Rating: PG, for violence.
Summary: Joxer has to fight just about everybody to keep from disappointing someone depending on him.

The quote heading this story is from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be well cared for! -- far better than thou canst do it."

"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up!"

She huddled under the rock outcropping, shivering more from terror than from cold. She was so tired, hungry, and cold . . . she hadn't bathed in weeks and bruises turned almost half her body a sickly purple. Then there was the dense aching in her arm that kept her whimpering like a beaten puppy.

So what would happen now?

She'd starve to death here, most likely, just because she was too terrified to leave it, even to seek some sort of food. Maybe some hunting party would find her in a week or two, wonder who she was and how she'd died. Maybe they'd build a pyre for her. That'd be nice. She'd always wanted a pyre.

It was awfully boring here, hiding by herself. She ought to go to sleep again. Maybe this would be the time she wouldn't wake up, and she'd go to the Elysian fields where her arm would stop aching.

That was a nice idea.

Joxer was incapable of moving quietly. It just wasn't in him. That was why he depended on snares for his food.

Xena had taught him how to spot rabbit trails. He was tromping through the woods with a couple of looped wires, his eyes on the ground, when he smacked his head smartly on a rock outcropping.

He spit out a few words not at all suitable for children's ears. Right next to his feet, something gave a violent scramble to his left.

Rabbit! thought Joxer automatically, and grabbed for it.

It wasn't a rabbit, because it sent back at him an improved version of the words he'd just uttered and kicked like a mule, whimpering as each blow landed on his ankles.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he shouted, and dropped to his knees so he could get a better look at what he'd grabbed.

A girl! A scraggly little girl of about seven, a mass of skin-covered bones and tangled, filthy hair and tangled, filthy cloth. Her eyes stood out from her face like a frog's, wide with terror, wild with hunger.

"Who are you?" he asked, rather abruptly, taking a firmer grip on her ankle. She whimpered and clenched her jaw. For the first time he noticed that the ankle was swollen so badly the feel of it made him ill.

She kicked again, and he let go so she could draw her knees up to her chest. He backed away from her a little: she was just too scared for him to stay where he was.

"You gave me some scare, Kid," he told her. "And you swear as good as a friend of mine I didn't think anyone could match."

She huddled tighter against the rock and watched him over her knees.

Joxer was a born dad. He understood kids, and they liked him: probably because he was so childish himself. And that paternal instinct in his head was beeping to him: Don't touch her. Poor kid's scared to death of you. She needs help.

"I'm sorry," he told her, quiet and calm as he could be. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Still, no response from her.

"No offense, but you look awful. When was the last time you ate anything? Last month?"

She didn't move. Joxer sighed inwardly: this was going to take some patience.

"I'm Joxer," he said at last. "I'm not from around here. I'm from Corinth. That's a big city far away. Are you from around here?"

Nothing. He shifted to sit down and take the strain off his ankles, and she jumped backwards against the wall.

"Whoa, take it easy. I'm just gonna sit down, all right? I'm not going to come close to you. Promise."

She didn't relax, so he slowly sat down with his legs crossed and ran a hand through his hair.

"I've been setting snares. For rabbits. I'm hoping that in the morning I'll have caught some, and I can take them with me when I leave. I bought some spices in that last village that go well with rabbits. It's one of my favorite foods."

The wild eyes went a little wilder at his talk of food. She wasn't hungry: she was starving, poor kid. Literally starving.

He wanted to pick her up, haul her back to camp, and make her eat something, but that would be a very, very bad idea. So he just kept talking.

"I also got a little honey, just as a treat. You can put it on flatbread and it tastes really good. But not like flowers. You'd think it would taste like flowers, but it doesn't. My friend Gabrielle really likes honey, especially when it's got walnuts mixed into it. Maybe I'll get her some walnuts before I meet up with her. Xena will have to crack them, though. She's good at cracking them."

Walnuts . . . the idea of walnuts was getting to her.

