“Mej, that’s enough.” Skeen’s voice remained angry, though I couldn’t think why.
Smiling into sunlight through the open door while I stood still, I said, “Yes.”
“Yes to my questions?” Mej paused and stepped in front of me, still holding my hair. “You want to be my mate?” His face was strong and elegant at once, exotic with his very short hair. His smile wavered as he watched my eyes, trying to decide something about me.
I wanted to reach up and feel that hair—just as he had a habit of doing, rumpling it back and forth, running a hand over it.
Mej might not be Demik, yet I’d loved my time with him today: his speaking lessons, his smiles, his words that were sometimes serious, mostly teasing, always fast. His smart human clothes, his habit of cracking his knuckles and looking upward when he was thinking hard. I couldn’t imagine a reason why he shouldn’t be with Demik and me.
Mej had already said I needed human money, which he would provide, so I could come into town for store-made clothes and my own conveniences: hairbrush, underclothes, and so on. Until then, I hadn’t known what “money” meant—as far as I could remember. Now talk of log dens to last any winter and protect kits? Being able to provide for them in any possible way? Such ideas sent my thoughts spinning with possibilities and that smile stretching over my face again. How could the three of us together not be better than two? How could this not be Earth Mother’s plan?
“Yes,” I repeated. “I do. And … Demik.” Looking up into his sly, amused eyes. Demik’s were reserved, often anxious. Yet there was one thing in common between their eyes: thoughtfulness.
Mej nodded. “So you said. I don’t mind. And he’ll … get used to the idea. You may have to talk to him. He’s a heap too protective of you. He thinks you belong to him.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Think … s … love…”
“Oh, he’s smitten all right. But that’s nothing to do with him crouching over you like a fresh kill. You can bite his nose for treating you like that, you know?”
I shook my head. Bite Demik? Yet I still had to smile. More teasing, of course. No one could ever bite Demik. Demik made it so easy to be happy. Maybe Mej did too. Maybe that was why Earth Mother brought us together.
“Mej—” Skeen was trying to interrupt but Mej went on.
“Since you don’t have family here, we’ll speak with our elders about a date and the ceremony. You talk to Demik first and make sure he’s in agreement that you take two mates. The clan will be pleased, so he’s our only river to cross. Then—”
“Mej.” Skeen was climbing down the ladder. “You are being either an unmitigated tease or an unconscionable reprobate. That’s enough. You’re not going through any bonding ceremony anytime soon.” She stood by the table, facing us in the middle of the den, hands on her hips.
Unsure what was the matter, I offered her a smile.
“I don’t know what you’re raving about, Skeen.” Mej also smiled.
“That poor vixen has been through who knows what. She doesn’t know where her family is, can’t remember her own name. She needs help. She probably already has a mate and she doesn’t even know. Contain yourself for two minutes—”
“I did contain myself for two minutes. Time’s up.”
“If you can’t be kind and stop teasing, stay away from her.” Skeen jabbed a finger at him, taking a step forward.
Mej’s smile faded. “Smooth your hackles, Skeen. That’s all right.” He set the hairbrush on the table, squeezed my shoulder, and stepped to my back once more. “Don’t mind her, beautiful. She doesn’t mean anything by it. You talk to Demik, like I said. And we’ll take our time from there. We’ll find your family, who you are, make all the arrangements for … maybe August? It’s a beautiful season.” His voice went extra smooth, a croon on those last words.
August. I remembered. August to September was the best mating season. Eight months gestation. Kits should be born from late March to May, with the thaw, to have the best chance of survival. That was why, late in summer, vixens stopped changing. If we changed, we lost our kits. A vixen had to conceive in skin and never leave her skin during the whole of the pregnancy. Eight months of skin for every hopeful vixen started late in summer.
How did I know? Who had told me? Had I been through it myself? Surely I would remember a kit, yet … no…
Wasn’t August coming up? A magical time, second only to the birth months themselves, glorious months warming into spring.
