--24--
	They took the old foot road because Jess had decided that the coach road was too dangerous.  Sebastian hadn’t argued, even though the old road meant an extra full day of walking and a painful trudge over piles of rocks that were too big to be easily removed.  It was almost worth it, though, not to have to worry about getting run down by careless coach drivers, and the relative privacy let him hold on to what remained of his dignity.
	By sunset, his legs were as sore as he could ever remember and dried mud was plastered on them up to his knees.  His back hurt, too, from carrying the weight of his pack, though the thought of supper made it seem worthwhile.  On the bright side, they had gone further in half a day than he had expected, and it was possible that they would be close to the halfway point by the same time next evening.  That thought eased the soreness in his legs a little and helped him climb the last steep hill that was in front of him.
	He had to be careful of where he put his feet so the sharp little rocks underfoot didn’t cut through his sandals, but he made it to the top only a couple of minutes after Jess did.  She had already made herself comfortable on top of a flat rock and she sat crosslegged with her back to him, looking away to the north toward Jaspertree.
	“Next time, we’re going to have to work harder at getting a seat.  I never realized how primitive everything is once you get away from the city,” she said.
	“Why would you?  Jaspertree is its own little world, high above the rest of us,” he said.
	“Not that high, for some,” she said.
	He sat down on a rock across from her and unlaced his sandals.  There were a few cuts on the sides of his feet where he’d stumbled on the rocks, but they weren’t important.  They stung right now, but by morning he didn’t think he’d even notice them.
	“We do okay in our little towns.  Better than you’d think,” he said.
	His anger surprised him.  The whole time he’d been in Shelby's Ford, all he’d wanted was to be somewhere else.  But it stung to hear an outsider talk about it that way.
	“Did I say otherwise?  You’re better off out here,” she said.
	“Go ahead and laugh.  I've met people from Jaspertree and I know what you think of us,” he said.
	“Do you?  I grew up there and every single day I wished I could leave.  You, out here, are the lucky ones,” she said.
	“I thought you had everything, in Jaspertree, food, medicine--” he said.
	“Entertainment, too.  It has everything you could want, and pretty girls, too, priced to fit any budget.  Depending on your point of view, of course,” she said.
	The mouse finally turned to face him, and with her elbows propped on her knees and her muzzle on the tops of her hands, she looked like a little girl in her mother’s clothes.  He was embarrassed to find that he could see up her dress, and ashamed at his disappointment that she was wearing a pair of trousers under it.
	He felt a blush creeping up the insides of his ears and he opened his pack so he wouldn’t have to look her in the face.  The shirts he had packed on top were damp but the loaf of bread tucked down to the bottom and was still okay, except for being slightly squashed.  He tore it in half and offered the bigger share to his new friend.  She took it with a polite smile and held it in both hands, like it was something precious.  He watched as she nibbled at one corner, and his earlier suspicion became a certainty.  She ate with small, dainty bites, but she still couldn't hide her sharp little teeth.
	“You do a good job of disgusing yourself. I don't think anyone who just saw you on the street could even tell.  But when you know what to look for, it’s easy to spot what you are,” he said.
	“I don’t try to hide it,” she said.
	“Then why do you smoke?  It covers up your scent, and I’ll bet it keeps people away.  I had to spend all day with you to be sure,” he said.
	“I’m not hiding anything.  I'm not ashamed of what I am anymore,” she said.
	“And the cigarettes?” he said.
	She crammed another piece of bread into her mouth and wouldn’t speak to him again until she had finished her supper.  He wasn’t sure why he wanted to push at her so much, except that he wanted to know everything about her.  It wasn’t just that she was pretty.  It was that he felt, deep inside, that she was the only person he knew who could help him understand himself.
	“It’s complicated.  Call it a… medical condition, and leave it at that,” she said.
	After supper was finished, they made camp as best they could in a small stand of trees a little distance from the road.  Sebastian gathered wood for a fire while Jess scratched out a circle of dirt and lined it with stones to contain it.  She spent two of her matches to get the fire lit and she lit a cigarette with a burning twig.  The smoke made him sneeze, but there was something slightly erotic about the way she held the paper tube in her mouth.  She didn't just let the cigarette dangle, but sucked the smoke down in long, deep breaths, which she held for a time before she exhaled.
