***
In the morning, the sun shone happily through the cracks under the door. The birds seemed to sing in the hundreds in the trees. Bo woke to find Ryan tending the hearth. He sat up in bed and remarked, “And the pupil rises before the master.”
Ryan started, turning to Bo. “What?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Bo shook his head good-naturedly. “Started breakfast?” he as ked. Ryan shook his head. Bo tutted. “So close.”
After the two finished breakfast, they went to training. Bo decided that the best thing to start with was Ryan’s jumping, so he had him practice leaping into branches with two goals: the first was to get into the tree. The second was to avoid breaking the branch. Unfortunately, the second task seemed to be a problem, if not the first.
Another branch snapped underneath Ryan’s clumsy weight, and he fell with a hard grunt and a moan. Bo shook his head. “You have to land lightly. You’re trying too hard, pushing your feet down. Watch.” Bo leapt into a low branch that bent some under his weight but did not yield. Ryan pushed himself up to watch.
“Well that’s just mean,” Ryan muttered, getting up. “I think these trees hate me.”
“They’d hate you much less if you stopped stomping on them,” Bo said.
Ryan tried again to leap into a tree, this time trying to mimic Bo as he leapt onto a limb beside him. His branch bent and swayed and he had to fight to keep his balance, but the bough stayed on the tree. He grinned at Bo, his features lighting up. Though, his smile was… something else.
“Good work,” Bo commended. “Now to get down—and gently, for the love of Mercy.”
“Bo? Ryan!” a voice came through the trees then, catching Bo’s attention. As he looked, Ryan turned to track his gaze and lost his balance, falling hard.
“Ow,” he groaned, curling into a ball.
“Are you all right?” Bo called down, continuing to balance on his branch.
“I’m fine,” Ryan hissed between his teeth, getting up slowly and brushing himself off. “What did you notice?”
“I thought I heard one of the girls from yesterday,” Bo explained. At the same time, the call came again. He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “I suppose I was right.”
“Which one?” Ryan asked.
“Colette, I believe. Stay here; I’ll deal with this.” Bo sprang down from the tree and turned to Ryan. “Keep working on that,” he said, pointing at Ryan before darting off.
He found Colette around the cabin, staring the opposite way. As he came behind her, though, she turned around and smiled. “Hello, Bo,” she greeted.
“Hello, Colette. What were you calling for?” Bo asked, eyes flicking to a basket on her arm.
“Well, we told our parents what you told us to say. This morning Ma had me come out and told me to try to find you and give you this,” she said, holding out the basket, covered with a white cloth.
“What is it?” Bo asked, taking it with slight hesitation.
“Some of our Ma’s bread and a few coins in thanks.”
“Well, we’re very grateful, but are you sure all of this is necessary?”
“Absolutely,” Colette said, her voice stern. Softening she asked, “Also, where’s Ryan?”
“He’s…out,” Bo said.
“Oh, I see,” she said softly. “Well, would you tell him I said hello?”
“I…well, I don’t see why not.” Bo shifted, crossing his right arm over his chest, the basket hanging from the crook of his elbow.
“Thank you,” Colette said with a polite little smile. “I’ll be heading home, then. Shall I see you again?”
“It’s a possibility,” Bo said, allowing a small wave. Colette grinned and waved back, heading off. “Ryan’s more comfortable at night,” he decided to shout after her. She turned back, her brow furrowed and her head tilted to the side. “If you wanted to see him, that is.” The confusion fled from her face then, replaced with a nod and a smile.
“Thank you!” she called back, waving. Satisfied, both turned around. Bo put the basket in the cabin and headed back to the area he’d left Ryan in.
Bo stopped a short way from the training spot and listened. He did not have long to wait before he heard a thud and an ow. Not long after, he heard a whoa and another thud. Shaking his head, he walked into view. Ryan was lying sprawled on the ground, looking up at the treetops. Bo walked to stand next to the boy and leaned over him.
“You all right there?” he asked, his mouth quirking into a small smile.
“No,” Ryan stated flatly. “I don’t get it. I’d rather just lie here for the rest of my life and look back at my failures.”
“Well, you don’t get to. Come on, get up,” Bo said, pulling him to his feet.
“How do you do it?” Ryan asked.
“Bend your knees more as you hit. It’ll absorb the shock and quiet your landing.”
“Oh,” Ryan said. He looked up into the branches and down at the ground again. “Oh.”
“Got it?” Bo asked as Ryan leapt again, landing on it with minimal swaying. Then, after analyzing the ground for a moment, he leapt down, his double-jointed legs bending and absorbing the shock even better than Bo would. He shot Bo a beaming grin.
“Yep,” he said.
“Good,” Bo congratulated. “Now do it again, with a higher branch. Keep doing it until you can do it throughout the tree, for as high as will support your weight.” Ryan nodded.
“Right.” With that, he began leaping higher. Bo let him go at it until evening, and they went home and ate by dark. Ryan had managed to make it more than halfway up the tree.
