Chapter Text
On the first horrible night without Falin, the huge white dog-daemon laid alone on the cold stone floor and sobbed as silently as she could with her mouth wrapped around her front paws.
Palinode’s heart was bleeding for want of her brother. If Elafros had been there, they would have laid together and been warm and loved. They would have fizzed with the comfort and glow of sibling-daemons touching. But Elafros, the great grey wolf, was dead. He had vanished as the dragon’s teeth closed, and he would not come back, not ever, until his human’s body breathed again. He had gone to the unfollowable place, and he had done it for Palinode; and now she was more alone than she had ever been.
More than anything, Palinode wanted to be touched. Elafros had been smaller than her - Palinode was a very big dog indeed - but he was so inexpressibly grand and perfect, so gentle and admirable, so big and generous in his soul, that he could simply lay his jaw on her shoulder, and she would feel cuddled all over! He was like that. Had been like that.
Oh, Elafros!
Palinode’s material form was that of a lovely sort of dog. She had settled at their maturity as a livestock guardian dog. She was big and grand and white all over, with enormous paws, and a hard skull for fighting wolves with. She had a mane of splendid white fur around her neck, as thick as armor, and as repellent to tooth and claw. She was wonderfully big, and as soft and warm as the sheep that her kind of dog was meant to protect, and her very nature was duty and willingness; she was formed to lay down her life in defense of her charges. She did not mind.
She would have been happy if only Laios loved her, but he didn’t, and that was that.
It was only now, without Elafros, that this fact felt so impossibly big and bad. She was a big blundering disappointment, and not even cool-looking, like a dragon. She had made such a lovely, realistic dragon when they were children! If only she had settled as one! But she had broken her human’s heart, and just been a dog. A big, embarrassing dog, who cried silently in the night, and was not allowed to come in.
Her human was awake, keeping watch, and she wondered for a moment if she could be naughty. By slinking along on the floor like a worm she could creep just into the firelight’s circle, and then by stretching her body she could just about lay her head on the toe of his boot. Even a little contact with her soul’s home, even with boots between them, would have helped. Oh, it would be lovely to be small and between his hands; or big as a bear and hugging him! It would be lovely if they were like other people; other people who gripped their daemons tightly when they were sad, who ran their hands over their daemons for mutual comfort, who slept next to them all night. She missed their childhood, when he had loved her, so much that it built up and almost became another sob. She bit her paw deeper, fiercely.
It was true that other daemons, normal people, were touched and held more often. But Palinode wasn’t allowed. She and Laios weren’t like that.
It hadn’t mattered much, when there had been Elafros.
Laios was driving the party forward with his blunt hope. Palinode did not have the same hope. She was the one had seen Elafros disappear. And in order to give her human his undistracted strength, she carried all his load of worry for him.
Oh, how much sadness a heart could bear; Palinode had a big heart that was all sadness. She stifled the next sob by biting down until her mind went white with hurting. Then she went back to her small fierce bites that made her paws bald and picked-at. It gave her something to do. And it was a good, quiet thing to do. Everyone else was sleeping. Even in her mad grief Palinode tried very hard not to make people hate her.
At that moment an impossibly small voice hissed, right up in her ear, “What are you doing to yourself? You big soggy fool.”
Palinode gasped. She held very still. She strained her senses in the darkness. She did not know the voice, but she felt instinctively the familiarity of the soul, and her great desire to be loved by it, to hoard it for herself like sheep or treasure. Her impossible grief was halted for a moment in wonder. “Ohh!” She whispered, “Are you … are you Bee?”
“Shut up,” the fierce tiny voice snapped. “What are you doing, crying in the dark like this? What are you biting yourself for, you big dumb lump?”
“Oh, you’re Bee! I’m so sorry,” Palinode whispered, “I thought no one could hear. Can I look at you? Please? Can I see you?”
“No,” the voice said with authority. “And of course we can hear you, numbnuts, it's us.”
Palinode was mortified at the thought of the little daemon’s human being awake and hearing her, when she thought she’d been private and all alone, chewing on her grief; but she supposed it made sense. But it was overwhelmingly exciting that the mysterious daemon was speaking to her; she had known them for ages - ages! literally years! - and not been allowed to know anything about the silent little daemon; the invisible soul that stayed hidden in her human’s mysterious clothes.
