Wolves of the Gods

Palimak gulped. 'Rea-dy!' he said, voice quavering.

He took his first step. The cable gave slightly under his weight, but remained steady.

'Keep yer toes pointed out,' Kairo reminded him.

'Got it!' Palimak took another step. 'Toes out and eyes aimed at where I'm going.'

He took several more steps, gingerly at first, keeping his outstretched arms steady, resisting the natural but wrong-headed temptation to wave them about and overbalance himself. Arlain and Kairo paced with him, ready in case he should fall.

'Very good, my thweet!' Arlain said.

Taking heart, Palimak picked up the pace and to his immense surprise it suddenly became much easier to keep his balance.

'That's it, me boy,' Kairo said. 'When it comes to wire walkin' the sayin' is-'briskly does it … and slowly goes the fool.''

Palimak had no wish to be a fool-or a 'rube' in his growing vocabulary of circus words. A 'rube,' he gathered was lower than low. An ignorant, 'cud chewing civilian'-another circus disparagement.

He blanked the surroundings from his mind and instead imagined himself strolling along a garden path.

Before he knew it he found himself stepping onto the opposite platform. Palimak spun about, gaping at what he'd done. Then the gape became a bright beam of pride.

'Ta-da!' he shouted, raising his arms high in victory.

Arlain applauded, shooting a sheet of smoky flame into the air, while Kairo lifted his head high above his shoulders and cheered.

'Ithn't that wonderful?' Arlain crowed. 'Lookth like we have a new member of the thircuth!'

Palimak goggled at her. 'Really?'

'Abtholutely,' she said. 'And it couldn't come at a better time, ithn't that tho, Kairo?'

Kairo let his head fall into hands and pumped it up and down in an exaggerated nod. 'That's the truth, me boy,' he said.

Palimak giggled at the strange sight-the face grinning at him from its nest between Kairo's palms-long tubular neck snaking up to his shoulders. His body jerked and the head snapped back into its proper place.

'We've been short an act for months, now,' he said, looking quite normal again.

Palimak clapped his hands in glee. 'Wait'll my father hears the news,' he said. 'I'll be a circus man, just like him.'

Then he looked at them, suddenly shy. 'But maybe I'd better practice some more,' he said. 'If it's all right.'

'Sure, yer can, me boy,' Kairo said.

'Great,' Palimak said. 'But let me announce it first.'

'Announthe away,' Arlain said.

Palimak threw his hands wide, in imitation of Biner's ringmaster pose. 'Ladies and gentleman!' he shouted. 'Lads and lasses! Beings of all ages! Methydia's Flying Circus now proudly presents…

'Half boy, half demon, half fly and that's three half's rolled into one. Brought to you at … Enormous Expense!

'Palimak The Magnificent! Ta-Da!'

Then without warning he bolted out on the wire.

'Wait!' Arlain shouted, but it was too late.

In a blink of the eye Palimak was already at the midpoint of the wire while she and Kairo raced on either side of the cable trying to keep up. The boy nearly overbalanced in the center, swaying for a moment, almost looking down and losing it, but then he remembered to fix his eyes and mind on his distant goal and he kept moving, pushing through the momentary clumsiness, until he regained his balance, practically sprinting along the wire until he reached the other side.

Once again he shouted, 'Ta-Da!' and made a flourishing bow to even greater cheers from his new friends.

'What'd I say?' Kairo cried. 'The boy's a natural!'

'Let's go higher!' Palimak crowed, jabbing a finger at the dim heights of the circus tents. 'All the way the way to the very, tip, tip top!'

'Thlow down, thweetneth,' Arlain laughed. 'You're going too fatht for uth.'

'She's right, me boy,' Kairo chuckled. 'Besides, before we go any higher yer gots to learn the next most important thing about wire walkin'.'

'What's that?' the boy asked.

'Yer gotta knows how to fall,' Kairo said. 'Because if there's one thing that's certain in this life, me boy, it's that someday, somehow, a body's gotta fall.'

'The trick,' Arlain added, 'ith to not get killed when you do.'

Gundaree bounced up and down on his chest, chanting, 'Palimak's in luu-uve. Palimak's in luu-uve!'

'Shut up!' the boy snarled, pulling the pillow around his ears.

'Don't say shut up, Little Master,' Gundara admonished. Then, to his twin, 'Stop teasing him! It isn't nice!'

Gundaree giggled. 'But it's the truth!' He wrapped his arms about himself. 'Ooh! Arlain,' he mocked. 'I luu-uve you so much!'

At that, Palimak lost his temper. His eyes suddenly glowed demon yellow. He pointing a finger at the Favorite, who gleeped as a sharp claw emerged.

'I don't like that!' he said.

Gundaree's little demon face drooped into infinite sorrow. Even his horn seemed to sag. Big tears welled into his eyes. 'I'm sorry, Little Master,' he sobbed.

For a change Gundara didn't gloat over his brother's misery. From the look in the boy's eyes he thought it best not to draw attention to himself.

Gundaree sniffed, wiping his nose, and Palimak's anger dissolved. He felt ashamed of himself for frightening the Favorite.

'I'm sorry first,' he said. 'You were just playing. You didn't mean it and I shouldn't have gotten so mad.'

The small crisis past, both Favorites brightened considerably. 'Who cares?' Gundaree said. 'We're back in the circus again, that's the point.'

'The point indeed, lesser brother,' Gundara sneered as only he could sneer-little human features elevating into high snobbery. 'Instead of teasing our poor master, we should be instructing him.' He turned to Palimak, face rearranging itself into something more respectful. 'We learned some excellent circus tricks when we toured with your father. If I do say so myself.'

'You always say so yourself, Gundara,' his sibling mocked, hands on narrow hips. 'And that's because you're only talking to yourself because you're so stupid no one is listening.'

Gundara sighed. 'I'm only glad our poor mother isn't alive to see what her son has come to.'

'Don't talk about our mother!' Gundaree shouted. 'You know I hatefttuh…' The rest was lost as Palimak clamped his pillow over both Favorites, shutting off the quarrel.

Palimak laughed at the muffled sounds of protest. 'I should have thought of this before,' he said. Then,

'You have to promise to quit arguing, or I won't let you out.'

He bent an ear close and heard mumbles of what sounded like surrender. 'Good,' he said, lifting the pillow away to reveal two very rumpled Favorites. 'Now it's my turn to talk.'

Gundaree, a stickler for tidiness, brushed himself off. 'That wasn't nice,' he said. 'Pillows have feathers.

And I hate feathers. They give me a rash.'

Gundara plucked here and there, restoring a semblance of dignity. 'If you wanted to speak, Little Master,' he complained, 'all you had to do is ask!'

'Then I'm asking,' Palimak said. 'You were talking about teaching me some circus tricks. And I wanted to ask, were they magical circus tricks? But you kept arguing and arguing until I thought I was going to go crazy because you wouldn't let me talk.'

Gundaree shrugged. 'Of course, they're magic. That's what we do, right? Magic. We're not sweaty acrobats,