	Now that the sun was down the temperature was dropping fast and they both moved closer to the fire, and to each other.
	“You seem to have a bit of everything tucked away in that pack of yours.  No blankets?” said Jess.
	“I really wan't planning on spending the night outside,” he said.
	“I thought so.  I guess it isn't your fault, but just once, I'd like to meet someone who didn't end up trying to sleep with me,” she said.
	“I never asked,” he said.
	“You didn't have to.  Your eyes were enough,” she said.
	She tossed the rest of her cigarette into the fire and lay back with a final burst of smoke.  She was silent for a while, and then she patted the ground beside her.
	“One more won't hurt, I guess,” she said.
	Sleeping outside wasn’t very comfortable, but there was no wind, and the cold wasn’t much worse than his bedroom at home.  The fire died down quickly, but there was still enough light from the embers that he could see Jess for a long time after he lay down beside her.  For a while she kept perfectly still, with her hands folded on her stomach, waiting for him to prove her right.  It was difficult for him to ignore her.  The dress she wore was thin enough that he could see every curve of her breasts and hips through the material, and she made no effort to cover herself up.
	It was stubborness, rather than gallantry, that kept him from touching her.  His groin ached with his arousal, and he couldn't help thinking of her mouth.  He wondered what it would be like if she put it on his body, and sucked him in the way she did with the smoke.  But the weary contempt that had been held in what she'd said kept coming back to him.  He shut his eyes, and folded his hands on top of his stomach, too.  The last thing he heard before he fell asleep was her sigh of relief.

	Sebastian woke at dawn, startled out of a pleasant dream by the sound of something heavy stomping its way up the road.  He was on his hands and knees before his eyes were open, with all of his instincts screaming at him to run.  But that would mean leaving Jess behind.  The girl was still sound asleep, curled up around herself with her hands over her eyes.  He had no doubt she could take care of herself.  She didn't seem like the sort of person who would shy away from trouble.  But she had waited for him.
	Their visitor was coming closer, and from the heavy footfalls, and the occasional snorts, he guessed that it was someone on horseback.  That meant serious trouble.  Their visitor could be a soldier, or he could be a robber, and Sebastian wasn't sure which one would be worse.  He picked up a piece of fallen branch that he found nearby and crept to the edge of their camp to investigate.  A makeshift club wouldn’t be any use against a real weapon, but it made him feel a little better.
	He almost fainted with relief when he reached the edge of the trees and found only a big roan horse grazing on the tough grass that grew by the side of the road.  The animal had a shaggy winter coat and a ragged mane that looked like it had been slashed with a sword.  There was a brand burned into the horse’s hip that marked him as a cavalry stallion, but he wasn't wearing any tack or colors.
	The horse raised his head when Sebastian stepped out of the trees, and it looked like the animal might bolt.  After a while, though, when he hadn’t moved any closer, the horse returned to grazing.  As the horse got closer, Sebastian walked over to meet the animal with his hands held out in front of him.  He clucked his tongue the way he’d heard merchants in Shelby's Ford do when they wanted to calm a frightened animal, and moved slowly.  When he was close enough, he dipped on hand in a pocket and pulled out a piece of bread that he had left over from last night.  The stallion grabbed the treat and swallowed it almost without chewing.
	“Maybe rabbits are lucky,” Jess said, behind him.
	She held a hand out to the horse, and he sniffed her fingers and let her scratch his cheek.
	“We need to find who he belongs to,” he said.
	“He belongs to us.  We found him,” Jess said.
	“But someone had to bring him out here.  They might still be around somewhere.  They might be hurt.”
	“They’re dead.  Or they left him.  He’s been out here for months, from the look of him.”
	Jess stroked the horse’s neck, and when she took hold of a lock of his mane, he whickered but didn’t pull away.  He let her lead him over to a nearby rock that jutted up above the rest of the debris on the road, and he stood patiently while she climbed on top of it.
	“We don’t know that.  Doesn’t that bother you at all?” he said.
