Read Boelik for Free Online

her belly. He couldn’t help worrying if he would
be a good father, or if his child would be twisted like
himself.
    And Olea was very good at picking out his
doubts. “You’ll be just fine,” she said. She put her own hand over
Bo’s. He sighed. “She’s almost here, you know.”
    “ She?” Bo asked, blinking
at her. Olea was still gazing out at the sunset but nodded against
his shoulder.
    “ Maybe a he,
too.”
    “ Two?”
    “ Yes, Bo. Two.
Twins.”
    “ How long?” Bo was getting
excited, and Olea could hear it. She laughed.
    “ Around a fortnight,
perhaps? I don’t know exactly; they’ll come when they’re ready,
whether or not we are.”
    “ Then I suppose I should do
this now,” he grinned, standing and bringing her to her feet with
him.
    “ Bo?”
    “ May I have this dance with
you?” Bo asked, pulling her close.
    “ I’m not sure. Can you keep
up?” Olea challenged, brown eyes sparkling. The two separated and
wound around each other, Bo’s voice humming a melody for their
steps. They moved lightly as birds as they danced, Olea’s laugh
rising in the air. The wind wound around them, leading them in
their joy.
    As the sun disappeared completely, Bo pulled
his tired wife to him. He kissed her, showing his love as she’d
taught him how. “You realize,” she said, pulling away from him,
“you weren’t this good when we got married.”
    “ Well, that was my first
kiss.”
     
    ***
     
    It was a week later when Bo went hunting
again. He sensed that ground animals were becoming something of a
mindless tedium at dinner, so he decided he’d go find some nesting
quail for both fowl and eggs. He headed out to the fields where he
and his wife would watch the sunset to search. The sun was
beginning to set, and still Bo had not found his quarry. He
wandered further still, out to the plains where he was sure he
would find some of his prize. The trees groaned from the woods as a
howling wind began to stir, and thunder cracked overhead.
Determined to find something, he continued a bit further.
    Sheets of rain began to fall before Bo
decided that the hunt was off for today. Thunder cracked again, and
he thought he heard something else in the rumble. He paused for a
moment, letting himself get soaked as he listened under the wind
and rain. The sound came again and sent him into a sprint for
home.
    His wife screamed.
    Bo was a blur through the trees. He prepared
his claws for a fight, and emerged in a moment at his grove to find
the door of his house splintered on the ground and a creature
stalking around outside. It looked like a large lizard, with black
fur and red eyes and long legs that gave it an ungainly
movement.
    Bo shouted and leapt at the demon, catching
it behind the head. He realized, as it attempted to snap back at
him, that its muzzle glinted a damp scarlet, and its breath stank
of decay.
    With a well-placed strike to its throat, Bo
dispatched the creature before running into his house. He stopped
at the door frame as if it were a wall, putting his hand on it to
support himself as his stomach flipped. “No,” he managed after a
moment.
    There was blood all over the kitchen.
    “ No.”
    The stew put was boiling over.
    “ It can’t…”
    Black fur was scattered around.
    “ You can’t…”
    Olea was lying on the ground.
    “ You can’t leave
me.”
    Her eyes were open and blank.
    “ You can’t just leave like
this.”
    Her belly was ripped apart.
    “ You can’t just leave me!”
Bo wailed. His knees gave out and he slid to the ground and stared
at his wife, at the cavern in her body where his children once
waited, through wavering vision. He wailed to her, the wind and
rain drowning out his cries. He felt sick, from the sight, from the
blood of his wife’s murderer on his hands.
    “ Why do I have to be
alone?” he asked in a trembling whimper.
    Because you were never
supposed to be in the first place, something inside of him hissed back as thunder clapped.
    He stared at Olea’s