhaven?” He couldn’t understand anything of what Samantha and I were saying. Our language was a mystery to him.

  “Samantha was talking about, I think, the blurred man. She says he’s from Farmhaven. Where’s that?”

  “A small town west of here. A day’s travel, and for not much. A farming town, but the soil’s bad. There’s no more than fifty houses in Farmhaven, and less people than that. It’s a dying community.”

  “I guess that’s where I’m going next,” I said.

  “You’re stepping in my poop,” Samantha told me. With her watery voice, I couldn’t tell if she was apologetic or amused.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  I wanted to leave for Farmhaven immediately, but couldn’t find Molly. Asking around, I was eventually told that her sparring battle against Roth, the weapon’s master, had ended with Molly dazed and Roth unconscious. The crowd had vied for the right to splash water on their faces, a celebration and a tradition in the sparring grounds. The honor had gone to a young man named Holdfast. He’d laughed when he’d splashed water in Roth’s face and was rewarded with effusive sputtering on the weapon’s master’s part. Everyone else had laughed when Holdfast had splashed water in Molly’s face and was rewarded by having her kick him in the dick.

  “Where’s Molly now?” I asked Holdfast, who was a strapping man of the type you see in pastoral scenes doing things like carrying hay bales or chopping down trees. He answered in a higher-pitched voice than I’d expected, but maybe Molly’s boot was still in effect.

  “I assume they’re fucking,” he said. “They do that. The battle always gets them going.” He pointed to a tower window. It was open. Three stories up. No glass. Just shutters thrown wide. Now that I was paying attention I could hear a man grunting with a cadence that was almost a chant. I could hear Molly laughing. Both the grunt and the laughter were low and guttural. A collie dog with matted hair came and sat next to me. It leaned its head against my lap and looked at me with its big dog eyes as I listened to Molly’s laughter.

  I wasn’t sure if I was glad that I’d already used my Speak With Animals ability for the day. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear what the dog said.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Gerik chewed on a twig as we spied on the village of Farmhaven. There wasn’t much to see. The largest building was two stories tall, towering over the others and best described as a barn that couldn’t decide how to collapse. The rest of the buildings were squat, and not designed by master architects. They had grass roofs and resembled dirt-covered mushrooms, each of them with attached animal pens. You could’ve made a case that it was a village for people and their sheep, or possibly the other way around. If anybody in the village specialized in building repair, they hadn’t reported for duty in decades.

  Gerik and I sat atop a hill, but beneath a monstrous tree similar to an oak, with acorns five times the size, covered in spikes. Now and then one would drop to the ground. Gerik had a leather helmet for protection, but I didn’t have anything but luck. At one point a spindly sort of caravan rattled past, three wagons and one guard who looked like he’d shriek if a gopher ran across the road. The lead driver nodded as they passed. I’d thought they’d stop in Farmhaven, but they didn’t. They just rolled on through.

  “Doesn’t much seem like we’re hiding,” I told Gerik. We were supposed to be watching the town from hiding, seeing what there was to be seen.

  “Sometimes the best hiding is not hiding at all.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t really mean anything.”

  “Not much ever does.”

  “I should’ve known better than to argue with a man chewing on a stick.”

  “Time’s like those, only the stick wins,” Gerik said.

  “Philosophy is the sister of bullshit,” I told him. We went silent for a time. I scanned the village, looking for any telltale signs that a homicidal maniac lived there. Molly and Fridu were down by the village well. Molly had stripped her chest half bare and was washing herself with the water, pouring cups of it over her hair, her arms, her chest and back, acting like a woman who didn’t favor either the heat or any sense of modesty. She was drawing all the attention in Farmhaven. All eyes on deck. Except Fridu’s. She was watching the rest of the town. Gazing. Calculating. Same as me and Gerik.

  “You see this?” Fridu asked. She was a couple hundred yards down the hill, standing next to the well in the tiny valley where Farmhaven had taken tenuous root, but we were connected by magic and it sounded so much like Fridu was whispering directly into my ear that I unconsciously pulled back. I covered up my idiocy by pretending to brush away a fly.

  “See what?” I asked. There was nothing to be seen.

  “Walk a little to the west,” Fridu said. I stood and walked a little to the west. The new angle revealed a few other things about the withering village. A couple more sheep pens. A pair of dogs fucking in a desultory manner. Two boys playing catch with an old doll’s head. And a pen filled with three ostriches.

  “Ostriches,” Gerik said. There was a lot in his statement.

  “Ostriches,” I said, with meaning.

  We came back later, in the dark.