"I like to chew on the shells. You can't eat them, but they're fun to chew on. Gives your mouth something to do. Gabrielle always gets mad at me when I chew on something, just for chewing on it. She says it bugs her. But she always chews on her quills. That's how the ends get so ragged.

"She says it's because she needs to think and I don't. I think it's just because she likes to boss me around. But that's really okay. I don't mind her. that's just the way she is. If she gets really bad Xena tells her off."

He noticed with satisfaction that she was no longer breathing so hard, and she'd stopped concentrating on curling up as tight as possible. Such simple things were interesting her: friends and their squabbles and their smiles. Had she no friends? If she was starving in the woods under some rock, he was betting that she didn't.

"They're out west now, Gabrielle and Xena. I didn't catch them in time to go with, so I have to wait until they come home. It shouldn't be too long; Gabrielle hates sailing. Xena loves it, and it never bothered me. Sort of fun, to feel the deck moving all the time. Sometimes you trip over something and fall on your backside. Then everybody laughs. It's just a good time. But the rigging is scary. Only Xena goes into the rigging. She does lots of scary things like that.

"I'm not very good at climbing. I'm too big now. I used to be able to, when I was a kid. Of course, I didn't wear shoes back then, so my feet were a lot tougher. Boots just make you go soft. But they keep snakes from biting you, so it all works out."

She was listening. She was interested. She was hungry. Time to move.

He stretched his back a little and announced, "Well, I'm going back to have some dinner. Nice talking with you."

He stood up: she cringed again, but more reflex than true fear.

"You can come and share with me if you want," he offered, then waved slowly and turned back the way he'd come.

He didn't look behind him, but he heard a rustle of leaves. She was following. Slowly, warily, she was following. He smiled to himself and kept walking, pausing a lot to examine this or that, so she could keep up.

She knew she shouldn't move. But what was better: to die at the hands of a human being, or to die of starvation?

Human beings were more frightening. They were definitely worse. But the man that she was following seemed more child than adult. More than her than like a person. And he promised food.

She wanted food horribly. Maybe she would run away after she ate something.

He had a small camp, out of the wind on the side of a hill. He had blankets spread out next to a laid fire, and a lazy-looking brown horse was tethered downhill a little ways. There was no tent. There were no other people.

A sword, though. One sheathed sword on one of the blankets. She watched it, watched him, made sure that one was never in close proximity to the other.

He lit the fire, whistling tunelessly, ignoring her. She stayed out of the little camp and watched from the thicker brush. Careful: you could never tell what an adult would do, especially a male adult with a sword.

But then he threw together some dried meat, vegetables, spices, and water in a pot over the fire and it started to smell . . .

The hunger that had been building in her for six days suddenly lurched and gnawed and raged inside her. Six days with no food, only to be presented with a smell like that. The temptation was unbearable, never mind fear. Never mind it.

Slowly, she crept into the open ground around the camp, toward the crackling little fire. The man turned slowly to look at her, then turned back and filled two bowls with the simple, watery stew.

He set one of them on the ground and moved away from it, then began to eat his own food. She crept towards it as carefully as she could.

He didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to her.

She finally got near the bowl, dipped her fingers in, and licked the broth from them. It tasted all right . . . more than all right, it tasted fantastic. Her body craved food.

She took the bowl and slowly sat cross-legged with it, never taking her eyes off the man. She ate carefully, slowly, ready to bolt at any moment if he lunged for her.

He finished his food and licked his fingers. "Pretty good tonight."

He got up as slowly as possible, and finally she was calm enough to appreciate what he was trying to do. He was trying not to scare her. Correction: he seemed to be trying not to scare her. Nothing was certain.

For the first time in a long time, the frightened little girl inside her started to come through the haze of pure instinct that had been guiding. Here was a friend.

But the hunted-animal instinct insisted to her that no one was a friend. Be careful. Be careful. You should run away now.

He cleaned out the bowl with a handful of pine needles, put it back into a bag, and lay down on one of the blankets. He was still far enough away from her that she could relax a little, and he was nowhere near the sword.