	Jess hooked both hands over the horse’s neck and pulled herself up onto his back.  This left her skirt hiked up around her waist, and gave him a better view of the trousers she had on underneath.  They were made of some soft, dark grey material, and someone had sewn a ridiculous number of pockets up both legs.
	“We don’t even know who he was.  For all we know, he could be some complete son of a bitch who would kill both of us without remorse,” she said.
	“But we’re not like that.  It wouldn’t be right to leave him,” Sebastian said.
	“What do you know about what’s right?  Is it right that the bastards always win?  A horse is the least of what I’m owed,” Jess said.
	“They only win if they drag you down to their level,” he said.
	Jess growled, so low that she must have thought he couldn’t hear her, and she scratched the side of her neck again.  Afterward, her fingers lingered on her collar, tracing out the grain of the leather like she was trying to remember something.
	“We aren’t going to find anything,” she said.
	She clucked her tongue at the stallion and turned him around with a tug on his ear.  Sebastian followed her, pleased that he had been right about her.
	Half a mile down the road they found a splash of dried blood in the middle of the road, which they had missed in the dark.  They didn’t find a body or any sign of even a hasty grave, but Sebastian discovered a thin metal badge wedged halfway under a rock.  It was a stamped tin circle and it looked like something that would have been used to decorate a saddle.  A blue star had been painted on the front of it, with a red and white fox tail in the middle of the star.  He thought about not showing it to Jess, but she leaned down from her perch on the stallion’s back and plucked it out of his fingers.
	“They’ve been missing for months,” she said.
	“Could they still be--”
	“Around?  I doubt it.  Anyone who was big enough to attack Jaspertree soldiers wouldn’t have left any of them alive,” Jess said.
	“Do you blame them?  When the soldiers come in, they take anything they want without paying for it, they burn down our houses and they kill anyone who objects.  And who has to pay for their swords every time there’s another stupid war?” he said.
	Jess crushed the badge and flicked it back down to the ground.  As she brought her hand back down,  her fingers brushed against his shoulder in a fleeting gesture of sympathy.
	“Not all of them are that bad.  Can you ride?” she said.
	His mouth went dry at the thought of being that close to her, and the tips of his fingers tingled, already feeling the softness and warmth of her fur.  He wanted, more than anything, to say yes.
	“I’m going stay down here for a while,” he said “Just in case.”
	“In case of what?  Who knows what kind of people we might meet out here?  Just because they don’t like Jaspertree doesn’t mean they’re nice people,” she said.
	“We don’t wear our new friend out.  And so we don’t both end up not being able to smell anything but horse,” he said.
	A loud, metallic click from the bushes ahead of them on the other side of the road raised the fur on the back of Sebastian’s neck.  The barrel of a rifle slid out from behind the bushes, followed by a small, scruffy cougar.  He had mud in his fur and his arms were streaked with blood from several scratches that looked like claw marks.  His ears were flat against his head, and he was growling.
	“I knew he had friends somewhere.  That’s why I let the horse go.  I knew when you found it, you’d come to find him,” he said.
	“We aren’t anybody’s friends.  We found the horse by accident and came to look, that's all,” Sebastian said.
	“I don't believe you.  You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know,” the cat said.
	The barrel of the rifle swung wildly between them and Sebastian cringed every time it was pointed at him.  Jess kept silent and he was afraid to look at her, in case the cougar took this as a signal. 
	“We don’t know anything.  Please, put the gun down before you shoot someone.  You can have anything if we can just get to the city in one piece,” he said.
	“I want my friends back, God-damn you,” the cat said.
	The cougar snapped the gun up and fired it at Jess, but she wasn’t there anymore.  She leapt straight from the horse’s back, as the animal crumpled and fell, and Sebastian saw her flying straight at their attacker with her mouth open.   He had enough time to see the sun shining on her fangs and to see the cougar's expression change from anger to fear before she struck.  The cougar screamed when she landed on top of him and sank her teeth into his throat.  They fell back into the bushes, which was a small mercy, and Sebastian shut his eyes until the screaming stopped.
