Page 58 of Moonless

Then another, with far too much space between them.

I turn around grinning, and he’s got his hands up, clapping with the claws kept out of the way.

I dip him a curtsy, fish and all. “Oh, very—”

His hands stop apart.

He’s staring at me. I wait for the next clap, but he keeps looking, his mouth a little open around his fangs, and both ears have come all the way forward.

My smile falters. What’s he staring at. I look down at the fish and push the hair off my cheek with my wrist.

“You can stop now.”

He lowers his hands to his thighs, and he hasn’t even unfolded the sack, so I lift the fish a little higher.

“Make yourself useful.” I toss it over, underhand, easy. He’s got both hands free.

His eyes stay on my face.

The fish slaps him across the nose.

Its tail catches his cheek on the way down, and he traps it against his stomach a moment too late.

I laugh so hard I have to bend over. He’s sitting there with a salmon in his lap and a wet mark across the pale fur of his brow. He blinks, looking at the fish, then at me.

“You were supposed to catch it.”

I barely get the last word out. Every time I look at him I start laughing again, and my eyes are watering by the time I can stand up straight.

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, and a scale sticks to the dark fur beside his thumb.

I point at the fish in his lap. “I held it up. You saw it.”

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out, and he just keeps watching me while I wipe my eyes, one hand still on the fish in his lap.

I walk past the end of the log and put my good hand on his shoulder.

“Hopeless.”

And shove.

He’s half turned toward me with one foot off the ground, and he goes backward. For a second he just hangs there with the fish in his lap.

Then he goes.

His legs come up, and he lands on his back in the grass. The log barely moves. I didn’t even push that hard. I stop beside it with my hand still out, then catch hold of the broken end because I’m laughing too hard to stand straight.

Rauk’s lying there with one knee still hooked over the log. He lifts his head and looks at me, fur wet, grass all down his shoulder.

He chuckles, low in his chest.

He presses his lips together and turns his head, but I hear another one before he gets his feet down.

I grin down at him. “I heard that.”

He rolls onto an elbow, keeping the fish in his other hand. I let go of the log and start up the bank, wiping my wet palm down my shirt.

Behind me, Rauk clears his throat.