The Feverbird's Claw Read online

  But when they took the blanket off, she only wobbled two steps on stiff legs before a warrior man grunted and unwrapped a leather thong from his waist. He tied her wrists together and then bound her to a small tree. She slumped to the ground. All around, people were eating, but no one brought her anything. Her pouch was gone. The velee was gone. So was the serenity stone.

  For the first time she felt despair. Old Tamlin said, “May your eyes show nothing when the enemy is fierce before your face.” But even if Old Tamlin raised a whole army of soldiers, they would never dare come this far from the temple and the protection of the Great Ones. She was hungry and sore and cold. She didn’t even have an ugly Arkera blanket to keep the moon away.

  How had she gotten it all so wrong? Maybe everything—the boy, the bead, the web—was just chance, after all, and not from Cora Linga. Or maybe she had indeed angered the earth spirits, in a place where they were stronger than the Great Ones. Either way, she was doomed.

  After a long time a warrior woman stepped out of the shadows, held out an ugly dress, and motioned for her to put it on. “No.” Moralin shook her head, hoping her meaning was clear. “No, I won’t wear any Arkera cloth.” If only Song-maker were here to translate.

  As an answer, the woman reached down and grabbed Moralin’s shoulders and lifted her to her feet. Two other women walked over. It was clear she would have no choice, and if they took her Delagua dress, she would lose the bead in her pocket. She held out her hand, palm up. “All right.” She pointed at the blanket tied to one woman’s waist and motioned for them to hold it up, give her privacy. They laughed, but while they were distracted, she curled her fingers around the bead.

  The skin dress was scratchy-rough, and it smelled faintly of tree bark. “Can I have my pouch?” she asked.

  “Poouuch?” one of the women mimicked. The others laughed. Moralin pointed, and they knotted one of the small bags around her waist.

  Her wrists were tied together, and she was fastened to the tree again. A woman carried her dress away. “Don’t,” Moralin shouted, but the woman tossed it into the fire. The cloth flared orange and purple, then shriveled to a black lump. Moralin bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood.

  After they left her alone, she peeked at the sky. At least the moon’s eye was starting to close. Old Tamlin, who had traveled outside the walls in his youth, said soldiers found their way by knowing the positions of the star animals that crouched in the sky. She knew only the bright spider star of the south in the feverbird constellation.

  All chance of memorizing landmarks was gone. What would happen now? The boy had said they wanted her unharmed, no doubt to be a prisoner sacrifice. She took a deep, shaky breath. Old Tamlin said the way of a fighter was not to court death but also not to be afraid if death came seeking, calling your name.

  If she ever saw Figt again, rage would make her strong enough to tear the other girl to bits. And Figt’s beastie, too. Had he been the one to smell her out? But now she was with only a small group. Either the skulkuk had killed hundreds of Arkera or the big group had split into smaller traveling bands.

  When the camp quieted, she twisted and turned, then tried pulling and yanking. No, she was as helpless as any animal about to be slaughtered. Finally she simply huddled against the tree, trembling. She slept a little and woke to feel the tree burning her skin.

  By first light the camp was already in a hurry. A warrior woman untied Moralin and knotted the other end of the thong around her own wrist.

  “Can I have something to eat?”

  The woman made a shrug of nonunderstanding and gave a tug. Moralin made the motions to show what she wanted. In answer, the woman held out a piece of the black bread. “Gada.”

  Moralin took stiff steps. She’d say no dirty Arkera word for “bread.”

  “Gada,” the woman said again.

  “No.”

  The woman put the bread in her pouch.

  For the next two days they walked deep into the red forest, where the trees grew huge and close and hummed so loudly that Moralin could not even hear the breathing of the people beside her. Her feet had gone from burning, pinching pain to numbness. Her heart, too, numbed.

  Every day farther away from the Delagua city and temple made it more impossible that she would ever get back. She stared ahead with stone eyes and made no response to anything.

