The Feverbird's Claw Read online

  Unbelievable. The smooth and lovely water-rippling cloth started with these crawling things?

  She hurried on. Here fluffy white cocoons hung from twigs. Cautiously, she reached out to touch one, brushing the soft surface lightly with her fingers. According to Nazet, the girls put most of these into the ovens to kill the moths before they could crawl out and spoil the thread. Others soaked the cocoons to loosen the filaments that were then wound onto a spool.

  She breathed deeply, considering the scent of the branches that stood in huge tubs of water. A sudden sound made her stiffen and stare. Two of the white-robed figures had come into the main room. They moved toward a cot and bent over the body lying there. The girl’s arms flopped as they lifted her, and even from here, Moralin saw the burns. Her skin crawled with pity for this girl who would never go home. Gently she closed her fingers around the cocoon.

  When she returned, Figt was jagged with worry. “Be calm,” Moralin told her. “You must not think of leaving until daybreak when I can get supplies.”

  Though it had taken them only two days to travel from the caves to the city, Figt and Nazet would not be able to go back the same way, of course. Song-maker had said four days. The cave people must use a path somewhere to the north of the city on the edge of the Great Mountains. Figt would have to find it. Impossible without food and water.

  They could shelter with the cave people until the Arkera returned to camps in the red forest—and maybe longer. They would need help to remove Nazet’s mask. He would need time to heal. As for Figt, was it really possible for a solitary to rejoin the village? She thought of Ooden’s many comments about the ancestors and thought it unlikely.

  The caves then. Later she would allow herself to feel this sadness that was tugging at her, sadness for all they would see that she never would. For now she smiled to remember the garden. The smell of the trees. The gift she would give Figt to carry would make them welcome.

  She dozed and dreamed again she was running to her mother. Mother was not smiling and not frowning—just beyond Moralin’s outstretched fingers. “Mamita,” Moralin called out. “Mamita, wait.” She jolted awake, put on a velee, and went outside.

  Night was already shot through with silver. She gasped as if seeing the beautiful city for the first time. Over there was a stable where, on mornings of velvet fog, servants stood in pools of light, holding their lamps high, lingering over the gleaming sides of the animals they brushed. How many times had she gone this way, clinging to Old Tamlin’s hand or sneaking back home from the fighting yard?

  Ah. There was the house. She lifted her arms as if she could somehow embrace it.

  Slowly the sun’s eye peered over the horizon. A faint sound of chanting floated from the temple. A woman emerged from a nearby house, sobbing. A cry of mourning rippled.

  Grandmother came out the door first. Then Mother. Moralin’s breath stuck in her throat. By the flower bush they leaned on each other. Though their faces were hidden and they made no noise, she could see their grief in the way they stood. Lan joined them.

  Moralin took a step—and then stopped. Lan had changed. Not any longer a laughing child, she carried herself stiffly and stared ahead with dark, serious eyes.

  Followed by the household servants and shadows, the three of them walked out into the street. Moralin willed them to look at her. No one did. She gazed after them, pressing her fingers against the corners of her eyes to hold back the tears.

  After the street was empty again, she forced herself to move. She bent to pick a yellow moralin, breathing in the smell. She could almost taste its sweet scent.

  Inside the house she allowed herself one quick glance around. Scarlet and purple hangings on the walls, glittering dishes, a tray of pretty cakes. If only Figt were here. “See how different my world is from yours,” she would say.

  She found the bedroom that had been hers. What would her family do when she began to tell of her adventures? Mother would raise one eyebrow in horror and dismay. “Here is my story,” Moralin would say. Would anyone listen?

  Maybe Lan? She thought about her sister’s face. In just a few years Lan would be one of the girls standing for hours, scorched and wilted, burning the wood the shadows left by the door, tending the secrets of the beautiful cloth.

  She swayed for a moment, full of sorrow, unable to move, at the same time, knowing if she didn’t, she would be trapped here forever. Eventually her feet found the room with the walls that were draped with starbright weavings. “Mother,” she imagined saying, “I have seen the skeletons of human beings hanging in trees. I have seen the giant wings of a skulkuk.” Would she dare say this: “I know what happens in the secret temple chambers”? And what about this? “The Great Ones do not favor the Delagua and care for us above other people of the earth.” She laid the yellow flower gently on the woven cover of the bed.

  Quickly now. She ran to the kitchen. Threaded her way between ropes of savory and sweet herbs that shadows had braided and Mother hung here to dry. Reached for whatever she could find. She rushed out of the house and ducked into an alley. Time now to remember all the back ways to Old Tamlin’s house.

