“My God,” said Geo.
The sharp muzzle blunted now and the claws in the padded paw stretched, opened into human fingers and a thumb. The hairlessness of the underbelly had spread to the entire carcass. Hind legs lengthened, joints reversed themselves, and bare knees bent as human feet dragged themselves through fragments of brown leaves over the ground and a human thigh gave a final contraction, stilled, and then one leg fell out straight again. A shaggy, black-haired man lay still on the ground, his chest caved and bloody. In one last throw, he flung his hands up to grasp the stake and pull it from his chest, but too weak, they slipped down as his lips curled back from his mouth revealing a row of perfectly white, blunt teeth.
Urson stepped back, and then back again. The stave fell, pulled loose with a sucking explosion from the ruined mess of lung. The bear man had raised his hand to his own chest and seized his triple, gold token. “In the name of the Goddess,” he finally said.
Iimmi walked forward now, picked up the carcass of the smaller animal that had been dropped, and turned away. “Well,” he said, “I guess dinner isn’t going to be as big as we thought.”
“I guess not,” Geo said.
They walked back to the ruined building, away from the corpse.
“Hey, Urson,” Geo said at last to the big man who was still holding his coins, “Snap out of it. What’s the matter?”
“The only man I’ve ever seen whose body was that broken in that way,” he said slowly, “was one whose side struck into by a ship’s spar.”
They decided to settle that evening at the corner of one of the building’s ruined walls. They produced fire with a rock against a section of slightly rusted girder. And after much sawing on a jagged metal blade protruding from a pile of rubble, they managed to quarter the animal and rip most of the pelt from its red body. With thin branches to hold the meat, they did a passable job of roasting. Although partially burned, partially raw, and without seasoning, they ate it, and their hunger ceased. As they sat huddled by the wall, ripping red juicy fibers from the last bones with their teeth, night swelled through the jungle, imprisoning them in the shell of orange flicking from their fire.
“Shall we leave it going?” asked Urson.
“Fire keeps animals away,” Iimmi said.
On leaves piled together now they stretched out by the wall of the broken building. There was quiet—an insect hum, no un-namable chitterings, except for the comforting rush of the river’s water.
Geo was first to awake, his eyes filled with silver. The entire clearing had been flooded by white light from the huge disk of the moon that sat on the rim of the trees. Iimmi and Urson beside him looked uncomfortably corpse-like, and he was about to reach over and touch Iimmi’s outstretched arm when there was a noise behind him, like beaten cloth. He jerked his head around, and was staring at the gray wall by which they had camped. He looked up at the spreading plane that tore off raggedly against the night. Fatigue had washed into something unpleasant and hard in his belly that had little to do with tiredness. He stretched his arm in the leaves once more and put his cheek down on the cool flesh of his shoulder.
The beating sound came again and continued for a few seconds. He rolled his face up and stared at the sky. Something crossed on the moon. It seemed to expand a moment, spread its wings, and draw them in again.
He reached out, his arm over the leaves like thunder, and grabbed Iimmi’s black shoulder. Iimmi grunted, started, then rolled over on his back, and opened his eyes. Geo saw the black chest drop with expelled breath, the only recognition given. A few seconds later the chest rose again. Iimmi turned his face to Geo and raised his finger to his lips. Then he turned his face back up to the night. Three more times the flapping sounded behind them, behind the wall, Geo realized. Once he glanced down again and saw that Iimmi had raised his arm and put it over his eyes.
They passed years that way. Then a flock suddenly leapt from the wall. Some of them fell twenty feet before their wings filled with air and they rose again. They circled wider and before they returned, another flock dropped off into the night.
As they fell this time, Geo suddenly grabbed Iimmi’s arm and pulled it down from his eyes. The figures dropped through the dark like kites, sixty feet above them, forty feet, thirty; then there was a thin, piercing shriek. Iimmi was up on his feet in a second, and Geo beside him, their staffs in hand.
“Here it comes,” breathed Iimmi. He kicked at Urson, but the big man was already on his knees, and then feet. The wings beat insistently and darkly before them as they stood against
