Magdy stared at me, then stomped off into the gloom, toward the village. Enzo gave me a strange look and then followed his friend.
"Perfect," I said, and squeezed my temples with my hands. The monster headache I was on the verge of had arrived, and it was a magnificent specimen.
"We should return to the village," Hickory said to me.
"You think?" I said, and then stood up and stomped off, away from it and Dickory, back to the village. Gretchen, suddenly left with my two bodyguards for company, was not far behind me.
"I don't want one word of what happened tonight to get back to John and Jane," I said to Hickory, as it, Dickory and I stood in the common area of the village. At this time of night there were only a couple of other people who were loitering there, and they quickly disappeared when Hickory and Dickory showed up. Two weeks had not been enough time for people to get used to them. We had the common area to ourselves.
"As you say," Hickory said.
"Thank you," I said, and started walking away from them again, toward the tent I shared with my parents.
"You should not have been in the woods," Hickory said.
That stopped me. I turned around to face Hickory. "Excuse me?" I said.
"You should not have been in the woods," Hickory said. "Not without our protection."
"We had protection," I said, and some part of my brain didn't believe those words had actually come out of my mouth.
"Your protection was a handgun wielded by someone who did not know how to use it," Hickory said. "The bullet he fired went into the ground less than thirty centimeters from him. He almost shot himself in the foot. I disarmed him because he was a threat to himself, not to me."
"I'll be sure to tell him that," I said. "But it doesn't matter. I don't need your permission, Hickory, to do what I please. You and Dickory aren't my parents. And your treaty doesn't say you can tell me what to do."
"You are free to do as you will," Hickory said. "But you took an unnecessary risk to yourself, both by going into the forest and by not informing us of your intent."
"That didn't stop you from coming in after me," I said. It came out like an accusation, because I was in an accusatory mood.
"No," Hickory said.
"So you took it on yourself to follow me around when I didn't give you permission to do so," I said.
"Yes," Hickory said.
"Don't do that again," I said. "I know privacy is an alien concept to you, but sometimes I don't want you around. Can you understand that? You" - I pointed at Dickory - "nearly cut my boyfriend's throat tonight. I know you don't like him, but that's a little much."
"Dickory would not have harmed Enzo," Hickory said.
"Enzo doesn't know that," I said, and turned back to Dickory. "And what if he had gotten in a good hit on you? You might have hurt him just to keep him down. I don't need this kind of protection. And I don't want it."
Hickory and Dickory stood there silently, soaking up my anger. After a couple of seconds, I got bored with this. "Well?" I said.
"You were running out of the forest when you came by us," Hickory said.
"Yeah? So?" I said. "We thought we might be being chased by something. Something spooked the fanties we were watching and Enzo thought it might have been a predator or something. It was a false alarm. There was nothing behind us or else it would have caught up with us when you two leaped out of nowhere and scared the crap out of all of us."
"No," Hickory said.
"No? You didn't scare the crap out of us?" I said. "I beg to differ."
"No," Hickory said. "You were being followed."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "There was nothing behind us."
"They were in the trees," Hickory said. "They were pacing you from above. Moving ahead of you. We heard them before we heard you."
I felt weak. "Them?" I said.
"It is why we took you as soon as we heard you coming," Hickory said. "To protect you."
"What were they?" I asked.
"We don't know," Hickory said. "We did not have the time to make any good observation. And we believe your friend's gunshot scared them off."
"So it wasn't necessarily something hunting us," I said. "It could have been anything."
"Perhaps," Hickory said, in that studiously neutral