11.
A Leopard Can't Change Its Spots
-x-
The emollient cascades, numerous over the tiny plinths frozen in the creek, provided the dulcet lullaby for the leafy arbours, the patches of ferns, the quilts of purple asters and alabaster fleabane, to create for Wyatt Cain a haven unmatched. Chimtu claimed him first, claimed a spot at his thigh, as he sat on a slate slope, the prevalent carpet of moss mottling the grey, the lay between his fingers, splayed to support himself.
If they came to his rescue, he ignored the threat, physical, mental, from the feazings of a rain cloud. In the house, before he'd rushed out, a coat and hat were left behind. An everyday cotton shirt, worn on the range as well as the orchard, had been marred by mud up and down the sleeve, the brunt at the elbow. This was an inconsistency Glitch marked. And a consistency tagged visually: he'd noted the same on DG. Mud on her skirt, the sweater hem, the coal tresses just at the end.
He wondered what he'd missed. But he swiped a hand in the air, eyes on Wyatt, with a touch of insight and mist in them.
"You should not have let him upset you like that. It's wrong to place yourself on the wrong side of the faire's duke, and you know it. Granted," Glitch showed his heartfelt view with greater conviction than the intended punishment, "he should not have said what he did. It was more wrong of him. But he's cheap, cheap in spirit and cheap in intelligence, and vastly cheap in all the places that matter. You should've—"
"I should've slugged him in the mouth," Wyatt said, staring into the lay of trunks, some white, some brown, one with a red squirrel running down, "that's what I should've done."
Regarding DG helplessly, Glitch lifted his shoulders. He urged her, with the tilt of his head, to near Wyatt and speak with him, in some clandestine form that she had tried earlier, perhaps, if that was the secret of the muddy tracks. But she shook her head a bit, hesitant. She also thought, too, of the scene by the shore, the imprint of her body and Wyatt's in the mire, the way its cold had touched her, and how Wyatt hadn't…
Sighing, Glitch reached for her fingers, and they only separated as they knelt, one on either side of Wyatt. DG had disturbed Chimtu, but the wolf scaled the tier, as though her time to bring comfort had passed.
"I don't pretend to understand what's going on in that thick head of yours," started Glitch; he had a way of starting, of unravelling, that brought them together by seemingly tearing them apart. "But how you think the three of us are going to handle the selling of goods to three thousand people estimated to attend the faire this year, I don't know, and it's not important. If you think we can do it, then we'll do it."
"We know the faire's important to you." DG suspected Wyatt was listening. Her fingers coiled behind the crook of his knee, to test, to see if he sank in her words, drowned, or floated in them. "And now we know it's even more important to you."
He held her hand, and in the squeeze of her fingers lingered the promise of earlier. She hadn't told Glitch, that was his position, the duty of his derelict, reluctant tongue, but that was another matter. The faire belonged to all of them. The affair that held them together. If anything kedged their friendship to the fathom it might drown, that would arrive the day after tomorrow, at faire's end.
"You are my family, both of you."
Glitch brightened his grin at Wyatt's expression. A tease could've followed, a mockery of Wyatt's dimly clever execration, though he was mute, struck dumb, by the sentiment. He found a soft spot to place his cheek, and there rested on Wyatt's shoulder. "You don't have to say things like that."
"Things like what?"
"Things you don't really mean."
Wyatt threw him a contemptuous look unseen. From the gloaming of temper, DG rose valiantly.
"We really aren't your only family, Wyatt," she said, purpose in her tone. "You have Raw, too."
"And Meria," added Glitch. "So the woman can't cook, but at least she knows how to stew apples and can! I love DG," he gestured helplessly to the figure swallowed in a sweater, who was used to the affectionate ridicule, "and she can't cook."
"Meria's kind of odd, though she seems pretty fond of you. We all are…" But DG's massive blue eyes wouldn't end there the prod of his soul. That would be too easy, and he wasn't anticipating ease. "And then there's Jeb."
Glitch felt Wyatt freeze. He snapped up his head, the formation shattered, and he shuddered. The invisible frost of a northern wind had shortened autumn just then. "Where is Jeb? You know, you so rarely talk about him…"
"He's fine." Wyatt made the statement: two words that he did not want maimed, discoloured, fouled beyond their profound imprecision.
"Fine," Glitch repeated with a laugh to hide the information sorted. He lifted in his graceful way, twirled halfway at the edge of the tier, then filled the halfway twirl to enclose one side of Wyatt, and the far side of DG. "Fine—as in he's fine living his own life? Or fine as in—"
"He doesn't even know where you are," DG suddenly accused. She gawked, unbridled, horrified, confused. "Wyatt! You never told Jeb you were coming to live here! This strange, strange little place out in the middle of nowhere! You should've told him!"
Against this argument, be it breakable or formidable, he couldn't yet be sure, he tilted. The slight lean into her, and DG reconsidered what she had said.
But Wyatt goaded, and from the silent argument, he pulled at a long thread. "Why would that be important? If Jeb wants to live his life elsewhere, am I supposed to stop him? I wrote him letters while I was gone. Never got an answer."
"You've been through an ordeal," Glitch murmured. He hadn't forgotten, and he doubted any of them would. "Maybe he needs time to think about what he's seen."
"He did witness a lot in a short span of time," DG thought this a hopeful line, saturated in truth as much as hope could ever be.
"That's just the thing…" Wyatt allowed the phrase to burn out there. The suns were separating on their race to the horizon, and shades of blue and pink began to cover the west. He thought about Jeb, the letters written, some of them burned, a few of them sent. "We all witnessed a lot in a short period of time. The two of you were the only ones who came out of it without an injury. You had each other."
"That was an accident," Glitch announced, shaking his head. His sad gaze passed to DG, then to Wyatt, and his heart felt too heavy to hold, to show, like a red box someone had decorated in lead. "I left her and roamed for a long while. You know that. I only went back because I missed her. You never know what a lily really smells like until you smell it in her hair. She was kissed by moonlight, and then I had to kiss her. It was an accident… The whole thing."
"He's telling the truth." The lids lowered over bulbous eyes, and she cradled Wyatt's arm, his responsive hand. At the back of her neck, a set of lips, an apology in Glitch's tiny kiss. But it was the truth.
"Hearts don't land where they do just on accident," Wyatt told them. "That's what the two of you keep forgetting. Everyone has a choice. Jeb made his, and he'll go on making it, every day he watches the suns rise, every night he watches them set—wherever he is. And I'll go on making my choice. A leopard can't change its spots. Even if I did, that wouldn't make me the man I'm supposed to be today, tomorrow, or the day after."
"Of course not," soothed Glitch. "No one wants you to be anything right now."
"Just Wyatt," DG said.
Glitch sat, back to Wyatt, a warmness pressed against his hair. "And wherever you cast your heart, that's where you'll want to be. Don't look before you throw it. Just throw it. It'll land."
Wyatt spoke aloud that he thought he already had. "Now what do I do?"
"Wait for it."
The solemn eyes of a princess flowed into his inquisitive sea. Her smile trembled, but she understood, and Glitch, and then he did. He knew…
The two of them waited, hands outstretched.
