The Feverbird's Claw Page 9

  “Think I’m talking stupid talk? Thee is the stupid one.” Figt glared at Moralin with warrior eyes.

  Moralin looked around. Had the food come from here? She didn’t see any more. Figt must have brought it with her.

  The other girl began to talk rapidly. Moralin listened intently, trying to piece together the words and gestures.

  Figt had decided not to return to the village. The life of a solitary was … she used a word Moralin didn’t know, but noting Figt’s expression, Moralin almost felt the beginning of pity. Figt continued, talking in such a low, angry voice that Moralin had to strain to catch familiar words. Now Figt had a new plan, and maybe even a stupid one like this girl could be of some use.

  “Come.” Figt’s tone was imperious, but Moralin just shrugged. If anything, they’d been equally stupid.

  Once they both were on the low, broad branch she could see that far below them at the foot of the butte the land stretched to the north as if it were a huge piece of quilted cloth. Bare trees of the red forest. Smooth and endless yellow of the sands. The Brown Turtle mountain range and gash of canyon that separated them.

  “We go that way.” Figt pointed with her chin.

  Moralin squinted. “The sand waste? Where no living beings dare go?”

  “It is the only way.”

  The beastie whined and scratched at the foot of the tree. Moralin eased down from the low branch until she was on the ground beside him. Ooden had said, “No work, no food.” A solitary might manage to find or steal provisions through one dry season … but year after year? It seemed unthinkable, but the Arkera were certainly capable of starving one of their own.

  No, it wasn’t astonishing if Figt, now that she had shaken free of the village, would decide not to return. But the yellow sands?

  Figt dropped, light as a wildcat, and adjusted her waterskin around her waist. “It is the only way, Kadu.” Moralin thought she saw fear mixed in with the fierceness on the other girl’s face.

  “My name is not Kadu. My name is Moralin.”

  Figt gave her a look she couldn’t read. Was it disgust? Was it sadness? “Does this Kadu have a plan?” She grabbed Moralin’s wrist.

  “Stop!” Moralin pulled away. “Tell me what you … tell me what thee wants.”

  Figt looked off in the distance for a long moment. “When I was young,” she said in a strange, halting voice, “my family traveled often in the sands. My mother, my older sister, my little brother, my father.”

  Moralin turned her head from the pain in Figt’s face.

  “In those days my people and”—Figt spit—“the dwellers of the sand waste kept clear of each other. We gathered food.”

  The beastie whined and rubbed against Figt as if it could smell the fierce sadness that seemed to rise from her skin. Figt cleared her throat. “This is my story.”

  Moralin leaned forward, trying to catch enough words to understand.

  One day Figt had begged to stay in the village with her friends. That afternoon The People were attacked in the sand waste. Figt coughed. “My father, my mother … the others carried their bodies back to the village.”

  “Dead?”

  “Understand this,” Figt said. “When I crossed the bridge, I was not afraid. I knew their spirits would keep me safe.”

  Dead. Moralin swallowed, remembering whimpers and speared bodies. “Thy brother? Sister?”

  “They did not come back.”

  “How good that thee was not with thy family.” It was all she could think to say.

  Figt glared at her. “I should have been with them.” She paused, her face suddenly blank of any expression. “When I wandered alone in the fields, I made a vow to find those who killed them.”

  So had she now concluded that since she was going to die anyway, she would do it seeking revenge?

  “This decision’s time has come.” Figt chin-pointed at Moralin’s pouch. “The plant keepers taught thee things that can help me in the sands. And I can be of use to thee.”

  Moralin considered. If they survived the sand long enough to find Figt’s enemies, Figt could seek a good death by killing some of those who had taken her family.

  She herself would most likely also die. But if she managed to survive? She would be among the enemies of the Arkera. Perhaps they would also be allies of the Delagua who could help her find her way home. Her leg was hurting so much it was hard to think, but she looked around for her things.

