Vheret spun his cudgel in hand, moving through the mass of sheep to the windward side of the herd, eyes wary. There would be no wolves to see, of course; he suspected the pack that frequented this part of the Peregrine foothills purposefully laid a heavy scent where the wind would find it, in order to throw off their actual movements. That’s why they are the hunters and we are the prey, Vheret thought with a scowl. If he could have, he would have taken his father’s old bow to hunt the pack, but experience taught him he’d find no wolves—only more missing sheep upon his return. The flock was already oblivious to whatever threat they’d sensed only a few moments earlier. Vheret resisted the urge to cuff a nearby ram out of momentary pique.

The young shepherd sighed, pushing his irritation aside, gaze watchful on the late-afternoon woodline shadows. Vheret was thirteen winters old and had been tending his sheep for nearly as long as he could recall. He had to occasionally remind himself not to be irked by them. Sheep were stupid creatures, after all, their tiny minds confined to the herd’s general disposition and habits. No, not stupid, he amended. Sheep could communicate with one another with weird subtlety, could remember a face seen only once or twice, years down the line. It was their forgetfulness in the moment that was a source of frustration. Something could upset the flock, throwing the whole into a chaotic mass of agitated, bleating tups and ewes, and off they’d rush, stampeding in whatever direction the first panicked sheep had randomly decided to bolt. The phantom threat would be utterly forgotten twelve heartbeats later, once the potential menace was beyond sight and scent.

Vheret regarded his diminished flock with a critical eye. There were less than forty sheep remaining from the sixty-plus head that fed the family coffer three autumns back. Misfortune had shrunk the flock drastically; famine and sickness and wolves a steady cull through the years. Misfortune is the only fortune we’ve had, he thought. He despaired of a reality that saw cruel winters and crueler fates on the horizon, and often fantasized about abandoning them to the wild—to simply let the wolves have their way. It had never been his dream, to be a shepherd; this was just the life that circumstances had forced upon him.

But he couldn’t just leave. Vheret was needed—and by the flock least of all.

His father, Adem DesTari had come north to Windshear Cove nearly ten years ago, with young wife Mirya and little Vheret in tow. Vheret was well past walking by then, which was a good thing, as Mirya was heavy with their second child. To the family’s great sorrow, Vheret’s little sister would not be born into this world alive; Mirya’s health, ever fragile, had been weakened by the trek, and the baby paid the toll. They settled on the cove nonetheless, high in the hills, a breathtaking view of the Peregrine River’s outlet into Windshear Bay and the ferocious Storming Sea expanding beyond. Adem had been an itinerant musician—a wandering minstrel skilled in lute and pipe, gifted in song and dance. He vowed to give up that wayfaring life if the beauteous Mirya a’Carpinteira, the fairest maid he’d ever seen, would but wed him. She did, taking half her father’s wealth as dowry, and leaving the bustling city of Alegria, where her father had made his fortune, far behind.

That half-fortune was mostly depleted by the time they arrived in Windshear, gone in just a handful of years spent on lavish, extended inn stays and expensive wines. Adem traded most of what they had left for a massive flock of sheep—a hundred head that included ten sizable rams and seemed very impressive at the time. He promised he would provide just as well, if not better, than Mirya’s dullard of a father. He hired men to build a house in the high hills, despite warnings that the winds would make living there untenable, and ran out of silver with which to pay them before the task was even halfway completed. Having been promised coins, the men would not take sheep in trade, and the house was left unfinished. Adem vowed to complete the remainder himself, but carpentry was not his forte; the resultant hovel had three rooms, but only two ever had walls sturdy enough to stay upright in the worst of months. Within a year, Adem took up his lute and pipes again, intent on performing for copper nubs in the Windshear town proper—only in the evenings, he swore, after the sheep were safely in the fold—and promising he would soon earn enough silver to pay a proper carpenter.

But promises were not easy things to keep, especially when the horizons offered brighter possibilities than Windshear’s stingy townsfolk or a boring flock of sheep ever could. Adem quickly tired of the daily drudgery of following the flock, and as the months passed spent more time down in the middling Windshear pubs; before long he left the tending of sheep to young Vheret whilst he traveled to other nearby coastal towns, seeking easier fortunes. Adem’s forays away from their home became more frequent and protracted, and before long he had fathered at least two more children with two other women, and that was only within the extent of Mirya’s knowing. Vheret’s mother was fearful of upsetting Adem if confronted—terrified of him leaving her alone in this strange northern land, so she looked the other way and tried to make do.