She ought to run away.

But she didn't.

When Joxer woke, long after first light, his first thought was of the wild-eyed runaway girl. If she was still here, he didn't want to sit up too quickly and startle her. If she was gone, it didn't matter either way.

He rose up, very slowly, to rest on his elbows and look around.

She was still there, her hair of unknown color spilling across her face and mixing with the fur of the pelt she lay on. Curled up in a fetal position to keep warm. But there.

And he knew now that she would stay long enough for him to help her.

The paternal instinct, Joxer's natural tendency to care about . . . anything . . . made him grin. He could take care of the poor kid now.

The practical side of this never occurred to him. The practical side of anything rarely occurred to Joxer. A full-grown man who knew nothing about children . . . much less girl-children . . . taking care of a girl that wouldn't even speak. Moreover he was clueless about medicine and she was clearly wounded. Xena and Gabrielle were who-knew-where and couldn't help him. He had little food and less money.

And he was already determined to take care of this girl.

In response to some secret signal, the girl in question lunged up, shoving the mane of tangled hair out of her dirty face and pulling the scrap that remained of her sleeve down over her left arm. Her eyes locked onto him, but they were no longer the eyes of a hunted animal. They were the pale brown eyes of a frightened runaway child.

"Good morning," he told her. "I hope you slept well."

No word or twitch of the head indicated that she had heard. He shrugged it off. Gabrielle was sometimes like this when she'd woken from a nightmare.

"I have some pita bread for breakfast. Not much variety, but it's food. I'll get you some, and then I'll go see if my snares got anything, and if they did we can cook it, and then we can pack up and keep moving."

Finally . . . a sign. She jerked her head down, in approval of his plan. Then she tucked her feet under her and tugged on her ragged excuse for a sleeve.

He got up slowly, rolled up the skins he'd slept on, and went off to check the snares. She wouldn't run away. She'd fallen asleep in his camp and taken the leap of faith that she'd live through the night. She'd lived. That had to be worth something.

It had been stupid: falling asleep here. But the furs were so comfortable and her body had been screaming for rest. Exhaustion made one do foolish things, just like hunger.

But the man promised more food and he promised more rest and he hadn't gone anywhere near her or the sword. Perhaps it would be all right.

He opened a saddlebag and took four round, flat disks of bread. He laid them on the bag and left the camp.

She waited many long heartbeats to be sure he was gone, then crawled around the dead firepit to get at the bread.

She took great care to avoid the sword.

When Joxer got back, the bread was gone. The girl was sitting on one of the rolled-up skins, tugging on her left sleeve. It seemed to be a nervous habit of hers.

He shrugged when she looked expectantly at him and held out his hands to show they were empty "Nothing. We'd better move on, find somewhere else to hunt."

She looked down in resignation.

"That means a quick packup. We'd better get to work."

He started putting the small camp together and loading it onto the remarkably cooperative horse. (It didn't have a name. It was just called the horse. Not even the dignity of a proper noun.) She kept a quick watch on him, moving away when he got too close.

It was only when he went to get his sword that crisis struck.

When he took a grip on the sword-belt, she jumped like a rabbit and scrambled on her hands and knees as far away from them both as she could possibly get. She curled up against a tree and pressed her sleeve down against her upper arm with her right hand.

Joxer dropped the sword and held up his hands. "It's okay. Just my sword. I'm gonna put it on the horse and then I'm not gonna touch it any more. All right?"

She gave no sign or response, and her eyes were like a hunted animal's again. He wanted to just leave the sword there, in hopes of repairing the sudden loss of trust, but he needed a weapon. Most highway bands would be scared off by the mere presence of a well-used sword.

He picked it up again, very slowly. The girl didn't move. He carried it, slowly and where she could see, to the horse and slipped the buckle through a leather loop on the saddle.

"See? Now I won't touch it again. I'll leave it right there."