  The ginger-brown and yellow ground that had seemed smooth from high on the cliffs was actually lumpy and rough. Spiny bushes and patches of grass dotted the tan hills. As Moralin climbed down a ragged gash in the land and up the other side, a small whirlwind of sand blew up. When it twirled off, she coughed, spitting out grit. The sky above them was almost white.

  Figt gave a wide wave. “The Arkera say that many travelers stand and look upon this place. Those who enter soon have only the hollow eyes of death.”

  The hollow eyes of death. Moralin hesitated. Maybe she could still find another way.

  Figt caught her arm.

  Moralin shook herself free. She squatted and picked up a handful of sand. Slowly she let it trickle through her fingers. Might as well die trying to get home.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  AFTER HOURS OF FOLLOWING FIGT, MORALIN felt as if she had swallowed mouthfuls of sand. By a small gray bush, Figt knelt and began to dig. The beastie joined in, spraying dirt and sand in an arc. Water began to seep into the hole. It was dirty, but Moralin knelt and slurped from both hands. The bright designs were fading. Figt held water in her own hand for the beastie to drink.

  They walked on. After a long, dusty time Moralin knelt and tried digging as Figt had. The beastie helped, just as it had before. But though Moralin stubbornly dug and dug, no water appeared.

  Finally, she pulled the rikka sap out and gave each of them a nibble. She held hers in her mouth for a long time, letting the drops leak into her throat. Her feet were swollen rocks. Up and down. Up over a sand dune and down the other side to green and brown patches licked by fat tongues of sand. “Mamita,” Moralin whispered through salt-dry lips. She couldn’t remember exactly what anyone back home looked like anymore.

  Thirst traveled with them always, sometimes a few steps in the distance, sometimes choking their throats. At first Moralin spent her time trying to make plans. In the end she could think of nothing except thirst. Every time she decided she must sink down in the sand and sing her death song, Figt seemed to find a place to dig, some strange plant, a bit of water trapped in the rocks.

  With her warrior training, Figt knew little of herbs. Moralin was the one, using the things from her pouch, who cared for the welts that appeared on their skin from stinging insects, who handed out the hard green berries that gave them strength to walk for hours in the early morning and again as soon as the sun slipped down the sky. “Nazet,” Figt told her, holding one up.

  “The name of these berries? Like Nazeti, the plant keeper?”

  “It’s a common name. For a boy, too. It was—” She coughed, a dry, choked sound. “It was the name of my brother.”

  Moralin nodded. After that, sadness stirred in her every time she took out the berries. Even the beastie learned to chew them.

  When they rested in whatever shade they could find, they sat as still as stones, trying not to sweat out precious moisture. During the day they could usually find their bearings from the line of purple mountains. At night Figt used the Arkera constellations: the black-beaked bird and coiled snake, the hunter with his spear, the skulkuk and child.

  Moralin no longer felt afraid of the flecked sky. She wished she had listened when Old Tamlin talked about stars. Soldiers had once used them when they needed to capture prisoners for the great ceremonies. Priests still consulted them in temple duties. If she had known she would one day walk openly under the stars, that they could even determine her own life and death, she would have made better use of the moon-dark times when Delagua dared to go
outside. She would have learned more than the feverbird with its giant wings spread wide.

  Sometimes they traveled in silence, but often it was necessary to talk to stay awake, to keep going. “Tell me about thy city,” Figt said one night.

  Moralin searched for words to make Figt understand. How huge it was. The strong houses, some covered with flowers, and stone streets with the channels of water running beside. The lake. The temple, which was the center of Delagua life. The fighting yard, where she had been happy.

  How to explain Delagua traditions? Not secrets, of course. Just things anyone could see. That women wore velees when they went outside so their faces would be protected from the eyes of others. That the grinding of flour and the other back-bending work was done by the shadows, wearing masks.

  “These masks.” Figt interrupted. “Like The People’s black-beak masks?”

  “No, white. Made of cloth.” Soaked in resin, but there was no way to explain that. She showed the way the masks were molded to a shadow’s face and allowed to harden. Holes carved for eyes, nostrils, mouths. “The masks do not come off.”

