Not all chickens were evil. Many of them were quite productive members of bird society. In fact, if chickens could get organized, they would probably be wonderful house guests and throw very pleasant tea parties.
Except for Yaasha’s chickens.
Yaasha’s chickens had the devil in them.
The savage beast writhed and squirmed, furious talons scraping the soft loam. The trembling quills of its mottled wings shifted and stretched in a desperate attempt to break free.
“So much drama.”
Jenny planted her boots on either side of the struggling hen and stood, carefully lifting the enraged chicken with its wings pinned to its round sides. A enraged growl-squawk burbled out of the animal’s beak, made no less malicious by its current predicament.
“Oh, don’t growl at me.” She bent her head to gaze into the angry fowl’s flashing amber eyes. “I’m helping. Yaasha would just throw you in a stew pot.”
The chicken uttered another threatening whine, the pitch of a siren against the harsh staccato of a idling engine. It flailed its talons uselessly, dirty claws grasping at air.
“You’d probably taste terrible, though. Just out of spite.” Jenny stood on her tip toes at the wrought iron gate that secured a fenced-in yard of dirt and grass. She thrust the angry hen over the gate and dropped her inside. “There. Stay put this time.”
The raging chicken flapped her wings and waddled away without a word of thanks.
Rude.
Jenny narrowed her eyes at the pied mix of feathered birds stampeding inside the yard, an undulating flock of panicked pillow stuffing. Fourteen.
Yaasha had fifteen chickens. One was still missing.
Jenny heaved a sigh and turned on her heel, the heavy rubber boot squeaking with the sudden motion. Tracking down Yaasha’s rogue chickens had not been on her list of tasks for the day, but the aging Josharon couldn’t exactly do it herself.
Yaasha’s property lay on the very edge of Chandan Village, as far to the west as possible, pressed up against the extreme angle of the Goladaru Mountains. Not that Yaasha was antisocial, she just didn’t really like people. Or loud gatherings. Or lengthy conversations. Or visiting.
But she did like eggs.
Jenny dragged her dirt-covered palms across the thighs of her homespun trousers as she clomped into the whitewood trees at the foot of the mountains.
“Here, chickie-chickie-chickie.” She poked her head around the rough skin of a whitewood tree as thick as a dinner plate.
The fugitive fowl didn’t answer her.
No surprise. Yaasha’s chickens were known for being taciturn and unfriendly. Not at all like Yasira’s chickens back in the poultry yard at Prism Castle. In comparison, Yasira’s hens were practically chatty and always had something nice to say about whatever Jenny was wearing.
Jenny forged ahead up the mountainside, ears straining for the peculiar whine-squawk of a self-satisfied chicken. The little monster. It was probably clucking happily to itself while it slurped down a knot of slimy earthworms.
Ungrateful fiend.
She took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Jenny paused and rested her palm against the thick bark of an ancient oak tree with massive low-hanging branches spread wide as if to embrace the rest of the forest.
“Hark. That could be her now.”
Rustle, scritch, rustle.
Of course, it might not be the chicken. It could be a Centaur, drooling and monstrous and smelling like rotten eggs. But, more likely it was the chicken—just full of rotten eggs.
There had been more Centaur sightings than normal in the last few weeks, but they had yet to attack any of the outer villages. And Chandan Village wasn’t exactly easy to get to.
So, she decided to believe she was hearing Yaasha’s fugitive chicken.
If it turned out to be a Centaur? Well, she had heavy boots on, and they didn’t protect their kneecaps very well.
Jenny placed her hands on either side of the giant trunk to steady herself, and then she leaped over one of the tree’s protruding roots and landed with a thump. The elusive hen on the other side of the tree croaked unhappily and flapped its wings in panic.
“Gotcha!”
Squawk!
Jenny lunged for the bird, aiming to clap her hands around its wings, but the hen moved too quickly, dashing out of her reach. Jenny seized one of its gnarled legs, and the hen shrieked in anger, flapping and beating its wings against Jenny’s head.
Jenny yelped and covered her eyes as the hen attacked. Its sharp beak pinched her fingers, and Jenny squeaked in surprise, releasing its foot. And the chicken took flight.
Sort of.
It was more of a lop-sided leap-and-flap with a delayed scrabble up the bark of the oak tree, but the bird succeeded in climbing one of the low-hanging limbs and disappearing into the leaves.
“No you don’t.” Jenny finger combed the leaves and sticks out of her blond hair and followed the chicken up the side of the tree and into the higher limbs.
The chicken warbled at her menacingly from somewhere above her head.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jenny called up at it. “Is this really necessary?”
Jenny paused halfway up the main trunk and rested her forehead against the bark.