He stepped away and took the horse's reins. "You can stay right next to it if you want; make sure I don't touch it. Deal?"

She didn't move. Joxer clenched his teeth and begged the gods for patience. He'd go to Tartarus before he left her behind, but if he left the sword they'd both get robbed and killed.

He'd just have to stand there and wait until she got up and came with.

It was a long wait.

A sword was too much of a risk. A line she could not cross.

Why did he still stand there? It had been . . . a very long time. Why didn't he leave her?

He didn't touch the sword. He'd said that she could stay by it, guard it. Would that be all right? He could overpower her and take it. But if he'd wanted to do that wouldn't he have done it already?

This couldn't go on much longer. Either she'd get up and go with him or he'd go off and leave her. Suddenly, the idea of being alone again was terrifying.

She crept towards the horse, ready to jump back if he so much as twitched. He didn't move until she was standing with one hand resting on the hilt of the dreaded weapon.

Then he clicked to the horse and tugged on the reins. Keeping a grip on the sword, she kept with the horse, limping to take pressure off her swollen ankle, and they moved along like that.

The girl still didn't talk. Not a word, not a noise all day. She never let go of the sword, except when they stopped to rest and eat. Then she sat almost underneath the horse, ate what was left near her, then got up quietly when it was time to move on.

Joxer stopped a lot earlier than he usually did when he was traveling without the girls. This time, the sword stayed on the saddle and the child stayed calm.

Her very wide personal bubble started shrinking, and as he made a new camp she moved less to stay away from him. Not much, but less. It was a good sign.

As he assembled a serviceable fire, she sat a comfortable distance away and systematically pressed on her bruises, as if trying to push out the pain. She had a lot of bruises, all of them very nasty-looking.

"You know," Joxer said conversationally, "There's willow around here someplace. Xena uses it all the time on me when I get banged up. I could make some for you, and you'll hurt less, even though the stuff tastes disgusting. If I made it, would you drink it?"

She looked up at him curiously and stopped pushing the bruises.

"Okay. Stay here, and I'll go get some."

He got up, leaving the fire unlit, and headed off in a likely-looking direction to try and find a willow tree.

He found one, luckily enough, with half its roots sticking out of a stream bank. The stream was slow and muddy: not good for drinking out of, but promising good fishing. Which was good, because he had plenty of water and not much food.

He stripped a good bunch of willow bark from the already-abused-looking tree and returned to the camp, where the girl hadn't moved. She kept a steady watch on him as the lit the fire, nestled a small pot in the fresh flames, filled it with leathery-tasting water, and sprinkled the bark into it.

Finally he scooped a little of the hot bark-water into a shallow bowl and set it down near her.

"There you go. You might want to plug your nose while you drink it." He backed off and sat cross-legged, watching her.

After a long moment of indecision, she reached out and snatched the bowl, spilling a few drops onto the ground. She held it up to her face to examine and smell it, then cautiously took a sip.

"Awful, isn't it?" Joxer asked, a wry smile on his face.

"Awful," whispered the girl.

Falling asleep was much easier than it had been the night before. A security was growing inside her: this man would not hurt her. Being almost as much a child as she was, he probably couldn't protect her from anything else. But he wouldn't hurt her and she could fall asleep knowing that.

With bread and meat digesting comfortably in her stomach, she curled up on the soft fur pelt and huddled to keep the warmth of her body from escaping into the air. It didn't work terribly well: her clothing was paper-thin rags and provided little insulation.

She was used to that. Cold was no bother. Soon she'd fall asleep and escape it all. Sleep was always an escape.

She started as she felt something falling around her curled-up frame. But it was just a blanket that the man had dropped on her. Already she was warm.

She looked up at him, unwilling to speak again. Speaking before had been a mistake. Her voice was her own. But she tried to tell him, while still hiding inside herself, that she was thankful.

He went over to his own bed and nestled down inside it. She lay her head down and closed her eyes, and for the first time in a very long time she didn't fear waking up again.

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