Somehow … I lost focus on the conversation after Mej said August.
Skeen was still upset. Both were talking.
In a minute Mej, stroking my shoulder, moved to face me once more.
He ran his fingertips down sides of my head to the two braids and I felt warm and tingly with his touch. One corner of his mouth turned up, his eyes bright, mischievous. He had been teasing Skeen. Me as well. Yet … he hadn’t been. The money, the log den, the kits… Maybe he didn’t want me to take him seriously, or he wasn’t sure how to take his own life seriously. But his eyes gave away how much he meant it.
“Where were you just now?” he asked, his warm hand touching my face. His fingers were firm, yet the feel of his skin was smooth. No calluses there. What did he do that made him wealthy according to humans?
When I shook my head, confused, Mej said, “You were oceans away. Thinking of the ceremony?”
I smiled, the word August popping to mind, though I didn’t try to speak.
“I’ll stand to your left, Demik to your right. We’ll say the blessing to Earth Mother, rights to each other, then honor to our families.” He leaned in closer, his nose inches from mine while I smiled back. “Then our elders bless our union and we…” He turned his head.
I shut my eyes, heart beating faster for the mere thought of contact.
“Mej!” Skeen was upon us. “Get out. And you—” Whirling her finger in my face as Mej tripped out through the doorway. “You can also be smart and stay away from him. You don’t know what life you’ve had. You could already have a mate somewhere, or could be saving yourself. Who knows? Either way, leave that one”—pointing—“out of your plans.”
Mej was walking away outside, chuckling.
“I do,” I told Skeen, beaming and checking that my hair was tied in each braid before I could run after him to fetch Demik and Komu for Dawson City.
“You what?” Skeen asked, eyebrows lifting.
“I do … already … have a mate.” I dashed after Mej.
Chapter 15
Demik had not helped me get ready. Demik did not believe in my visiting Dawson City at all.
“Mej and Skeen say I … need … thing…”
“We can get you anything you could ever want from Dawson. One of the vixens can come to decide about personal items. There’s no need for you to set foot in that place.”
“Want to…”
“No, you don’t want to.” Demik was so agitated that he paced and stalked around outside their den even once the rest of us were all dressed, faces washed, my hair braided, ready to go.
Komu and Mej stood at a little distance, waiting for us. They traded a cigarette as they watched, murmuring speculatively to one another about the argument. Mej, I was pleased to hear from the corner of my ear, was betting on my victory. His confidence bolstered my spirits.
I only wished Demik didn’t have to be so unhappy for me to win. Couldn’t we both be happy? Couldn’t this work for everyone?
“Small trip … Demik,” I tried.
“It doesn’t matter.” Demik threw up his hands. “Of course it’s a small visit, but it’s still going in there. You don’t understand what it is. It’s a pool of black, stinking filth on a mound of tortured soil, a heap of seething depravity, sickness, suffering, human disgrace. There are no shifters there. Only mundane humans and their slave animals—which they starve, whip, and drive to their deaths through snow or mud, treating them like the devils that men claim to fear or despise, yet love to imitate.”
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I looked around. “Mej says … there … every night.”
“Yes, he goes every night. He makes a living off the whites. It’s just his sort of place.”
“Thanks, pal,” Mej said behind me.
Komu was chuckling appreciatively.
I held up a finger. “One viss…” I struggled with my tongue on the word. Had to try again. “One visit. My things.” I held up my palms. “No more. You come.”
“Of course I’m not going to let you go there alone, but that’s not enough. You shouldn’t be going at all.”
“Want to see.” I smiled at him.
“No, you don’t. Just the stink of it—”
“Mej uses … smoke.”
“Yes.” Demik sighed and looked away, hands hanging at his sides, shoulders slumped. “Mej and some others have taken up smoking their vile, nose-killing tobacco because they work around humans and have to choose one filth to cover another.”
“Not half bad either.” Mej held out his cigarette as if close enough to share.
“Demik…” I moved to take his arm, hug him, kiss his cheek. “Demik… One small.”
