Page 83 of Moon Tamed

Calden snorted in an effort to keep from laughing. “Dad won’t allow it. He wants the bells, the whistles, and the formalities. He loves weddings.”

“Or he’ll be the one planning the perfect wedding. Don’t underestimate your father. I have seen his habits over the past week. He is a cunning, wicked man. He just limits his wicked cunningness to after hours.” Stretching out my legs, I put my feet as close to the fire as I dared without the risk of getting burned and enjoyed the warmth. “How hard is it to ride a horse?”

“It’s pretty easy. I can teach you. Hell, after we have some fun camping and hunting, I can drive you to Dad’s ranch and give you a lesson or two. I’m sure some of those freeloading Earth horses are broken to saddle, and if they aren’t, I can start the process. It’s fun. Horses are smart, and they’re pretty affectionate. I can’t promise you won’t end up as horse crazed as my father, though. The Earth horses we got in are lookers, too. They’re a lot less bulky than ours. I think of them as toothpick horsesbecause their legs look like they’re made from toothpicks compared to our breeds. Ours were bred to do work in the fields rather than be pleasure horses. I think the ones we got from Earth were riding horses or racers of some sort. Or maybe horses from Earth are just thinner in the leg in general?”

I had no idea, as while many of the books I’d read involving Earth had included horses, I hadn’t thought much of the descriptions, which had depicted them as having thinner legs. “Obviously, we’re going to have to do a thorough study of these horses and see what makes them different from our horses. But won’t the people at your father’s ranch tattle on us?”

“They won’t, not if I ask them really nicely to preserve the limited privacy I’m enjoying. Don’t worry so much. It’ll be fine. But first, we must enjoy some breakfast, some quiet time reading, and hunting.”

“You’ll teach me how to cook rabbits over a fire at lunch time, though, right?”

“Absolutely.”

NINETEEN

You live for book money, don’t you?

Once Calden decided to do something, he did it. And for some reason I couldn’t fathom, he wanted to hunt again as a wolf while I tagged along, armed with my new bow and a quiver of arrows. He’d given me a lesson on how to use it, a brace to protect my wrist and hand from being smacked with the string, and a few common-sense recommendations to prevent shooting him or myself.

Then, because I had zero common sense and an awareness of how much he liked strappy heels and my legs, I opted to run around in the sandals rather than change into something sensible.

Had the ground been a little softer, I would have made better use of my common sense. But as I could move around fine and I wouldn’t be running after any prey, I allowed myself to be stupid.

I gave Calden credit, though. The sandals held up a lot better than I thought, the heels didn’t bother me, and I could keep up with the prowling wolf easily enough.

He’d even provided a pair of bags capable of keeping the blood of any prey off me for transport back to our camp, which I carried along with several bags of salt to preserve the pelts of any animals we killed.

Within five minutes of leaving our camp site, with the fire extinguished so it wouldn’t reignite without our assistance, I understood why he hadn’t protested more about my choice of shoes.

The meat rabbits had bred, and I could barely take a step without startling one out of the foliage. “For the sake of the entire forest, we must thin these numbers. And eat them. For the sake of my stomach.”

Calden halted, turned towards me, and huffed, his ears flicked forward.

“What? Didn’t you listen to my father? I’m a walking stomach with feet, and I operate on rabbit. That breakfast was a mere snack. I can eat two whole rabbits on my own.”

The bowed head and drooped ears conveyed Calden’s general despair rather well. “It’s just an extra rabbit or two. I’m sure a fierce hunter like yourself can handle feeding me an extra rabbit. Just be glad I told you I get mean when I get hungry!” I paused. “Of course, I’m telling you that a little late, but at least I told you.”

The wolf shook his head and resumed prowling through the forest, leading me along a deer track, presumably to one of his favored hunting grounds.

The woods opened to a hill leading down to a river, which gleamed in the morning sunlight. After dark, I would have to drag Calden to the spot with a lantern, hood it, and hope the fireflies would come out to illuminate the grasses and its patches of blooming wildflowers.

The hill also catered to the needs of a ridiculous number of meat rabbits, which rustled through the knee-high foliage without a care in the world. Calden could probably catch ten in the space of five minutes with how many of them bounded around.

As Calden had gone through all the effort to provide a bow and the required arrows to try to hunt rabbits in a more traditional fashion, I followed the lengthy list of instructions he’d given me, drew my first arrow back, and attempted to target along its length to the nearest rabbit, a particularly stupid one who thought nothing of the big wolf less than ten feet away.

Point-blank range helped, and to my astonishment, the arrow protruded through the rabbit’s neck. I could only assume I’d somehow severed its spine, as it went down in the blink of an eye, unaware of what had killed it. My eyes widened, and I stared at the bow. “Either the bow is magical or that was the craziest case of beginner’s luck I have ever seen. And if you spent extra money on a magical bow, we will have words!”

Calden lolled his tongue out at me, loped over to my kill, and investigated it, gingerly seizing the animal by its head, likely to preserve the skin.

I would appreciate that later, as while I wouldn’t be able to preserve the neck or head with the arrow protruding through the pelt, I could recover everything else. I found a log, got out the new skinning knife he’d given me, and went to work cleaning the kill while he observed, his head tilted to the side in interest.

“I draw lines at carrying offal with me. If you want to eat that horrible stuff, you’re more than welcome to, but I will not be anywhere near you or your mouth for at least twenty years should you do so. I have lines, and that crosses them. But I’ll feed you this rabbit after I skin it if you go catch me one. If you dispatch it without damaging everything below the neck, I can get us some good book money for it. We’ll have to take some care with the pelts so they don’t rot, but we have everything we need to do it.”

The camping store had sold everything I’d needed to preserve them, including several different types of salts, which I’d gotten in excessive quantity.

The curing salts and my preferred brand of regular salts would be mixed together and liberally applied to the entire skin to keep the moisture out until the artisans and crafters could work their various trades on them.

The meat would go into the bags, and I’d carry the salted pelts.

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