The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Why, he asked, did my owner bring me here. Then, had I never flown before? And why had I determined to break away? Why should I choose this moon, of all places, to be my new home?

  “Because I can fly here. The gravity—do you understand? I am freer. I have more power. But then I had no choice about coming. They forced me to do that. My choice was to break away from them.”

  “Have they gone back, Fire Jump?” He called me by name! My heart pounded with a hope that our friendship still held.

  “They have not gone back,” I said. “Each day that you and I walked, I was in danger of being recaptured. It was not vultures that flew over us, it was the Karloora space ship.”

  “Your story is very strange,” said Stone Jaw. “Much stranger than you know.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you are a vulture.”

  My brain swam with dizziness.

  I breathed slowly, deeply, yet with extraordinary effort. I was fighting off a passion to drop down and seize Stone Jaw by the throat and shake him until he swallowed the word.

  “You are wrong, Stone Jaw!” I squalled, tossing my head defiantly. “But we understand each other now. You’ve seen me. You’re taking back all those pledges of friendship. All right. That’s all gone. The slate is clean.”

  “Wait! I didn’t say that, Fire Jump—”

  He kept on with his shouting, but I swept off into the morning sky far out of hearing.

  I glanced back to see Breath of Clover persuading him to get on the growser, and together they rode to the bend of the stream a short distance away. The other growser had stopped for water, and one of its two riders was beckoning to Breath of Clover to come meet him.

  What did I care if the girl and her young warrior friend were about to meet? What did I care if she told him she had narrowly escaped being seized by me?

  Did it make any difference to me that his name was Flint Fingers and that he was an expert killer of vultures?

  Why should it? I cared nothing for men. My bitter vow was to break clean from them. The sunlight was good up here—and the air—and the freedom! This was my world, and it felt right to my wings.

  Was I not the most lordly creature of this planet? What had I to do. with those poor silly creatures who were doomed to stick to the ground? I could despise them, ignore them.

  Or could I?

  My human curiosity pulled me back down toward the line of trees that banked the stream. I skimmed over them almost silently; I was getting cleverer at this art of flying.

  I alighted on a dead limb. The two parties of growser riders were coming together down there below me, at a point where the trail narrowed between the river and the cliff. As long as I was not seen this limb was a box seat from which to watch the show.

  Stone Jaw’s face was hard, and I knew a turmoil filled his brain.

  Breath of clover, riding ahead of him, had regained her poise.

  She was a beautiful, graceful creature, and the eagerness in her eyes as she rode up to meet her young warrior was plain to see. Though still a trifle nervous from her recent shock, she evidently felt secure, now that there were two growsers to keep watch for any return of danger.

  But the growsers didn’t see me. Neither could they smell me, apparently, though my hiding place was so close to the trail that I could have dropped a leaf on the second growser as it passed under me.

  It was as handsome a beast as the first. Its fierce brutal head rode high and gleamed with bluish tints as the sunshine struck it. Its arched neck was a brilliant red, shifting in hues as it turned in the light.

  The tall young man, Flint Fingers, who sat astride this glorious mount was likewise a handsome creature, but I didn’t like him. He and the dragon had the same appeal for me. Both of them somehow reminded me of Tokel’s arrogant swagger, his ready brutality.

  The other occupant of this beast was almost hidden from sight. She was clinging to the growser’s tail, ducking her head down as if she were playing stowaway. She was a muddy unkempt urchin of fourteen or fifteen, as nearly as I could guess. Obviously she had been dragged in the dust.

  Breath of Clover did not appear to notice her at first.

  “Flint Fingers!” Clover greeted, smiling eagerly. “How did you find me?”

  “With my sharp eyes.” Flint Fingers laughed out of the side of his mouth. “I can follow your trail as easy as the river follows its bed. So you found your father at last.”

  “I told you yesterday,” Breath of Clover said, “that we should come out to these cliffs. I remembered—”

  Breath of Clover broke off. She leaned to one side to gaze at the second passenger. Meanwhile Flint Fingers and Stone Jaw exchanged blunt greetings, and the young warrior began to admonish the older man over the trouble had caused. All of this searching could have been avoided, Flint Fingers said, if Stone Jaw had simply climbed to a high hill and started a fire signal.

  “My sharp eyes would have caught it,” Flint Fingers declared. “I have the sharpest eyes in the valley.”

  “Who’s with you?” Breath of Clover asked.

  “No one,” said Flint Fingers. “There’s someone back there—” Flint Fingers spun around as if a whirlwind had lifted him.

  The impish creature back of him leaped off the growser’s tail laughing like a demon. She waggled her head from side to side and swung her arms in teasing gestures.

  “Hu-hu-hu! The sharpest eyes in the valley!” she cackled.

  Flint Fingers reddened. “Tangles! What are you doing here?”

  “Taking a ride with you.”

