His family was a great mystery. Of all the things in the world Harlowe wished to learn, it was himself he was most interested in—ancestry gave wonderful clues, and the chestnut-dipped child was more than willing to learn and listen to what Larkspur had to say. He nodded slowly. “I want to know,” he said quietly, jerking in surprise as the sable-furred man laughed, earning a wide-eyed look from the bicolored canine. He moved and spoke again, and now Harlowe listened with rapt attention, leaning forward and absorbing every word, committing it to memory. Religion and tradition were meaningless to him, but maybe there was power in them yet—Harlowe would reject nothing of what Larkspur gave him.
“Were you cleansed, then?” he asked, failing to understand that cleansing involved more than a little singeing of hair. He failed to recognize the emotion on Larkspur's face, the sore place where that question prodded. “How do I tell which of the three forces chose me?” the tawny-furred man asked, expecting the selection was automatic and happened to all of them. He wondered what it meant if he were to be directed by a certain force—maybe that explained why he hadn't spoken for the earliest months of his life, maybe that explained why he remembered everything in sharp, clear detail down to the very last minutiae.
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