"No," said Sula.
"Body and soul you belong to me."
"No," whispered Sula.
"Yes. Say yes."
She tried to keep her mouth closed on the word, but she could not. "Yes."
"Remember," said the pig. "You gave yourself to me when you killed me. Nothing else binds two souls so strongly as murder. You gave yourself to me, and now I have accepted you."
Sula shook her head.
"Say yes," whispered the pig.
Though she tried not to say it, she whispered yes.
"You cannot kill me," said the pig, "for my heart is elsewhere."
Recalling how she had taken care of her last wayward pig, Sula glanced toward the place where she kept her bow and a quiver full of arrows. They were no longer there. She looked lower, and saw that her bow had been bitten in half, its braided hide string chewed to bits, and the arrows had fared no better; all that was left of them were fragments of snow-white feathers and the iron heads.
She unsheathed the sky knife and looked from its blade to the pig.
"You might cut me, but you cannot kill me." It glanced at the fire for a while, then turned back. "You will not cut me."
She sighed and put the knife away. "What are we going to do with the babies?"
"When they can walk, we will take them to my sister."
"Your sister?" she whispered.
"In the castle kitchens at Babiruse Fief, six days' march to the south."
In the darkness beyond the pig, faint cries sounded. "Sleep well," said the pig, and vanished.
As the days lengthened she spent more and more time in the forest, for she had ten mouths to feed now—eleven, if she counted her own. Every night she fell into bed exhausted, and every morning the pig sent her out again, sometimes with specific instructions:
Horses, hounds, and hawks he might know, she thought, but he had no herblore. When she went foraging she picked bitter herbs with the sweet, nightshade and gutburst, larkspur and amanita. She offered them all to the pig, mixed with grasses and nasturtiums and puffballs, when she went home. Sometimes the pig ate them and sometimes it didn't.
It never even got sick. Pigs could eat almost anything.
Stephanie D. Shaver
It had taken exactly two hundred and twenty-two steps to get up to Lord Benzamin's room. Maakus knew. He'd counted every… last... one.
"Maakus, correct?"