Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,42

chair. “Sit down. Saul has agreed to tell us what he remembers of Joshua coming to live with the Panthergard.”

Jesse sat. So did all the Sanguinati. Virgil and Kane remained standing, along with Saul, whose hands shifted into paws.

“I was young,” Saul said. “Not a cub, but still young enough that I was living with my mother, still learning how to hunt. My mother’s sister had an overlapping territory and they often hunted together. Unlike the cats whose shape we can take, the terra indigene are not as solitary.”

Jesse nodded to indicate she understood. No matter what shape they took, the terra indigene were first, and always, terra indigene. They might mate based on the animal shape they could assume, thus reinforcing that form, and that shape might have some influence on their nature over decades or centuries, but that didn’t change the basic fact that they were a species that had been the dominant predators since the first creatures began to walk or fly or swim and had branched out to wear the shapes of other predators in order to remain dominant throughout the world.

“My … aunt … had lost her cub,” Saul continued. “She was wandering, grieving, not really hunting, when a human cub suddenly ran toward her and scrambled under her belly just like a Panther cub who was frightened. She led him to a place where he could hide, and somehow he knew to remain hidden, just like a Panther cub.

“She retraced his trail and heard humans. Angry voices. Harsh voices. Searching for the cub. Then one of the males said, ‘Forget it. He won’t survive out here.’

“She followed them to a place filled with death. Male cubs about the same age as the cub who had found her. That’s what she guessed since she’d never seen human young before. All those cubs had been clubbed to death and left for the carrion eaters.

“The humans would kill the cub if they found him. She’d lost her own cub. My aunt returned to the human cub and led him to her den, then asked my mother for help. The Panthergard didn’t spend time around humans. They didn’t know how to care for a human who was so young. They asked for help from terra indigene who could assume human form and did sometimes go to a trading post. I don’t think my aunt ever told anyone beyond the Panthergard about the dead human cubs. What was the point? She was interested in the living cub.

“My family learned how to shift to human form, learned how to speak human words so that Joshua could learn. We learned what foods were safe for humans and how to cook meat so that he would not get sick. And we taught him how to be Panther. And he …” Now Saul hesitated.

“And he knew things,” Jesse said softly. “What happened when Joshua got cut? A human boy was bound to get cuts and scrapes growing up. My boy certainly did.”

Saul thought for a moment, then shrugged. “My aunt licked the wound clean. It healed. When he got older, Joshua would take pieces of plants and sometimes mash them up with water and put the mess on a wound to help it heal better and faster. He knew things about our territory that we didn’t know, just as we knew things he couldn’t know since he was human and not terra indigene.”

“What difference does it make?” Virgil growled. “Joshua is grown. He survived because the Panthergard helped him.”

Jesse looked at all the terra indigene in the room. “What does he smell like to you? Why would a Panther, seeing a human, not see prey? Why did none of your kind make use of the … meat … left in that place of death?”

Noticing the sharp way Tolya looked at her, Jesse thought, He knows why I’m asking about the boy’s smell. And he suspects the same thing I do.

“If Joshua survived, could there have been other boys in other places who survived because they were raised by someone other than the humans who had been their original keepers?” she asked.

“You’re wondering if other male offspring who were at the breeding farms somehow escaped when they were taken away to be slaughtered,” Tolya said.

“Yes,” Jesse replied.

“Why kill the males?” Stazia Sanguinati asked. “Wouldn’t you want them to breed with the sweet bloods?”

“One stallion with the traits and bloodlines you want can cover a lot of mares,” Jesse said.“And based on what I saw