Crucible by Mercedes Lackey

of lumber and coarsely patched stone.
    â€œCome along, young Kade. Feel free to bring your animal along.”
    :Do you want to come?:
Kade asked.
    Nwah hunched her shoulders. The building looked tiny and tight. The doorway was open to reveal pitch-dark like a cave inside. Just the idea of entering it made her lungs ache. And she didn’t like the expression on the Healer’s face, either. He seemed a loner, separate in some way, with the same aura as an alpha pup grown into a pack chieftain. It made her even more uncomfortable, though she couldn’t tell how much of this discomfort was due to fear for safety and how much was based on pure jealousy.
    The night had grown dark now, too.
    The wood smelled of dew and had begun to rustle with the movements of predators in distant hollows.
    The sky above glittered with the night’s first stars.
    Beyond that, she could feel Kade’s focus was on the Healer.
    Which meant it was not on her.
    :I prefer to be outside,:
she said.
    The woman whom Lord Pelten’s healing had rescued spoke.
    â€œI can manage the beast if you want,” she said.
    Nwah grumbled.
:Perhaps she can best manage a gashed thigh,:
she said.
:Perhaps that would test this Healer’s gift better?:
    â€œNo,” Kade said to the woman, not rising to Nwah’s anger. “She’ll be fine on her own.”
    â€œAll right, then,” Pelten said. “Let’s go.”
    The two disappeared into the room, and lantern light soon glowed from within.
    â€œWell,” the woman said, looking over the gathering. “All this being healed can make a lass mighty hungry. Who’s up for a round of ale and a little dinner?”
    The group clamored and stood in unison. Footsteps rumbled and voices rolled together. A short while later, the clattering of soup ladles and then the sounds of laughter and song filled the area.
    Nwah took a spot under the brambles at the edge of the clearing, watching and feeling pangs of hunger. Perhaps she should have gone and hunted by herself, but her gaze kept going to the hut where Lord Pelten had taken Kade.
    She wanted to see him return.
    She lay on the ground under the briars and put her chin on her front paws. The soil smelled thick. Her whiskers drooped to touch the ground.
    :Are you all right?:
she finally brought herself to ask Kade.
    :I’m fine,:
Kade replied.
:But I’m busy.:
    The answer was like a claw to her gut.
    :I’m busy.:
    Those words were like coarse grindstone.
    :I’m busy . . . I’m busy.:
    The words echoed in her mind and became mixed with the sounds of laughter from the humans around the stewpot.
    She heard them discuss the lessons they were soon to take together. They spoke of dreams and hopes, of setting up apothecaries or serving to rid their homelands of disease.
    One man pulled out a fiddle, and a jaunty melody filled the evening.
    A pair did a jig.
    It all burned against her fears.
    She wanted so much to talk to Kade again, but she had seen him walk into the hut with this man, a man who could give him something she couldn’t, and she was afraid. She had felt the irritation on Kade’s voice when he said
:I’m busy:
, and she couldn’t bear the idea of hearing those words again.
    Nwah thought about her mother, then. She was doing that a lot these days. She remembered huddling up against her mother’s warmth with her siblings in their den.
    Then, for the first time, she admitted the full truth.
    Perhaps she only then had fully realized it.
    She was afraid to be by herself.
    And laying there in the isolation of her rejection, listening to heartfelt strains of music . . .
    A
kyree
does not actually cry.
    This is because a
kyree
does not have the same tear ducts as a human does.
    And so she cannot cry in that way.
    Nwah whined, though.
    Her eyes closed to shut off the world. The corners of her lips drew down, and she let a thin moan slide away from her like a puddle of