Killbird

immediately wet thoroughly by a rain of water which came from above, and before I could leap out there was a rain of some sweet-smelling slick stuff which I could not get off my face, clothing, hands. Since I was wet and since the water still rained in the small cave, I stepped back inside. The water was warm as summer, and after another spraying of the slick, sweet-smelling stuff the water cleansed me and my clothing. The warm air which blew from all around after the water stopped dried me, but not my clothing, so I left off my exploration to put on another skin and then went on to the next protrusion. This was the most wonderful of all. As I pushed the pimple I heard a hum and a section of the wall slid away to reveal a small and lighted cave. Chair things were placed around a flat surface which stood on legs, and when I climbed onto one of the chair things to better see the surface of the flat thing, which was shiny and rather pretty, a delightful aroma filled the cave, a plate opened and out came a thing with steaming bowls atop. The aroma was both meaty and something else. I put my finger into one bowl and licked it. The taste was strange, but when I used one of the eating things, made of dragonskin and shaped much like the spoons which the old men carve for family use out of wood, it was edible and interesting. We went no further that day. After the bowl with the hot and delicious liquid there came from the plate a dish of meat which was so well cooked, so delicious, that I ate much, and Mar overcame her nervousness to join me. The good things which issued from that plate kept us there until my belly protruded almost as much as Mar's and she could eat not another bite, not even the delicious things which were white and light and tasted as sweet as the stickiness of the stinging bees. As long as we sat and waited the magic continued, and when I could eat no more I went outside into the snow, put my finger down my throat, voided my stomach, and went back to begin again. Not since I was a child and ate myself to sickness on finding a bee tree did I do such sinful gluttony, but the supply seemed to be never-ending and the variety was amazing, although some things I could not stomach, mainly the soft and strange-tasting things which I suspected—and checked carefully for the warning tingles—were products of vegetation. Glutted, sated, we slept. We ate the next morning and all that day, and only then did I move to the next and, I found, the last visible protrusion on the wall of our house. I pushed it, not knowing what wonders to expect, and the plate opened, as had all the others, to reveal only a white eye on the wall of the small cave, a hard chair thing, and in front of the chair thing and below the eye, a flat but solid thing which was rooted on the floor. I was disappointed. I explored the remainder of the walls and found nothing of interest. Only then did I come back to the last little cave and push and probe. I could, I thought, break the eye. I tapped it with my hardax, and it was strong. There seemed to be something over the eye, unlike the eyes of, for example, dragons or the cave of the giants to the east. I tried harder, and no matter how hard I hit the eye I could not dent or break the strong, clear material which protected it. To think about it, I climbed up into the chair thing, and immediately there was a hum and the eye came to life and I scrambled for my own life. The eye glowed and there appeared in it a series of little lines, running from one side to the other. When I determined that there was no danger, I went back and sat in the chair, and the lines appeared and faded. On close examination the lines were made up of individual little things, looking somewhat like strange bugs. But they did not move. Only the lines changed from time to time. Then, after a while, the lines went away and a star appeared. The star was in the middle of the eye, and then the flat thing in front of the chair came to life, showing in a glow of color a bunch of things, stars, dots, circles, squares. The star on the eye glowed and faded, as did the star which was one of the things on the flat surface. I reached out and touched the glowing star on the flat surface, and the star on the eye faded to be replaced by a circle, and a circle glowed on the flat surface. I touched the circle there, and the circle went away to be replaced. Mar wanted to try. It was a fun game. A thing would appear in the eye and on the flat surface, and when you touched the thing on the flat surface the thing in the eye would go away and be replaced with another image. We played for a long time, and then the pictures went away. A single line appeared on the eye. I pushed my finger at the single line which matched it on the flat surface, and two lines appeared. I pushed my finger at the two lines, and three, and so on until we'd counted to twenty in this manner. Now one line appeared on the eye again. I pushed one line. But the next thing was not two lines but a thing with curve at the top and a flat line at the bottom. There was nothing like it on the flat surface. However, the two-line picture was glowing, and I pushed it and the curved thing went away to be replaced with a thing with two curves and the three lines glowed on the flat surface. I didn't like that game as well, but played it, finding that it passed the cold winter day, but when the pictures on the eye started switching into random appearances of the things with curves and different shapes I found that I could not remember how many lines to push to cause them to go away until, after a while, the flat surface would