Silent Dances (44 page)

Any thought of her brought that moment back so clearly, that instan
t when

he
'
d realized what that fragment of quilt signified
.
He could still feel
the rough bark of the killer limb

215

...
and the sc
re
am of rage and sorrow ripping out of his throat. He

swallowed
.
And whenever he thought of her
,
he sensed a thought
--
or
was it a feeling
?--
She
can't die, Thorn. Not on Trini
ty
.
He knew that was just because he hadn'
t seen her, the way he
'
d seen Peter.

Bruce or no,
he'd have to go out and take his ch
an
ces, just as Peter

had
.
He
had
to find them.
Part of him said, find them and kill them
,
and
lately he hadn
'
t argued with that side
.
Now, with Bruce
'
s restrictions
,
it would be harder to get away from the shelter
. Thorn
was confident he

could slip out without being caught, but he
'
d only be able to do it

once
,
so it would have to be the
ri
ght time
.
If he t
ri
ed to
re
tu
rn,
Bruce
would make sure Thorn would never get to tell
an
yone what he'd lea
rn

ed.

It had been a long time since Sailor had watched Good Eyes t
ry
to

compare what they were going through to some exercise taught in the

place called
"
StarB
ri
dge
."
As the human stood beside him in the f
ri
gid water of the caldera
'
s blue lake, he wonde
re
d whatever had made
him agree
,
even for a moment, that teaching Death
'
s child to sign

might be a good thing to do.

An entire
moon phase had passed while they had worked like hive

insects to keep her fed, to keep her well
,
and for what?

Only seven days ago, she had caught some food herself, some venomous,

slow-moving
re
ptile
,
but eating it had made her ill
.
Good Eyes had
tested plants
an
d molds from the meadows with a device--a cell
an

alyzer
--
on her
re
d knife, then steeped a collection of them in hot water.

She'd forced massive amounts of this water into the weakening chick
.

Later
,
she had pounded the organs of fish with c
ry
stallized nectar

she'd dug up
out
of a ground hive
an
d forced that into the beast
.
Sailor
still wondered how she
'
d managed to extract the nectar without ge
tt

ing stung
.
Even more amazing, Good Eyes then built a fire--what

creature on the World would
want a
fire?--and heated rocks in it, then

brought them into the cave to warm the air.

Poor Good Eyes had worked so hard that when she'd collapsed that night,

dozing fitfully
,
Sailor had had to come in
an
d cover her with a cloak.

He'd taken a long look at Death'
s child, then
.
At that

216

moment,
while the raggedy chick slept beneath his mother
'
s cloak,

Sailor had felt a touch of conce
rn
for the c
re
ature he
'
d resented so
much these last weeks.

Suppose she dies tonight?
Sailor had thought, watching her b
re
ath
.

The place on his head where his crown would one day be shrank with

alarm
.
It'll break Good
Eyes'
heart,
he'd thought. He had felt something then for the life he was nurt
u
ri
ng that he did not w
an
t to examine too
closely
.
He was too young to be a parent
.
It was
ri
diculous to think he
could develop a parent
'
s hea
rt,
a parent
'
s jealous love of a child.

Good Eyes had cared for the chick for three days and nights, and when the

creature recovere
d
,
was she grateful?

Not likely.
She'd just sat the
re,
sullen and reproachful, befouling the

walls of the cave, now plastered white with her disgusting body wastes

that she ejected like venom in a stream
.
It was mo
re
than any decent
person should have to tolerate.

And her "
l
an
guage
"?
It was such simple gibbe
ri
sh he'd come to
understand mo
re
of it than he wanted to admit. Unlike his own

language
,
with its graceful compound phrases and elegant poet
ry
of h
an
dshapes and motion
,
the raucous sounds that erupted from Death
'

s throat did little but threaten
an
d dem
an
d
.
And Sailor was ve
ry
tired
of being referred to as a walking meal.

Now, the evil fledgling stood at the shoreline,
her fully feathered wings

stretched out, her legs strong enough to bear her weight. She marched

up and down
,
demanding food.

It was said that as the child of Death att
ained its full size, its parents grew

to fear it, dropping food into the nest from great heights
.
The appetite

of the child
,
as it tu
rn
ed food into feathers
,
was so voracious that it
would devour its own parents if they we
re
foolish enough to come too

close.

Even Good Eyes believed that now, and spent most of her time in the water

with him, where Death's child would not fol ow.
He noticed Good Eyes

suddenly shifting her weight in the water.

"What is it?" Sailor asked, as she moved her fish-
catcher from one hand

to the other.

"The warmers in my pants," s
he signed one-h
an
ded. "I think the left
side
'
s failing
.
That leg
'
s getting pretty cold."

"Can't you stop the blood in that leg?"

"What?"
She looked confused
.
That was the first thing that

217

happened to people when they became too cold--they would act disoriented.

"When we're in the water," he explained, "we stop the blood from flowing into our legs, so we don't get cold."

She smiled feebly. "Pretty efficient. I can't do that." She spied something in the water and drove the fish-catcher down, once, twice, but the big swimmer

got away. Sailor impaled it, hauling it up into the air where it couldn't

breathe. Good Eyes should've caught this one, it was big and slow.

