The Boy and the Animal

Part I | Five

So, I took him to the one place I knew he'd be safe.

My brother's basement.

"What the hell are you doing here at such an ungodly hour, you ignora-" My brother grumbled as he opened his inn door while rubbing his groggy eyes. When he found me standing there, holding the naked, soggy, and limp boy in my arms, his face went white. "What the hell is that?!"

I cupped his mouth with my hand to hush him, forcing him into the inn and shutting the door before anyone could get wise. I urged the both of us through the silent room- it was later in the night, so all of his guests had gone to bed by then- and down the side door into the basement. Shutting the door behind me once again, I almost shoved him down the steps.

He immediately began shouting at me, fumbling with angry words while his eyes stared back and forth between me and the boy in my arms. I ignored him, however, and placed my bounty on a mattress of hay in the corner. There were two cows in the basement, cows that I shooed away from their rests to make room, but I knew that they wouldn't mind sharing.

Eventually, brother exhausted himself from yelling at me and stopped to watch helplessly at what I was doing. There was nothing that he could do but lean against his wall and glare at me taking over his basement.

I ignored him. Setting the teen on something soft and drying him off with my tunic was far more important to me than whatever my brother was doing. I did just that, and, when he was settled, I went to work on preparing the room for him. He would surely wake soon, so I had to be sure he wouldn't be escaping.

The door had to be fashioned and secured, the animals had to be in their corals, and anything that the boy could get a hold of to stab me with would have to be hidden away. This time, my brother couldn't just watch me any longer.

"Cyrus, this isn't a joke anymore! You can't just- who is-" My brother shouted at me until his frustration boiled over and he shoved me against a wall. I rubbed the back of my head.

"Look," I began, brushing myself off, "I got a bounty for this kid, but I..." I trailed off as I looked over at the boy. He looked like a sweet maiden lying there, waiting for his prince to come and wake him with a kiss. "I couldn't do it."

"You brought a criminal to my inn?!" Dark nearly screamed. I rolled my eyes. "Wait a minute, is this the 20,000 you were talking about?"

My chest felt as if it had been stabbed with the dull ax of an executioner. Why did he have to remind me of what I gave up?

"Yes, Dark," I seethed. I sighed and continued preparing the room.

"Oh my..." He began, running his fingers through his hair. "He must've killed people for a bounty that high! What are you thinkin-"

I huffed and grabbed my brother by his collar, pulling him up to my height. He froze and swallowed. I didn't want to intimidate my little brother, but I had no choice. It was the only way that he would listen to reason with that thick skull of his. And he fell silent, just as I knew that he would when I grabbed him.

"Listen," I snapped, "this boy is different. He's special, beautiful, ethereal, and you know what'll happen to him if I give him up to the authorities. He needs me. "

My grip loosened on my brother's collar, and he backed away from me with widened eyes. He was speechless for a moment, but I took this as a sign that he had accepted what I was doing and continued once more on my work. While he didn't stop me again, he still opposed me in quiet protest on the bottom of the steps.

I could feel his eyes burning back and forth between myself and my companion lying on the hay mattress. To myself, I found it almost funny; he was objecting now, but wait until he saw what the boy was like awake. I smirked. It reminded me of when I would bring injured foxes and coyotes home, and my brother and mother would scold me.

"So, you..." My brother began. I ignored him. By then, some time had passed, and I was nearly finished with the preparations. No matter what he had to say now, it wouldn't change my mind. "What exactly did you... Do to him?" At that moment, I suddenly realized that all my brother knew about the situation was three things.

The first was that I had come in the middle of the night with a bounty worth 20,000 gold- no small feat, even for a common citizen. I wasn't able to turn him in, so I was now locking him in his basement.

The second was that the reason I was unable to capture my bounty, despite him being worth enough to get my family out of our... Financial strain... Was by my rather emphatic explanation of 'he's special, beautiful, ethereal' and 'he needs me'.

The third and final thing that puzzled and chronicled all my brother knew about me and this boy was that the youthful boy was naked, bruised, bound by his hand with my belt, despite me having taken it off once I settled him down, and now lying on his basement floor unconscious.

No, I thought as I blushed and rubbed the back of my neck, this situation did not look right or innocent at all. At that thought, I gave a weak life and sat against the opposite wall from my brother and adjacent to my companion. He was waiting for my answer, and I was ready to give him one, but before I could answer, a mew rang out in the room.

Both my brother's and my eyes immediately found the source. It was the boy, and he was waking up.