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Throughout my childhood in Darkling, I mainly ate meat. So when I reached the city I lived by stealing sizzling burgers from market stalls, which was as near to meat as I could find. When I figured out what fruit was, and how to peel it, I changed to pilfering apples and oranges, loving the intense sweetness, although to start with they gave me indigestion. The first words of Morenzian I learned were the tradesmen’s cries and curses.
I crept back to the distilling room and checked that it was deserted. I dashed out of the stone doorway, left the pueblo and jogged onto the plateau, while biting grit from under my nails. The dull sun shone a white pathway in the overcast sky. A ski
Two Rhyda
A handful of condor feathers quivered in her long matted hair; it was dried back with ochre paste and red daubs stained the hair roots on her forehead. She had a pierced bear-canine necklace, and wolverine claws strung on the babiche lacings of her tasseled puma-beige breeches. She looked old, perhaps thirty-five. They both had knives on their belts and armfuls of plain bangles, prized possessions that confirmed their status. As the mountains grow, earthquakes and erosion sometimes uncover veins of Darkling silver that Rhyda
These hunters were out of their territory, which I knew to be on the other side of the aiguille-lined ridge called the Raikes. They were not at all impressed by the farouche shock-headed boy who, having summed them up, was trying to flee. They strode around me. I couldn’t dash between them; I was trapped.
“What is this?” she said with curiosity. Her eyes drilled into me like pale shards of bone.
“He’s an Awian. Stocky as he is, he’s young.”
“Alone?”
They looked around. “If he is an Awian he’s not old enough to be here by himself, I do declare. An orphan, then.”
The woman spoke slowly, “Are you an orphan? Or abandoned?”
I said nothing.
“What are you doing here?” the man asked.
With overwhelming isolation I thought, I do two things: I can keep people company or I can leave them alone.
The woman shot out a wind-burned hand and started pinching my feathers. Her husband gave a laugh and pick, pick, picked at the other wing. I yelped and sprinted away. Why were they doing this to me?
The cold wind lifted my dirty hair. My soaked feet were freezing; my three layers of fur socks had been shredded when I scrambled among the landslide rock shards.
I ran frantically over low outcrops, knocking stones from their frost-shattered surface. The Rhyda
I wish I had realized then that my ability to fly would awe all Rhyda
I wrenched free and ran as fast as I could. The man gave a double whistle. The woman whistled once to show she understood and they spread out on either side of me. They’re hunting me, I thought with horror.
I swerved away from her and ran straight. Her mate narrowed the gap and forced me toward her with a laugh of pure joy. The ice inside my collar rubbed my skin raw and was seeping down my neck; the cold air seared my throat.
They easily followed their hunting system and mercilessly passed me between them. For them it was a leisurely pace but I was trembling and close to pissing myself with fear.
The third time around a stack of antlers marking a meat store scraped in the frozen ground I realized that they were deliberately making me run in large circles. I yearned to jump far away from Scree-to leave every one of the Daras and hunters. Blind with tears I swerved abruptly and headed straight for the gorge. They chased me, gri
I spread my wings and glided over the gorge. The ground fell away and I was suddenly one hundred meters in the air above lashing milk-white water.
The Rhyda
Above my world, a steady broad slipstream of wind blew to the southeast. I fought for breath in the thi
“Jant?” Lightning’s voice sounded amused. “Jant, wake up! Are you all right?”
I sighed. “Yes. Don’t worry about me; how are you?”
“Bearing up. Burning, weak. Snatches of music keep going around and around in my head. You look dazed too.”
“I was just thinking,” I said. “Reminiscing about my childhood.”
The dingy cabin creaked and lurched. The Archer nodded approvingly and said, “Please tell me about it. It must have been wonderful, living in the mountains and being free.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The ocean was a choppy swell laced with lines of foam, a breathing shape over the back of which the Petrel rolled. The mastheads were begi
A passing squall blew the surface of the waves opaque and slated rain horizontally onto the gleaming deck. Water dripped off the strips of lead nailed over Mist’s cabin door. White rain screamed down so strongly I couldn’t see through it. It pounded the waves flat.
I slid the forecastle hatchway open on its ru