  Figt stiffened, and Moralin thought the other girl would speak, but she said nothing, so Moralin went on, using words and gestures.

  The shadows rarely left their assigned buildings. Never after dark. But then everyone stayed inside most nights, especially those that were eerie silver with moonlight. She paused. No sense trying to explain priests, who studied the stars, or priestesses, who did the work of the dead.

  The rest of that night Figt pushed them hard. She seemed distant and angry. Moralin found herself wondering again about what was happening at the village. What were the survivors eating now? Was Ooden well? She tried asking Figt questions, but the other girl answered only in short bursts. No, they had never before captured a skulkuk. No, they had never had this kind of disaster.

  “Does thee ever wonder about … back there?”

  Figt only answered with a mocking question. “Does this Kadu worry about walking by the moon’s light?”

  Moralin glanced up. The moon’s eye was almost open. This must be—she counted—the fifth or sixth time since her capture. Sometimes she still longed for warm, comforting blackness. But there were whole nights where she hardly noticed. Could a person get used to anything? “My name is Moralin” was all she said.

  Figt glared with warrior eyes and stalked ahead.

  They slept a few hours, but at dawn Figt shook her awake, indicating that they should walk. She kept looking around with uneasy glances. Moralin couldn’t help glancing around, too. Soon hot dust thickened the air. Moralin scratched at the insect bites and sand on her arms. The plant designs had disappeared.

  Finally Figt pointed with her chin. Moralin squinted. A small bluff? When they reached it, they crawled up, slipping in the sand until they could grab on to bushes at the top. Figt whispered into the beastie’s ear, and it squirmed silently through the bushes.

  Moralin imitated the beastie. Her legs scraped the ground. When Figt plucked a small leaf from the bush and chewed on it, she did, too. The leaf had hardly any moisture and left her mouth feeling drier than ever. Figt raised herself to her hands and knees.

  “Ssssst.” Figt made the soft, hushing sound between her teeth. She eased herself through the bushes almost without noise. Moralin followed until Figt hesitated, putting one hand on the beastie, which leaned against her. For a while the three of them lay motionless.

  Moralin heard nothing except a soft whirring sound and the rustle of a slight breeze in the bushes. Then the sound of a human voice blew toward them. Figt eased forward—and stopped. Moralin wiggled up beside her and peered over.

  Short, squat men, perhaps twenty of them, with powerful-looking arms were making a slow circle on the plain below them. They were wearing only loincloths. Moralin tried to make out the faces. They had deformed noses. No. Their noses were pierced. Each nose had a yellow stick or bone jutting out from either side. A streak of brown paint ran from the top of each man’s forehead, down his nose. The men carried curved knives made of some kind of metal.

  The beastie gave a low growl. “Mud-ugly,” Moralin whispered in Delagua. “Doing what?” she added in Arkera.

  Figt said nothing.

  After a while the circle shifted, and Moralin saw that they had surrounded a garrag. It swung its massive head. Several of the men leaped forward to wedge a stick in the animal’s jaws. The garrag clamped down. Shouts echoed as the men tightened in a coil. A few moments later they scattered. They had used the stick to flip the garrag onto its back, where its powerful legs rowed helplessly.

  She watched the men stab the animal. Without ceremony, they carried it off. Moralin turned. Figt had an ill and stricken look on her face. And why not? Praise the Great Ones that the men had a garrag to focus on. “How can thee make …” She paused and started over, this time using a Delagua word. “How can thee make revenge on such as that?” The other girl curled in the sand and moaned.

  By now heat had seized the day, and they stayed on the bluff in the slight shade of the bushes. At dusk Moralin opened her eyes and saw that Figt was sitting up, gazing at nothing. “What is it?”

  “Strawhopper eaters.” Figt spit in the grass. “They also want to eat garrag and other unclean things.” She put her head down on her arm.

  “They are the sand dwellers … the ones who killed thy family?”

