I don't own Doyle. I don't own the Secret Saturdays.
I do own the various farmers and their animals.
Oh, and I have no idea how things work on a farm. Or how they speak.
I just liked the atmosphere....
Stray
The boy's heart thudded in anticipation.
He'd been watching this place for a few days now. He'd done all right with that hunter, and now he was trying to convince himself to try one of the farms.
But he'd kept himself hidden from the hunter. Now, though, success depended on showing himself to these people.
The fox and his other teachers had told him some of these people belonged to their Lord and Lady, and that those Powers wouldn't take two-leggers like those who'd hurt him.
He trusted his teachers. But he still feared the humans.
If I got to face them, he reminded himself, best to face them on my terms.
He fingered the wooden carving in his—new!—jacket. He'd made it when he'd thought about approaching the farm. He didn't know why he'd carved this one. He didn't even know what this carving was supposed to be; his carvings seemed sometimes to shape themselves.
But the carving gave him courage.
The boy took a deep breath, and walked towards the house.
He was nearly to the door when a large shape lunged towards him, barking furiously. He scrambled backwards to avoid getting bowled over.
Go away! the dog said. This is my territory, stranger. How dare some feral whelp try to walk in on my land!
"Nuh-uh," the boy protested. "I'm not trying to invade. That's not what I want at all."
Then scram!
"Hey, now, what's all this noise?" the farmer said as he came running up. He shushed the dog and looked the boy over with a stern gaze.
The boy trembled. This had been a bad idea.
"Who're you?" the farmer asked. "What're you doing here?"
The boy tried to answer, but all that came out of his mouth was a nervous squeak.
The farmer's eyes were drawn to the arm the boy had buried in his pocket. "What you got, runt? Something you stole from the village?"
He couldn't have said how, but the boy knew exactly what to say. "I found it," he said, showing the wooden piece to the farmer, "outside the gate. I thought maybe someone around here had dropped it, and I wanted to return it."
The farmer opened his mouth to say he'd never seen the carving before in his life, but something stopped him. He was not a greedy man, but something made him want to keep the piece of wood. It felt...important, somehow. Like he might need it soon. But that was ridiculous; it was just a wooden toy.
"I...think it might be one of the kids' toys, " he heard himself reply. "I'll ask around to see."
The boy nodded and picked himself up off the ground to leave.
"Hey, kid," the farmer said, hesitantly, as he tried to make up his mind. Under those clothes, that kid was scrawny as could be, and probably wouldn't be much use, and the farmer couldn't afford to take on charity. On the other hand, the man would never respect himself if he refused a good turn for someone that needed it.
"Listen, uh...you any good with animals? I mean, besides Big Mouth?" The dog relaxed and dropped to the ground once it decided its master was not going to throw out the strange runt, though it grumbled about it. "Cause I was thinking, if you don't have no place else you need to be...I need some help tending to my animals, and there ain't many people around this time of year."
The boy thought this over. This seemed no different than his teachers. They gave him food when he needed it, but they also expected him to work for his food, so he could learn to feed himself when he needed to. "You asking if I want to help?"
The farmer nodded. "If you don't have anywhere you need to be, of course. I mean, you'd kind of have to stay here a while, at least until I get some more help in. I'd put you up in my place," he added quickly, "and feed you the whole time. I wouldn't expect you to starve yourself over an old-timer...."
The boy tried a smile. "Show me what to do."
—
The boy learned the workings of a farm very quickly. Unlike his other lessons, his body was actually suited to these tasks—or at least, it would be once he'd gotten some more food in him.
The farmer voiced only one regret: that the boy had not been there earlier, to learn the harvest, but remarked often that he might be strong enough come spring to start to learn the real work. He did not miss that the boy ate very little—the dog begged for scraps before the boy was willing to even taste the food—and remarked over how quickly he learned, and how much better he'd be with more meat on his bones.
What the farmer did not know was that the boy had seen how little food there was. The farmer could not feed both of them all winter.
The boy considered the work the farmer had for him, and came to a decision. What the farmer had said was only partly true: the farmer could use his help, but didn't need him around the whole time. The work was little enough, and so long as the boy finished quickly, that freed him to hunt, or to investigate nearby farms.
The other farms were as poorly off as the old man, but he'd learned it was a matter of pride for them that he accept what they offered, and he learned to stop making suggestions about the little they threw out. Most could only spare scraps such as they'd feed their animals, but tried to give him a full meal, in exchange for a little help with that day's chores. He'd only once had to refuse, and that only because the family had offered money. He'd found himself having to explain his reason, just to avoid hurt feelings.
Daddy had taught him to never avoid responsibility, though, and to keep his promises, so he returned to the old man's farm every day.
—
Just over a week into the arrangement, the weather turned bad.
No matter how much the old man insisted, the boy refused to sleep in the house, and he stayed in the barn only to stay out of the weather.
The old man tossed in his bed, unable to sleep, worried about the boy, worried about his animals in this storm.
He thought he heard the boy yelling for help, and he struggled to wake up and climb out of bed. The carving had started to glow, and the old man stared at it for a moment, then shook his head, figuring he was still half asleep. He got himself dressed and fought the wind all the way to the barn to see what was wrong.
