She tipped her head back to smile at him, then sat in silence for a few moments while he gently tamed another handspan of her dark-and-light hair.
“Sometimes I wonder about my parents,” she said abruptly. “Maybe I was born broken and they gave me to Beehag because they didn’t want me.”
“I cannot fathom anyone in the world giving you up,” Conall said firmly. He thought about his own demanding mother and his stern father, and could not imagine even them giving up a baby. “Mothers love their children more than anything in the world.”
Beneath his gentle strokes, her hair became soft and glossy, with little waves near the end.
“How did you lose your hearing?” Gizelle asked next, toying with one of the locks while Conall worked another tangle loose.
Conall made his fingers keep going. The pain that the question always woke in him felt distant and muffled, like hearing her own voice through Gizelle’s ears did.
“I was in a car accident,” he explained. “A drunk driver ran me off the road. When paramedics found me, I was unconscious and they took me to the hospital, where I wasn’t able to shift until it was too late. I had already healed wrong; there was nothing my elk could do to make it the way it had been.”
I tried, his elk said mournfully, full of guilt.
It wasn’t your fault, Conall was quick to assure him.
“No, of course it wasn’t your fault,” Gizelle agreed. “You must have tried very hard.”
Conall and his elk both froze, as completely
as Gizelle ever had.
“You could hear him?” Conall asked in disbelief.
She could hear me? his elk asked in delight.
“Of course,” Gizelle said simply. “He has a very nice voice.”
Chapter 39
Gizelle could never predict what would surprise people; no one seemed the slightest bit amazed when she realized she could do marvelous things like somersaults. But Conall was absolutely blown away that she could hear his elk.
“Can you always hear him?” Conall asked, trepidatiously. “Can you hear me?”
“Not you, but I can always hear them,” Gizelle tried to explain. “I just never understand them. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Those whispers,” Conall said in understanding. “I thought it... was the wind. Or...”
“Or just voices in my imagination?” Gizelle nodded, and Conall’s brush tugged at her scalp through a knot. “Ow. I thought so for a while. But every so often, when I touch someone, it turns into words. You can’t do that?”
Conall shook his head. “It only happens with shifters?” he asked.
“I’ve only ever known shifters,” Gizelle said, and Conall paused in his brushing.
“Are there very many people who aren’t?” she asked when he started again.
“Aren’t shifters?”
“It must be very lonely,” Gizelle explained. “And I wondered if there were very many of them.”
Conall actually laughed—his surprised laugh, which was different than his delighted laugh, and much different than the giddy chuckle after sex (that was Gizelle’s favorite so far). “There are far, far more people who aren’t shifters than who are,” he explained. “It’s got to be a hundred to one. Maybe a thousand to one.”
“How awful for them,” Gizelle said in dismay. “Why is that?”
“I have no idea,” Conall said frankly.
“Do they have animals sleeping inside of them like Jenny did?”