Shadows Return

except that it lowered its hand.
    “You want a name?”
    That little hand went back to its chest, over its heart—assuming it had one.
    “Can you tell me what you mean, or is that just something you saw me do?” he wondered. “But I should call you something, I guess. I’ve never named anyone before, except a horse.” He studied the little creature for a moment, then said, “How about Sebrahn?” It was the Aurënfaie word for moonlight. He touched the rhekaro on the chest. “Sebrahn. That’s you. What do you think?”
    The rhekaro looked at him a moment, then slowly pointed at the retort and then at itself, and held up a finger, showing him the white line of a scar.
    Alec held its hand a little closer to the waning glow of the fire. A scar? And it had healed without the help of his blood, too. He looked at the roiling mass, then back at the creature. “He put something of you in there, didn’t he? He made you from me, and now he’s trying to make something from you.”
    Sebrahn went to the knife drawer, selected a small, sharp blade, and brought it to Alec, then held out its hand.
    Alec put it back and closed the drawer. “No. I won’t do that to you.”
    Just then he heard a louder voice outside: Yhakobin, speaking with the sentries.
    Alec looked frantically at all the open cupboards and drawers. He’d let himself get distracted by the rhekaro, forgetting that the alchemist worked all hours!
    Cursing silently, he flew around the room, trying to put everything back to rights. It was only when he stumbled over Sebrahn that he realized that the rhekaro was still following him. The voices were getting closer now. Ahmol was with his master.
    Alec took the rhekaro by its thin shoulders and whispered, “Tend the fire!” then bolted for the stairs. A final glance found the creature squatting by the athanor again with its basket of chips, but it was looking at him.
    Alec just managed to get the stairway door pulled shut when he heard the workroom door open. It hadn’t been locked!
    Damning himself for all kinds of fool, he crept back to his room and locked himself in with shaking hands. It took several tries, and he had just gotten the pick hidden in the mattress when he heard steps on the stairs outside his room. He braced for the worst, but they continued on downstairs to the cellar.
    Alec quickly moved the pick, since Khenir already knew that hiding place. Reaching under the bed, he wedged the brass pin between the mattress and the bed ropes. That done, he sagged back across the bed, limp with relief, until he heard the rhekaro’s first thin squeal of pain from the cellar. It took every ounce of will he had not to pick the lock again and dash down to stop whatever was going on. Instead, he pounded on the door, yelling, “Leave him alone. Stop hurting him, damn you!”
    It did no good, of course. The cries continued for a little while, then stopped just as abruptly. He kicked the door in frustration. “You heartless bastard! He’s just a child. How can you do that?”
    He jumped back quickly as a key rattled in the lock. The door swung open and there was the alchemist, whip in hand and furious. Ahmol stood just behind with Sebrahn’s limp little body in his arms.
    “You killed him!” Alec snarled.
    Yhakobin strode in and grabbed Alec by the hair, dragging him back to the doorway.
    “Him, you say? Look at its hand,” he ordered, giving Alec’s head a hard shake, and then shoving him to his knees for a closer look.
    The rhekaro’s left arm hung limply down, and Alec saw that its entire hand had been cut off this time. Something was dripping from the terrible wound, but it wasn’t blood. As with the last one, it was thicker, and almost clear.
    “You are a fool, Alec, if you think this
thing
is in any way human,” the alchemist said sternly. “And you are a greater fool to insult me. I’ve no patience with you—or it—tonight.”
    He barked out an order and two strapping men appeared and held Alec while Yhakobin drove the bodkin into Alec’s finger and yanked his hand to the rhekaro’s slack lips. After a moment the lips closed around it and it sucked weakly, but its eyelids didn’t even flutter.
    Yhakobin shoved Alec’s face closer to the severed wrist and he saw five little nubs protruding from the stump, the same sort as he’d seen when Yhakobin had cut the fingers off the first rhekaro he’d made. It was the beginning of a new hand.
    If it was healing, then perhaps it wasn’t