Hunter's Academy (Veller) (3 page)

She slowly got to her feet and it felt as if her stomach had dropped, she wasn’t sure if her legs would even hold her as she moved to the table and placed her hand upon the rabbit’s side. There was no motion, no feeling, and no warmth. She ran her hand down the softness of its fur willing it to wake, praying that it would, but knowing that it was beyond anything she could do. Tears gently rolled down her cheek.

“I suppose next time we should pick something a little bit more… durable.” Morgan said as he jotted down a few
more notes in that elusive book. She turned to look at him, and at that moment she hated him, but not as much as she hated herself.

“No.” She whispered and gently wrapped the rabbit in an old cloth that was lying by the table.

“No? Come now it was just a failed experiment, we learn from our mistakes…”

“No, I won’t do that again, never again.”

“You’re being unreasonable. It was just a rabbit…”

“I SAID NO.” She shouted as she turned on him, the old mystic must have seen something in her eyes, something in her face as he stumbled backward, bracing himself against the table.
She held the rabbit to her chest and ran out of the tower.

“Kile wait.” She heard Morgan call, but she wasn’t going to listen to him again.

She wasn’t sure where she was going, where she was taking the rabbit, or even what she was going to do when she got there, all she knew was
that she had to run because that was what he wanted to do, the only thing he wanted to do was to run.

She had to escape, not from Morgan, but from herself. She had to escape from the darkness and from that laughter she had heard from that darkness. She stopped when she reached the far north wall of the compound and there was no place else to run. There, under the shade of a young oak
tree she fell to her knees and wept as she held the rabbit close to her chest. She had spoken to it, and the rabbit had spoken back. It was scared and she told him it would be alright, and now he was gone and it was her fault.

She laid the body gently upon the grass, in the clover. She didn’t have anything to dig with, only her hands. It
seemed fitting she thought as she clawed at the hard dirt with her fingers, she was becoming an animal she might as well act like one.

Several minutes had passed before she heard the soft rustle of feathers. She didn’t look up as Kaza landed on a low branch above her. If Kaza had found her, Morgan wouldn’t be far behind she thought as she continued to dig.

-Kile… are you all right Kile?-

“I killed him Kaza.” She told the crow. “I told him everything would be okay, and then I killed him.”

-You didn’t mean to Kile, you know that, it was an accident.-

“Does it really make that much of a difference? I can’t tell him that, not anymore.” She said calmly, surprisingly more calm th
an she actually felt.

Kaza landed on the ground beside her and began to scratch at the dirt. He wasn’t making much headway but the sentiment was there and
she was grateful for it.

“Kile.” Morgan called as he finally found her. He was out of shape and out of breath and
as he stood behind her.

“Kile I’m sorry… I didn’t think.”

“I’m not doing that again, never.”

“No, I would never make you.” Morgan replied, she didn’t hear any real sentiment in
his voice, but it could be because he wasn’t used to showing any. He set Vesper on the ground beside her. The yarrow said nothing, he never had to. She knew what he was thinking. She had scared him as much as she had scared herself, but he would always be there for her. He got between her hands and helped her dig.

Morgan got down on the ground beside her as well, and with his old hands, ones that had never seen hard labor, began to claw at the dirt. He could have used his arts, he could have opened up the entire hillside with a simple word but instead he knelt beside her and dug with his bare hands, and for that she wanted to thank him, but she could stop crying.

Kile slipped silently from her window sill onto the grass and looked out into the darkness of the compound. She stayed
close to the walls so as not to alert the guards at the gate, not that they were very aware of what was happening inside the compound, their attention was focused outside the walls of the academy. She wasn’t exactly sure what the policy was for being outside the dorms after lights out. It might even be allowed and she was going through all this skullduggery for nothing.

When she was out of sight of the guards on the wall she was able to walk more freely as she crossed the List. On most nights she would just wander aimlessly about the dark moving from one location to another
on little more than a whim, but tonight she had a destination. The thought of the little white rabbit haunted her through supper and she needed to see the small grave one more time. She realized that to anybody else, anybody normal that is, her reaction to the situation would appear to be over the top. She knew Morgan didn’t really understand, although he did aide her in digging the grave. He did it more because he felt bad for her, not for the rabbit. To him, as well as anyone else, it was just a rabbit. Rabbits die, they die every day. They get eaten, poisoned, run over by runaway carriages, the life of a rabbit it fraught with danger. People have seen dead rabbits lying in the road, or hanging in the butchers shop, and although they might think, oh what a shame and feel sorry for it, it lasts only until they turned the corner and can no longer see it. What if it had been a man lying in the road or hanging in the butchers shop, okay, that is a little gruesome, but that vision would stick with that person long after they turned the corner. Is it because they feel on the same lever as that man, they could have known him, they could have talked to him, they could have liked him or disliked him whereas the rabbit was just another dumb animal, and yet she spoke with the rabbit. She may not have carried on a conversation with it, but she knew him. She had seen where he lived, where he ate, who the members of his den were, she had gotten to know the rabbit, and in the brief time they shared, she liked him, and then she killed him. It was like meeting someone in the street for the first time, striking up a conversation with them and learning about all their likes and their dislikes, where they lived, what they did, talking about their family, and when the conversation ended, beat them over the head with a large club. Oh it was just an accident.

