Page 70 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
He huffled. “Aye!”
I staggered. “What?”
A second later, the grocer staggered too. The shouting had drawn bystanders, Briar included. “Unhand her at once!” He whisked me into his arms. “By what right do you accost this beyn?”
Sputtering, the grocer gestured toward the stable fence the faelets had escaped through. “My ceyla alerted me that this meddler was feeding the beggars what bother my shop! Blatantly disrespecting the law!”
“Thelaw?” I exclaimed.
Briar’s jaw tightened. “Aye, well—please forgive her crime, good fellow. She’s simple, you see—doesn’t know any better.”
I glared at Briar, wanting to kick him.
The female grocer strutted over, arms folded. “Hmph. Didn’t seem simple to me. Seemed to know right what she was about.”
I sucked in a breath to tell her exactly what I knew, but Briar smacked a hand over my mouth.
“I assure you, she’s quite addled.” He adopted that infernal charmer act again. “She has the mind of a child. It’s my fault, really. It’s my task to watch her, but I wasn’t paying the proper attention, and she wandered off.”
Am I a wayward puppy?I flailed out of his hold.
The male grocer loosed a breath, considering Briar’s tale.
Cold to her core, the beyn sniffed. “Simple or no, the magistrate should be informed of her doings.”
“Surely you have more mercy in your hearts for a harmless fool and her caretaker,” Briar said. “What can I do to make things right?”
Flexing his paws in and out of fists, the grocer wavered. “Return us the food she wrongly gave, and we’ll forget we ever saw her.”
I paid for that food, you greedy assholes!I can give it to whoever I damn well please!
“Consider it done,” Briar agreed to my devastation.
Mere minutes later, he returned to us in a streak of leather and homespun with the bundles of food I’d given those poor faelets. Stony-eyed, he placed them in the beyn’s hands. “It’s all there,” he said, then spirited me away before we drew further unwanted attention.
Our journey continued. Without a mule and less a handful of seeds.
Myangerwasaliving thing, threatening to engulf anything I touched. So, Briar waited hours before he dared to speak to me. Even then it was too soon.
“Amy, listen.” He snatched my wrist, stopping me in my dirty tracks. Pity for my ignorance brimmed in his gaze. “It all goes back to the laws protecting nature. It’s a natural selection, survival of the fittest thing—Darwinism.”
My mind spun at such bullshit. “You took food from little kids, Briar! Food I’d given them!”
“Yes.” His tone bore no apology, only resignation. “If I hadn’t, those grocers would’ve summoned the magistrate, who’d have thrown you in a jail cell. Feeding beggars is outlawed here. It’s our ideal that all who thrive here do so on their own merit, without depending on their communities.”
“But they werekids!Kids are always dependent!”
“On their parents. Faelets are solely their parents’ responsibility. There are no welfare checks. No food stamps. Parents are expected to keep their faelets fed and clothed through their own means, no one else’s.”
My head hurt. “But isn’t birth controlalsooutlawed? We force people into having babies, but then we won’t aid them in raising them? That’s asinine!”
He sighed. “You know rejecting the blessing of a child from Danu is sacrilegious.”
“And if the parents fail at raising these faelets?”
Briar’s mouth turned down.
“If the parentsdie? Are the kids just expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Begin running the household?”