Vheret’s brother Beneficio was born four years following their arrival. Less than three years after that, Adem left for good. Vheret, aged nine, became the requisite head of the household. He did what he could to repair their wind-beaten home, though his skill with hammer and nail barely surpassed his father’s, and it was all he could do to simply keep the walls upright and the roof from caving. Mirya was no help; she had always been frail of constitution, her health seemingly a threat to fail for this malady or that sickness each year. But when she finally faced the realization that Adem would not be returning ever again, she took a permanent turn for the worse. A melancholy settled over her; she generally refused to talk, even to her children, and ate only the food that was set directly before her.

When she wasn’t bedridden, Mirya would sit on the porch and stare out at the sea. When it was cold, she sometimes remembered to bring a blanket or shawl. Most of the time, Vheret would lay one over her shoulders himself. The year’s turn to autumn did not treat Mirya with any kindness, as wet-lung fever settled in her chest, confining her to the small bed she used to share with Adem. Vheret wasn’t sure if she would survive the year.

Part of him did not care. It was a cold thing to think, but short of birthing them, Mirya had done little to benefit Vheret or Bene. Her love was reserved for Adem, and his absence cast her attentions to the wind, eyes and mind ever on the horizon. She was a mouth to feed, and that was all, as far as Vheret was concerned. We will be better off when she is gone, he thought, more often than not. It didn’t even make him feel guilty. Bene was all that mattered in his eyes; Bene had inherited Mirya’s poor health, so his chronic illnesses were in large part her fault too.

He didn’t really miss his father anymore, either. When Vheret was younger, Adem would on occasion bring back books for him to read; Vheret collected them, and read whatever he could, voracious for the habit. These days his collection sat at the bottom of a trunk, untouched, though he did not need them anymore, as he had virtually memorized every word on every page. Vheret supposed if he missed anything from his father it was the potential for new books. But that was all. He knew he would get no more. He had made peace with that.

Bene was all that he really had now, and Vheret would have surely gone mad without him. They needed each other. That was their bond—that and the flock.

Vheret guided the sheep down a narrow ridge, still wary of wolves. Autumn was making its presence felt, heavy on the wind, a strong breeze rattling leaves as they passed. The silver moon would rise soon after dusk, a crescent sliver unseen as yet; the blood moon was already up, taunting and low, gorged and nearly full, a dull, dark mirror opposite the soon-setting sun. Vheret didn’t like the red moon. It made him uneasy, especially when it was full. The townsfolk called it the Murderer’s Moon, and said it urged men to give in to their baser instincts. Vheret only knew that it provided scant light and inscrutable shadows.

At a creek bed’s pass, the sheep were pulled by another scent—forb, or clove, or that rare autumn honeysuckle. Three turned their heads, and the others followed, all in a direction opposite of the one Vheret wanted them to go. He resisted the urge to yell at them. That would do no good. And he was not possessed of a mood to dash up the hill to sway their path…

Instead, Vheret closed his eyes and settled his mind.

When he opened them again, everything changed.

He called it his “focused sight,” but it was something more extraordinary than anything words might describe. Vheret felt everything he saw. And it all looked different. The air, the earth, the trees, the grass, they all shared muted shades of purple and pink. Living creatures were more vibrant, constantly shifting in color. Vheret had discovered that beasts were colored depending on their current emotions. Happiness was light, frothy pink; sadness a layered, watery blue. Fear was a lavender that fluxed and twitched, anger a red that crackled like static levin. The first time it had happened, nearly a year ago, he was trying to squeeze past an abominable headache; when he opened his eyes, his first panicked thought was that he had somehow gotten himself cursed. But soon he was able to do it just by trying.

Vheret would watch the ripples of color when bored, noting what kinds of animals felt what ways at various times, and amused himself by finding little oddities here or there. He could see them in people, too, though he did not use it in that way often, cautious of how they’d react if he were caught staring. It wasn’t too long after discovering this strange new comprehension that he realized he could influence the colors as he saw them, thereby influencing the actual emotion in the creature. Not significantly—he could not make a panicked lamb suddenly blissfully content—but he could nudge them in various directions, ever so slightly, simply by narrowing his eyes and imagining the change. It helped to calm a nervous sheep, and even worked once to prod an agitated wild sow away from a potential charge.

It would work here too. Vheret seized on the lead ram’s curiosity, narrowing it to tepid caution. The ram slowed, other sheep bumping into its backside. Vheret clucked his tongue and tapped his cudgel on a rock. Another ram glanced in the direction Vheret wanted them to go, and Vheret shifted the tup’s attentiveness to interest. The flock followed, blissfully unaware. Vheret guided them along a low ridge, the ripples humming like wind across crystals in his mind. Using his focused sight always brought a whisper of euphoria to him, and it buzzed delightfully; Vheret laughed low and twirled his cudgel like a cane, spinning in an approximation of a dance to music only he could hear.

