The Feverbird's Claw Read online

  For a while as they walked, she did not see him. When she heard the haunting notes, she was filled with relief. He ran up, gave her an elaborate bow, and fell in beside her. Figt walked in front of them, muttering. “What is she saying?” Moralin asked.

  Song-maker didn’t answer.

  Moralin studied him furtively. She had to make her move soon. Had he ever seen her city? If he had, he would understand. What was Mother doing right now? Watching the pots as the servants stirred shining threads in the bubbling dye and shadows crept close to the dangerous fires to put on more wood?

  She looked around at the reddish trees, brown brush, and brown clothes and longed for sky-turquoise, honey-gold, fire-orange, all the colors of Delagua cloth. No wonder other people craved it; no wonder the temple elders worked hard to keep hold of the secrets of making it. She was ashamed that she had not seen how valuable it was. Now she couldn’t imagine that she had not wanted to learn all the important things a Delagua woman needed to know about cloth. When she got back, how much better she would do.

  “How did you reach the Arkera?” she asked.

  “On my own feet of course.” He stretched proudly. “I am almost a man. My people are those who walk bravely from one corner of the flat earth to the other.”

  “My people are those who stand bravely and defend their city.” Moralin gave him a glance of scorn. “And you are no more man than I am woman.”

  He raised the flute to his lips and played a tune so sad she felt the scorn melt. After a while he said, “At first I was a little frightened to walk alone. When I return home—if they let me return—it will be easier.”

  The chanting began again. If he knew how to walk away from this place, she must capture his trust. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” Moralin said. “Let me try again to hear the words.”

  The boy looked pleased.

  Brother, sister, small stream,

  Place where we have taken water, taken clay,

  We greet thee.

  On our way to deep mother,

  We ask for thy cooling water.

  We ask thee thanking.

  We ask thee singing.

  For the sake of Mama Koy.

  People stooped to fill waterskins. As Moralin waited for hers to fill, she tried to memorize the look of the gnarled roots of a tree that clung to the opposite bank. Figt gave her a shove.

  All morning they traveled. This was a land cut with streambeds, and as they climbed up and down, Moralin felt her muscles cramping. She hoped someone was carrying Salla. The boy stumbled and caught his balance. “I trip.” He grinned at her. “Thee trips, you trip, he trips, she trips, we trip, they trip.” He repeated the words in Arkera. “You try it.”

  “Why both ‘thee’ and ‘you?’”

  “Keep to ‘thee.’ It’s more polite.” He said something else. “I tripped,” he translated. “Hear the difference?”

  Cautiously she tried the Arkera word. He corrected her. She turned her head to listen better, caught her foot on a root, and had to run a few steps to smooth her stride and her dignity.

  “She trips.” He laughed. He bent and scooped up something. A little green creeper, leaf bright, surely a distant cousin to the ugly snakes on the Arkera sticks. “It does not trip. No legs.”

  She surprised herself by laughing. He held it out, but as she reached for it, a shout startled her. The creeper dropped between them and whisked away into the grass. Three warriors trotted by, their heads covered again with the bird masks.

  “Ferocious, aren’t they?” Song-maker shuddered elaborately, perhaps as a joke, perhaps seriously. “Once these black-beak people forced us to work for them as part of our tribute. More recently they’ve begun trading with my people instead, so they’re supposed to give me salt in exchange for my translating.” He paused. “Even so, I half expect to feel a spear sliding between my shoulder blades as I leave. Now that I know some of their secrets.” His face crinkled into a wry grin. “It would save them some salt.”

  Moralin chewed on her thumbnail remembering baby bird faces looking helplessly up. She bit her thumb to stop the horror of her thoughts. “Why are they wearing the masks again?”

  It was smooth enough here for Song-maker to walk beside her. He studied the soot-gray sky. “I suppose the masks give them some kind of power or protection. I don’t know. Guests watch their conversation topics. I’m to be out of here soon. I’d like it to be alive.”

  This was the opportunity. Moralin focused on the back of Figt’s head and made her voice casual. “Have you ever wanted to see the Delagua city?”