It was not long after dinner and dusk that a knock came at the door. Bo hid a small smirk from Ryan as he looked confused. “Well,” he said as he hid his smile, “open the door!”
Ryan tentatively opened the door to find Colette standing there. He stumbled back and fell over himself, landing with his bum on the floor and his hands behind him. The exact shape of his legs was hidden by the dim light as Bo had let the hearth fall to dull, dying flames.
“Are you all right?” Colette asked, reaching to take his hand as Bo smothered a chuckle.
“I-I’m fine,” he stuttered, hiding his lower half under the table as he leapt into his seat. Colette cast a glance at Bo and he shrugged.
“Come in. Close the door, if you’d please,” Bo said.
Colette closed the door and sat at the table across from Ryan. Bo sat at the bed and drank out of his flask. When Colette gave him a funny look, he raised it and said, “Water with honey.” Content, she turned back to Ryan.
“You see very well in the dark,” she remarked.
“I, uh…” he began, squishing against his chair. Bo cleared his throat to catch Ryan’s attention and mimed for him to relax some. Ryan looked back at Colette and did just that, exhaling and leaning forward slightly in his seat, pulling his hat further over the right side of his face. “Yes, I can. I’ve always been able to see well in the darkness.”
“That is pretty amazing, you know,” she said.
Ryan seemed not to know where to look. “I-I don’t know. Is it amazing to be born different from everyone else?”
“Well, some people might find it scary or odd, but I think it’s amazing,” Colette said. Ryan looked at Bo, who just waved him off and took another drink from his flask. He understood how Colette might have mistaken it for liquor, but at least it wouldn’t make him dead-drunk, and it kept him from being able to laugh out loud at the boy.
“What about when it makes them look scary?” Ryan asked.
“When it makes them look scary?” Colette asked, putting a finger to her lip in thought. Ryan nodded. “Well, they can’t help it, can they?” Ryan shook his head. “You’re like that, aren’t you?” she asked then.
Ryan looked at Bo, horrified. Bo shrugged. “You get to choose how close to her you want to be.”
Then, “I’ll show her mine if you do.” Ryan turned back
to Colette and nodded, swallowing.
Colette’s eyes sparked with curiosity, and she eyed Ryan expectantly. He gave a shaky sigh and pulled his hat up. Even with the dying fire giving little light, the contrast between the two halves of his face was easy to see. Bo could hear Colette catch her breath before she let it out slowly. “It’s not really that bad,” she said. Bo almost spat out his swig of honey-water in laughter, and Ryan blinked in surprise. “Is that all?”
Ryan stood up and let Colette take a long look at him, and when she furrowed her brow he lifted one leg. Her small brown eyebrows shot up, but all she said was, “Oh.”
Bo began laughing even harder, unable to swallow his mouthful.
She squinted at him and asked, “Are you sure you aren’t drunk?”
Finally, Bo managed to swallow before he broke down and blurted his laughter into the night. After recuperating, Bo looked at the two, who were staring at him like he was utterly insane—Ryan hadn’t even sat down again. And, maybe he was losing his mind. Ryan really had shown her his ‘defects,’ and she really had blown them off like a double of Olea. But after a few more moments passed and Bo didn’t wake up in his bed, he realized that he was not going crazy. He grinned at the two.
“Sorry, but I expected this to go much differently. Acceptance, I was as prepared for as denial; I just thought we’d have to wait for you to wake up from fainting.” With that, he placed his flask to the side and took off his cloak, folding it and putting it beside him on the bed, showing both of his lean arms. He chuckled again, giddy with the strangeness of everything. He imagined a stranger coming into the house, and imagined their view of everything. Then he found it still more hilarious, but he managed to control himself now. “Ah, it is a very good thing that I don’t drink, I think,” he said finally, craning his neck and staring up at the ceiling. “I’d almost certainly be thrown into an asylum.”
“So…” Colette began, bringing Bo’s attention back. “What exactly are you two?”
“Half-demons. Both of us had a demon parent as well as a human one,” Bo replied, bringing his left hand in front of his face and working it, staring at the silver fur and sharp claws. He stilled himself and said, “These are the ‘gifts’ they gave us.”
“Well, at least it’s better than not being born at all, right?” Colette asked.
Bo laughed, bitterness creeping into his voice. “Ah, not always. Colette, can you imagine what life must be like for us?” Bo continued without waiting for an answer. “I think you could. When I was a boy, I once tried to play with a boy from a nearby village.”
Ryan nodded, sitting once more. He’d heard this before.
“I didn’t understand why it was necessary to cover my arm then, and his mother saw me and screamed. The village came after me with fire and metal, and I ran back to my mother. And after that, she had no choice but to kill them all, to protect both us and the forest.” Bo could remember the screams as his mother ate people, guilty only of fear, snarling with a terrible fury to protect her child. And her tears as she saw him leave because of that day.
Colette stared at his arm in shock then, not sure how to take this new information. That, or she was appalled. Bo couldn’t place the exact expression, or to what it was focused on. “I’m…” she began.
