I Abandoned My Beast Cubs for the Protagonist... Oops?-Chapter 126: Tumbling Down

Zhāo Yàn had survived the Hollow Boar.

He had not, as it turned out, survived his mother.

He had cleaned the wound as best he could in the dark. He had climbed back through the window. He had arranged himself in his bed.

He had been asleep for just a bit when he heard a voice.

"Get up," Gū Gū said.

Zhāo Yàn got up.

She looked at him. At his face, which was fine. At his ears, which were fine. At his tails, which were slightly less fine but passable.

Then her eyes dropped to his side.

He had done a reasonable job with the bandaging, all things considered. He had used a strip of cloth from the bottom of his traveling pack where it was least likely to be noticed. He had tied it tightly. He had pulled his sleeping robe down over it.

The sleeping robe had shifted in the night.

The bandage was visible.

Gū Gū looked at the bandage.

Zhāo Yàn looked at the ceiling.

"That," Gū Gū said slowly, "is a bandage."

"It’s a precautionary measure."

"Against what?"

"General hazards. Of the night. Environmental."

"Environmental," she repeated.

"The forest floor is very—"

Thwack.

The stick connected with the top of his head.

Zhāo Yàn’s ears rang.

"OW—"

Thwack.

"Mother—"

Thwack.

"I can EXPLAIN—"

Thwack. Thwack.

"I survived! I am RIGHT HERE, SURVIVING—"

"YOU SNUCK OUT," Gū Gū said, and her voice had stopped being quiet and was now doing something considerably more impressive, filling the hut, bouncing off the walls, probably audible in the next three territories. "YOU SNUCK OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO HUNT THE HOLLOW BOAR WITH A STICK—"

"It was a good stick—"

Thwack.

"—AND YOU GOT YOURSELF CUT OPEN LIKE A DUMPLING—"

"I wasn’t cut open like a—"

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Zhāo Yàn covered his head with both arms. His three tails had wrapped around his own legs in an instinctive protective maneuver that was doing nothing.

"I’m fine," he tried. "I dealt with it. I handled the situation. The boar is unconscious in the forest right now, actually, so technically I completed the mission—"

"YOU ARE SIX."

"Six and a half."

The stick paused.

Gū Gū took a breath. The long kind.

"Sit down," she said.

He sat.

She unwrapped the bandage and looked at the wound.

"It needs proper treatment," she said.

"I know."

"It’s going to scar."

"I know."

She worked in silence, cleaning and rewrapping. Zhāo Yàn sat still and let her, which was the least he could do and also approximately the most.

A shadow fell across the doorway.

Both of them looked up.

Han Shān stood at the entrance of the hut.

He had, apparently, followed Zhāo Yàn home in the dark and then waited outside until morning. His white fur was immaculate. His blue eyes moved from Gū Gū to the wound to Zhāo Yàn and back again.

Gū Gū looked at him.

He looked back.

"Who," she said, "are you."

"Han Shān." He paused. "Northern Peaks."

"Northern Peaks." Her eyes moved over him. The white fur, the solid build, the stillness that did not look like a cub’s stillness. "Snow leopard."

"Yes."

"What are you doing in the Eastern Hills."

"Currently," Han Shān said, "standing in your doorway."

Zhāo Yàn’s ears perked forward with interest. In his experience, people did not answer his mother’s questions with technically accurate non-answers. In his experience, his mother’s questions had a gravity that pulled proper explanations out of people whether they intended to give them or not.

Han Shān appeared to be immune to the gravity.

Gū Gū’s eyes narrowed. "You were with my son last night." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"I was in the same forest as your son last night."

"Did you help him?"

A pause. Very small. "We addressed the boar together."

"Addressed," Gū Gū repeated.

"It’s unconscious. In the clearing past the third cedar. The senior warriors will find it easily when they go out this morning."

Gū Gū looked at him for a long time. Han Shān looked back. Neither of them appeared to find this uncomfortable.

"You’re far from home," she said finally.

"Yes."

"Alone."

"Yes."

"How old are you."

"Eight."

"Eight years old and alone in the Eastern Hills." Her voice was not warm. It was not unwarm either. "Where are your parents?"

Something moved through Han Shān’s expression. It was brief and quickly gone and Zhāo Yàn almost missed it.

"My mother is in the Northern Peaks," Han Shān said. "She knows where I am."

"Does she?"