	When he felt able to open them again, he saw Jess lyinging flat out on the ground, sobbing.  She had her arms over her head so he couldn’t see her face, but when he knelt beside her she raised up on her elbows and snapped at him.  Her teeth missed his throat by less than an inch.
	“Don’t say anything.  Not one fucking word.  Just take the horse and go,” she said.
	Blood dripped her mouth, dotting the collar of her blouse with red, and her eyes were full of tears.  He wiped the gore off of her muzzle with his sleeve, not caring that it would stain his shirt, too.
	“You were defending yourself.  He had a gun.  It isn’t your fault,” he said.
	“It is.  It has to be.  I’m losing control,” she said.
	“He shot at you.  If you hadn't jumped at him, you'd be the one lying on the ground now,” he said.
	“I’ve killed three people.  One of them was just doing his job,” she said.
	“It must have been a pretty awful job, then,” he said.
	“That doesn't matter.  Something has slipped loose that I thought I'd hidden, and it scares me that I won’t be able to stop.  Maybe the next time it will be someone I care about,” she said.
	“It won't be.  I'm sure of it,” he said.
	“You can't promise that,” she said.
	Jess knocked him over when she jumped up and she ran down the bank on the other side of the road, into the trees beyond.  He was up and after her without a second thought, his sandals and his fear abandoned in the road.  The woods were so thick here that he had already lost sight of her, but he kept going.  He didn't really believe that she would leave him behind.
	Besides being too far from home, and too full of people who might want to kill him, the little forest was quite pleasant.  The trees around him and the feel of the dry, sandy soil under his feet appealed to the wolf in him, as did the chase.  He’d never had much of a chance to hunt at home, except for playing with his few friends when he was a child.  But she wasn’t any good at hiding this way, either.  Hers were the only clear footprints in the forest and, with the cigarettes she smoked, people all the way in Jaspertree could probably smell her.
	After several minutes, he came to the bank of a narrow river that cut through the middle of the trees.  He stopped to catch his breath close to the bank, and he sniffed the air, trying to decide what to do next.  It surprised him that all he could smell here was mouldering leaves and a slight taint of pollution from the water.  There might have been a hint of her under the stink, but his nose was too clogged with chemical stink for him to be certain.  He kicked a rock into the water, and tried to think what to do.  Now he had time to think about things, she scared him.  It was too easy to imagine himself in the cougar's place.  But the memory of her tears hurt his heart.
	A branch cracked in the tree overhead, and there was a shower of twigs that pattered around him and splashed into the river.  Looking up, he saw Jess holding on to the broken branch with one hand and the crook of her left knee.  The part of the tree she was on extended out over the edge of the bank, and she was sprawled above open water while trying to reach the solid branch next to her.  She wasn’t going to make it.  Every time she moved the wood split a little further, and there was nothing that would support her within her reach.  He drew breath, but didn’t dare shout up to her, in case he startled her.
	The branch broke with a dry crack, and she fell without a sound.  She hit the water close to the bank, just to one side of a sharp rock that jutted out of the water like a spear, and she sank at once.
	Sebastian jumped in after her.  The river was deeper and colder than he’d expected, and he went down a long way without touching the river bed.  The pollution stung his eyes, and he was already running out of breath.  He turned to swim back to the surface, but he couldn't swim against the weight of his pack.  This made him think of Jess.  All the heavy clothing she was wearing would drag her to the bottom and they would never see each other again.
	He jumped when she grabbed his legs from below, and his gut reaction was to try to shove her away.  In their struggle, his pack was sucked off of his shoulders by the current and whirled away out of sight.  Jess dug her claws into his hips and pushed herself up until her muzzled bumped against his.  He pushed at her again, and she nipped him.
	Afraid that she had panicked, he tried to wriggle free so he could help her to the surface.  Instead, she tightened her grip even further and kicked with her legs, bouncing them off the side of the bank at an upward angle.  After that, he realized his arms were both still free, and together, they kept themselves close to the middle of the stream.  Sebastian couldn't see anything but murky water around them, but that was all the more reason to be careful.