Nobody ever got to meet that daemon. That was the rule about her.
Palinode had hoarded in her heart, for almost a year now, the single secret scrap of whisper she’d heard once and guarded, that the little daemon’s name (probably) started with the sound “Bee.” She had overheard it on purpose, even though it was naughty, because she wanted that little daemon so much that she was willing to be naughty in pursuit of it. She had not told anyone, not even Laios, this special secret fact.
Perhaps it was finally time for the start of beautiful friendship, and she would be rewarded for being so good, so trustworthy with the secret of Bee. “Can I sniff you?” She asked, hopefully.
“No,” the little voice said, “What’s going on, why isn’t he holding you? He’s awake, isn’t he? Why isn’t he doing his job? Go to him, so we can fucking sleep.”
“I’m not allowed,” Palinode whispered, embarrassed.
There was a silence. Palinode stayed still and tried to picture what Bee was. She had many fantasies about what Bee was, and though statistically Bee was probably just a mouse or sparrow - most daemons of her human’s race were - she held out the excited hope that Bee was something wild and strange and fascinating. Perhaps something with venom. Perhaps a miniature monster. Perhaps even something that could kill Palinode! Secretly, of course, in her sleep; she knew that Bee was small and not flashy. She would have to be deadly in a subtle way.
She had four pieces of information about Bee: firstly, that the first part of her name was Bee, from that stolen whisper; secondly, that she was small - small enough to hide in a scarf-thing and never be seen or known, not ever, not even after almost three years of close companionship, which must be small indeed; thirdly, that she was forbidden to the party and nobody could meet her; and fourthly, that she was probably a little brown thing, from a sense of movement Palinode had caught one time, when their humans had died near each other, before Bee had died in a shower of golden dust.
This was enough for Palinode to crave Bee. She would have been grateful just for this; this intimate silence, this acknowledgment, this company, their very first conversation of all. She asked hopefully, happily, “Are you something that could kill me?”
“You are so fucked up,” the voice breathed in her ear. Bee was on the floor, and her little voice whispered and scratched against the great furry flap of Palinode’s ear. “What the hell do you mean, not allowed? You’re crying. Your brother’s dead. His human’s dead. It's sad as hell. Your human’s gone to pieces, but he’s just sitting there like a corpse. You’re trying to eat yourself. You should be having a big soppy moment together. Go lick his stupid face, or whatever. Fix this.”
“Oh!” Palinode licked her chops in embarrassment. “Laios doesn’t touch me, really. We’re grownups. And really - I’m not supposed to cry. I normally don’t! I’m good, aren’t I? I’m normally very good and quiet. It’s just - oh, Bee! I’m so very sad. Oh, don’t make me want him.”
“What are you talking about? I’m far more grownup than you and I sleep under my human’s chin,” the voice flicked savagely into her ear. “Don’t pretend it’s a tallman thing, either. Every human I’ve ever known holds their daemon. It’s what we’re for.”
“Oh, Laios doesn’t need me,” Palinode said quickly.
“… fuck me, there’s something deeply wrong with you two,” the voice said, soft as a ghost of a mouse, “but anyway, you need him, which means he’s failing you.”
“No! He’s good.”
“It’s his job, you idiot. And If he fails it, it’s your job to make him do his job. Go to him.”
“Don’t,” Palinode said. She rippled all over as if tormented by flies, under her fur, under her skin. Wanting and naughtiness had no place in a livestock guardian dog. “Don’t make me want him.”
“So you do want him, then? Just to get an idea. This is just some kinda ordinary trauma, someone-should-have-strangled-your-parents, tallmen-from-the-North-don’t-hug, emotionally constipated psychological thing. You’re not actually separated?”
Bee and her human thought she was separated?
Palinode’s first thought was that an insulting thing to think of Laios. Her second was a slow understanding that they probably did seem like they’d been separated. Not quite severed, but more like of those unfortunate accidents where somebody’s soul was displaced for a bit too long - pulled apart by battle or abuse, or one of them falling in a river - but not enough to kill them, so they came back together in a strange way, with broken hearts and a longer range and a weirder way of seeing the world. Sometimes shamans and mages separated from their daemons on purpose; but there was a world of difference and training between mutual separation and whatever ghastly accident Bee must be picturing. And it was rather insulting really - separated people made for uncomfortable company; Laois just had a brain that worked a bit differently than others.