  He looked at her, and she was surprised to see in his amused expression that she had not fooled him. “Oho. In the feverbird’s claw. The only place even worse than in the grip of the black-beak people.”

  She could feel indignation flash in her. Calm. She needed him.

  “What your people do to prisoners,” he went on. “Now that’s the stuff of nightmares.”

  “And I suppose your people—”

  “Look.” She saw they were approaching a huge field. Warriors were already moving through the tall grasses, sweeping with their sticks. In the confusion, the beastie came slinking up to stand by Figt, who leaned down to whisper something in its ear. “Actually—” Song-maker said.

  He was interrupted by a woman’s voice speaking loudly to a group of children. “What is she saying?” Moralin asked.

  “That the helicht grows here,” Song-maker said. “Once she found a plant so big that even a warrior hurt near to death could place the oils of the plant on the wound and be healed. She says, ‘Look hard, oh, my children, and do not forget to thank the helicht plant before taking its flower.’”

  The old woman’s face became grave, and her voice dropped. “Take care not to pull up any roots,” Song-maker translated, “lest earth spirits get pulled into the air, where they will shrivel and become angry.”

  The children began to fan out, pushing the grass aside. Moralin lifted the hem of her dress and took a cautious step. “Skulkuks?” she asked. Even a small one of those fierce and biting lizard beings could attack people’s ankles and cripple them.

  During the deep dry time, when dust whirlwinds danced in the streets, Delagua women stayed inside their cool houses, weaving. Her grandmother would weave words along with her threads, terrifying stories of the red forest and the creatures living there. As a child Moralin had asked again and again for the stories of giant skulkuks, perhaps mutated by the red trees, huge flying beasts that could sweep down without warning, only one water-rippling cry. The stories gave her nightmares, but the next day she would ask to hear them again.

  She saw that Figt was already deep in the grasses. Be careful, lest a mere story leave her hollow and quavering. She waded in.

  “Wait,” Song-maker called, but she didn’t dare. Oils like those Figt kept putting on her feet would be important for the journey home. “Skulkuk,” he shouted after her. “That’s a word the same in both languages.”

  When they were near the middle of the field, Figt dropped to her knees. Moralin saw a plant with a spike topped by a sinister white flower. Figt bowed slightly to the plant or perhaps to Mama Koy. With her shiny knife, she carefully began to cut. Moralin was filled with envy. The moon color of the flower made her uneasy, but she had to have one.

  Just then the mournful note of the shell moaned. Obediently people began to move toward the sound. Moralin sighed. She took a step and then leaped back from whatever rustled in the grass almost under her foot.

  As she fell, a gray bird whooshed up toward her face and into the air, its wings flapping as wildly as her heart. The grass broke her fall. By her hand she saw a tiny helicht plant. “Cora Linga,” she whispered. “Was this bird your messenger?”

  Urgently she tugged on the flower. The whole plant slid out of the ground. “Earth spirits,” the old woman had said. Forget that. Moralin’s fingers trembled with the haste of getting the plant into her pouch before Figt saw what she had
seen, a brilliant blue bead tangled in the small roots.

  As she crossed the field behind Figt, her thoughts leaped, each one shiny with possibilities. It was as if she were living in one of Grandmother’s stories. Song-maker. He must be the son of the earth. “My people walk bravely,” he had told her, and he had surely opened her ears. Now here was this bead, like a blue bit of sky just waiting to be freed and carried. Could Cora Linga send her messengers even here? Hope burned her throat, making her hold her breath. She would do it: trust the boy and ask him directly for help.

  But Song-maker seemed to have disappeared. While she walked and waited for him to find her again, she thought about what she would say. She must find the perfect tone.

  Gradually she noticed that people were whispering to one another. Their voices sounded dire and urgent. The trees were too close for her to see the sun, so she didn’t even know in what direction they were moving. Once or twice she took a cautious step or two to the left or right. Each time Figt whistled, and warriors were beside her in a flash.

  Where was Song-maker? Impatient and cross, she glanced around.