The human took the crimson swimmer from him and started wading toward

the demanding chick.

"Be cautious, Good Eyes," Sailor warned.

The chick was ravenous, but Good Eyes seemed unconcerned. The human

stood knee deep in the lake and held the fish up by its gills, tantalizing the

maniacal chick. Sailor wondered about her judgment sometimes.

Death's child flared her wings, thrust her head forward, and waded into the

cold water. The human waited just out of reach. The beast rushed Good

Eyes, but the human easily held her off with the blunt end of her fish-catcher.

Death's child grabbed the shaft in her powerful bill and snapped the end off,

then rushed the human again. Good Eyes spun the fish-catcher and

threatened the fledgling with the business end. Faced with its three sharp

points, Death's child hunkered dismally on the shore.

After an interminable moment, the fledgling signed, "That is fish. It's good to

eat and I'm hungry. Please, feed me the fish..." The fledgling hesitated, then

finished with "my parent."

Sailor could see the disappointment plainly on Good Eyes' face as she

tossed the fish to the chick. She still could not get Death's child to use her

name-sign. Gingerly the chick took the food, walked up on the shore, and,

without so much as a backward glance, began ripping it to pieces. Sailor

hated watching that and started to move back into deep water, but Good

Eyes didn't join him. Instead, the tired human waded out of the lake and sat

heavily some distance from the feeding chick.

Only Father Sun colored the day sky now, but He was the warmest, and

Good Eyes sat basking in His glow, rubbing her legs. Putting the fish-catcher

on her lap, the human started to sign to the chick. Suddenly Death's child

knocked her to

218

the ground,
straddling the human's body, grabbing an arm in her deadly

talons until blood poured from the flesh
.
Sailor flew toward them
,

landing roughly on the heavy chick
,
kicking her, beating her with his

wings. Finally
,
the fledgling
re
leased the human as Sailor struck her
with his w
ri
sts and elbows.

Sailor drove the chick back to her fish. Then he saw the gouge near Good

Eyes'
throat and his anger overwhelmed him. He went after Thunder,

intending to fight her to the death.

Suddenly Good Eyes was between them,
brandishing her fish-catcher at

the Aquila, keeping Sailor away with her body. "Stop!
"
Good Eyes

demanded
. "
Both of you
,
stop it this minute!"

Sailor blinked at her,
startled
.
Was she ang
ry
at him? "I'm sick of all this
fighting
!"
Good Eyes
'
signs were sharp, hard
.
She addressed Sailor
. "

Were you t
ry
ing to save me, or just looking for an excuse to kill

Thunder
?"
She didn't give him a chance to answer
,
but spun around
to Death
'
s child. "Don't you understand
,
if you kill or injure us you'll
never leave here
?
You'll sta
rv
e to death?"

The chick hunched her shoulders and looked sullen.

"And you can just stop hurt
ing me!" Good Eyes
re
p
ri
manded the chick
.

"
All I've ever done is feed you, nurse you, save your life, and all you

ever do is bite me! What's wrong with you?"

"Liar!"
hissed the chick, and surp
ri
sed them both by signing it as well
.

"
Liar
.
You stole me from my nest to hide me in the ground
.
You'll eat
me as soon as I'm big enough to feed you. What's wrong with
you,
who

would steal a child and tort
ure her, instead of killing her quickly without

shaming her memo
ry
?"

Good Eyes looked strangely at the chick. "
We're not going to eat you
,

Thunder
.
We saved you from sta
rv
ation
,
or from being killed
.
Your
father had been killed. Your mother fled for her life
.
You would
'
ve died
if we hadn
'
t saved you."

Thunder turn
ed a baleful near
-
red eye on the human.
"You
killed my father," she signed. "
You destroy the trees and b
ri
ng fire to the nests to
burn the children so you can eat us. My mother told me. She wouldn
'
t

do as you ordered, so you came in that giant flyer and destroyed our

trees."

"That was not me,
or my people who did that," Good Eyes explained
. "
I
mean
...
it was my people, that is ... they were

219

humans, but..." Good Eyes ran a hand through her tangled hair
. "

Thunder
,
those humans shouldn
'
t be here
,
on the World. They
'
re my
enemy
,
because
they'
re your enemy
.
They
'
re Sail or's enemy
,
too.

And we
'
ll
ri
d the World of them
...
I don't know how
,
but ... we will
.
I'm
so sor
ry
about what they've done
, so terribly sorry.
If I could speak to
your mother, I'd tell her
,
too ..."

The chick seemed to shri
nk
. "
My mother
...
never to see her ... How will I
lea
rn
to hunt
?
How will I know the thermals, or follow the suns? How
will I know what
'
s the hunted, and what
'
s not
?
How will I live without
my mother
'
s knowledge?"

Those simple signs struck Sailor hard,
for they were questions he might

have had to ask
,
if Taller and Weaver had been killed
,
and Good Eyes
had had to raise him alone
.
Sailor
felt sorry for
Death
'
s child
,
who
might never see her parents again.