Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,43

yesterday at the saloon, Joshua has too dominant and aggressive a personality to be easy to handle and would have caused too much trouble at a breeding farm. I have a feeling that was true of any male toddler who managed to escape.”

Silence. She felt their anger crawling over her skin like bugs she couldn’t see. So many of their forms mated for life or raised the dominant pair’s young as a pack effort. She’d heard about the abandoned cassandra sangue, had even entertained the idea of fostering one or two of the girls who had been rescued. And everyone had heard about the callous treatment of the infant boys.

“You think Joshua is an Intuit,” Tolya said. “And yet you’ve seen him many times in town with Saul and said nothing about this until now.”

Neither did you. “I didn’t get a feeling about him until yesterday when he said that Simple Life man was a marsh. I knew what he meant. Treacherous. Dangerous. And I had the feeling that women of a certain age and look wouldn’t be safe around that man.”

“Like Barbara Ellen and Lila Gold?” Tolya asked.

She nodded. “Joshua sensed it moments before I did. But I hadn’t sensed Joshua’s nature, which is why I think he’s not Intuit in the same way that I am.”

“Does it matter?” Virgil asked. “He sort of smells like you under the scent of Panther. Well, smells more like you than us.”

Jesse studied the Wolf. “Smells like me?”

Virgil thought for a moment. “Not quite like you. You smell like prey. He … doesn’t.” He looked at Saul.

Saul shrugged. “He didn’t smell the same as the humans at the trading post, but we just figured it was because he was ours.”

“The cassandra sangue don’t smell like prey,” Tolya said. “The terra indigene don’t drink their blood or eat their flesh because they are Namid’s creation, both wondrous and terrible. Their blood was used to create drugs a few months ago; drugs that could make someone so passive they were helpless or make someone so aggressive they would attack and kill without provocation.”

“I remember hearing about gone over wolf and feel-good,” Jesse said. “I hadn’t realized those drugs were made from the blood prophets’ blood.”

“They were—and they affect humans and terra indigene alike.” Tolya looked at the rest of the terra indigene gathered in the room. “I met Meg Corbyn, who lives in the Lakeside Courtyard. Her scent is unlike any other kind of human. She is not prey, despite the allure of her blood. Joshua doesn’t have the same allure, but …” He turned to Saul. “Did your aunt react to Joshua’s blood when she licked a cut or scrape?”

“Not that I remember.” Saul frowned. “I remember her being happy that she had a cub again, even if he wasn’t Panther.” He focused on Jesse. “Why does it matter?”

Jesse’s right hand tightened on her left wrist until it hurt, until she knew there would be a bruise, as she struggled to explain what she was feeling. She usually didn’t have feelings about people she hadn’t met. “If one boy was saved, maybe there were others who escaped, who were found, who were saved by terra indigene who could make room for a young human in their family. Maybe an Intuit family or a Simple Life family found a lost boy and raised him as their own. Maybe someone has found boys like that in the past few months.”

Tolya suddenly tensed, and she knew she’d finally said what she needed him to understand.

“Saul’s family accepted that Joshua sensed things about the world that they could not, and that acceptance may be true for any terra indigene who finds a child like him,” Jesse said. “But it might help them to know that these boys might be the children of cassandra sangue, might claim to see things that make no sense. And I think Intuit and Simple Life communities should be told as well. An Intuit boy adopted by someone in an Intuit village? His abilities won’t be unusual.”

“But an isolated Simple Life community might feel threatened by a child who senses things, who warns of danger before it happens,” Tolya finished. “The humans might think it’s a sign of illness or madness if they don’t know it’s normal.”

Or they might think the child is evil and kill him, she thought. “It could still be a sign of illness or madness, but it might not be. And it might give comfort to the people who