He sighed. “You’ll stay right with me.”
I nodded.
“And if you want to go, just say so. We’ll leave. Mej and Komu can stay in. They cheat humans out of gold so it keeps them working late.”
“How?”
“Card games.” Demik turned away. “Let me put on boots. And you’ll have to stay on the boards. I’ll carry you across the street. One step into a Dawson street and you’ll ruin those moccasins.”
“We’ll buy you boots, beautiful,” Mej said while Demik slouched into the den. Smoke trickled from Mej’s lips as he talked. It burned my nose, even from a little distance. At the same time, it was pretty, smoke dancing around them. “And a shop-made dress of your own, and taste of human cooking. That’s one thing they’re a dab hand at. Ever heard of apple pie?”
I shook my head.
Vixens in their own stray den were already helping me by making a tunic and skirt with hides on hand. According to Mej, a single outfit for my time in skin was not enough.
He had talked up Dawson City: people speaking different languages, musical instruments, dance halls and saloons, hotels and barber shops. Rows of shops with items you could buy with gold dust displayed in glass windows: dry goods and sweets, shoes and handbags, rifles, toothbrushes, and dolls for children or kits to play with.
At last Demik joined us, checking a leather pouch on a thick belt over his tunic and still looking miserable.
“Don’t trouble your whiskers,” Mej said as we started south together.
Demik glanced at him.
“I’ve got this. Already told her it was on me. Or get yourself new clothes while we’re at it, Earth Mother…” Muttering at the end. He pulled in smoke while I watched, fascinated.
I enjoyed the scent of wood smoke, but I could not imagine putting a tube into the fire in order to suck up smoke.
“No,” Demik said shortly, “I have enough. I can look after her.”
“Told you—”
“Mej already said.” I reached to take Demik’s elbow.
He scowled ahead.
“I’m buying.” Mej waved his cigarette. “The three of us make a real top skulk. She sees that. I see it. Wouldn’t hurt you to.”
Komu cleared his throat.
Mej ignored him, looking at me. “Want to tell him about us?”
I nodded. Then shook my head, glancing to Demik. His stride was stiff, his arm rigid against my hand from tight muscles. He still looked straight ahead.
I glanced sadly to Mej, hoping he understood.
“Right you are. Wait for the storm to pass.” Mej winked at me.
I couldn’t help returning a smile, despite Demik’s mood.
After that, Mej let him be. We didn’t talk much for the long walk along the river. Mej sometimes prompted me to try more words, which I did. Mostly he talked with Komu about their plans for the night, though they used such slang and spoke about games and hands and heat, so I couldn’t follow what they meant.
With the evening sun high, grouse calling in their funny voices, mountains looming green and purple on the horizon, still capped in snow, the river roaring, and wild flowers in bloom, we began to smell Dawson City long before we saw it. Komu put two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them, and passed one to Mej. They were right. The tobacco was preferable.
Among timber camps, miners sleeping on cots or dirt in the sun, eating, arguing, drinking, mixed with howling dogs and rough voices, we came to a real dirt road and a final hill where we could look onto the great city beside the Yukon River.
Chapter 16
It was everything they’d said—and so much more. Beyond any dens or settlements, Dawson City stretched like a mountain basking in the nighttime sun.
It seemed a mile wide, two miles long, another half mile tall. Never had I imagined such structures: buildings not with one row of windows and a door, but three rows of windows, one above the next. “Three stories,” Mej said, as if each window had its own story to tell. Yes, he also said, we could go up inside one and see the view all the way into the gold fields from the third story.
There were mules pulling carts the size of tents. There were dogs ambling in all directions, tied, loose, fighting, loafing, carrying heavy packs. There were human kits—called children—running and banging.
Females, or women, held their skirts up from mud while they stopped to talk together on the wooden sidewalk that ran along the endless rows of timber buildings. Mostly, though, there were males: men. Pale men with rough beards on their faces, but other men as well. Men of all shades, languages, ages, sizes, hats, and clothes. Mej said this was after working hours in the gold fields for most, when Dawson City came alive.
