An animal like Darok or Melio, Inata thought, whose doctrine was drifting toward anti-speciesism, as she watched with disgust her brother rush toward a stall selling sausages and potatoes fried in oil. The little ginger cat circled her meowing, though he was the best fed of the four. Never had he suffered from hunger or lacked food.
"This is so good!" the boy exclaimed. "I feel as if it's been years since I last ate a real meal."
"Not years, but months for certain," Inata replied, ordering a steaming bowl of rice.
Once their stomachs were full, they went to a clothing shop, where they were welcomed with little bows. To merchants, points hardly mattered at all, and only the number of gold pieces had value. They seemed to possess a sixth sense consisting in knowing how much money their customers had, as well as how much they were prepared to spend. The twins got rid of their dreadful patched-behind outfits and bought better suited clothes.
The saleswoman certainly tried to convince Inata that only a dress was appropriate for a young woman like her, but in vain. The twin bought comfortable trousers and a wool jacket. She replaced her worn shoes with sturdy canvas boots and covered her head with a beret. Hichy, for his part, bought a fine leather jacket and walking shoes. A little farther on, they found a shop that sold backpacks and completed their gear with those useful little objects they had been deprived of: a lighter, knives, mess tins, toothbrushes, and feather sleeping bags. With a few provisions added, the load was pulling heavily at their shoulders.
GP = 104
"Come and look! This is exactly what we need!" Hichy cried, stroking a handsome donkey with long hair.
"You're mad. He'll only slow us down," his sister replied. "And by what right can we force an animal to carry our luggage on its back?"
"Oh, come on! And by what right can you force your brother to carry a bag as heavy as a dead horse on his back? The world shouldn't be turned upside down to the point where we sacrifice ourselves for animals. Look how well they're treated," he pointed out, jerking his chin toward Darok and Melio. "If you feel like ruining your back, that's your problem, but this fine donkey would be much happier following us than staying shut up in his pen."
"He's absolutely right," the seller chimed in. "This donkey will give you complete satisfaction. I think he already likes you," he added, while the animal rubbed against Inata, much more likely begging for a little food than showing affection. "Normally, I sell him for one hundred gold pieces. Since I like you, I'll let him go for fifty."
"Come on! You say that to everyone. We don't..."
"Deal!" Hichy said.
Inata did not even have time to protest before the agreed sum was debited from their account and transferred to the breeder's, a spoken promise serving at once as contract, receipt, and payment authorisation.
Delighted to be joining their clan, the donkey did not protest when the boy loaded their belongings onto his back, but he objected loudly when Melio dug in his claws beneath his coat to climb onto his neck. Inata resigned herself to imitating her brother and did not dare admit that she would have had a hard time walking miles with such a heavy pack.
"What's his name?" the young woman asked the seller.
"What's his name? How should I know? He's only a... Helios! His name is Helios," he said with an assured look, though no one was fooled into believing he had not just invented it on the spot.
So Hichy, Inata, Melio, Darok, and Helios all went together to the bookshop to buy a children's storybook as well as a few schoolbooks. Since the donkey and the wolf were not allowed inside the shop, only Melio had the right to slip among the books. He had the very bad idea of attacking the edge of a bound volume to sharpen his claws, which cost the twins five additional gold pieces. The work was a political treatise glorifying the Celestial power, and they were forced to take it with them, though it held absolutely no interest for them.
GP = 42
If they kept up that pace, they would be ruined before nightfall. It was time for them to leave the town and all its corresponding temptations. The inns full of noisy, drunken customers attracted them little, and they preferred to make camp in a field at a good distance from the town. A thin rain, the kind that slips under the skin and gnaws at the bones, began to fall just as they stopped for the night.
"Damn! That's really bad luck," Hichy lamented. "We could build ourselves a comfortable house for the night," he added for his sister's benefit.
"Yes, splendid idea. That way we'll make ourselves noticed and show everyone we've got magical powers, you triple imbecile."