  “Yes.” The whisper shimmered in the air as if it were something alive. “I made those who survived tell me everything. They said these strawhopper eaters cut the leg of Nazet, my baby brother.” Figt pointed to the curved scar by her ankle. “So I cut my own leg.” With one finger, she made the gesture of a tear, showing her mourning. “If only I had gone with them.”

  “Shall we walk?” Moralin asked after a while.

  “No.” Figt’s voice was harsh and final.

  This was the end of their journey then. They both would die here in some kind of attempt at revenge. Moralin whispered the death prayer and sat in silence. Did the messengers for judgment and pity venture into the sand waste?

  As night wore on, she watched the way the moon shadows folded themselves over rocks and bushes, turning everything strange, and she longed for swallowing darkness. She offered Figt a few last berries from her pouch, and Figt held out a precious piece of dried meat in return.

  After a while Moralin half slept, her fingers twined in the beastie’s fur.

  In the early morning Figt found a fleshy fruit covered with spines and showed Moralin how to scrape off the prickles and suck out the juices. As they ate, Moralin suddenly wished she could tell the other girl that she herself sometimes wondered about that terrible day she’d been dangled over the wall. If she hadn’t run away from Mother and Grandmother after that fish, would the rough hands have grabbed her? Such small things could change a whole life—a decision not to go with family one day. A fish.

  Her thoughts hissed and burned as if some legless creeper had been let loose in her head. If not for the fish, she might have grown up small and sweet, loving the leap of the thread rather than the leap and spin of bodies. The thud of the heddle rather than the thud of a body hitting the ground. She might have become wonderfully skilled at cloth work, and when it came her time to enter the secret temple chambers—Figt bumped her arm, interrupting her thoughts.

  For a moment they were looking boldly at each other. Moralin wondered if her own face was anything like Figt’s, full of desperation and despair. “What can thee do against them?” she asked. “Forget them.” She made her voice soft and coaxing. “Why should you and I not find a way out of this sand place?”

  The huge, colorless sky stretched above them was so vast she thought she could drown in it. Figt appeared to be thinking. “Where would we go?”

  “I will try to find the city. As for thee—” She tried to think if there was any place the girl could hide until the rains came.

  “All right,” Figt finally said with no emotion. “But give thy word.
Help me get inside thy city.”

  “Inside?” In Delagua she said, “What craziness is this?”

  “Give it.” Figt grabbed Moralin’s arm roughly.

  “But—”

  She spoke in a tumble of words. “Here is my story. The strawhopper eaters sold my brother and sister to the Delagua. My sister escaped and reached the camp in the forest.”

  “No one escapes from the city,” Moralin said firmly.

  Figt gave her a baleful look. “Thee did.” She rushed on. “My sister died in the night from the wounds of her journey. I have decided I will go to my brother.”

  A distant shout made them both fall silent. In a few quick moments they crossed the bluff. Sand blew up in Moralin’s face. She could feel grit between her teeth. In a low voice she said, “Thee cannot call what happened to me—”

  “Ssst.”

  Figt crept to the edge. She gave a tiny grunt. Moralin wriggled to see. Below were the people who had captured the garrag the day before, whooping and running in a place where coarse, dried grass poked through the sand.

  She lay beside Figt on her stomach to watch. “What are they doing?”

  “Catching strawhoppers.”

  “Ugh. Too close.” Moralin scooted and then crawled backward. Figt started to follow, but with a whooshing noise, the ground under her broke. She let out a short, scared burst of sound and disappeared.

  The beastie barked. “Back.” Moralin grabbed for him. “And shut up.” She hugged him around the neck and held on.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  MORALIN LAY SALT-STILL AND BURIED HER head in the beastie’s fur. The beastie smelled of sweat and dust, but it was alive and the nearest thing she had to an ally in this place. “Oh, Cora Linga,” she whispered. “How I wish you could hear me.” Please don’t let the strawhopper eaters look up here. I’ll forgive this beastie and take care of it. I’ll do anything.

  Don’t be rock-stupid. These people apparently were allies of the Delagua. But she felt ill, thinking of their pierced noses and menacing faces.