  They came to a slope where the trees thinned. As people found their way down, they slipped on the rocks. Moralin paused. Figt stopped, too, staring at her with hostile eyes. Moralin ignored the other girl, studying the clumps of people for Song-maker.

  How many were spread out on the slope below her? Two hundred? Three hundred? More Arkera trickled past. “Wait,” he had said, but she had been in too much of a hurry. Had he been trying to say good-bye?

  Frantic now, she searched the whole area again. The elders must have decided it was time for him to leave. Alive? “I half expect I’ll feel a spear sliding between my shoulder blades as I leave,” he’d said. She shuddered.

  Figt spoke a word of rough command, and Moralin took a few stumbling steps.

  Far below, those in the lead had reached jagged stumps that pointed at the sky. The elders raised their snakesticks, and the wave of people moving toward them stopped as if a river had abruptly dried up. For a moment the air was still and dry as dust. An animal howled.

  Every other animal on the slope wailed in answer. Figt flung herself toward the beastie. A child screamed. At that moment something leaped into the sky from behind the stumps.

  A wild shriek shivered the air, and the world exploded with sound and fear. Run. Anywhere. Away from the glimpse of wings and clawed feet and webbed red skin hung on delicate bones.

  The smell of rotting meat choked Moralin. She dashed down and to one side, tripping, falling, hauling herself to her feet, running again. Thick brush grabbed her ankles. She turned even more downhill, scrabbling and slipping toward the trees that would give some cover. Her breath was knife-sharp in her chest. Her eyes blurred with tears.

  A rock blocked her way. She didn’t hesitate but scrambled over it. Now she was sliding and then rolling into some kind of ravine. A bush at the bottom broke her fall. A huge tree lay flat on the ground ahead of her.

  The air was hazy with smoke. Somewhere behind her, the beastie began its low, hoarse barking, frantic this time. The stink grew more powerful, filling Moralin’s head.

  “Pay attention,” Old Tamlin’s voice urged her. The barking turned into a yelp of terrible pain. On hands and knees, Moralin lunged toward the fallen tree. One end was open. She wiggled backward into the hollow log, then reached out and grabbed as much brush as she could reach, pulling it around the opening. Carefully she flattened herself.

  After her breath quieted, she could hear muffled shouting and snarls. The skulkuk must be attacking. Long ago in the Delagua city it was the fashion for highborns to keep miniature skulkuks chained in their houses. Grandmother talked disapprovingly of the danger and more than once showed Moralin that one of the old servants had a purple scar on her ankle from a skulkuk bite. When the servant was only a child, she’d let fascinated curiosity draw her too close. Grandmother’s mother had saved her life, putting hot cloths on her ankle and ginger on her forehead to soak out the poisons and nightmares.

  Shhhh, shhhhh. Moralin pressed her mouth closed to keep the moan of fear inside. What she had seen was a giant, monstrous version of those miniature beasts. She rested her head against moss, breathing in the smells of earth and old sap. Calm. Her enemies would be busy for a while. No one would have time to think of an escaped prisoner.

  “Thank you, Cora Linga,” she breathed again and again. She must still be on land where the Delagua had once made their camps. No matter what other horrors were out there, Cora Linga’s messengers would help her make her way.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  THE INSIDE OF THE LOG WASN’T DAMP, AS Moralin had expected, and Old Tamlin had trained her to lie still without twitching even when she was terrified. Finally the sounds drifting from the outside world made her think the skulkuk must be growing weaker. She could hear the shouts dropping away.

  Shivering with joy, she imagined herself already back home, running over the stones to her house. She could clearly see Grandmother and Mother standing by the moralin bush, hugging each other sorrowfully. Now they were looking up. They spotted her and began to cry out with excitement.

  She pulled her thoughts back, groping to feel inside the pouch. Not as much food as she would have liked, but she would survive somehow, even if she had to eat bugs. As if it had heard her thoughts, some tiny thing scuttled across her hand. Careful to make no noise, Moralin flicked it off.