"She trusts my judgment."

"She trusts the judgment," Gū Gū said, "of an eight year old who is wandering foreign territories alone."

"My judgment has not failed her yet."

Gū Gū snickered. She looked at him for another moment, then turned back to finish wrapping Zhāo Yàn’s side with a firmness that communicated several things simultaneously.

"You," she said to Zhāo Yàn, tying the final knot hardly, "are confined to this hut for three days."

"Three—"

"Four days."

He closed his mouth.

"You will rest. You will eat. You will not go within fifty paces of any forest path." She stood, picking up her stick. "And you will think very carefully about the difference between bravery and stupidity, because last night you demonstrated you do not currently know it."

She walked to the door before stopping. She looked at Han Shān, who had not moved from the entrance and showed no signs of planning to.

"You can stay," she said. "If you’re hungry."

Han Shān considered this. "I’m not hungry."

"Then you can stay anyway." She stepped past him into the morning light. "Someone should make sure he doesn’t do anything else stupid while I’m gone."

She left.

The hut was quiet.

Han Shān stepped inside, looked around with that same cataloguing attention, and sat down near the wall.

Zhāo Yàn looked at him. "She likes you."

"She doesn’t know me."

"She let you in. She doesn’t let most people in." He tilted his head. "Why are you actually in the Eastern Hills?"

Han Shān was quiet for a moment. "My mother said I should see other territories before I take on responsibilities at home. Understand the broader world." Another pause. "She said I was becoming too narrow."

"Narrow how?"

"Focused only on the peaks. On training. On what’s directly in front of me." He looked at his hands. "She said a lord who only knows his own territory is a liability to everyone in it."

Zhāo Yàn considered this. "Your mother sounds sensible."

"She is." Han Shān’s voice was simple and certain. "She’s the most sensible person I know."

"Mine hits people with a stick."

"Also sensible."

Zhāo Yàn laughed. It hurt his ribs. He laughed anyway.

They sat together in the morning light while the village woke up around them. The senior warriors went out and found the Hollow Boar unconscious in the clearing past the third cedar, exactly where Han Shān had said it would be, and came back to much celebration that neither cub received any credit for.

By afternoon, Zhāo Yàn was going to lose his mind.

"I can’t stay in here for three days," he announced to no one in particular. "I am a fox of exceptional—"

"Cultivation," Han Shān said. "Yes. You mentioned."

"It’s true."

"You were thrown eight feet by a pig."

"It was a large pig."

"Hmmm."

"There’s a river," Han Shān said, after a moment. "East of here. I passed it yesterday. It runs fast this time of year."

Zhāo Yàn’s ears came forward. "How fast?"

"Fast enough to be interesting."

"My mother said fifty paces from any forest path."

"The river isn’t a forest path."

They looked at each other.

Zhāo Yàn’s three tails swished once. Twice.

"She’s going to hit me again," he said.

"Probably."

"With the stick."

"Almost certainly."

"Multiple times."

Han Shān stood up, already moving toward the door. "Are you coming?"

Zhāo Yàn was already on his feet.

They slipped out together, moving through the village. Past the elder’s hut. Past the cooking fires. Past the section of path where the ground was soft from yesterday’s rain and the grass grew long on either side.

They were nearly to the tree line when the ground disappeared.

Not metaphorically. Not gradually. One moment there was solid earth under Zhāo Yàn’s left foot, and the next moment there was not, and then there was a great deal of nothing happening very quickly, and then there was an impact.

Thump.

Then, a second impact, slightly heavier.

Thump.

Silence.

Zhāo Yàn lay at the bottom of a hole that was perhaps six feet deep and smelled strongly of rain and old leaves. His ribs, which had been making progress toward forgiving him, had reversed their position. His three tails were somewhere above his head.

Beside him, Han Shān sat up from the dirt with an expression that was completely unreadable, his white fur covered in mud, a leaf on top of his head.

They looked up at the circle of sky above them.

They looked at each other.

"This," Zhāo Yàn said, "is not the river."

Han Shān looked at the walls of the hole. At the mud. At the leaf on his own head, which he removed with two fingers and set aside. "No."

"This is a hole."

"Yes."

"We fell into a hole."

"We did."

Zhāo Yàn’s tails flicked. "Well," he said, with as much dignity as a fox covered in mud at the bottom of an unexpected hole could muster. "This is fine."

Or not.