	By luck, they broke the surface next to the piece of the branch that Jess had brought down with her.  It was thicker than his leg and almost as long as his whole body, and he was able to grab it before they drifted away from it again.  The branch was big enough for both of them, but it left them pressed awkwardly close together.  While they both caught their breath, Sebastian wiped the water out of his eyes and tried to figure out where they were.  The current was faster than it had looked from the bank and they were already a long way from where they'd started.
	“You’re an idiot.  Don’t you know better than to jump into unknown water?” she said.
	“Did you want to drown?  I thought you would have been grateful,” he said.
	“What difference should it make to you?  You don’t even know me,” she said.
	He could feel her shivering, and he looked for a place where they could land, but the bank was high out of reach on both sides.  There were places where tree roots had grown through the rocky soil, but they were moving too fast for him to catch hold.
	“You might still get your wish,” he said.
	“I told you to leave,” she said.
	“Why?  For that matter, why should you care what happens to me?” he said.
	She snorted, and her breath on his cheek reminded him again of how close they were.  She wrapped her legs around his waist and he could feel the heavy roundness of her breasts, and the slight swell of her stomach.  She was kind of a plump girl, which fascinated him.  Most people in Shelby's Ford only had enough food to keep themselves alive.
	“You aren't being fair,” she said.
	“Neither are you.  That means we're even,” he said.
	“I shouldn't have waited for you.  When we get to the city, you should go find what you're looking for and leave me alone,” she said.
	The current of the river was getting faster now and there was a hissing from up ahead that sounded like rough water.  It was getting narrower, too, and the banks squeezed together until he felt like he could have stretched out his arms and touched both sides.  There were no more roots here, but the number of rocks that stuck up out of the water was increasing quickly.  He shut his eyes, and wondered if it would hurt much to be dashed to pieces.
	He almost lost his grip when the branch jammed against a couple of rocks that stood across from one another, and left them floating safely in the middle of the river.  There weren’t any roots or overhanging branches to help them climb, but the bank here was low enough that he could reach up and touch the top.  By now, he wasn’t sure he had the strength anymore.  Except for where Jess was touching him, he felt numb with cold, and he was shaking with fear and the effort of holding on.
	“Climb up, right now.  If you don’t, I’ll bite you,” he said.
	She was shorter than he was, and unable to reach, but her grip on his back let her wedge her knee into a narrow shelf of rock just above the water.  From there, she put a foot on his shoulder and pushed herself the rest of the way up.  Without her weight dragging him down, he was able to scramble up after her and they both lay, panting, in the grass.
	As much as he would have liked to, he didn’t let himself stay still for long.  It was nearly spring, but the weather was still cold enough that they might freeze if they didn’t get warm fast.  Ignoring the soreness in his legs and arms, he got up and started to get undressed.  He kept his back to Jess while he wrung the water out of his clothes.  He could feel her watching him, but he forced himself not to show that he cared.
	The forest continued on this side of the river, too.  The trees grew a little further apart, and there was what looked like a trail leading into them, but he was too tired to take in many details.
	“Take off your clothes.  I’ll find something to make a fire,” he said.
	“Just like that?  No, you don’t get me for free.  I don’t owe you anything,” she said.
	“Not that, damn it.  If you don’t, you could get sick,” he said.
	“You could have come up with a better excuse than that,” she said.
	There wasn’t much of a breeze and that was lucky, but without his clothes he still felt dangerously exposed.  That Jess watched everything he did didn’t help much.  He laid his clothes out on the ground to dry and tried to pretend he didn't notice what she was looking at.
	“You don’t understand.  I’m not interested in you,” he said.
	“Liar,” she said, and he felt ashamed at having been caught.  His own body had betrayed him.
	“I’m not.  I’m trying to help you.  Your fur will dry faster than your clothes, and you’ll stay warmer that way.  But if catching your death of the cold sounds like fun, that’s up to you,” he said, and he turned and walked into the trees.
	A little way in, far enough away that he could no longer see the riverbank, he found a lightning burnt tree with several dead limbs.  Most of them were too high for him to reach from the ground, and he wasn’t about to try to climb a tree that looked as brittle as this one.  There were several branches that he could get to, though, and he didn’t need more than an armload.  That would give them enough wood to burn for an hour or two, and that was all the longer they could afford to stay in this place anyway.