The men spilled from all directions, yelled and spat, thundered their ways through crashing doorways, tipped back bottles to their lips, smoked, talked, slipped in mud, and ran about trying to catch the attention of the rest. Some carried painted signs, boxes, or stacks of papers. Yelling, yelling, yelling, pointing out what they had to offer.
Music burst from doors and windows: high and low, long and short, fast and slow. A new voice started and a dog howled, sending a dozen huskies in the streets to throw their heads back and join. In a minute, dogs from the camps, the mines, the river, from the distant Hän village, all joined in a song that rose among the rest of the noise.
Even without my nose the smells were a deep sea, an endless exploration with a changing wind. Sweat and blood, urine and excrement, alcohol and fish, grease and wood smoke, tobacco and lamp oil, horses, dogs, mules, raw meat, cooked meat, fruit, soda bread and sourdough, leather, lanolin, beeswax, tallow, rust, paint, iron, and a hundred thousand odors I had no name for and could never have catalogued in my skin.
Glass windows stretched as wide as I was tall, flaunting their insides for the city to see. Each display shouted like men in the streets: look, look, look! See me, touch me, smell me, take me with you, those windows waved and beckoned.
Beaver mitts hung beside sheep-skin rugs. Oil lamps stood on a table with piles of candles and bullseye lamps. Pickaxes and shovels jostled for a place with circle saws and hatchets. Food hidden in metal cans stacked to the rafters, the labels in every color from red to blue. Sides of ham and eggs crowded to the front with fresh-baked loaves by buckets of lard and sacks of salt, flour, and cornmeal.
A toy dog with rabbit-skin fur and glass eyes stood in the next window. A tin train and brightly colored wooden knobs, glass marbles, metal spiky things, and peg boards and checkerboards spread out beyond it.
Mej was grinning at me, Komu looking amused. Demik had been talking to me. How could he expect anyone to hear in this?
I cast him one eager look, feeling as if the corners of my mouth would bump into my ears, then dashed into the toy shop, which also turned out to be a general store.
“Wait a—”
I slipped thro
ugh Demik’s fingers. That dog…
I stroked silken fur, pressed it to my nose, and inhaled deeply. I turned to Demik, who was stiff at my shoulder.
“You can’t just rush off in—”
“Tem?” I showed him the dog.
Demik gazed blankly at it. “You want to get Tem something? What about a top?” He pointed out the knobs. “There are only two other kits near her age in the settlement. If you got her three she’d have enough for her friends and they’d have a game of it.”
Just as glad for the tops, beautifully carved, smooth and brightly painted, each with its own pattern, I gathered up three, held them out to Demik, then realized I had no idea what one did with them. I mimed throwing one and glanced at him.
Demik shook his head. “Here…” He pushed aside a checkerboard and spun one of the tops with a flick of his thumb and first finger. It spun like a fire whirl.
I gasped, watching colors blur into solid lines. Thrilled, breathless with the beauty and cunning of it, I tried one myself. Only to knock it off the shelf—no spin at all.
“I’ll teach you.” Demik selected a fourth top for me, blue, yellow, and pink.
I kissed his cheek, holding the tops to my chest.
Mej was talking to the man behind a big, cluttered counter as we walked up. This man was as fascinating as the tops. Pale-skinned, with a snow-white beard and bald head that gleamed in the sunlight through front windows. I stared at that snow beard, inching forward to reach and feel it.
Before I could Demik stepped in front of me, holding out his hand. He stopped because Mej already had a leather pouch open on his belt and he was giving the bearded man something. They talked fast: Mej sleek, snow-beard booming. I had no idea what they said. Wasn’t sure even of the language. Was this English? Something … vaguely familiar… Maybe if I heard more…?
Demik took my elbow, guiding me out. “I know it can be overwhelming, but just stay close—”
Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1) Page 7