“If you’re going to apologize, don’t. You didn’t do this to us. Just understand that you can never tell anyone what we are, not even your sister. Just try and see things like most people would, and understand their fear. Understand the situation.”
Colette pursed her lips for a moment and set her jaw before responding. “I understand.”
“Good. I think Ryan would be a little heartbroken if you didn’t,” he said, causing Ryan to splutter an excuse to her, replacing his hat and putting it over his face. Bo laughed.
Three years later…
Bo watched as Ryan leapt from branch to branch, light as a sparrow. Colette watched from below, sitting next to the basket with the three’s lunch on top of Bo’s cloak. Both children Bo now considered his own, and they had grown well under his watch. “All right, Ryan!” Bo called into the trees, their leaves just beginning to change color. “Get down here and spar with me! Progress report before we eat!” In an instant, Bo felt Ryan hit the ground behind him and try to catch him in a headlock. Bo ducked and twisted out of the way in a second. “You’ll have to do better than that with an enemy who’s seen you in those branches!” he growled with a grin, facing the boy.
“Oh, shut up old man!” Ryan called with a light voice, charging forward and leaping up and over him with a flip, trying to catch Bo’s head and shoulders and bring him down. Bo ducked and Ryan sailed overhead, landing on his bare feet and whirling to face Bo again, a challenged grin on his face. Bo whipped himself around and went low to swing his leg beneath Ryan as he ran at him.
Ryan saw the blow coming, leapt over it and used Bo’s position against him. He tackled him and rolled, getting Bo off-balance. Bo let them roll and left Ryan panting on top of him, pinning him down. “Good,” he congratulated. “You’ve passed the simple test.”
“Thank you for the sincere congratulations,” Ryan replied with a roll of his strange eyes, a smile creeping onto his face as he pushed his hat back up onto his head.
“I never tire of watching you two,” Colette said from where she sat, the sun sparkling in her green eyes. “But I do get hungry. Lunch?”
“Absolutely,” the boys replied, getting up, Ryan giving a hand to Bo.
The three ate and chatted about the nice weather, the forest, and Ryan’s training. “You’ve gotten much better, you realize,” Colette told him.
Ryan looked away, his face becoming red as he pulled his hat over his face.
“Now, don’t give him a big head about it,” Bo chastised.
“He has, though,” Colette protested.
“I am aware. I just don’t want him to get arrogant. Freezing is the worst thing you can do, but…”
“Arrogance is the next. I know, Bo,” Ryan said, taking another bite out of his bread. Bo looked at him, unable to hide the bit of pride in his eyes. Ryan certainly had grown. He glanced over at Colette as well, thinking the same. The two were so close in age and close to him that Bo could almost pretend they were his own children, just without Olea.
Almost.
“So,” Bo said as he ate, “I hear that there’s a demon running amok in a forest not too far from here, wreaking all sorts of havoc. Care to test out your skills on it?”
Ryan paused in mid-bite, Colette pausing as well as she saw his hesitation. He finished the bite before saying anything, his fantastically different eyes downcast in thought as he chewed. “Where did you hear of this, Bo?” he asked then.
“Oh, a little bird told me upon request.” Well, Dayo’s wings were feathered.
“Well…sure. I have to get used to it, don’t I?”
Bo nodded. “No choice,” he agreed.
Colette looked between them. “I’m sorry, what? Did you say a demon in the woods? Are you talking about those woods a little northwest of here?”
“The same,” Bo said with a nod.
“I heard a passing hunter was torn to pieces in there! Is it safe?”
Bo gave her a withering look.
“Sorry, right. ‘Nothing is safe,’ correct?”
“Exactly. And we know no normal human around here can take care of this, so our elimination of this demon will help keep your little village safe, too.”
Colette shot Ryan a worried look.
He gave her a soft smile, taking off his hat and placing it on top of her fluffy hair. “I’ll be fine, Colette.”
Her worry didn’t disappear, and she peered at Bo. “I’m worried for you, too, Bo. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course. But I’m an old man. Ryan’s closer to you. Don’t give me that look. It’s clear that you’re still more worried about him. But let me ask you something: do you trust his word?”
“Yes?”
/>
Bo looked at Ryan, tilting his head toward Colette as he said, “Promise you’ll come back to her.”
Ryan turned his gaze to Colette, his strange eyes locking onto her green ones. “I promise I will come back.”
She searched his eyes for a moment. “Promise for Bo, too,” she finally said.
“What, you don’t trust my own word for that?” Bo asked
Colette peered at Bo and shook her head.
“I promise,” Ryan said, bringing her focus back to him. Satisfied, Colette stood and returned his hat.
“Well, farewell for today. Keep the basket,” she added as Ryan grabbed it from the ground and offered it to her. She walked out of sight and toward home.
Ryan turned to Bo. “She’s still worried.”
“Extremely,” Bo agreed, taking another bite of his cheese.
“What do we do about it?” Ryan asked.
“We come back.”