	He took hold of the lowest branch in both hands and pulled.  The tree, an oak he thought, was still tough, and he had to lean back and hang all of his weight from the limb before it finally broke.  He landed flat on his back and bruised his hip on a rock, but most of the branch came with him.  He broke off the other branches, earning several more bruises,  and limped back to camp feeling rather pleased with himself.
	Jess still sat by the riverbank where he had left her, still dressed in her dripping wet clothes.  She watched as he snapped each branch into several pieces and piled them up in front of her.  Getting the fire lit, of course, was an entirely different problem.  He’d heard that it could be done by rubbing sticks together, but nobody had ever shown him how.  To cover his ignorance, he fussed with the sticks like there was something about their arrangement that worried him and he hoped that Jess would come up with an idea herself.
	“Did you actually mean that?  About not being interested?” she said.
	“I don’t even know you,” he said.
	“That’s never stopped anyone before.  You do know what I am, don’t you?” she said.
	“Not exactly.  I know you’re not just a mouse.  I saw your teeth at supper last night.  But I don’t know what else you are.  Does it matter?” he said.
	“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said.
	He picked up a couple of twigs that had snapped off when he piled up the branches and he tried scraping them together.  They broke after only a few passes.
	“You’re afraid of something, but I don’t know what.  If it will make you feel any better, I’ll sit with my back turned,” he said.
	“And that’s all?” she said.
	“Only that you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met,” he said.
	As the blush crept up her ears and she looked away, he realized he’d said that last part out loud.  Furious with himself, he rubbed two more twigs together and succeeded in getting them to smoke a little before they broke.
	“Males always tell such pretty lies,” she said.
	 She took a small metal box out of her pocket and tossed it in his lap.  Inside the box was half a book of matches which was wrapped in waxed paper and still dry.  While he lit the fire, she stood up and got undressed.
	He had been with a girl once, when they were both seventeen, but they had been so shy with each other that they'd never gone past kissing and fondling each other.  She had sat on the edge of his bed, and shied at every touch.  Jess was casual in her nudity and she squatted down in front of him to arranged her wet clothes on the grass.  He had promised himself he would't stare, but the way she spread her legs was as good as an invitation.
	Stripped of her layers of clothes, she was still rounded, but not as plump as he had imagined.  There was a girlish delicacy to her hips and breasts that made her look younger than he supposed she really was, and even the wound on her neck didn't mar her beauty.  Her fur was the color of chocolate, splashed with white on her hips and chest, and, even wet, it glowed in the morning sunlight.
	He expected her to be angry with him for staring, but her expression remained neutral.  When she was finished, she came around to his side of the fire and knelt down in front of him.
	“Just once, understand?  Then I’m done with it for good,” she said.
	Before he could answer, she kissed him.  Her tongue filled his mouth with the taste of smoke and he could feel her shaking, just a little.  That worried him, but her fur was still so wet that he thought it must just be from the cold.  His hands moved up her body and found her breasts.  They were soft and heavy, and he could feel the rough lines of new scars around her nipples.  He squeezed them lightly and let her softness fill his palms.  She pushed him down on the ground and straddled him, her hand sliding back to take hold of him.  The heat between her legs made him feel weak, and he wanted her to continue so much he ached with it.
	But when she pushed her hips down on top of him, he somehow found enough breath to speak.
	“Stop,” he said.
	She froze, and looked down at him, her eyes bright with an emotion he couldn’t read.
	“What’s wrong?  You don’t have to worry about me, I don’t mind.  Just leave everything to me and enjoy it,” she said.
	“But this isn’t what I wanted.  Not like this,” he said.
	“Why?  If this is about the money, you can take care of that later.  Or is it that you don’t like girls?  You can say so, I don’t care, I’m not one of those stuck-up church types with their heads stuck up their own past,” she said.
	“It’s nothing like that.  It’s that this is something that should be special, between two people who--”
	“I see.  You’re a romantic.  You want flowers and paper hearts, and the whole stupid fantasy.” she said.