Puppets, he thought with an odd grin, recalling a puppeteer’s wagon that had passed through Windshear two months back. The man had made wood-and-cloth sheep, cows, chickens, and hogs dance on lines of twine. The puppeteer passed a hat for coins following his performance, but Vheret had none to give. He had bowed to the man, chancing a shift to his focused sight to see if he could change the puppeteer’s disposition from disappointed to indifferent, but Vheret’s eyes—glowing a telltale soft lavender incandescence—alarmed the puppeteer so much that his emotions were quickly beyond modification. Vheret left quickly, before the puppeteer might chance a run to the town constabulary—or worse, the church. The Windshear townsfolk already saw him as strange; glowing eyes might well push them towards violence.

“I’ve never seen eyes like yours,” Chayand had giggled to him once, teasingly. He tried not to think of that, of her, but in truth it was a rare day when he did not. They had been curled close together, tucked against the cup-shaped trunk of a willow tree. He thought for a moment she might try to kiss him, and was not wholly opposed to the idea. She didn’t, but ever after he wondered what it would be like. Chayand did not begrudge him looking different, but then she, of all people, could not.

Vheret knew he looked odd. Not just his eyes, which were already queerly colored, pale lilac, ashen like the rest of him. His hair was so blond it appeared nearly white, as were his eyebrows and lashes, which, he knew, made him appear even stranger. At least his hair did not cause him physical distress; Vheret’s fair skin was the epitome of sensitive, a threat to burn in the sun if exposed for even half an hour, so he always went about cloaked or cowled throughout the year, despite whatever other discomfort that might bring. He didn’t mind so much, he was more prone to suffering from cold than heat anyway.

“You’re skinny,” Chayand would tease him on occasion, usually with a poke to his ribs. She was still in his mind, refusing to leave. Chayand, by contrast and ever Vheret’s opposite, had always been curvy, and seemed more so this year. But Vheret had learned not to complain to her of hunger, or to confess that he had given his day’s ration to Bene. He made the mistake of mentioning it once, and Chay showed up the next day with sympathy in her large brown eyes and a picnic basket filled with fresh food in hand. He couldn’t abide her pity, but he took the basket nonetheless, wordlessly, and gave most of the food to Bene once she had departed. But he hated the thought of her charity. The fact that it wasn’t really Chayand’s to give made it somehow worse; it was her parents’ farm, after all, the food likely plucked by the hands of their workers, not hers.

And it reminded him that the “charitable” people of Windshear Cove were much less so when Vheret’s charming father was not around to entertain in trade for a basket of well wishes. No one wanted to visit mad Mirya and her silent sons.

All my good memories are bound to be soured by something, he thought darkly. The focused sight had faded, leaving the usual dull headache in its wake.

But at least the sheep were on course and headed for home. Vheret bowed his cowled head and followed.
 
 
 

 
 
        The flock was penned with little complaint, the barest of mutters given as they filed in and quickly huddled together. It would be a cold night. Vheret latched the gate and went inside their family’s hovel to build the hearth fire, then went to check on Bene. His little brother was sound asleep in their bed, his breathing strong. Vheret noted Bene’s hair was getting long, falling in soft brown curls over his ears; he made a promise to himself to cut it on the morrow. Vheret brushed his brother’s cheek, then went to their mother’s room.

He found her window shutters had been thrown open, threadbare curtains shifting with the wind. Mirya was abed, as ever, her eyes on the window. “Did you open this?” Vheret asked accusingly. An open window in autumn was asking for death to climb in.

She didn’t answer, which was hardly a surprise. He went to the window and pulled and latched the shutters tight.

“It’s all I have,” she said suddenly, her voice reed-thin.

Vheret stood still by the window. “You have us,” he said after a moment, voice low. He turned to regard her. She looked shrunken, there in the bed, worn blankets a tousled mass all about her. Her dark hair—long a source of vanity—was a fright, and streaked with gray. Two years ago she would have plucked each gray hair out by hand. Vheret noticed she lay in the middle of the bed rather than the side she usually kept to. She had finally accepted Adem would not be returning to it.

“We weren’t even supposed to come here,” Mirya rasped, a hard-fought breath following. Her eyes still seemed determined to seek beyond the shuttered window.

Vheret frowned. “You always said this was Father’s choice.” He went to her and adjusted her blankets, tidying them. One glance told him her chamber pot was empty.

“Adem was obsessed,” she said with a weak nod, and coughed that wet cough. “She sent… letters describing the bay… the beauty of it. It seized him.” Her lips were desiccated, like those of a woman thrice her age, cracked and lined with dried blood. “He broke the arrangement… by coming. He was beguiled by her words.”

“Who?” Vheret asked, puzzled. Tales of Adem’s infidelities were not new to his ears, but Vheret didn’t know he had corresponded with anyone prior to their arrival.

She looked off, either not willing to answer or distracted by whatever new phantom thought was passing through her mind.