She must have been distracted because she almost stumbled over Gorum who was sitting in her path.

-Fine thief you would make.-

The low guttural voice echoed in her head.

“Sorry Gorum.” She told the dog. “I guess I was preoccupied.”

-I’ll say
.-

Hunar added as she came up behind
her.

-Been following. Never noticed.-

-You seemed troubled.-

Gorum said as he started to walk
alongside her, Hunar followed, keeping her distance. She was not as sociable as Gorum or it could have been some kind of pack thing, Kile never really understood the social structures of a dog’s life.

“I killed a rabbit today.” She told Gorum.

-Way to go, how did it taste?-

Hunar asked from behind.

“I didn’t eat it.” She replied. “I buried it.”

-For later?-

Hunar asked.

-For Respect.-

Gorum answered for her, but was it the right answer. Did she do it for respect or to ease her own guilt?

-Seems a
waste.-

Hunar mumbled to herself.

-Why does it trouble you so?-

Gorum asked.

“It shouldn’t have happened, I couldn’t control myself.”

-Did you do it because you wanted to?-

“No, of course not.”

-Because you had to?-

-Yeah right, like the rabbit tried to attack her, dangerous creatures those things.-

Hunar laughed and Gorum turned suddenly and gave her a loud bark. It didn’t carry words, but Kile could hear the meaning. Mind you
r place. Hunar backed down.

-If it wasn’t because you wanted to, and it wasn’t because you had to, then why did you kill it?-

“We were doing an experiment, and I told it to stop, and… it did.”

-It wasn’t
your intention to kill it.-

“But that’s not the
point; it was because of me that he died.”

-Did you know what you were doing would have killed it?-

“No, I didn’t think it would.” She replied, although she wasn’t entirely sure. She had a bad feeling about the entire experiment but she went along with it anyway. She could have stopped it before it started, but truth be told, she wanted to know as much about the Maligar as Morgan did.

-Then that is just the end of it.-

Kile stopped and shook her head. She would have thought Gorum would have understood.

“His death was pointless, it made no sense.”

-Sense has very little to do with death.-

Gorum replied as he turned around and sat in front of
her.

-You place a lot of importance on yourself pup. You feel that you can manipulate life and death, but you have no control over the cycle. The cycle is life and death and life again, just like the seasons. Winter gives way to spring, without winter we can not have spring, without death we
cannot have life. The cycle of the rabbit ended, whether it was sooner than nature had intended, you do not know that. Nature may have marked the cycle of that creature to end when it did, whether you had a hand in it or not. Now his body will return to the ground, and the cycle will continue, with his death, there will be life and he will live on in that new life.-

“When you put it that way it
seems so simple.”

-The cycle of life is simple. It is the vir that places burdens within their
paths; it is the vir that make living the cycle complicated. Why do you suffer these burdens? When your cycle is near its end, as mine is, you will see that the burdens you suffer are meaningless. If anything you should rejoice that you were a part of the rabbit's life, if only for a little while, and if you did have a hand in ending its cycle, then you were only doing as nature had intended.-

It was like being lectured to by one of the
instructors; only the lecture was shorter and more meaningful. Although she still felt guilty over the death of the rabbit, Gorum’s explanation of the simplicity of life did easy a bit of the pain.

-So pup, show us this resting si
te of your rabbit friend so that we may respect it too.-

She
led them up to the north wall where a patch of freshly turned dirt and a small stone rabbit, created by Morgan from a simple rock, marked the location. Both Gorum and Hunar sniffed around the perimeter of the grounds before paying their respects.

-I still say it’s a
waste.-

She heard Hunar mumbled under her breath.

Kile threw the stick as far as she could and Hunar tore after it. She could never understand the fascination dogs have with the game of fetch. She had tried asking Hunar but all the dog would tell her was that it was fun and thrown the dam
n stick. Gorum was less enthusiastic about fetch, but then the male mastiff was quite a bit older than his female counterpart. She didn’t know how old Gorum was and never really gave it much thought until he spoke about the cycle of life and his coming to an end. She was always led to believe that animals were ignorant about their mortality, but it turned out that they were just more accepting of it. She sat beside Gorum, stroking the dog as she waited for Hunar to return with the stick. Hunar had a habit of getting sidetracked easily by a stray sound or a new smell, so it usually took her some time before she returned.

“
Did you see any of the gathering?” She asked Gorum.

-I was present.-

“You were? What did they talk about? What was it like?”

-More things for the vir to worry about, more burdens for them to place upon their path. If they did not have enough burdens they would look for them, and then complain when they f
ound them.-

“What burdens have they found?”

-The burdens of the vir matter little to me these days.-

Gorum replied as he turned his head so she could scratch his other ear.

-They spoke mostly of war in the western lands, from there I do no know, nor did I care to listen. Ask of Hunar, she appeared more interested in the vir’s business.-

-Don’t listen to him.-

Hunar said as she dropped the stick beside Kile’s leg.

-He was just as interested, He’s just too old and could no longer stay awake to hear it all.-

-There is truth in that too.-

Gorum laughed as he lay on his side so Kile could reach his belly.

“What was that about a war?” She asked Hunar.

-They didn’t call it a
war; they called it… something else-