	She rolled off of him and moved a bit away to sit hunched in front of their little heap of wood, with her arms held around her stomach.  Her damp fur steamed a little with the heat and though she kept her face turned away from him the fire made her tears shine in her eyes.
	“I’ve never known any male who meant it when they said ‘No. No, I’d rather have love’.  That’s only a lie they tell you, so they won’t feel guilty when they fuck you and leave,” she said.
	“I’m not like that,” he said.
	“No, you’re not, I can see that.  I should have known earlier,” she said.
	“It might be different if you wanted me, too.  But you don't, do you?” he said.
	“You son of a bitch, it’s not fair,” she said.
	She rounded on him, snarling, and slapped him across the face.  It wasn't a strong blow, and it appeart to hurt her more than it stung him.  She clutched her hand to her chest and shuffled a little closer to the fire.
	“It isn't your fault.  You were just a baby when I started.  But you're still too late,” she said.
	“Maybe you just gave up too early,” he said.
	“I never had a chance.  Nobody will love a whore.  Why would they, when they can just pay me and have what they want right away?” she said.
	Her tears were falling freely now, and she put her arms around him and laid her head against his chest.  Just for the moment, all of her defenses were down and she let him wipe her mouth clean and rock her until she stopped trembling.
	“You never know,” he said.
	The fire was starting to die down when Jess got up to gather her clothes.  She dug her pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her skirt and smoked two of them before she got dressed.  He watched her, enjoying the way she moved and even the way she bound her breasts with her strip of cloth.  There was an efficiency to everything she did that a more thoughtless person would have considered vanity.  She scraped and smoothed her fur with her claws while he dressed and doused the fire with dirt.
	Rather than try to find the road again, they followed the course of the river downstream.  They were less likely to meet people if they kept off the road, and they both found the cover that the trees gave them to be comforting.  Neither mice nor rabbits were happy out in the open.  Except for the smell of the river and the silence between them, the walk was pleasant.  The sun was bright and there were little early flowers growing near the riverbank.  Their petals were white with purple streaks on the inside.
	“Why are you going back to Jaspertree?” he said.
	“It’s my home.  A person can go home, can’t she?” Jess said.
	“I've heard about the Houses and what they do to girls there.  You ran away, didn't you?” he said.
	“I'm... not really sure.  I didn't quite mean to, but Megan kept saying it could be done, until I think I believed her,” Jess said.
	“But she didn't make it?” he said.
	Their path went uphill again and they labored up it, breathless.  They came so close together that her hand brushed his, and he wanted to take hold of her and comfort her the way he had at the riverbank.  The memory of her touch still lingered on his body and made him tingle, but he felt her go tense at his touch and he made himself give her the room she needed.
	“She was on a ship called the Scylla.  It sank, not far from port, and took everyone down with it.” she said.
	“She drowned, then.  I’m sorry.  I didn't mean to cause you pain,” he said.
	“It's a fair question.  If she's dead, there's no point in my going back.  Except that I love her.  We barely knew each other and she did everything she could to save me,” said Jess.
	“When we get to Jaspertree, I’ll see that you get back what you lost.  Twice over,” he said.
	“You can’t, and anyway why would you?  Don’t make empty promises, I’ve heard enough of them,” she said.
	“It was my father’s ship,” he said.
	He took Catherine’s letter out of his pocket and held it out for her to take.  The paper stuck and tore as she unfolded it, and some of the ink was blurred, but it was still readable.  She glanced over the message and turned the photo over so she could look at it.  After she was done, she folded everything back up and gave it back to him.
	“There’s nothing either of you can give me.  I won't take anything else from Catherine, and you’ve lost too much already,” she said.
	“You’ve come this far, we owe you something.  If she won’t honor it, I will,” he said.
	“Can you bring back the dead?” Jess said.
	Her voice hitched and he thought she might cry again, but she just swiped at her eyes and walked on ahead.  He trailed after her and kept silent, to give her some privacy.  At the bottom of the hill, he plucked one of the little white and purple flowers.  It had a sweet smell and the petals felt like silk in his fingers.  He wanted to give it to her, to cheer her up, but he was afraid she would misunderstand the gesture.  He tucked the flower in his hair for safe keeping, and wondered how he could help her.