“Mother,” Vheret began—

“You’re not mine,” she rasped, finally looking at him, and not kindly. “You never were. And you’re going to infect my Beneficio.”

Vheret drew back, eyes narrowed. “I’d need nine lifetimes to harm him as you have. If there is blood poisoning him, it’s yours,” he said accusingly.

She looked sad, but that was how she always looked. “It is,” she said, a soft confession. “But ours is not yours.”

Vheret had always believed he favored Adem in semblance, at least in some ways, whereas Bene greatly favored Mirya, especially in the face. Perhaps Vheret was the by-blow of one of Adem’s strumpets after all. He didn’t care. But her saying Bene was not his brother was like a physical blow.

“Lies on your lips,” he finally retorted.

Mirya only shrugged feebly. “Your heart is a stone,” she whispered. “Adem never understood. Mayhaps you frightened him away.”

It was just like his mother to blame him for Adem’s leaving. Vheret had nothing more to say, so he left with no more words for her, and went back to Bene’s room.

Bene was awake, half sitting, moon eyes anxious. “Is Mother still unwell?”

“Always,” Vheret muttered, feeling Bene’s forehead. The fever seemed to be abating, which was heartening at this hour; dusk always seemed to bring with it the darkest vale of any sickness.

“Don’t quarrel,” Bene sighed, then coughed once, softly. Vheret said nothing to that.

Vheret pulled a blanket up to Bene’s narrow shoulders, and his brother snuggled in gratefully. “What’s for supper?” Bene asked, which was a good thing; a healthy appetite usually meant he was turning a corner for the better.

“Choice beef cutlets, potato mash with peppered gravy, and candied yams,” Vheret said with the faintest smile. Bene smiled back. They both knew it would be four-day pickled mutton and hard tack.

Vheret left to dredge the mutton from the cellar vinegar barrel.
 
 
 

 
 
        Vheret rose early the next morning, as he always did. He was a light sleeper, and the rams usually tapped horns at the first blush of dawn.

Slipping from their bed in the near dark, ever careful not to wake his brother, he paused in dressing himself. Something was different. It was in the air, but he didn’t know what.

He checked his brother; Bene was flush with warmth, but it was thankfully not fever. Still…

Vheret felt the cold in the other room even before he entered. The window was wide open again. Mirya DesTari had died in the night, passing in her sleep. Vheret stared at her corpse a long moment, but did not approach, not even to close her eyes. He just turned and went back to Bene.

“Mother is gone,” he said quietly to his brother.

Bene lifted his head. “Oh,” was all he said, then turned his face away after a long moment. Vheret thought he saw a tear in Bene’s eye, and he would not fault him for it. Bene deserved a father’s protection, deserved a mother’s care, Vheret thought. Alas, all they ever had were Adem and Mirya. Vheret shook his head, suddenly angry. When he realized he had tears in his eyes as well, he turned and left the room.
 
 
 

 
 
        Vheret buried Mirya DesTari that afternoon, digging the hole himself, placing it next to the unmarked grave of Mirya’s unnamed daughter. The sheep all watched the oddity from their pen, a few bleating in protest for lack of the day’s usual forage. Vheret covered the grave with stones, then went to look for one large enough to use as a headstone. As poorly as his mother had lived, she deserved that, at least. He would worry about finding something to engrave it with later.

He found a stone soon enough, a smooth but otherwise unremarkable slab of granite. It would do.

Cresting the north hill on his return, Vheret saw a distant figure, cowled in a weather-stained cloak and sitting on a stump-tailed horse; they were just off the trail that wound up the hillside leading to their house.

Father…? Vheret dropped the slab of stone, momentarily taken aback. Of course Adem DesTari would finally return on the day she died. In a world of dark absurdities, this would be the darkest and most absurd.

But no; his father was tall and willowy, whereas the cloaked man was not very tall at all, and broad of shoulder. Vheret watched in silence for a long moment, but neither the horse nor rider moved. It was clear, however, that the man was peering in the direction of their home.

When the man shifted his weight, Vheret heard steel rings shift beneath that cloak.

He’s probably armed as well. “If you’ve come to rob, you’ll gain only sheep,” Vheret called out, though he somehow doubted that was the man’s intent. Only a fool might believe there was anything worth stealing here.

The cloaked man turned his head slightly but said nothing to him in reply, though Vheret thought he heard a low, raspy laugh. After a moment, the man simply turned his horse and rode down the hill toward town—far too soon for Vheret to even consider using his focused sight to attempt to gauge a mood. Within a few heartbeats the rider was out of sight.

Vheret stared in that direction for a long time after. He was glad it was not his father, truly. And now Mother is gone too. It was just going to be him and Bene; just them, now, and for the rest of their lives.

When he finally strode for home, Vheret left his mother’s stone laying where he’d dropped it, and he thought of her no more.