It looked as though I had found part of Star’s body, and the sorcerer who had stolen it.
I stood, paralysed with terror, as the jerking feet brought the dancer now forward, now back, but always a little closer. I could hear breathing now, but no words. The stranger seemed oblivious to my presence, absorbed in the ritual.
I might have stood like that until he was close enough to plunge a knife into me – not asleep, but as helpless as if I had been – if Spotted Eagle’s cry had not jerked me back to life.
‘Yaotl! Over here!’
I started and whirled around, forgetting the person in front of me for an instant. A grunt, like the noise of someone disturbed in mid-snore, told me the dancer was surprised as well.
Spotted Eagle was invisible in the shadows, but what I could see was enough to freeze the blood in my veins.
It stood on the roof of a house, a shadow cast against the pale sky. It was impossibly tall for a man. Its shape was conical, slightly curved, like some great twisted root, but it had limbs like a man’s that were bent as if in a crouch. It was preparing to leap onto the path below.
I dashed towards it, screaming: ‘Spotted Eagle! Look out!’ The thing vanished from my sight as it fell, landing with a loud, ungraceful clatter and a bellowing cry that may have been part pain and part rage. Distracted by my voice, it had mistimed its jump.
Feet thumped the path behind me. I heard rapid, shallow breathing. A hand seized the material of my cloak.
I remembered the dancer then. It was too late and my assailant was too close for thought. Still running, I turned, almost losing my footing, and struck instinctively with my fist. The blow connected with something soft, halting the shadowy figure in mid stride. With a snarl, it staggered back and thrust the pale shape towards me. It was only a finger’s breadth in front of my face. I could smell it: raw meat and a hint of rot.
Furious now, I lashed out again, but my target was too far away. I heard a giggle, a peculiar, high-pitched noise. I wondered whether the sorcerer had taken sacred mushrooms as part of the magic that was supposed to lull a household to sleep.
Unable to hit the dancer again, I screamed instead.
It may have been my shout or it may simply have been bafflement and fear at the failure of the charm to render me unconscious; but for whatever reason, the giggling stopped. In its place came a shocked silence, and then a strange, babbling, gibbering sound as the stranger backed away, then turned and bounded off into the night.
I took two steps in pursuit. Then I remembered the creature I had seen leaping off the roof, which was now presumably somewhere on the path behind me. I spun around again.
‘Spotted Eagle?’ I called nervously.
After a long, dreadful interval the youth’s voice, shaky but clear, answered: ‘Here. I’m all right. It ran off.’
I hesitated, fearing a trap, before walking cautiously towards him. ‘What happened?’
‘I think it hurt itself when it fell. It landed with a bit of a crash, anyway. It took a swipe at me with a sword, but I think one of its legs must have given way. Then all that screaming broke out over there and it staggered off.’ He added in a shamefaced tone: ‘I was too slow getting after it. I wasn’t expecting anything like that!’
Judging by the catch in his voice, the shock had just begun to affect him. ‘Yaotl,’ he gasped, as I got close enough to see him and notice how pale and drawn his face looked in the poor light, ‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Some kind of demon? My friend back there must have brought it with him.’ I told him what had happened to me.
‘You saw my mother’s arm?’ he cried in a strangled voice.
‘I think so. I was like you, though – too shocked to do anything about it.’ There was a pause. I tensed, waiting for an explosion of wrath from the youth, a tirade about my failure to recover the arm, more bitter reproaches for drawing this horror down upon his family.
Instead he said: ‘That thing would have got me if you hadn’t yelled.’ After a further hesitation he added gruffly: ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I replied, embarrassed. Looking for a change of topic I went on: ‘You saw something first, though, didn’t you? What was it?’
His answer should not have surprised me. I should have anticipated it, considering why we had come out here, but it still came as a shock.
‘A body.’
THREE FLOWER
1
Spotted Eagle said that one of us ought to go at once to the parish hall, to alert Kite and his men. He changed his mind when I asked him where he thought our assailants had got to.
‘They may have run off,’ I said. ‘Then again, they may be lurking around the next corner. Do you want to risk running into them again?’
‘Not particularly,’ he admitted.
‘Wait until daylight. We’ll be able to get a good look at this body then, as well.’
‘Who do you think this is?’
There would be no answer to that question until the morning. If the body had been left in the same condition as the one Kite had shown me earlier, there was every chance we would not know even then. ‘I couldn’t begin to guess,’ I said unhappily.
‘Flower Gatherer and Red Macaw are still missing,’ the youth mused.
‘True. If it was either of them then we may know later on. Or not. For all we know this was just some poor sod who got in the way. Maybe we can find out when there’s light enough to see. Kite won’t like this, will he? Another unidentified body on his patch!’
I