Oh, how nice it might be, though, for Palinode to be severed. If the gulf between Laois and his soul could just be one clean cut, and no more hurting.
“Oh, Bee,” Palinode whimpered. “Could you bite me? Could you sting me? I know you could kill me - just a little bit. Oh, please, Bee. Are you a scorpion? I will open my mouth, please, and you may poison me as much as you like.”
The ghost of the tiniest sigh, a movement of air. Then, still a secret, imperceptible, the fierce little voice raised itself slightly louder than a breath and said, “Yeah, I dunno either, boss. Go for it.”
Chilchuck erupted from his bedroll in one smooth movement that carried through his body into his hand, almost as if he’d been laying awake the whole time and plotting exactly how he was going to do it; and before Palinode understood anything, he had bounced a boot very hard off her human’s head.
She leapt to her feet, leapt to her human, as Bee’s human whisper-shouted: “You hold that big stupid noisy dog of yours right now, Laios, so help me, shut that dog up, or I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you right now, some of us are trying to sleep,” and that was practically permission, wasn’t it? So Palinode hurtled herself across the space and wedged her big strong head into her human’s lap before he could do anything else.
“Oh, shut me up,” she begged, “oh, please, shut me up, I didn’t mean to wake him. Oh, please.”
And glory, glory, glory, Laios put his hands on her. He wrapped his big good hands around her jaws and crushed her head against his chest punishingly, and made her be quiet, and told her off quietly in exactly the same way their father always had; and it hurt terribly to be touched, but was better than being alone. Even though her heart cried for Elafros, Palinode felt more like a whole soul. She could be quiet, she really could, she could be good.
And after that, forever, she loved Bee.
Loved her with a big good wanting all by itself, a big good love that didn’t need encouraging; which was good, because she never got any.
The origin of the problem, of course, had been that everyone knew about dog daemons.
They were the souls of servants and soldiers. It was an unwritten law, but a practical one.
They were boring and mundane, and unbefitting of a family that had something to prove.
They were not interesting souls. They had no greatness in them, not even the ordinary kind.
Everyone had wanted something better for Laios and Palinode. Their parents certainly had, and had been clear about it. That was a bitter thorn in Palinode’s side. Their home village, too, had hopes: hopes for a predictable future leader, stability, prosperity. A strong-souled chief might even unite the high weald-villages under one representative, which everyone had been wanting for the past generation, but were held back by the awkwardness of choosing a candidate from the rising generation of chieftain's sons, which had all settled as uninspiring things, like “turtle” or “cat.”
And then the Touden chief’s first son’s soul had removed itself, at puberty, from succession. An overnight cancelling-out of all that bother and upbringing. The general disappointment had been tangible. Worse, because it wasn’t even about Laios as a person; it was about everything he represented, cascading down. It was about his engagement to that girl, which had to be carefully rearranged, and it was about the villagers going even longer without their own school (Palinode could practically see the local mothers calculating this resentfully), and it was about another generation of Taxes Being Too High, with no silver-tongued or steadfast soul to lead their case to the Lord. It meant that instead of the easy option of a nicely-brought-up boy from the chief’s house, they’d have to have a fight, or an election, or marry someone in. It meant that they’d wasted time and attention on that odd, strange, different boy, who had turned out to be of very low worth to them after all.
A soul that settled as a dog was practically not worth educating. Servants and soldiers required no education other than training for their roles, and dog-souls were suited for no other vocation. Laios had pride and ambition to uphold - he’d tried very hard at school, even before she settled, it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried - but ultimately his dog-soul had proved itself. As anyone could have predicted by simply looking at Palinode, he was not going to be well-suited to education.
(Perhaps it was because of that, Palinode had wondered; perhaps they would have been kinder to Laios, more understanding of his mind and heart, if he hadn’t been so instantly separated from his peers by being so blatantly dog-souled?)
They didn’t do well at school after Palinode settled, and at the age of twelve they left school for the army. Soldier it was to be, then…
Everyone had wanted something better for them.
Laios had wanted something better, and Palinode couldn’t be anything other than what she was. And that was the seed of the split between them; the war between desire and realism.
That was what had led them to do the terrible, desperate thing they had done.
And that was why it hurt for them to touch, and that was why they did not touch.
Well, it was the beginning of the reason.