  “Get away, you silly little gob of mud. I ought to jerk the tangled hair off your head. I ought to—”

  “I dare you to do it!” the taunting girl flung back at him.

  Flint Fingers jumped at the challenge. He was evidently the sort of proud young hothead who would jump at any challenge, and the wail of Breath of Clover only fanned the flames of his temper.

  “It’s only Tangles. She’s harmless.” Breath of Clover’s words went unheeded. Her young warrior bounded, to the ground and started chasing the, ragged, tangle-haired girl.

  Her dirty bare feet were nimble. She skipped ahead of him and leaped up a tier of rocks. He followed, muttering darkly that he would teach her to play such tricks.

  “Let her alone,” Breath of Clover cried, tagging after them.

  “I’ll not let her alone,” Flint Fingers swore. “I’ve warned her to keep away from me, the dirty-faced little worm. I’ll teach her—Stop it! If you throw another rock I’ll club you—”

  “Why don’t you do it?” The swiftfooted girl could hurl stones and taunts with equal vigor, and throw in a scornful laugh for good measure. Flint Fingers was boiling mad.

  He chased her along the rocks, back and forth under perch. Suddenly he had her trapped on a bit of cliff above him and he picked up a club. He started to climb up. She kicked at him. He drew himself up only far enough to swing the club at her. He began beating her feet.

  She didn’t cry out. She tried kicking, but her feet were taking a drubbing.

  It was Breath of Clover who screamed, trying to stop it. “Don’t, Flint! You’ll make her fall! Don’t!”

  The girl’s feet were already bleeding. But no cries from Breath of Clover or Stone Jaw had any control over the young warrior. His pride had been injured. That dirty faced little practical joker called Tangles was going to pay for what she had done.

  Before I thought, I swooped down.

  Flint Fingers didn’t hear me coming. Breath of Clover screamed, but that meant nothing to him. I was almost on him before his eyes jerked up at me. The color went out of his pinkish-bronzed face.

  My right talon dug into his hair and kicked backward in the split second that I hovered over him. A slight kick, but enough. Flint Fingers went rolling down the stony cliff.

  I arched back into the air and settled proudly on my perch.

  Flint Fingers scrambled to his feet almost immediately. I had expect
ed that, for his fall hadn’t been dangerous. And I wasn’t surprised that he shook his fist at me and gave me a round of Clankolite cursing.

  Neither was I surprised that the beautiful Breath of Clover ran to her father, crying like the terrified child she was, and that they mounted their growser, who was now looking hungrily in my direction.

  But I confess that I was surprised by the words of that tangle-haired impish girl on the ledge, after what I had done to befriend her. Her dark squinty eyes froze on me with an undecipherable stare and she gasped, “Vulture! . . . Vulture!”

  But it gratified me to observe that she didn’t run, and she didn’t scream. If anything, there was a hint of admiration in her look of breathless amazement.

  However there were six pairs of eyes upon me, not neglecting those of the two growsers, and it didn’t become me to become too much fascinated by any one pair.

  Flint Fingers, I observed, had regained his bravado, had remounted his charger, and was now in the process of fishing some weapons out of a supply sack.

  “Wait, Flint Fingers, wait!” This harsh muttering came from Stone Jaw.

  But Flint Fingers was a law unto himself, as I have noted before. He began shooting arrows for me. I didn’t like it. It was easy enough to dodge the arrows, but I didn’t care for any more of Flint Fingers’ company. I gave a squawkish laugh and sprang into the air to circle high into the morning sky.

  And that might have been the end. I had had enough of men, whether from Karloora or this moon. It was time for me to go my own way. But one thing drew me back.

  As I looked down from the clouds and saw that the surly young warrior refused to let the dirty-face girl ride back to the village—as I watched her limping along on her sore feet, unable to keep up with the procession—I spiralled back toward the ground.

  CHAPTER VIII

  It was Flint Fingers, not Stone Jaw or his daughter, who had forced Tangles to walk. Now they were on out of sight and she was alone.

  She was a pitiful thing, limping along the dusty rocky trail, crying and swearing and calling down the wrath of the Clankolite spirits on Flint Fingers and all his kinfolks.

  I followed along after. I was sure she would fall by the wayside. But she tottered on until she came to a small brook. She dropped down into the sluggish waters and drank and bathed at the same time. That bed of wet sand might have been a pallet of feathers, the way she relaxed in it.

  She hadn’t bothered to remove any clothing. Like Breath of Clover, she was dressed in a tight-fitting garment that appeared to be endless wrappings of coarse ribbons. But what a contrast. Breath of Clover’s costume had been neat, almost stylish. This girl’s wrappings were dirt and rags.

  Her hair, too, was in sad disarray. As she wallowed in the stream and the water oozed around the back of her head, her unkempt tresses became a mop rag.

  At first I wasn’t sure whether she knew I had followed. But as I swooped across to a tree that cast a shadow beside her, she scrambled to her knees and reached for a stone.