glow. Mar, who counted only on her fingers and toes, found the game boring, but as the days passed I found myself returning to it. I came to the realization, at last, that the eye was trying to tell me something. For example, the thing with double curves was a sign for three, only instead of having to make three slash marks you only had to make the one double-curved mark. It was interesting and opened up an entirely new line of thinking to me. As the winter deepened around us and game became scarce and the creek was frozen down to within a couple of hands of the bottom, we played our games with the eye and ate at the magic cave and drank our cool water from the magic fountain and Mar's belly told her it was time. She instructed me and prepared herself, and all through one long night she groaned with the pains, and then it was indeed time, for she was heaving and moaning and telling me how to help, and I saw the bulge of something between her legs, and she cried out, strained. I held the outcoming thing, wet and sticky, gingerly, and then with one great heave it was over and I held a squirming bundle of muck and wetness in my hands, frightened, not knowing what to do in spite of all Mar's careful teachings. She took it from me, cleaned away the muck, hung the little thing by its heels and patted it, and there was a sound which caused me to laugh for joy, the protesting, feeble cry of the newborn. Then I was examining it with a beating heart, looking for the terror, finding only perfect little tiny feet and hands and the shriveled little sign that it was, indeed, a son. Then, suddenly, Mar tensed and moaned and I knew more fear, for I remembered the time she'd helped a woman deliver and one of the babies had been a monster. But the second came quickly, and I cleaned it myself, Mar resting from her labors. I bit the cord which held it to its mother and spanked the little rump, and the little girl baby bawled louder than her brother had. Two perfect and lovely little babies with skulls of a thickness which pleased me and perfectly shaped heads. Gods of man, the joy of it. Chapter Six There was no joy in me, however, when I aborted my flight of praise to God. I had carried my wings to the top of a hill behind the guarding line of dragons. I positioned Mar and the babies near the swimmers lake, where I would conclude my brief flight, having been in air only a short time, not nearly so long as even a ceremonial flight back in my own country with my own people and nothing like as long as Logan and I soared before the killbird came to kill my family. I had too much to live for, you see. I wanted no risk. I had cleared a runway. All was in readiness. Snow lay soft and deep in my valley, but the sun was warm and the day splendid. I waved to Mar, off in the distance, made my run, leaped, my heart soaring as I felt the wings bite air and lift. And I had not been in the air for nine wing lengths—I could see the symbol for nine, a round head on a little curve—before I looked up and saw, coming out of the sky directly above me, the white streak. Never had a killbird been so vigilant. «Oh, God,» I cried, and looked down for a landing spot. I was over the steep side of the hill with nothing below me but trees, and the killbird was streaking, and already, as I dipped my wings and started to circle, I could hear his bellowing roar, and I knew that I was a dead man unless I reached ground quickly. Better to risk a broken head or a twisted limb, which could be healed, than to vanish forever in a roar as had Strabo and my family. I could see the gleam of the killbird's hide as I lowered a wing further and slipped down faster and faster, looking for a minute hole in the solid greenery of the treetops, praying, thinking of Mar alone and my two children, boy and girl. Roar and flash as I glanced up, the nose of the killbird pointed at me and the trees coming up, and then I went down between two tops, the wings caught and ripped, the braces breaking with little snaps and the whole world a roar as the killbird flashed by overhead, arcing, making me think for one horrible moment that he was following me into the trees. Then I had time to think only of myself as I fell away from the broken and crumpled wings. I went down, down, rolled into a knot. I hoped the snow was deep and there were no rocks and then I hit and was still conscious, but rolling down the steep slope with the harness tangled around me until I fetched up against a tree with a bang which made me see white spots in front of my eyes, and I could hear the roar of the killbird diminishing as he climbed, and then I saw his streak, climbing high, back into the sun from where he had come. I was alive. I was bruised and my right leg was sore, but I was alive. I walked through the snow to find Mar coming, carrying little Egan and Margan on her back in their carry pouches. She threw herself on me and we fell into the snow, and Egan started crying. «You must never fly again,» she wailed. «I think not,» I said. «Not with alert killbirds like that one.» I grew lazy. With food there for the asking, all we had to do was sit at the flat surface in the eating cave. What need to hunt? We had food for dozens. We could have fed an entire family, and I found myself thinking wistfully of my old family, wondering about Yuree and Yorerie the Butcher and all the rest. It is funny how, when you've been away for a long time, you find yourself wondering about people whom you didn't even particularly like. Logan, for example. Was he a good hunter? Had he become pairmate to Yuree? One day I used one of the dragonskin knives, honed to sharpness, to