  In the room where Moralin had once kept her things, Figt sat rubbing her brother’s hair. Nazet’s head leaned against her arm. The boy appeared to be asleep or in some kind of daze.

  “We must go.” Moralin felt the words burst out of her, exploding in droplets. Figt looked up with astonishment. Moralin stuttered on. “Yes, I—I’m coming with you.”

  Though she ached to, she couldn’t read the expression on Figt’s face.

  “Am I going to go into training in the temple? Knowing what I know?” The mixed Delagua and Arkera words rushed out. “Am I to watch the shadows carry wood for the fires? Impossible. And even if I survived temple service, am I going to spend my life inside this wall now that I’ve seen the outside world? Now that I’ve seen the mountains and the forests and the true sacred places.”

  Figt looked down at Nazet. “Doesn’t this decision want more time?” she said cautiously.

  “There is no time. We have to get out.” Moralin began to fashion a bag for the supplies. “Once or twice I think I knew the truth even before we reached the city. Then I became confused. Because of what the guard said about Old Tamlin. But I figured something out tonight.”

  She was a flood of impatience, herding them the way a mother bird might cluck her chicks along. As they approached the door to the tunnel, Figt said, “My brother says the shadows have tried many ways of escape. When they are caught …” Her voice trailed off, sharp with fear.

  “We won’t fail.” Moralin looked around one last time.

  “And your family?”

  Moralin considered. The guard would report only to his commander. There would be good reason to keep his story secret lest fear spread in the Delagua and hope in the shadows. “My mother will question everybody. When nobody can explain it, I think she’ll take the flower I left her as a message from the afterdead. I hope the message will ease her grief.”

  She reached for the ivory knobs. “Together we can figure out where the cave people’s path might be. And while you’re rescuing that beastie, you’ll need someone to stay with Nazet and keep watch at the top. How do you plan to get that barking one up the cliff?”

  Figt began to laugh, and after a moment Moralin laughed, too. They put their hands over their mouths to stifle the noise. With Old Tamlin’s body no longer here, someone could enter this house at any time.

  “We should take more cloth.” Figt turned. “We’re going to need it to make some kind of sling.”

  “All right. Hurry, though.”

  They didn’t speak again until they were back in the dark tunnel. “Maybe we can yet explore the golden kingdom,” Figt whispered, “and see a bird that talks. Or a skulkuk egg turned to rock.”

  “Why are you still whispering?” Moralin asked. “Afraid the rocks will hear you?” She laughed again, giddy with relief. “The cave people go to all those places,”
she added.

  “Nazet and I …” Figt was suddenly serious. “We will not rest until we find a way to open this city’s gates.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  LATE ONE AFTERNOON, AFTER THE TIME OF little rains had come and gone and the big rains were washing the land, making everything green and new, Moralin and Figt rested on the grass in the cave garden. Moralin had been teaching Figt one of the fighting yard moves, and now sweat gleamed on their arms and dried on the backs of their necks, even though evening would be cool. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” Figt said. “When exactly did you decide to leave?”

  “I—I’m not sure.” Moralin watched a feverbird floating on the currents of the wind high above them. The mist made spiderwebs glisten in the trees. “In the secret temple complex, I thought about Old Tamlin’s vision. And what Cora Linga said in my dream. That humans hardly ever got it right.”

  Nearby, in the soft sunlight, the beastie snorted and moved its legs in its sleep, probably chasing some small wood creature in its dreams. Nazet rubbed its ears, then turned to dip a brush in black ink again. He had been painting endlessly, it seemed, stroking peaceful scenes onto the thin reddish pots fired in the cave people’s kilns. Would the beauty be enough to heal him? Moralin watched sadly.

  “Old Tamlin thought he understood what his vision meant.” She paused and then continued. “But I remembered the presence on the cliff. I asked myself how saving the city might look through sacred eyes.”

  “And that’s when you—”

  “That’s when I decided to take the silken pouches. I was thinking I should give them to you. After all, Cora Linga sent you a vision of them.”

  She’d realized that if she could slip away with a few cocoons before they were put onto a tray and into the ovens, a moth would break out of each. Every moth would lay many eggs. With the information Nazet had gathered and Song-maker’s skills, surely the cave people would figure out ways to care for the precious worms that would hatch from the eggs somehow already knowing how to spin silk.

  She finished. “But when I saw Lan and stood in my old house again, I also realized how impossible it was for me to stay.”