“Look, Mrs. Chicken, I have a lot of work to do today. We kind of have a big event happening tonight, and I’m supposed to get it all set up. So I really don’t have time to be chasing you through the treetops.”
The angry chirring continued from somewhere to the right of where Jenny clung to the trunk. Jenny slid from the trunk to one of the thick limbs draping over the forest floor.
“I know.” Jenny peered into the leaves and smirked as the red-brown plumage of the demon chicken strutted into sight on a limb opposite her. “Yaasha is an old meanie and only gives you yummy grain. Earthworms and longmint and sharpgrass are much tastier, probably.”
Jenny eyed a branch over her head and spotted a cluster of green oval-shaped oaknuts, and she plucked one of them, careful to not dislodge the seed’s rough brown cap. She pinched the oaknut between her thumb and index finger and narrowed her gaze on the chicken, happily scratching her talons against the bark on the tree limb.
Jenny snapped the oaknut through the air, and it smacked the chicken in the side of its head. The hen startled and tumbled off the limb, wings flapping in terror and claws scratching uselessly at the tree bark as it bounce-bounce-bounced off every limb all the way to the dirt.
Jenny swung off her branch, landed solidly next to the floundering hen, and snatched it up with a cry of delight.
“Ha!” Jenny raised the disoriented hen overhead in triumph. “Hail the victorious chicken wrangler!”
The chicken uttered a sound somewhere between a gasp and a growl.
“Serves you right, pea-brain.” Jenny held the chicken out in front of her as she picked her way down the mountainside back to Yaasha’s poultry-yard. “Maybe you’ve learned your lesson this time.”
By the time Jenny reached the gate, though, the hen began to snarl and squawk indignantly, scratching at her with sharp talons.
“Should have known. Chickens don’t learn.” Jenny dropped the bird on the other side of the fence and wiped her palms on her trousers again.
Overhead, the red-orange rays of sunlight were beginning to arch over the tops of the Goladaru Mountains, the warm light filtering through the leaves and casting speckles of glittery brilliance across the neat stone walkway leading up to Yaasha’s simple wooden hut.
Jenny snatched the basket of eggs she’d gathered earlier off the table where she’d set it before she’d begun her chicken hunt. She had just enough time to make sure Yaasha had everything she needed for the week before she had to meet Yasira and Zyna at the village center.
She settled the egg basket over her arm and stomped the dirt and leaves off her boots as she walked toward Yaasha’s door, long straight lengths of birchwood bound together with leather straps.
Laughter drifted toward her on the wind, and she paused at the latch, glancing over her shoulder toward the sound.
Yaasha’s hut stood apart from Chandan Village, well removed from the rutted path that served as the village’s main road. Not that Yaasha was an outcast. She was just—misunderstood.
Four Josharon youths perched on the rough wooden fence that lined the main road, separating Yaasha’s hut from the rest of the village and the thick branches of the sandalwood grove that formed the center of the village itself. Three of the four Jenny didn’t recognize. Some of the local kits from Chandan Village, no doubt, but the fourth one, Jenny knew.
Kahle. He had the traditional two tails of a Nibe Josharon, with black fur, sharp green eyes, and a long, narrow snout full of sharp gleaming teeth. The eldest kit of Chief Minister Mirwais, Kahle considered himself to be particularly handsome, dazzlingly clever, and undeniably charming.
Unfortunately, in the existence known as reality, he was none of those things.
“Good day, Shara-kuri.” Kahle waved a clawed hand at her, the expression on his furry face smug as his tails whipped behind him.
Shara-kuri. Arrow-girl. The elders of the Josharons had given her the name when she’d taken up archery several years before. A tremendous honor, to be sure. Meg and Danny had both been given names much earlier as symbols of their acceptance within the Josharon Tribes. Even so, it was a title reserved for use by elders—not peers.
Jenny flashed him a smile. No need to be unpleasant, even if he was being rude. “Good day, Kahle.”
He snapped his tails again, his expression turning smug as he nodded his head at Yaasha’s hut. “Back to bother that old tulachor? It’s a good thing you haven’t any tails to steal!”
The other kits with him burst into muffled snickers and growls of laughter. Heat crawled up Jenny’s face.
Rude, rude, rude. The basket of eggs felt heavy hanging on her arm. Maybe she should remind Kahle and his idiotic friends just how she got her Josharon name. She could wipe the smirk off their fox faces from across the road with a hail of eggshells up their ugly noses.
But pelting the Chief Minister’s son with eggs this soon before the festival probably wasn’t a good idea.
I am a fount of grace and mercy. Jenny turned away from the laughter.
He deserved it, of course, but the last thing Meg or Velanna needed tonight was to negotiate a ceasefire or have to convince the Chief Minister that his beloved only son had a big snout.
