The first three days after training began passed almost quietly.
Tom rose before full light, worked for as long as his strength allowed, then returned to ordinary tasks and made as if nothing had changed. By evening his body ached a little less, but that brought no particular pleasure. It simply meant he could now push himself harder.
On the fourth morning, the quiet ended.
At the table his father was telling Jack, grimly, that the Hailes had had two of their hens killed in the night and a third taken clean from the yard.
— A fox wouldn't take like that, he said, breaking his bread. — And their dog didn't make a sound. That's what I don't like.
Jack shrugged.
— Might be a polecat.
— Polecats don't tear boards.
Tom raised his head.
He had no memory of this from his previous life. Not because he kept track of every chicken in the county, but because he was already listening too carefully to things like this. After the wood and the grey creature, any small piece of trouble needed checking.
His mother said nothing. Only glanced briefly at Tom, as if she had noticed him sit up too sharply.
He dropped his eyes to his bowl and made himself finish the porridge.
An hour later his father sent him and Michael down to the lower pen to see whether the rain had broken the old ditch at the boundary.
Michael walked beside him, swinging a stick and talking about whatever came into his head: the Hailes' dog, a broken wheel, the time Jack had made him mend the fence instead of doing it himself. Tom listened with half his mind. A great deal more of it was occupied with the wind.
Or rather, with what was wrong about it.
The damp autumn air smelled of earth, wool and cold water from the ditch. Beneath that lay something else: a faint, fetid trace, already familiar from the copse. Not strong. Not fresh. But close enough to make him tighten at once.
Tom slowed his pace.
Michael looked back.
— What?
— Nothing. Mind where you step.
Michael snorted but didn't argue. Tom didn't know what the other boy had heard in his voice, but it was enough to stop him asking questions.
They reached the ditch. The water in it stood dark, with a rusty gleam at the edges. The earth at the crumbled bank had indeed given way, though not as badly as his father had feared. Tom walked along the length of the ditch, testing the softer spots with his boot, and saw the track almost at once.
Not a clear impression, as in the wood.
More a blurred groove in the wet clay at the very edge, as though something low and fast had slid down the bank and then hauled itself back up.
Tom crouched.
The smell was stronger here.
Behind him Michael was poking at a clump of old grass with his stick.
— Tom, look, there's wool stuck here.
Tom stood too quickly.
On the lower rail hung a tuft of dirty grey fur. Not a sheep's. Coarse, with a dark sticky clump at the root.
Blood.
Old, but not by much.
He took the clump from Michael and dropped it on the ground.
— Get back from the fence.
— What's got into you?
— I said, get back.
Michael blinked and obediently stepped away.
Good.
Tom looked about him.
He didn't like the open ground by the ditch. To the left ran a low stone wall, and beyond it began a stand of blackthorn and an old equipment shed that hardly anyone used. If the creature had been here at night, during the day it might be sitting either in the bushes or under the shed roof, where it was dry and dark.
In his previous life he would simply have noted the track and called his father.
Now that wasn't enough.
If the grown-ups raised a hue and cry, came out with pitchforks and dogs and lanterns, the creature would flee. And then return somewhere else, at some other hour. But if it had already grown bold enough to approach the yards, waiting any longer was foolish.
Tom looked at his brother.
— Go home.
— Go yourself.
— Michael.
The other boy jerked a shoulder but stubbornly held his ground.
Tom breathed out.
— Tell Father the lower edge has sunk, but it's holding for now. And say they shouldn't let the hens out of the yard until it gets dark.
— Why?
— Because I say so.
Michael stared at him with open irritation, very close to anger.
For a moment Tom understood he had overstepped. You don't give orders like that to an older brother, even when you're right.
He softened his voice.
— Just go, all right? And quickly.
Michael hesitated one second longer, then turned and ran toward the house.
Tom waited until he had disappeared over the brow of the hill, and only then moved toward the shed.
He walked slowly, not hiding but making no extra noise. The stick was in his right hand, the knife at his belt. Too little, always too little. But there was no choice.
Under the shed roof it smelled of rotten straw, old wood and rusting iron. And — that same sweet-fetid odour he had begun to hate.
Tom stopped a few paces short of the darkness under the eaves.
Nothing.
An empty barrow.
A pile of old boards.
A broken yoke against the wall.
And a silence that pulled the skin tight on the back of his neck.
He was just about to take another step when something splashed behind him, right at the ditch.
Tom turned in an instant, and still barely managed.
The grey creature had come up from below, out of the crumbled bank — not from the shed at all. The same sort as in the copse, but larger, or simply hungrier. It moved low, almost hugging the ground, and it was heading not for him.
For the path Michael had taken.
Tom threw himself across.
The stick caught the creature across the muzzle with a dry crack. The blow was passable, but his body hadn't fully pivoted, and the recoil shot painfully through his shoulder. The creature yelped, swerved, then lunged again.
This time at him.
He got the stick across in time. Claws raked along the wood, tore off a strip of bark, and nearly wrenched it down. The thing's strength was nothing like a dog's. He stepped back, once more, feeling his boot slip on the wet clay.
Don't fall.
He hauled the stick toward himself, knocking the muzzle aside, and kicked out at the same moment.