  What would happen if she died out here? At home when someone died, that person was left alone in a closed room to which the Great Ones sent their messengers for judgment and pity. Would the messengers somehow find her? If they did, she could at least go to judgment having died a worthy death as a noble Delagua sacrifice.

  The trees dwindled until she could sometimes glimpse a faint purple line of mountains to the east. Smaller pockets of people camped together at night, calling out in high chants or with pongas to other groups nearby. Moralin learned to match her step to the woman she was bound to and look at bare faces without flinching. She learned to sleep sitting up, tied to a tree, her head covered with a blanket because of the moon. She learned to say gada for the black bread, her voice sullen.

  One evening they came to a brackish pond. Moralin crouched listlessly by it, thinking about the lake in the middle of the Delagua city, fed by underground streams. It was a place of cool respite except in the evenings when the feverbirds did their hunting along the shoreline. A person who stood under the whooshing of those giant wings was sure to wake up flushed and burning and was often soon dead.

  Excitement rustled through the camp as people crushed shells and made a paint to decorate their bodies, using their fingers or tufts of grass to form patterns. That night no one built a fire, and the painting and chanting went on and on. By the time the ugly half-moon went down, everyone had a yellow body. Some had yellow handprints spread over their cheeks to look like feathers. Others had fish fins painted around their eyes.

  At dawn fish leaped from the water in spiraling arcs. People spread nets among the floating weeds. Soon yellow birds circled and came in to rest on the water, a flock so huge that Moralin thought a person, stepping on their backs, could run out to the middle of the pond. People waded through yellow feathers that swirled around their ankles and stuck to them. Lan would love the feathers. Moralin caught one, but after a few moments she dropped it and watched it blow away.

  She saw that some of the girls were carrying the birds in nets. Pity for them and for herself, poor prisoners all, made her choke. She watched fish being strung over the fire and cooked. If only she could give up her life as easily as a fish seemed to. The familiar words of the death prayer ran through her mind. Oh, Great Ones, I thank you that you gave me life as a Delagua fighter and not as a shadow or an animal. May I stand with courage and look death in the eyes before I ever bring shame to my people.

  The next evening they walked down the slope toward the black mouth of a cave. That night was full of whispers and movements and far-off haunting cries. People lit torches from the embers of a fire and walked off into the midnight-dark cave’s throat. The lights flickered, wavered, and were swallowed. A long time later people began to trickle back. She saw that they had been gathering salt.

  Near dawn she fell asleep sitting and had a dream so clear she opened her eyes and felt tears on her cheek. First she had been falling, falling through a white mist. She could see the wall of the Delagua city, and she reached out; but under her fingers the stones turned smooth, and she could not hold on. What did it mean? Probably that death would soon come for her.

  On the next terrible day she walked through gray ashes that drizzled out of the sky from a far-off fire, making the ground slick and hot. Moralin slipped and slid. When she managed to steady herself, the woman she was tied to would lose her balance, and the two of them would fall again.

  Finally the woman untied the thong and used a rock to strike the trunk of a tree. She gathered chunks of sap that had welled up along old bruises. Moralin sucked on a little piece, so bitter it made her mouth ache, bu
t it did take away her thirst.

  She touched her wrist tenderly. The rope had rubbed the skin off. Would it become infected? If so, she would die a weak and feeble death with fever tearing at her body. That was no death for a fighter. Could she somehow coax more freedom from the warrior woman? She pointed to the sap and spoke for the first time in many days. “What is its name?”

  The woman ignored her.

  She tried again, gesturing with her chin as she’d seen the boy and other people do. It worked.

  “Rikka,” the woman said without expression.

  “Rikka.” Next, Moralin lifted the waterskin, pantomimed the act of drinking. The word for water made a little explosion in her mouth as she said it. When the warrior woman laughed at her mockingly, she knew her pronunciation was bad, or maybe she had even said an embarrassing word. And her plan failed. When it was time to go, the warrior woman tied Moralin again.

