Killbird

I said. I took handfuls of sand, and as she stood there, weeping, I scrubbed her, feeling a strangeness in my body as my hands covered the roundness of her body, the hips, the hard back and soft rump, the full legs. To do the job right I washed thoroughly between her legs, and when I was doing that she ceased her sobbing for a moment and, in the moonlight, looked at me with her eyes half closed. I scrubbed her until her skin was red and then washed her long hair repeatedly until, by sniffing her in various places, I detected only the fresh and natural scents of a clean body. I led her from the stream. «Go to the fire,» I said. «Warm yourself. I will wash your skins.» She went. I beat her clothing with stones and rubbed it with stones and rinsed it repeatedly, and finally, after a long time, it was reasonably clean, but with a faint lingering aroma. Then I went to the fire. She was in her own couch, curled into a ball. I put her clothing onto a bush to dry and removed my own wet hides. I rubbed the water from my skin, shivering with the chill. In my couch I pulled leaves to cover me. She had her back turned. If that was the way she wanted it, so be it. I slept. I awoke, feeling only a short passage of time, to feel her soft warmth at my back. It was pleasant, and there was only the fresh scent of cleanliness. I could tell by her breathing that she was not asleep. «Much better,» I said. «Now we can give each other warmth.» «I will die of the chill,» she said. She was shivering. Feeling slightly guilty, I turned and put my arms around her to give her my warmth. Her softness was disturbing. There was no sin in my actions. Nor was there sin when, with a sigh, she lifted her head and placed her lips on mine. All premen and prewomen may play so. And it was pleasant. Her lips full, soft. Her hands clasped my back and gave little spots of warmth. I let my hands know her back and her soft rump and, although she was not protected with a loincloth, carefully avoided the forbidden spot. I had done as much many times with Yuree, and the memory of it was white-hot pain. I ceased my activity. She did not. I lay as if made of stone, and her hands went to my manhood, and it grew, and then she was atop me, her weight sweet, and I was still thinking of Yuree when I felt myself touch the forbidden and her hand guiding me. «It is sin,» I gasped, trying to push her away. She clung and engulfed me, and I was weak, knowing feelings which I had never known. And what was one more sin on the head of a killer of his own people? We slept little as she taught me. «You are not—were not—prewoman,» I said, during a lull. «What?» «Oh, yes,» I said, «you said you had a mate, who died or was killed.» «Yes. But none like you,» she whispered. «Now you will be with child,» I said. «No. I am barren.» «That is sad,» I said. Barrenness was not unknown to my people. «I would have taken the little girl,» she said. «Perhaps you are not barren, after all.» She laughed. «I have tried many times with many mates.» I was shocked. I rolled away and gave her my back. «Did I say something wrong?» she asked. «Many mates?» I asked, feeling jealousy. «Oh, as many as my fingers, no more.» «Shame,» I said. «You speak of shame and you a holy man?» «I am not a holy man.» «Then you are mad.» «Perhaps,» I said. I was silent. At last, I went to sleep. When I awoke she was cooking the fish which I had suspended in a tree out of the reach of small animals. I ate. I resolved not to repeat my sin with her, but my resolution failed after we had eaten and she came to me. We spent half a moon there, near the stream, and in that time I taught her and she taught me. She learned, finally, that fatal chills do not come from wetting the body all over, and, indeed, before we left she had begun to swim in a frantic, flailing, half-sinking sort of way. I had utilized the time to kill climbers, tan their hides, and fashion her a garment, using the few strands of dragon's veins which I had to hold it together. She looked charming in her reddish skirt which rose to cover her breasts and hang by one strap across a tanned shoulder, and I found myself forgetting, for long periods at a time, that I was Eban the Killer of his People and that I had lost happiness when the killbird struck the father of my intended pairmate. I could even forget, for a while, when Mar was in my arms, that she had known other men, as many as her fingers. Mar was, as best she could account, the number of summers counted by the fingers of two hands and the toes of one foot. She had no numbers, as I did. I told her that was fifteen, and she said, «Yes, two hands and one foot.» It was a signal of coming winter which broke into my idleness, my happiness there in that grove of stunted trees beside the stream where big fish swam. «We must go,» I said. «We will go back to my village, there to spend the winter in my house,» she said. «We will not,» I said. «We will go to the south and the east.» «There be dragons,» she said fearfully. «It is you who followed me, knowing my intentions.» «I did not know you were mad and would go to the east forever.» «Perhaps not forever,» I said. Why was I driven? I had Mar. Although game was not as plentiful, and was small and stringy, there was game in those flatlands. I could have built a hut, a cave, something. But there were those moments when I remembered and knew that to the east was my salvation, the deliverance of Eban the Killer of His People. There was death, and an honorable death at God's will and not from my own hand. There was Mar, however. Had I the right to risk her life? «Mar,» I