  “Brains and courage have given the noble Delagua many an advantage against an enemy,” Old Tamlin used to say. He had taught her that if she could be patient enough to wait and then bold enough when the moment came, anything was possible. Old Tamlin knew all about weapons and how to use them, but he said over and over that more important than weapons was a disciplined mind.

  Using her fingers as eyes, she found what she wanted. Though the inside of the log was dark, the bead’s beauty glistened in her mind. Such a sumptuous blue would tempt many, making the bead useful for trade. But Cora Linga had said, “Use her not, the daughter of the sky.” Moralin put it into her pocket, and drew out the serenity stone. “I told you I would escape,” she said, mouthing the words. She’d find a friendly village. Maybe she wouldn’t even need Cora Linga’s help.

  “Be careful.” The voice in her thoughts was so real she could almost believe the stone had spoken. “Don’t say anything rash against the Great Ones.”

  Moralin touched her forehead gratefully and felt, against the back of her hand, the brush of something sticky that clung to her fingers: a spiderweb. Cora Linga had said “Go to the web.” Now all three pieces of her riddle had fallen into place, and Moralin was saved.

  The elders would be interested to hear that Cora Linga’s power still spread so far from the temple. Moralin would give them the blue bead so she would never be tempted to use it. As her time of service began, they would already know her to be someone who had proved herself worthy.

  She imagined herself bowing before the tapestry. Her muscles twitched with the longing to burst out of the log and just to run, putting this place far behind. Better not trying to travel until the Arkera were farther away from her. Figt wouldn’t be able to think about anything but the beastie for a while. It would be a nasty thing for any small animal to get mixed up with the claws of a skulkuk.

  Song-maker had shown her this weakness in Figt. Warm gratitude spread in her chest. If the Arkera elders had simply told him it was time to go, if the warriors had spared him from their spears, maybe she could catch up. She smiled. He could show her how to walk from one corner of the flat earth to the other.

  Slowly she relaxed into the cradle of the giant log. Many times, according to Old Tamlin’s stories, the Delagua were so badly outnumbered by the fierce and bloody Arkera they thought their enemies must be as numerous as strawhoppers, yet they still managed to win. Now she, too, had gotten away.

  Ruuuch. Ruuch. Moralin stiffened.

  Something was rooting through the leaves outside
the log. She put her sticky hand to her mouth, feeling hot breath on her fingers.

  The rooting became louder, and she thought she could hear waa-waa-waa breathing. Something snorted and bumped against the log. Cora Linga, she prayed. Don’t let me get this far only to be torn apart by one of the monsters from Grandmother’s stories.

  Just then whatever it was gave a loud snort and whuffled off, its noises growing fainter and then dying away completely. Praise the Great Ones, she was not to be meat for some monster’s belly.

  It took all her training to make her breathing steady again. Soon she was deep inside herself. In her mind she soared through the air, practicing her leaps and spins. Old Tamlin was laughing, cheering her on.

  “Brave girl,” Old Tamlin was shouting to her. “I knew you would get away.”

  What was that? Footsteps. Small, light patters and heavier steps following.

  A soft whimper trickled out before she could stop it. Cora Linga. Save me once again. Maybe Cora Linga would send a fog to cover the log and keep her safe from prying eyes. Maybe smoke still hung heavy from the skulkuk’s firesome breath.

  Something scratched at the brush in front of the log. And then a voice, a familiar voice, began to shout.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  HANDS GRABBED HER AND PULLED ON ANYTHING they caught hold of—neck, shoulders, hair. She swallowed the pain and squirmed deeper, but the hands were too strong. She was outside the log. Hands seized her legs and arms and hoisted her into the air. Someone yanked the pouch from her waist, the serenity stone from her hand, the velee from her shoulders. She kicked and bit, but the hands just tightened. As she twisted, she caught one glimpse of Figt before someone pulled a rough blanket over her face.

  All that day she was carried, wrapped in the blanket, on the back of first one warrior and then another. She could barely make out muffled voices. It was like being in a great cocoon. For a while, sick with suffocation, she clung to the idea that when they unwrapped her, Cora Linga would have allowed her to sprout great wings, and she would flap off into the turquoise sky, looking down at their startled, upturned faces.