Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) Read Online Free Page B

elegantly as any dual in the village.
    In deep snow, the two cougars wrestled and batted at each other, claws pulled in like house cats playing. They snarled, they growled, they shrieked.
    Suddenly, Grand-mère stood in front of them. She didn’t even pretend to ignore them while they changed back into wordside, humanlike form and scrambled for clothes. Jack was used to it. Grand-mère was a manitou, and manitou, being nature spirits, had even weaker notions of modesty than duals did. Not to mention Grand-mère had changed not only Jack’s diapers but his father’s, grandmother’s, and several more generations of ancestors back to the long-ago part-dual, part-manitou baby that was actually her son. Rafe tried to hide behind a bush. Never mind that he was one-quarter manitou, Grand-mère’s actual grandkid; he’d been raised human.
    “Children,” she said, “someone is on her way to the village. Jack, you will take her on as a student. Cara is the daughter of Lily Many-Winters, who left here for the outside world many years ago. You may remember Lily and Cara visiting when you were a cub. Raphael, you and she have some things in common, including that her heritage is coming as a surprise to her and she is fighting it. I trust you will both be kind to her, for she needs it.”
    “Of course, Grand-mère,” Rafe said, all respect. He even bowed his head a little.
    “Is Cara pretty?” Jack asked with a leer, knowing it would get his grandmother’s goat.
    “Stop thinking with your little head, Jack. She’s coming to us because she needs our help. She’s gone into crisis, and no one around her knows how to handle it.”
    He racked his brain and came up with an image of a little girl, a few years younger than him, who used to visit in the summers with her mother. Cara had dark blonde hair, which made her unique among the humans he’d met at that age. He couldn’t remember anything else about her; he’d been just enough older that she wasn’t too interesting. She hadn’t been back since her mother died.
    He remembered her mother’s death all too clearly, though it happened many kilometers away. He and old Sam Many-Winters had been magically linked, with Sam trying to beat some shamanic lesson into his stubborn adolescent head, at the moment Lily died.
    Lily was Sam’s daughter.
    He’d been just shy of fourteen when Lily died.
    That would make Cara over thirty herself, which was damn old for a shamanic crisis. At twelve or thirteen, your body bounced back, and you were so awash with hormones that a few more waves of crazy seemed almost normal. As an adult, not so much. “Right. So Cara’s taking after her mom and turning into a shaman. Why give her to me instead of Nella or Mary Running-Deer or her own grandfather or someone else who’s, oh, human ? Rafe’s giving me enough to do.”
    Grand-mère let out a big, whooping belly laugh. “Jack, Jack, Jack, I’m giving her to you because she needs your bad attitude. Even as a child, Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie was overly serious. You will be good for each other.” She laughed again. “And if her real self looks anything like her dream self, you’ll be pleased to have her around.”
    Oh, great. Funny how something that would normally be good news, like the arrival of someone attractive, single and not related to him, sounded less appealing when it came with a huge obligation attached. “All the more reason to give her to someone else as a student, Grand-mère. How am I supposed to impress her with my manly charms when I’m making her life miserable like I’m doing to poor Rafe?”
    Rafe, getting into the spirit of the game, tried to look hangdog and frail with fatigue. He failed miserably.
    “Oh, my poor Raphael. Go home and let Elissa and Jude tend to you.” Grand-mère didn’t sound a bit sympathetic. “More to the point, tend to Elissa and your daughter. If Jocelyn doesn’t start sleeping through the night soon, half the village will wind up with