said, «there will be danger. When there is, I will warn you and you will retreat. If I am killed, you will go back to your people.» «It is far,» she said. «I would not be able to find them. I would starve.» «Follow the setting sun,» I said. «And I will prepare food for you, food which will last.» I dried meat in the sun, carrying it as we journeyed uneventfully toward the south and east, staying just ahead of winter. We encountered few of the inbreeders, avoiding them as I avoided the more and more numerous areas of God's chaos. At night the winter stars were the same as those of my mountains. And many times, as I lay awake, I saw God's messengers, stars larger than the rest, high, swiftly moving, traveling from flat horizon to flat horizon. I did not know what I sought. I had nothing for which to live, save Mar. And she would not mourn me, for she had known men, as many as the fingers of two hands. Chapter Four I fully expected to be dead. Now the time of long nights was nearing. From the notches I'd made on the handle of my hardax I knew that the new moon was the first moon of the winter and that in the mountains there would now be snow, the animals entering into the long harshness of shortage, the deer growing poorer as the days passed, the great bear sleeping, but in this strange land the winter's breath was merely a frost, a thin layer of white which melted and faded with the rise of the sun, and although the nights were cold, the days were warm. Once I tried to estimate, at the end of a purposeful but not strenuous day's walk, the distance we had covered in arrow flights. The numbers grew until they were beyond my comprehension, and the total distance between me and my home and my people was of such a vastness! And I was not dead. We heard talk of dragons, and we saw, in the few people we encountered—so far south and east were we now, at the start of winter, that we went a full moon without seeing a trace of man, and then only in the form of a corpse left lying beside a woodland—the signs of death. Few wandered so far. One day we saw a new kind of bird, white, flying low and crying out with a raucous screech. The air smelled different, damp, humid, even on the chill days of early winter. Mar could not understand, nor, in confidence, could I, the urge which kept me going. Past death now, I think, looking back, that it was pride, or perhaps curiosity. Could it all be such a sameness? The flat, slightly rolling ground, the stunted trees, the occasional streams, the vast and sprawling heaps of God's chaos? It was far more dangerous in the mountains, with lions, bears and dragons. Dragons in the east? Ha. We had heard of dragons, for example the dragon of the grassy plain, but we had seen none. I concluded that the only danger in the east was to people like Mar, who, I had concluded, did not have the gift of the warning, could not feel the spirits of the dead, perhaps the dead giants, calling out from the chaos of God to tell of death. Someday, I thought, I would return and tell the people of the mountains, the only true men, that there was no danger in the far hills nor beyond. They would not believe me, of course, for from childhood man was taught that death lay there, and had been taught so for so many generations that it was a part of our legacy. Perhaps I still sinned in my pride, thinking that someday I would return and tell strange tales and, perhaps, enrich the knowledge of my people. At any rate, I continued on more east now than south, and the countryside changed from rolling hills to a flat plain with only mild undulations, scanty vegetation, and even scantier game, consisting mostly of little rodents and hares. The soil was sandy and coarse and poor, and now and then, where there was chaos, the surface could be seen from a distance to have a sheen, as if made of sand-colored ice. But the areas of warning, the heaps of God's chaos, were more scattered. We encountered a large river and followed it. There were trees along the stream, and the water was drinkable, if muddy. I began to wonder if that river would lead to the fabled field of large waters, the unending lake, or if that was merely some myth out of our past. We encountered swamps along the river, sometimes pushing through them, sometimes skirting them. In the swamps were wondrous creatures, snakes which did not flee, as did the harmless snakes of the mountains, but stayed to fight and poison their prey with their fangs, larger reptiles with huge scales, turtles, and a delicious large variety of frog, the legs of which made feasts equaled only by the meat of the fanged serpents. To build up enough frog's legs for a meal, we entered one swamp, waded, found high ground, killed snakes and frogs until, seeing a rise ahead, we carried our booty out through thick woods to step without much forethought into an open field grown with a tall form of grass. I froze instantly and then went into action, thrusting Mar back into the trees. There, within arrow flight, was the old and bloody head of a dragon. Thank God he had been sleeping. We circled and came out of the swamp in another area, carefully this time, and, gods of man, there were dragons everywhere, ancient, their blood coloring their hides, their heads motionless but deadly. All the dragons of the world seemed to be congregated in that field. I could not help but stay to stare and think of all the riches inside those beasts, and for a long time I counted, reaching three hundred before I forgot which dragons I had counted. And all the time none of them moved. I began to notice things. The nearest dragon sagged on his