Too slowly.
The creature dodged the boot, slashed at his breeches and sprang back toward the stone wall. Its eyes were a muddy yellow, without fear and with almost no intelligence.
Tom had seen this kind before. One of those small dark things that came to settlements and took small livestock until people understood the trouble was not a fox.
He drew the knife.
The creature dropped low.
Tom shifted left, trying to keep the ditch between them, but the ground was bad: wet, cramped, too many uneven patches. His older body might have worked here. This one couldn't.
The creature sprang.
He stepped aside, nearly well enough, and slashed downward. The blade caught the neck, but shallow. The thing hit his thigh, knocked him off balance, and they both went rolling across the wet grass toward the lip of the ditch.
Dirty water splashed into his face.
The stick flew from his hand.
The creature clawed at his jacket, trying to twist clear for another strike. Tom drove his elbow into its jaw — more from fury than calculation — and for a moment pinned it to the ground with his knee.
That was when the knife proved useful.
Not neatly.
Not cleanly.
Just quickly.
He drove it upward, under the forelimb, to the soft spot he had once seen in a creature of the same sort. The thing convulsed so violently it nearly wrenched the knife from his fingers, shrieked, and thrashed in the mud.
Tom scrambled back, breathing hard.
The creature lunged once more, scraped its paws, then suddenly went limp and slid sideways into the ditch.
The water around it darkened at once.
Tom stood motionless for several seconds, not taking his eyes from the grey body.
Then he took a step closer.
Then another.
The knife stayed in his hand.
The creature did not move.
Only then did he let himself breathe out properly.
His hand shook.
His thigh throbbed.
The skin of his left palm had been torn off, and black mud was already working its way in.
But worse than all of that: footsteps sounded on the path again.
Tom looked up.
Michael.
Hell's bells.
Michael was already running back, and judging by his face he had understood enough to be frightened.
— Tom!
— Stay there! Tom snapped.
This time his brother actually stopped dead.
He was not looking at Tom, but at the ditch.
— What is that?
— A boggart-thing, said Tom, before he had managed to think of something safer.
Michael went pale.
— I'll fetch Father.
— Now you can.
Michael set off at a run as if he had only been waiting for permission.
Tom wiped his face with his sleeve and looked at the creature again.
So there it was.
Not a rumour.
Not a track.
Not a bad feeling.
Something real, dead, lying by a farmhouse ditch.
And in his previous life this had not been here.
Or had not come this early.
He didn't know which was worse.
A few minutes later his father and Jack appeared on the path. Both were moving quickly — one with a pitchfork, the other with a heavy club. Behind them, a little way back, Michael hovered. Tom had already put his knife away, but concealing what had happened was impossible.
His father saw the body first and swore under his breath.
— What in the devil's name is that?
— It came up out of the ditch, said Tom. — Was heading toward the yard.
That was nearly accurate. The ditch at least was accurate.
Jack looked from the dead creature to the mud on Tom's breeches.
— You went at it on your own?
Tom nodded.
His father looked at him in a way that had not yet decided between anger and simple disbelief.
— Have you no sense? he said at last.
— If I'd let it go, it would've come back.
That came out too quickly, and too firmly.
Jack frowned.
But nobody argued, because arguing beside that grey carcass was uncomfortable even for his father.
He prodded the body with the pitchfork.
— Not a fox, that's certain.
— And not a dog, said Jack.
Tom said nothing.
They did not yet know exactly what to call the creature. And perhaps that was for the best. The fewer words put to it, the slower the talk would spread.
— We'll burn it, his father decided. — Not leave it here.
Jack nodded.
When the two of them hauled the body to a hook and rope, Tom stepped aside and only then realised his heart was still beating far too fast.
Not from fear.
More from delayed reckoning.
If he had reached the ditch a quarter-hour later, the creature would have been on the path when Michael was coming back down it. Or not Michael — someone else. Or perhaps it would not have come so close at all, if he had not begun to disturb this line of events earlier, if he had not wounded the first creature in the wood, if he had not made them change their paths.
He didn't know.
And could not know.
But one thing had become entirely clear.
The future was not changing somewhere off to the side.
It was already answering.
His mother noticed his hand only in the evening, when he was washing at the tub behind the house.
This time there was no separate conversation. She simply came over, looked at the scraped palm and the mud under his nails, and asked:
— That a branch too, was it?
Tom nearly laughed.
— No.
She nodded, as if she had expected nothing else.
— So at least once today you decided not to lie.
He looked at her.
In the dusk her face was calm, but too attentive for a casual remark.
— Father told you about the creature? Tom asked.
— Father told me about the creature by the ditch. The rest I can see for myself.
She took his hand, cleaned the graze quickly, and let go.
— Next time don't go at it on a wet bank as though you've two spare lives to go through.
Tom went still.
The words were ordinary enough.
Almost.
But for a moment it seemed to him that something larger had stirred beneath them.
He had no time to ask. His mother had already turned away, as though she had said precisely as much as she intended.
Later, lying in the dark, Tom still heard the splash of the ditch-water and the creature's short yelp when the knife went in below the forelimb.
It hadn't been a victory. Just the first move that had been genuinely his own.