“Ah.” Rowena sighed, the tears now streaming, laughing at herself and her fears, shamed for Dimity’s shame but relieved just the same. “Mother! I’m all right. It’s all right.”
Rowena nodded, dabbing at her eyes. Of all the things that might have gone wrong, none had. Dimity had mounted, had ridden, hadn’t fallen off, hadn’t been attacked by the fox, hadn’t done anything to upset the hounds.
“Mother.” Softly, moved by the tears, offering something.
“Yes, Dimity-“
“There was this one hound that kept watching me, all the time we were coming back. A kind of purplish mottled one. He just kept looking at me and looking at me. Every time I looked down, there he was.”
“You didn’t stare!”
“Of course not. I know better. I didn’t even seem to notice, not that the hound could see. I just thought it was funny, that’s all.”
Rowena argued with herself. Say too little? Say too much? Say nothing? “Hounds are peculiar that way. Sometimes they watch us. Sometimes they don’t look at us. Sometimes they seem to be amused by us. You know.”
“I don’t, really.”
“Well, they need us, Dimity. They can’t climb, so they can’t kill the fox unless we bring him down.”
“They only need one man for that, somebody with a strong arm to throw the harpoon.”
“Oh, I think there’s more to it than that. The hounds seem to enjoy the Hunt. The ritual of it.”
“When we were riding back, I kept wondering how it ever got started. I know they ride to the hounds on Terra, back before Sanctity, before we left. That was in my history book, with pictures of the horses and dogs and the little furry thing—nothing like our fox at all. I couldn’t figure out why they should have wanted to kill it, even. With our foxen, killing it is the only thing to do. But why do it this way?”
“One of the first settlers made friends with a young mount and learned to ride him, that’s all there is to it,” Rowena answered. “The settler taught some friends, and the young mount brought along some more of its kind, and gradually we had a Hunt again.”
“And the hounds?”
“I don’t know. My grandfather told me once that they were simply there one day, that’s all. As though they knew we needed them to have a proper Hunt. They always show up on the proper day at the proper place, just like the mounts do….”
“If we call them hounds when they aren’t really hounds, how come we don’t call the mounts horses?” Dimity asked, lying back until her head was half submerged, contented now to say nothing much, to talk, perhaps to have her mother wash her back.
Rowena was startled. “Oh, I don’t think the Hippae would like that, not at all.”
“But they don’t mind being called mounts?”
“But my dear, we never call them even that where they can hear us. You know that. We never call them anything at all where they can hear us.”
“It makes your head feel funny,” said Dimity. “Doesn’t it?”
“What?” asked Rowena, suddenly on her feet. “What does?”
“Hunting. Doesn’t it make your head feel funny?”
Rowena said in a preoccupied tone, “It has a kind of hypnotic effect. It would really be rather boring otherwise.” She put a folded towel within Dimity’s reach, then left the room, closing the door behind her to keep the steamy warmth within.
One of the hounds watching Dimity? She bit her lip, frowned, acquired a suddenly haunted expression. She would have to speak to Sylvan about that. Right now he would be closeted with Figor about that Sanctity business, but perhaps he had noticed something. No one else would have noticed anything, but perhaps Sylvan had. Or perhaps it had all been in Dimity’s mind. Weariness and hours of pain could do that.
Still it would be an odd thing to imagine. The hounds had killed, so they should have been in a good mood. There was no reason for one of them to have watched Dimity. There was no reason for Dimity even to have imagined it. Surely no one had ever said anything to her, about Janetta … about that side of things