At first, Mora thought he was crazy to go want to go look for people in the forest, though she saw no reason not to entertain his idea. As far as she could tell, keeping Vares away from others was best for everyone.

  For a time, maybe two hours or more, they wandered directionlessly through the forest. “We should go back,” Mora said to him every so often. Vares, however, kept going, and as they got deeper in he began to move and act in a way closer to an animal.

  Now, as the gloom of the forest descended around them, he crouched and took a deep whiff of the air. “Do you smell that, little oni?”

  “It smells awful. Rotten.”

  “That’s the scent of the putrid corpse of the hedgehog we came upon before. It’s carried on the wind. But beyond that. Do you smell anything else?”

  Mora sniffed the air as she stood next to him, her slender eleven-year-old body so tiny that she was still shorter than him even as he crouched. “Not really. What is it?”

  Vares ignored her and took another deep whiff, savoring it, much like a wolf might.

  Not that Mora had encountered many wolves; but the stories she’d heard made her imagine that this is how a wolf would act.

  The pirate went quiet and closed his glowing red eyes. What’s wrong with him? she wondered. With his lean muscular body and lean physique, no doubt many human women found him very attractive. Why did he bother doing any of this when he could’ve just lazed around and done nothing?

  Stolen story; please report.

  Everything about him, from where he came from, to how he arrived, to that damned monkey he referred to as his beloved, was extremely strange.

  An unfamiliar bird screeched in the distance. Mora glanced up at the thick canopy above and noticed that the trickle of light was becoming fainter as the day advanced. “We should go,” she said again. “It’ll be dark soon. I doubt we’ll find our way out then.”

  “It’s perfume.” Vares stood up.

  Mora’s head tilted to the side, dark eyes widening. “Huh?”

  He smirked knowingly. “The smell, little oni. It’s the scent of perfume.”

  Mora smelled the air again, but there wasn’t a trace of it. “I can’t smell it. Maybe only humans can smell it.”

  “Has nothing to do with that. It’s just that right now, my senses are… fully awakened. Come.” He took a step forward and then stopped. “Or better yet, go back. It may not be safe for you to accompany me from this point forward.”

  Mora clicked her tongue. “You can’t be serious! I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”

  “That’s true, you’ve managed to walk through the forest for an hour without dying, though I wouldn’t say that is a particularly impressive feat. It certainly doesn’t mean that you’d be able to face up against an enemy. Who knows what I’m hunting.”

  A deep frown showed on her face. “You do. Don’t you?”

  “Vaguely. You should go back.”

  The moment he began to forge ahead without her, Mora sped right after him. “I’m not going back alone. It might be dark by then. There’s no way I’m getting lost here all by myself.”

  In part, that was an excuse to keep from going back, since she was invested now. Why was this big idiot pirate all the way out here if he didn’t know who or what he was looking for?

  I’m not going anywhere, thought Mora, throwing an over-the-shoulder glance at the stretch of forest they were leaving behind as they wandered deeper than she’d ever gone before.

  Before her, lumbering ahead like a big cat that imagined no threats, was Vares. He’ll keep me safe. Probably. He has to, doesn’t he? He’s saved my butt two times…

  What he would have to keep her safe from, though, remained to be seen.