The White Road - Lynn Flewelling [45]
Just then he heard laughter, and a gang of small children came running through the snow toward him. Stopping near the porch, they set about trying to make snowballs with the dry new snow. Grinning, Alec slogged out to help, with Sebrahn trailing along behind.
"You won't have much luck with this," he told them, scooping up a handful and letting it blow away on the breeze.
A little girl pouted up at him. "We wanted to make a family."
"Of snow people? It's just too dry. How about making snowbirds?"
"How do you do that?" a little boy demanded, wiping his runny nose on the back of an already crusty mitten.
By way of answer, Alec fell over onto his back and fanned his arms and legs, making the wings and tail as Illia and Beka had taught him during a winter visit to Watermead.
The children were delighted. Soon there was a large flock of snowbirds on the slope and everyone was dusted with snow.
Everyone except Sebrahn.
"How come your little boy doesn't play?" the girl, whose name was Silma, asked. Sebrahn was standing where Alec had left him, looking down at the first bird Alec had made.
"He doesn't know how," Alec replied. "Maybe you can show him?"
Silma and her friends gathered around the rhekaro, then fell back and flailed around, crying, "You, too! Like this!"
Sebrahn looked to Alec, who smiled and nodded. Sebrahn immediately fell on his back across one of Silma's birds and slowly imitated what the others were doing.
"He ruined mine!" Silma cried, offended.
"He didn't mean to." Alec pulled Sebrahn to his feet and directed him to a patch of smooth snow. "There, do another one."
Sebrahn fell facedown this time, but made a passable bird.
"Very good!" Alec picked him up and dusted the snow from his coat and leggings, then helped the children make more up and down the hillside.
He'd assumed Sebrahn was doing the same, until Silma asked, "Why doesn't your little boy have any boots?"
Sure enough, Sebrahn had gotten them off when Alec wasn't looking. There they lay, up the slope, and there Sebrahn was, barefoot again.
"My mama would be angry if I went barefoot in the winter," another chimed in. "She says your toes can break off just like icicles. How come his mama didn't give him any boots?"
"He doesn't have a mama," Alec told her, and the words seemed to stick in his throat. Seeing Sebrahn among real children like this, he could no longer hold on to the fantasy that Sebrahn was anything natural. Sebrahn was something else entirely, and no more Alec's kin than the clouds in the sky.
He trudged up the slope to get Sebrahn's boots, blinking back sudden tears he didn't want the children to see.
He picked up the boots and knocked out the snow that had gotten inside them.
Sebrahn had followed him. He stared up at Alec, and then the boots. "Bad."
"No, they're not!" Alec growled. Sitting down heavily in the snow, he pulled Sebrahn into his lap and wrestled one boot back on, tying it tightly.
Sebrahn looked up at him and said again, "Baaad."
Alec understood this time and let out a soft, bitter laugh. "You're not bad. You're not anything, except ... Except ..."
"Are you crying?"
He forced a smile as he looked up at Silma. "No, I just had something in my eye."
He got Sebrahn's other boot on and quickly distracted the children by proposing a contest to see who could do the most somersaults to make the longest path in the snow. Sebrahn copied them, and once he'd mastered the basic movement he was off, rolling like a wheel, blond braid flying. Faster than any natural child could go. The others looked slow and clumsy compared to him. The thought filled Alec with a mix of revulsion and guilt. What did he feel for Sebrahn, really? Was it love? Could you love such a creature? Or was it just neediness on his part? Pity? Duty?
Silma came back and squatted down beside him. "You're