  The next day they met up with another knot of people. At first Moralin assumed they were from the original group. Most Arkera looked the same to her. But later she decided that these must be people whose rainy season camp had been somewhere else. People sang songs back and forth and touched cheeks with great warmth. Sometimes, from their gestures and glances, she knew they were telling stories about her, her actions by the campfire and how she had tried to escape.

  By the time dusk came on that night, a thin smell of fermenting fruit hung in the air. The animals sensed it first. The four-legged ones howled, and the yellow birds stirred and squawked in their nets. People began to sniff and hesitate.

  “Kachee,” someone shouted.

  “Kachee.” Others took up the cry.

  Moralin looked around. Dying from some kind of animal bite or goring was a good death. People shuffled and shouted, beginning to form a circle. The warrior woman drew a bone knife and, without warning, slashed the thong.

  The air filled with a strange clicking sound. The ground began to move as if the dirt had come alive. Small dark animals scurried forward in a wave, paused, advanced. Moralin strained to see. Bodies a little bigger than men’s feet. Whip-thin tails. She made out triangular heads with sharp snouts.

  People crowded together and pounded the earth with snakesticks and rocks, shouting a hoo-hoo chant. A woman rushing toward the group dropped a net, and yellow birds fluttered out, helpless with their feet tied together. Moralin watched as dark shapes pooled around the birds and dragged them away.

  This was her chance to die. But when the first kachee leaped at her, she couldn’t offer up her throat as she’d planned but automatically flailed at it, crying out as the claws ripped the flesh of her hands.

  She lurched back. Bumped into the warrior woman. Using the woman’s back as a brace, she groped for anything. Felt something—a spear? a branch?—under her fingers. She swung it with all the force of a fighting stick and felt the thud as she connected. Swung again. And again. To her shame, something inside her seemed determined to stay alive.

  Gradually the clicking died away. Moralin swiped the sweat from her eyes and smelled the blood on the back of her hand. It was now too dark to see much of anything, but the kachee seemed to be gone. Only the smell hung everywhere.

  The warrior woman rubbed healing oils into Moralin’s hands. That night she did not tie Moralin up. The next morning she did not bind their wrists together.

  As she walked, Moralin considered just running. The warrior woman’s spear would be quick. Or would Old Tamlin want her to die proudly, standing to face her enemies? He had always admired the prisoners who were brave as they were killed in the Delagua city.

  She lost count of the times she fell, the times she put her head on a rock at night and pulled a blanket over it, too tired to eat. When conversations washed over her, she noticed that the boy had been right. By listening for familiar words and watching gestures, she could sometimes make out pieces of a story, such as one about when the dry times came early.

  The Arkera had apparently been caught on this part of the journey, no chance to get to deep mother. A storyteller coughed and choked, showing the heat and dryness. She acted out dust descending like huge birds, covering the Arkera.

  At the end of the story people chanted something. Perhaps, “Do not give us such a year”? Moralin smiled grimly, stone-hard inside. She would be glad of another such year and would pray for it to come. Let her enemies choke with thirst, even if she choked, too.

  The next day they traveled in swirling grit. She could barely make out other gray shapes around her. At the top of a slope she looked back and saw they had crossed a finger of yellow-brown sand. Dust hung over it in a haze.

  For the rest of the day they climbed in a rough country of canyons and small cliffs. When she raised her eyes, she saw a butte that held back the sky. She trudged for hours, legs aching. Finally the way seemed to be blocked by a wall ahead, but when they reached it, the warrior woman led her into a narrow passageway.

  People called out, their voices echoing against the rocks. The woman in front of her began to move faster, faster, faster … to what? Rock loomed on either side, close enough so she could touch the walls with both hands. She found the strength to follow up a long set of rock stairs, natural or man-made. Faster. Faster. When she half-fell out the other end of the chute, she gasped and staggered back. An enormous skulkuk’s eyes glared down at her.

  Be strong. It was only painted onto a rock. Around it crouched other monsters that Moralin had never seen, not even in tapestries.