  Sometimes, at the strangest moments, a person might catch a glimpse of how the Great Ones might feel about their gifts to the world, gifts that were often twisted. From talking to the cave people, she now knew that once, long ago, the flightless, blind moths had lived all over this region. A blight had killed the trees the moths needed for food. Only the isolated trees on the Delagua island had survived to be transplanted within the convent walls.

  Seeds, carelessly carried in a trade bundle, nurtured by Song-maker’s grandfather, had brought the trees back to this garden. Although he hadn’t known what he was doing–humans rarely did–his vision had been right. The cave dwellers would become successful people of trade. Moralin was sure that the cloth they would learn to weave would be especially exquisite.

  “This theft will destroy the city, not save it,” Old Tamlin would have said. But he didn’t know what she knew. Hoarding the cloth making kept the royalborn eating on plates of gold and kept all the Delagua trapped with their shadows and their secrets. It turned Delagua girls into prisoners. As Old Tamlin himself had said, without the cloth, the people would have to leave their city, a beautiful city but with the heart of a snarling wildcat.

  A figure appeared, walking toward them through the trees. Moralin watched as Song-maker moved under a branch and pulled it low to the ground. He let go and it sprang back, scattering a shower of raindrops and leaves. He held up his arms to the sweet water, laughing. Moralin laughed, too.

  “Think.” Figt pointed with her chin. “The power of cocoons.”

  Yes. Cocoons with moths. Moths to lay eggs. Eggs to hatch into hundreds of worms. Worms that would spin more silk thread. Thread that might one day be strong enough to pull down a wall.

  It was going to take years and other people’s help to spread the secrets of the cloth making. Moralin sighed and then caught herself. The Great Ones would go with her wherever she wandered. She hoped Figt and the beastie and Song-maker would go, too. They were sure to see wonders she couldn’t even imagine. And luckily, as the cave people often said, “The whole world is ever anybody’s home.”

  Mark it well.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m grateful to so many people who helped me shape and reshape this book:

  Jane Yolen, and others who read the earliest drafts of this story years ago and encouraged me to not quit too soon.

  My writer buddies, who got me back to work on Moralin’s great adventure and who continually fortify me with their laughter and passion for books and words. I particularly thank Jo Stanbridge and Nancy Werlin for their smart, bold suggestions.

  My Greenwillow editors, especially Rebecca Davis, without whose perceptive, careful reading, lavish use of the word “terrific,” and fearless nudging about weak spots this book would be a pale, limping wraith of what it is.

  Kathy Isaacs and her class at Edmund Burke School, who were my first young readers and whose comments forced me to rethink a number of important points.

  David and Leonard Goering, who cared about such things as lock mechanisms and topography.

  My parents, for taking me to a new continent when I was two years old, giving me scary adventures, and inviting me to wonder “where is home, anyway?”

  People who do and describe astonishing things including climbing cliffs, handling snakes, and walking on coals.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JANE KURTZ was born in Portland, Oregon, but moved to Ethiopia when she was two years old and lived there for most of her childhood. She says, “As I was writing The Feverbird’s Claw, I often found myself thinking about Ethiopia, where I grew up among such varied ethnic groups—from hunter-gatherer people to ancient highland societies that developed Africa’s only still-used alphabets. I have powerful memories of a land where many cultures clash and cooperate, and, as a girl, I developed a lifelong fascination with ancient civilizations.”

  Ms. Kurtz is a highly acclaimed author of picture books, poetry, and novels covering a wide range of subjects. She recently edited the short-story collection Memories of Sun: Stories of Africa and America, and her novels include The Storyteller’s Beads and Jakarta Missing. She now lives in Hesston, Kansas.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.

  CREDITS

  COVER ART © 2004 BY DON SEEGMILLER

  COVER © 2004 BY HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS

  COVER DESIGN BY CHAD W. BECKERMAN

  COPYRIGHT

  The Feverbird’s Claw

  Copyright © 2004 by Jane Kurtz

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harperchildrens.com

  Map copyright © 2004 by John Hendrix

  Book design by Chad W. Beckerman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The feverbird’s claw / Jane Kurtz.

  p. cm.

  “Greenwillow Books.”

  Summary: On the eve of the day she is to begin temple service, Moralin of Delagua is kidnapped by the Arkera, enduring grueling adventures as she tries to escape, and ultimately learning surprising truths about her own people.

  ISBN 0-06-000820-2 (trade).

  ISBN 0-06-000821-0 (lib. bdg.)

  EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780062239259

  [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.K9626
Su 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2003049258

  First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  GREENWILLOW BOOKS

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