“He doesn’t seem to be hurt,” said Leelson in an expressionless voice. “Look at him, Lutha!”
Her eyes were still full of righteous fury, but she did look at the boy, her chin quivering as she kissed and hugged him and looked beneath his shirt to see if he was hurt, murmuring small endearments the while, all of which Leely ignored in favor of churning his arms and legs and caroling “Dananana.”
“He’s not hurt,” said Leelson again. “He woke early, let himself out, and got bitten by … what, Saluez? You know your native vermin better than we.”
“Jiggerbugs,” I said, giving the creature an equivalent aglais name. “Maybe. Or there’s a kind of spidery thing we call D’lussm. Both of them bite.”
Which they did. A bite from either would leave spots similar to those on the boy, though usually it took a day or two of frantic itching and even localized pain before the swelling disappeared.
“Or it could be something local,” I offered apologetically. “Something we don’t have around Cochim-Mahn.”
“Whatever it is didn’t hurt him,” Leelson repeated for the third time, reaching out a hand to shake Lutha by the shoulder. “Get him dressed, Lutha. Feed him. Feed yourself, you’ll feel better.”
She reddened at his tone, which was impersonal and disinterested. It would have angered me had I been she, but then, she couldn’t see the look in his eyes. His disinterest was as false as her fury. Both of them were playing at it. Still, Leelson wasn’t lying to her. The boy wasn’t hurt; the boy was strong; the boy had opened the panels to let himself out. And Leelson was considering all these facts with an appearance of calm while Lutha was wildly splashing about in her own terror and guilt at having let Leely escape. Or, perhaps, wondering if Leelson had not purposely let him out. I saw something like that in her eyes. She wanted someone to blame besides the boy himself; she knew this was silly; so she added guilt to all the other things she was feeling.
After a time she settled down, but the look was still there, in the way she watched Leelson when he wasn’t looking, in the hard set of her lips and the wrinkles between her eyes, in the shamefaced flush when she caught me watching her. The travel was hard enough without this simmering away. I went to her, putting my hand onto her arm.
“I heard the boy moving around in the night. No one else, only he. He let himself out, Lutha.”
She shook off my hand angrily. “Perhaps,” she said, with a grimace. “Perhaps he did.”
She didn’t want to believe me. Any more than she wanted to believe all those people who had told her about the boy, over and over, for years. She rode her own belief. Sometimes she slipped off its back, for it was a slippery beast, but most times she straddled it steadily, whipping it onward: Leely was human; soon he would talk, he would amaze people, he would be supernormal.
I sighed and set about fixing us a quick meal so we could get on our way. Leelson stood by the lead gaufers, tightening harness straps. His back was rigid. When I moved to get the food bowls, I saw that his eyes were closed. He was reaching at Lutha, feeling her out, deciding how to behave toward her.
When I handed him a morning bowl, his eyes opened and he smiled at me, a courteous curving of the lips with no real camaraderie behind it.
“Give her time,” I whispered.
“She’s had years,” he murmured, this time really smiling, though ruefully. “She’s had … enough time, Saluez. She simply will not see!”
I knew the saying in aglais. The blindest are those who won’t see. We have similar sayings in our own tongue. None so lost as those who will not believe. Leelson could quote the blindness one to Lutha, she could counter with the belief one. And neither would change their opinion one whit!
We ate in strained silence. I washed the bowls in the trickle of water provided by the spring. We drove on to the end of the elbow and turned south once more, hoping we would come to the end of the canyon before midafternoon, for though it was midmorning, the shadow had only just moved away from the bottom of the western wall.
We had not gone far when Leelson pulled up the gaufers and sat staring ahead. On a huge flat stone, one that the trail veered around to the right, something pallid heaved and struggled. To me it looked like a pile of our cotton underrobes, almost white and softly shapeless. But it moved.
Leelson clucked to the gaufers and we moved forward a little, then a little more.
“It’s one of them,” breathed Lutha in my ear. “One of the Kachis, Saluez.”
In fact it was two of them, tumbled side by side on the flat stone, where they writhed, lips drawn back from their sharp teeth, eyes blind and unseeing. Even as we watched, one of them collapsed, motionless. The other cried out, a long, ululating cry that made the canyon ring, then it, too, fell into motionless silence.
From somewhere came a distant echo, or an answering call. We waited to see if it came nearer, but there was no more sound.
Leelson got down from the wagon seat. Trompe went with him. I stayed where I was, unable to take my eyes from the place where they were, from Leelson’s and Trompe’s hands as they moved the wings, the arms, from their faces as they looked curiously at the slender bodies.
“They’re dead,” cried Leelson. “Do they normally die like this, Saluez.”
I could not move. I could not speak. Lutha looked at me curiously, then put her arms around me and held me closely, whispering, “They don’t die at all, do they, Saluez?”
I shook my head frantically. Of course not. Of course they didn’t die. They couldn’t die. They stayed with us,