Though his sister never spared him, Hichy had to admit that she was often right. He missed the house in the clearing and dreamed of a comfortable place in which to rest.
"What if we dug?" he suddenly suggested.
Without waiting for an answer, he bored a deep tunnel into the ground. A great heap piled up at the entrance to that sort of burrow, which he fashioned without the aid of any tool and by the sole strength of his power. His sister helped him arrange the ground with a carpet of leaves and cover the walls with a layer of small stones. It was not high luxury, but far more comfortable than sleeping in the rain. Darok and Melio darted inside, while Helios preferred to stay outside. It would have been hard to do otherwise in any case, Hichy having overlooked that minor detail. The donkey did not seem to hold it against him, and Inata's theories about human-animal equality suffered slightly. The boy did not dare say anything, but to him a donkey indoors simply was not done.
The brother watched his sister while she read stories to Melio and Darok. The wolf hung on her every word, drooling and watching her joyfully, yapping whenever the story took a particularly intense turn. One might almost have believed he truly understood something. The situation was far less encouraging on the cat's side, as he was already dozing. From time to time he cast an eye one might have taken for haughty toward the book.
That day gave way to a routine that would repeat itself for many days, paced by the donkey's step, the rising and setting of the sun, the movement of the stars, the foolishness of Darok and Melio, and long evenings of reading. They stayed as far as possible from towns. Their financial resources being exhausted, they had no reason to go there anyway.
The change was barely perceptible, but the towns gradually grew in size while noses grew finer. Though it was still very far away, the influence of the great city was beginning to make itself felt through the clothes people wore and the way they spoke. The lack of regard shown toward the twins, who were still at the very bottom of the social ladder, gradually faded, those quickest to belittle them being the humblest.
One day, while the little troop was trotting merrily along the road, Helios in front, Melio on his neck, and Darok coming and going with no purpose other than to make the most of life's joys, Hichy noticed that his sister was clutching her stomach. He did not worry overmuch, having already noticed before they left that she was regularly seized by inexplicable pains. He had certainly tried to ask her for an explanation, but those mysterious troubles, linked to the cycles of the moon, had remained inaccessible to him. Inata had never wanted to reveal the nature of those obscure ailments. Hichy was still too naive to understand that his sister's body was transforming into that of a woman, and that the same mutation had already begun on his side.
Never before, however, had he seen her doubled over like that and stumbling on the stones. He hesitated as to what he should do, torn between respecting the secrecy of the matter or sympathising with her pain. His sister's reactions could sometimes be violent. When she stopped and sat down at the roadside, however, he understood that this might be something else entirely.
"It really hurts!" she said through clenched teeth, though she would not have needed to speak for him to understand.
Melio, whose strong point was not altruism, had already taken advantage of the stop to go hunting rodents. Darok had laid his snout on his mistress's thigh, making little squeaking noises. His empathy, pushed to an extreme, made him feel all the young woman's pain.
"What's happening to you?" Hichy asked.
"How should I know, you big idiot?"
"Oh, come on! Just because you're hurting doesn't give you the right to insult me. Let me take a look."
The boy lifted his sister's clothes and inspected her rounded belly. He laid a finger on her abdomen, drawing a cry of pain from her.
"You've got appendicitis," Hichy declared.
"Oh, because you're a doctor now?" she shot back nastily.
"No, but I'm not ignorant either. When it hurts badly in the lower right part of your belly, it can't be much else."
"Then we have to find a doctor to treat me."
"Absolutely not. Given the conditions of hygiene we've seen, there's a far greater chance they'll finish you off than cure you. And how are we supposed to pay? We haven't got a single kopeck left."
"If I don't get treated, I'm just as certain to die, and even if that's the common lot, I admit I would rather have waited a little."
What could Hichy say to that? He was desperate not to be able to save his sister. How could so small and useless a piece of intestine become infected enough to endanger a person's life? The wolf began to howl to the death, as though Inata's fate were already sealed. Great drops of sweat beaded on the brow of the poor teenager, whom death had come to gather far too early.
Everything was lost. Unless...