"What's the matter, boy?" he called once he'd gotten inside. No sense calling out before then; even inside, he had to shout to hear himself over the wind. "Who's breeched? What're you yelling about?"
What's he mean? the boy wondered. He frowned for a moment. He'd only just gotten up after he heard the mare's pain. He hadn't been yelling. And what else the farmer said.... Breech?
Rather than argue the point—the farmer talked to his animals often enough, but gave the boy funny looks when he talked to them—he just shook his head. "Not sure. Mare's hurting. Pushing on something. Inside."
The farmer nodded and made his way to the little mare; he felt all over her stomach and frowned. "Dang it, you ain't supposed to drop for another month," he muttered. He felt the boy's eyes on him, and turned. "Mare's got a baby; I think she's trying to drop now, but it feels like the baby's turned. Coming out the wrong way."
"What does that mean?"
"It means, boy, that if that foal don't get turned the right way around and come out head first, ain't neither one is going to live."
"How do we help?" the boy asked
The farmer liked that. Not "can we help," but "how do we help." He hated to disappoint the child. "Vet would usually be here in another couple of weeks, but this foal's trying to drop early." He grimaced. "An' it's been long years since I ever had to deliver a young'un; my hands ain't what they used to be. Even if I could grab the baby, I'd never turn it alive."
"Then tell me what to do."
The farmer shook his head, sadly. "I wouldn't know the first thing about what to say."
"So you're just going to give up?" the boy asked, challenge in his eyes. "You say they will die without our help; you're not going to try to make it a 'could'? You're not even going to try to help them?"
The farmer stepped back, astonished. This was the skittish little fellow he'd only just taken in? "Kid...."
But the boy had stopped listening. He asked the mare for guidance, silently—he remembered the strange looks people gave him when he talked out loud to the animals.
Inside.... Your hooves, like their hands. The mare gasped and strained.
The boy laid his jacket aside and reached in, as the mare directed. He felt her mind and the foal's both. With their guidance, and both telling him when they felt pressure or pain, he was able to find the foal's head and turn the animal so it could be born properly.
The farmer's mouth dropped open; the boy's eyes had turned brown to match the mare's, and were glowing, like that carving had glowed. He staggered back, uncertain of what he saw, or if he should be afraid.
The boy continued, unaware of the farmer's reaction, until the foal fell into his arms, small but healthy.
The farmer remembered his wits and found a blanket to wipe the foal off with, and set it beside its exhausted mama to nurse.
The boy started to smile.
And his eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell over.
—
The weather abated enough that the animal doctors arrived only a few days later. They listened to the farmer's story with some surprise and skepticism, and, once they'd examined the mare and her foal, a lot of relief.
After they arrived, the boy saw how much more they did around the farm than he could, and decided it was time to leave. He still visited some of the other farms, helping with the chores and accepting what little food they could spare, some strange instinct directing him to leave behind other wooden carvings that seemed to shape themselves. Some of these carvings looked like farm animals—a cow here, a dog there—but other shapes he still could not decipher.
He didn't know that anything unusual happened after his visits: the place where he'd left the cow shape had an old cow whose milk had all but dried up, only after he'd visited, she started producing again. Those he'd given the dog carving to had a pup with a lame leg that started getting better.
Another family, with one of the stranger carvings, found themselves compelled to spend a night out of their homes...and when they returned, they found that a tree branch, weak from the storms, had crashed where they would have slept.
He did not stay at farms, only. He left carvings at hunters' camps, and these same hunters found a seeming abundance of available game, as though they'd stumbled upon the best bait ever.
Some of these events were mixed blessings. The cow's milk quickly turned sour, and she dried up again soon after, never to be milked again. But the family had enough each day to get through the winter, and they'd saved enough to buy another cow. The family who'd slept in the barn spent nearly all of their savings to make the house livable again...but if even one of their able-bodied elders had been inside when the branch fell, they could never have afforded the repairs. Some of the less skilled or less alert hunters found themselves losing bait or tools to the surge of game.
But the boy knew none of this. And he continued to wander, with no grasp of a destination.
Regarding Doyle's ability, I've been trying for a variant of Tamora Pierce's "Wild Magic," but without the "oh I love you I love you I don't care that I'm a vicious guard dog you can do whatever you want" approach that most (but not all) of her animals seem to have. With maybe a bit of "Mowgli" or something thrown in.
Thus the guard dog in this one, who knows it's his job to keep strangers out of his territory...human or not.
Thus, also, the nature of why the fox and the others helped Doyle in previous chapters....
And as to the carvings: what ability allows Doyle to do that, besides simply casting spells that he's not aware of casting, will eventually be explained.
Or not.
But the point there is that he's essentially (unknowingly) casting spells on these carvings that, as Benton more-or-less discovered, somehow "magnetically" attract whatever they're used for. Whether each one serves a particular purpose (hunting, fishing, milking the cow), or they simply attract whatever the user needs, I haven't the foggiest. I'm somewhat split on the idea—I have reasons why either could work, and I'd prefer not to use both—and it's quite possible that I'll never resolve the question.