Jenny ground her teeth until they squeaked. Grace and mercy. She reached for the latch on Yaasha’s door. Look at me. I am peaceful and calm and serene.
“What is it, Shara?” Kahle kept shouting. “You’ll only speak to the crazy tail-stealer?”
Her hand froze on the latch.
Two-tailed rat!
Nostrils flaring, she snatched an egg out of the basket, whirled, and let the egg fly. Kahle yelped the moment he saw her moving and fled, but he couldn’t get away faster than she could throw. The egg splattered against the back of his head, sending shell and yolk spattering into his neatly combed mane, running between his canine ears.
She grabbed another egg, and the rest of them scattered.
“Cowards!”
Jenny scoffed after them. She set the unthrown egg back into the basket and pushed Yaasha’s door open, the warm embrace of wood fire and cumin beckoning her forward while Kahle and his pack of retreated into the sandalwood grove.
I’m probably going to pay for that later.
Balanced on the interior entry steps, she shut the door with a grunt of effort and carefully walked down into the dugout hollow of Yaasha’s living area.
“What’s all the racket outside, Jennifer?” Yaasha snarled from the darkened loft to the right of the entry, her old voice as rough as gravel.
“Hooligans.” Jenny stepped inside the dim hut, maneuvering around the plain wooden meal table surrounded by plush cushions.
“Hooligans!” Yaasha snorted.
But her tone was vaguely pleased.
It was one of their favorite Terran words. She didn’t really know what it meant. Truth be told, Jenny wasn’t entirely sure either. She’d found the word in a dictionary Meg had brought back from the Terran Dimension a month ago, and just the word itself provided a blank canvas for emoting.
Hooligans!
You could say it angrily: Hooligaaaaans.
You could say it cheerfully: Hooooooooligans!
You could say it sadly: Hoohoohooligans!
It was an every-occasion kind of word.
The Josharon tongue didn’t have words like that. Neither did the Celtican language, which was similar to Josharon in many respects. Maybe Velanna’s original language, Jankaida, did, but Jenny didn’t speak that. No one but Velanna and her Andai Master, T’zuman Goltamach, spoke that language. And even if it had fun words to say, Velanna wouldn’t say them.
And T’zuman?
That sadistic little elf didn’t have a funny bone in his body.
Maybe that could be a definition of the word hooligan. Having no funny bones. That way, T’zuman could be a hooligan, and Jenny could think of him that way whenever he was behaving badly. Which was most of the time.
“I have eggs for you, Yaasha.” Jenny announced as she ducked under the loft to the kitchen area of the aging Josharon’s home.
Jenny touched a knob on the wooden wall panel, and the soft white light of an aelon stone switched on under the supports that held up the loft. Yaasha’s kitchen might have been rustic with its coal grill and small clay tandoor, but Yaasha could make better food than even the matrons at Prism Castle with its much larger facilities.
Jenny set the egg basket on the wooden countertop and tucked the eggs into the little box Yaasha kept for them.
With a rustling sound and the creaking of wood, Yaasha slowly descended the ladder on the far side of the loft. As the lights in the hut continued to rise, the shifting shadow cast by Yaasha’s four tails became more distinct.
“How many hooligans were there?” The aged Josharon poked her head around the side of the ladder and flashed a lop-sided smirk.
“Four.” Jenny set the egg basket on the floor and lifted the grate on the stove to check the smoldering coals. “Kahle and his band of bharu.”
“Bah.” Yaasha climbed the rest of the way down the ladder and wrinkled her long, graying snout. “Insolence. Mirwais should have plucked that kit’s tail-fur years ago.”
Jenny giggled and poked at the smoldering coals with a metal rod until the heat around them increased. She lowered the grate on top of them and reached for a small cast iron pot.
“What did you do to them?” Yaasha wrapped a blanket around her thin shoulders and sank into the rustic diwan on the opposite side of the round hut.
Her tails didn’t completely fit under the blanket, but she didn’t seem bothered. Most Nibe Josharon females would have been mortified to let her tails be seen, even by a close friend, but not Yaasha. Yaasha was just too old for such trivialities as modesty.
“I threw an egg at Kahle.”
“Did you hit him?”
Jenny smirked. “Of course, I did.”
Yaasha cackled.
At one point in her life, her long luxurious mane had been jet black. Her fur had been golden brown. Now, both were mostly silver with only a faint hint at the color they once were.
Yaasha coughed into a frail hand and breathed deeply.
Jenny poured water into the small pot and dumped a healthy handful of rice inside, along with cinnamon sticks, cloves, and peppercorns.
“There,” Jenny said. “You will have rice tonight, and as soon as the Ti’uhara Nishani is done, I’ll bring you some curry.”
“You don’t need to mother me, kuri.”