  The woman guided her onto a narrow path that led around the painted rock. Without warning they were looking down into a wide, flat canyon. Moralin bent over, trying to catch her breath from the climb. This must be the place of her death—in the belly of Arkera deep mother.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  AS THEY REACHED THE BOTTOM OF THE canyon, they splashed through a stream, surely smaller than in the rainy season, but still with good water. Ahead, Moralin saw houses wearing their roofs pulled down low like hats made of grass. The warrior woman led her to one and pushed her inside. The walls were mud with pieces of straw sticking out, and the floor was polished hard clay. One wall was yellow with moss. Outside, the smell of meat over a fire made Moralin dizzy with hunger.

  She was alone. Now she could finally grieve. Go ahead. Weep. She waited for the hardness to dissolve. Nothing happened. So she sat with her back against the mossy wall. People were running between houses. Everyone seemed to be trading stories and laughing.

  When darkness dropped, a woman appeared at the doorway and beckoned. Outside, Arkera thronged around a crackling fire. After a while the best storytellers were pushed forward. They acted out the adventures with great groans and hisses, somehow capturing even the whir of wings. People laughed and grunted and cheered them on.

  Moralin looked around for Salla. There. Was that Salla? Moralin was moving to see more clearly when rough hands grabbed her and pushed her into the crowd. People scrambled out of her way. Near the center someone gave her a hard shove, and she stumbled forward and knelt in the dirt.

  Four elders with severe faces stood over her. They all were draped in bright feathers. The man in the green cloak, who had spared her life at the camp, now wore a headdress made of yellow ones. An old woman said something in a hard voice.

  Moralin heard a low, hissing noise rise from the crowd. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of firelight on a black knife.

  She raised up on her knees as tall as possible. “May I look death bravely in the eyes and not bring shame to my people,” she said aloud.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  THE BACK OF HER NECK PRICKLED, BUT THE blow didn’t come. Instead the storytellers acted out her story. The attack of the skulkuk started up some argument. She tried frantically to understand. One of the storytellers howled in rage and shook imaginary bars. They had captured it and brought it back here? Surely not. A man gestured to the east. Moralin imagined she heard skulkuk snorts through the chatter.

 
Finally an elder spoke rapidly, shaking her fist toward Moralin. Another shouted. Moralin felt the heat of the fire on her scalp and smelled smoke and meat and skins, but it all seemed unreal. One part of the circle bulged, and Figt was pushed into the center. She stood swaying slightly before the elders.

  Moralin leaped to her feet, stunned with hatred. She forced herself to not look away from the fevered glare in the eyes of her old enemy. Around the circle people shouted opinions and comments. When the old woman raised her hands high, the murmurs died away. She said something in the voice of whitest doom.

  Green Cloak spoke next, but his accent was so terrible Moralin would not have recognized the Delagua words except that he said each one so slowly. “You are brave. You are The People now.” He gestured to show what he meant by The People. Arkera. He was trying to say, “You are Arkera now.”

  Her head buzzed. “No,” she said softly. “Let me die.”

  Back in the hut she refused to raise her head from the blanket. Starvation was not a fighter’s death, but it was her only choice. How much did it hurt to die that way?

  She wondered, again, if they had killed Song-maker. If his people walked the whole flat earth, did they also walk the round sky? It was a comfort to think that perhaps he would appear again to guide her through the strange world of the afterdead.

  What about Figt? Whatever the man in the green cloak said had made the girl hang her head with a look even Moralin could tell meant shame and suffering. Perhaps Moralin would have another chance to fight her enemy after death.

  For a week Moralin hardly moved. They poured water into her mouth, but they could not make her eat. At first hunger clawed her stomach, but then it went away. She dreamed her life was a huge yellow eye that was slowly closing. Let the dim light leach the red from her blood. Let her teeth darken. Even prayers could do no good in this wretched place so far from the lands the Great Ones watched over.