Wild Boy by Nancy Springer

the stones again, and he did not know how to say any of this to Rowan.
    “Oh, toads take you, go wherever you want.” Rowan turned her face away.
    Rook stood a moment longer, but could not think how to help her. Silently he went away, walking off between the hazel bushes that edged Robin’s clearing, striding uphill into oak forest.
    It should have been a fine day. Sunny, warm. Runkling trotted along cheerily, grunting with mindless good humor. Dogs, too, were like that, happy for no reason. That dog Father used to have, the one that helped herd the pigs, even after the foresters had cut its toes off, it still wagged its tail, happy just to be patted, fed, be with its family.
    Stupid
.
    Or—maybe brave?
    Rook slipped like a breeze along the ravine where he had found Tod in the man trap. The stream still dashed along like black squirrels leaping, cold and swift, singing its wild song. Rook still thought there ought to be grayling in the riffles. But it all looked different to him somehow, and not just because the sun was shining today. Something had changed.
    “Come on, Runkling.” He spoke gently to the little pig as he led it through the thinning outskirts of the forest, trotting through straggling woods, then between groves amid stony meadowland growing thick with furze and wild mint and pignut and a hundred other plants—the sort of place where Rowan might go to hunt for herbs.
    Again, the meadows looked different somehow. Beautiful. Cowslips in bloom. And there, ahead, the hut, with the fallen blossoms of the crab-apple tree lying on its stones like a fragrant white blessing.
    “That’s the house my father built, Runkling,” he whispered to the little pig, and he stood just looking for a moment before he knelt and crawled down into the shelter his father had left behind, snug in wintertime, but dim and cool now in the summer heat.
    His hand touched something warm, solid and alive. Someone’s shoulder.
    Rook gasped. For just an eyeblink instant he thought it was his father lying there sleeping. Then the person awoke with a whimper and jerked upright, edging away from him.
    Peering in the dim light, Rook whispered, “Tod?”
    Tod turned his face toward the wall. “Go away.”
    Rook said, gently enough, “What, I am supposed to walk off and leave you in the man trap now?”
    Tod did not answer except by stiffening and shrinking against the wall.
    Rook stared, thinking of Rowan so shadowed today, and now Tod even worse, and he still didn’t know what to do to help.
    He heard quick movements nearby, and a snuffling sound. Runkling, rooting around inside the hut, exploring. Rook reached over, lifted the little pig and placed him in Tod’s lap. He did not let go until Tod responded. It took a moment, but at last Tod’s arms stirred, lifted Runkling and hugged him. Tod’s chest heaved. A sob, a sigh? Rookconsidered that he did not need to know. He started hunting along the walls of the hut for the things he had come to fetch.
    He found an old jerkin and slipped it on. It was a bit tight, but he could still wear it. Sitting on the dirt floor, he put on the sheepskin wrappings to protect his legs from thorns. And the shoes, stiff and dry now, neglected for almost two years, but he eased them on anyway. They would soften as he wore them.
    He gathered everything that was left: bedding, an old mantle, spare jerkins and leggings, flint and steel. He wrapped it all in a blanket and pushed it out of the entryway ahead of him. Then he looked over his shoulder at Tod and said, “Come on.”
    Tod did not move except to shake his head.
    “You can’t just stay here,” Rook said.
    “Why not?”
    “How will you live?”
    “I don’t want to live.”
    Rook turned to peer at him, crouching. After a while he said, “You can’t just give up.”
    “Why not?”
    “You can’t. You have to go on.”
    “Is that what you did?”
    Silence.
    Finally Rook said, “That’s what I’m doing now.”
    “So go ahead. Go away.