Jenny stopped at the wardrobe on the other end of the meal table and pulled out a second blanket. She walked to the diwan and tucked it around the old Josharon’s shoulders.
“Someone needs to.” Jenny surveyed her work and nodded. “And Yasira is making saag.”
Yaasha snarled under her breath, the light catching in one of her broken fangs. “Saag.”
“Yes, you like saag.” Jenny moved back under the loft to switch the light off.
“Leave it on, if you please.”
Jenny stopped and glanced back at her old friend. “Of course.”
“Come.” Yaasha beckoned her. “Sit. Speak with an old daina for a while.”
Jenny took a cushion from the meal table and sat on it at Yaasha’s side. “You shouldn’t call yourself names. You might believe them.”
“I say what I see.”
“You’re blind, Yaasha. You can’t see anything.”
The old Josharon snickered and grinned big enough to light up her pale eyes. “Why do you care for a withered birakha like me? Hm?”
“Stop saying bad things.” Jenny slapped the old female’s arm gently. “You need help, and it’s good to help people. And even if you say mean things about yourself, I like you.”
Yaasha laughed again and then began to cough. And cough. And cough. Jenny quickly stood and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen. She crossed the hut to the wooden table on the other side of the entry and set the glass of water down. In the dim light, she squinted at the shelves above and beside the table, reading labels until she found malathi.
Jenny grabbed the jar on the shelf and opened it, withdrawing an inch-long segment of the dried licorice root and dropping it into the mortar and pestle on the table. She ground the root thoroughly and poured it into the water, mixing it with a wooden rod and carrying it to Yaasha.
Yaasha drank it gratefully and sagged as the malathi soothed the coughing spell.
“Good,” Yaasha mumbled around a sigh. “You were paying attention.”
“I always pay attention when you talk about your herbs, Yaasha.”
Yaasha closed her eyes. “I am old and weak,” she said, her voice hoarse and fragile. “Never thought I would live this long. No one did.”
“I’m glad you did.” Jenny gathered Yaasha’s hand in hers. “If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten to meet you.”
“Praise be for your good fortune.” Yaasha huffed air out of her nose. Then, the old Josharon ran her gnarled fingers gently through Jenny’s long blond hair, letting the soft strands slide from her claws slowly. “Do me this service, kuri?”
“What do you need?”
“When the Ti’uhara Nishani is ended, come and share the stories with me.” Yaasha’s smile was sad. “I would like to remember your father too.”
Jenny’s heart twisted, tears welling in her eyes. “Of course, Yaasha. I’ll gladly tell you the stories.” She smiled. “I like remembering him.”
Yaasha’s hand cupped the side of her face. “You miss him.”
Jenny’s lower lip trembled. “Every day.”
Yaasha lay back on the diwan and smiled. “Tolan Ittai helped those who could not help him in return. He was like the Azama Saifa. A mighty conqueror among the Tribes. A benevolent warrior who knew no defeat.” Yaasha’s voice grew quieter and quieter. “Yes. You are like him.”
“A mighty warrior?” Jenny giggled. “I just threw eggs at our enemies, Yaasha.”
The Josharon’s smile didn’t fade. “You are like Tolan Ittai. You have the same heart.”
Jenny caught her breath, her throat constricting as it always did at the mention of her father’s name.
A distant bell clanged on the wind, a call to gather at the center of the village. It was time—past time—for her to be leaving.
Yaasha clutched something at her collarbone beneath her robes, and Jenny patted her hand.
“Thank you,” Jenny said with a shake of her head. “That’s the highest praise I can get.” She swallowed hard and dashed the tears away from her hot cheeks.
Yaasha sat up slowly, gripping Jenny’s elbow. “I would give you this.”
Jenny frowned. “Yaasha, you don’t have to give me anything.”
Yaasha reached into her robes and pulled a leather cord from around her neck. Dangling from the cord was an arrowhead carved from obsidian. The old Josharon held it in one hand and searched for Jenny’s face with the other.
“You cannot refuse a gift, Jennifer. Your stiff-necked mother would be displeased, not to mention your irritable sister.”
Jenny smiled. Yaasha slid the leather cord over her head and let the arrowhead fall against her rough work shirt.
“It’s beautiful,” Jenny said. “Thank you.”
Yaasha patted her cheek. “You are stronger than you know, Shara-kuri.” She laid down with a sigh. “Go in peace. Come again with tales of my friend who was lost.”
Jenny stood and replaced the cushion on the table and walked toward the stairs, wiping tears from her face and clutching the arrowhead until its corners dug into her palm.
“Jennifer?”
She paused on the steps and turned back.
“Take the eggs if you need them,” Yaasha called back. “Mirwais’s foolish brat might need another lesson.”