Jacopo touched his mantelpiece in the spot where the altar to Gwythr should sit, if he were richer or more religious than he was. Gwythrians were a more church-going people than their Mediterranean rivals, the Mallosians, who preferred home worship as a general rule; but wealthier, more traditional Gwythrians still housed small altars to their god over their fireplaces. It was probably just as well. If Jacopo did have a real altar, he'd have sold or thrown it out by now.
He made the sign of the weighing scales over his forehead in the traditional manner, closed his eyes and knelt down before the hearth to pray. True Gwythrians were supposed to pray once a day. Jacopo just about managed once a week.
'Ma'at-inety, bring order to my life,' he thought, using the generic opening which had been ingrained into him in his youth before personalising the prayer. 'Please send guidance. I don't know what to do.'
Morality had always been something of a grey area for Jacopo. If the stories were to be believed, it was a gaping grey area for Gwythr. Maybe they were well suited together.
Every day, at the end of the day, he sent off a new report about the Prince of Shaman's habits, movements, and routines. And every day, by the end of the day, his feelings for Birch grew stronger. How long could he keep up this double life, and could he afford to sacrifice one half of it for the other? Whenever it got too much, he knelt before his imaginary altar and prayed for Gwythr's help, but the god never replied. Gwythr had always been much more aloof and seemingly above ordinary people – unlike deities such as Zed or Allianah, who camped out with mortals as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them. Very occasionally, and very, very blasphemously, Jacopo privately wished that he had been raised in a different cult.
With no small sense of hopelessness, Jacopo finished his prayer, opened his eyes... and got the shock of his life. Sat right in front of him on the hearth, its eyeballs mere inches away from his was a – a – a thing.
Jacopo fell back onto his backside and scrambled backwards a foot or so before leaping back onto his feet. The thing watched him calmly with attentive, silvery green eyes which followed him wherever he moved. It was like a cross between a fox and a wolf, with a narrow, pointed muzzle, lean body and slender legs. Most startling was its fur, which seemed to have a base colour of a rusty golden-red interspersed with black and white hairs. Its throat was completely white, as were the inside of his legs, and the stronger black hairs on the back formed a saddle-shape.
Between them, there was a very long pause.
“Esci,” Jacopo growled after a moment, waving his hands at the creature as if to shoo it off. How the heck had it gotten in here?
Something unusual happened then. The thing snorted and dropped its muzzle, its sides shaking slightly – as a person's shoulders might shake when they were laughing. Jacopo growled again and took a cautious step forwards, but froze in shock when the wolf-fox-thing opened its mouth and spoke.
“My name is Bethany,” it (she?) said simply, in a soft, feminine voice.
The pause was shorter this time. Jacopo had more intelligence than most people credited him with.
“Well, I never asked for a familiar,” he grumbled. “You can let yourself out.”
Bethany's sides shook again, and this time he definitely saw her smiling. “You asked for help.”
And that was that.
She followed him around everywhere then. For the first few days Jacopo got annoyed by it and kept telling her to esci, but he very quickly found her presence quite tolerable. Having someone want to spend time with him was a new experience. Having someone to listen, and who he actually found he liked talking to, was even newer. Bethany kept her distance when he was in a mood but never left him completely, and she always knew without being told when the time was right to creep a little closer. She hardly spoke, but she had a knack for getting him to talk. Her silent, intelligent eyes never judged. By the end of the week, Bethany knew all about his past crimes on Earth and his current dilemma on Shaman – but he knew very little about her.
One thing he did know was that she wasn't a wolf-fox hybrid, however much she looked like one. A few days after her appearance, when he grouchily asked her why she kept following him around, she told him something which still lingered in his mind a week later.
“Golden jackals choose one partner for life,” she said in that calm, soft voice of hers. “And then they stay together, always.”
She made it sound like the easiest thing in the world.
|