  Her lips and eyes were tight with suspicion. She was watching my every move. Hers was a fighting face—though it might have been a pretty face, if it hadn’t been streaked with lines of tension—and dirt. With her, belligerence was plainly a habit. She lived in a world full of enemies.

  “My name is Fire Jump,” I called down to her. Her arms jerked with surprise. She hardly knew whether to believe her own ears. But I went on talking. “You shouldn’t be afraid of me. I’m not Flint Fingers. I’m Fire Jump. Who are you?”

  She began biting her lips. She didn’t intend to answer me. So I answered myself. “Your name is Tangles, isn’t it? I heard them call you that.”

  She began to sniffle and sob.

  “What are you crying about, Tangles? Do your feet hurt? Aren’t you going to thank me for making Flint Fingers stop?”

  She rubbed her wet fist across her face and stopped crying. Again she was hard with suspicion.

  “I know how you feel,” I called down to her.

  It took several minutes of talking before I gained ground. And no wonder. She was certain I was intent on plunging down to capture her, and was only killing time.

  “We are alike, you and I,” I said. “I’ve been mistreated too. But I’ve run away. No one can hurt me now. Why don’t you run away?”

  “I’ve got no one to run away from,” she said sulkily.

  “What about your family? What about your village?”

  “No family. No village. Nobody.”

  “Don’t you live with the same people as Stone Jaw and his daughter? You’re a Clankolite, aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But I drift from one village to another. Nobody cares. I go where I please. I’ll hang around some family until they push me out. Then I go on to another.”

  “Do you ever go hungry?”

  “Why should I? I can steal, can’t I? Besides, I can hunt. Sometimes I follow the boys when they go hunting. But they don’t like me. I’m always getting in fights. Everybody hates me. That’s because I always make trouble.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Why not?” she said sullenly. “I like to fight.”

  “I do too,” I said, “if there’s something to fight for. But I don’t like to go around making trouble.”

  She gave a cynical sniff, looking up at me skeptically. “Then what are you doing around here bothering me?”

  “You need help, Tangles, after that beating you took. You can hardly walk. The darkness will catch you before you can get anywhere. But I could help you.”

  “How?”

  “Pick you up and fly over the hills to wherever you live. You could be back to the closest village right away.”

  I tried to smile, and some of my old trainers might have recognized the drawn corners of my beak as an expression of a pleasant humor. But Tangles didn’t. As she watched me, perched comfortably at the top of the tree, her scowl deepened. She was lying on her stomach, her elbows in the sand, her bruised feet in the glassy water. The stone—her weapon—lay within reach.

  “I don’t trust you,” she said slowly. “I’ll admit you’re not like the other vultures. You talk better. I’ve heard them—captured ones—and they snarl and squawk and blurt. Their words aren’t much better than the grunts of beasts. But you talk as well as a Clankolite. Yes, even better . . . But I don’t trust you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a vulture. And I know vultures. They flew away with my mother. I was just old enough to remember.”

  “You’re wrong about me,” I said, feeling the warmth of anger race through my feathered neck. “I came from Karloora. I was made there.

  Someone decided to create a freak. I’m it.”

  “You’re a vulture.”

  “I’m not. I’ve never seen a vulture. I’ve just come to this Blue Moon. But nobody believes me.”

  “You’re a good talker,” Tangles said. “I wish I could lie like you do.”

  “Look, Tangles,” I said. “Do you see this badge?”

  I turned the gold engraved button so that it flashed sunlight in her eyes. “What about it?”

  “It came from Karloora,” I said. “That proves I’m telling the truth. I’m not a creature of this Blue Moon. You can’t match this emblem on the Blue Moon.”

  “It proves nothing,” she said stubbornly. “I have a coin that came from Karloora, but I never came from there.”

  “Show me your coin,” I said skeptically.

  She drew a kerchief out of her clothes and untied a knot in the corner. My head bent forward and turned from side to side. I was too far away to be sure the coin was genuine, but my eagle eyes were almost convinced. It looked like a Karloora coin.

  “Where did you get that?” I snapped. “You would like to know, wouldn’t you, Fire Jump? But you never will . . . Stay where you are!”

  I sprang from my perch without warning, and the girl leaped to her feet. She was alert to danger, all right. My
words hadn’t changed that. She grabbed the rock with one hand, thrusting the treasure of her kerchief into the breast of the ragged garment with the other.

  But my sudden leap had nothing to do with her. I was winging full speed away. Then a wide patch of blue shadow floated over her. She turned sharply and saw the passing space ship.

  It was the Labazoff convertible. Less than a hundred yards beyond the stream it floated down to a landing. I had flown at the first sight of it.

  My wings were a stroke ahead of my wits. But in a flash I swept down and sped back toward Tangles. She was in a panic. She hurled rocks at me so fast I had to dodge in flight. But I fluttered to a stop and squawked at her with a sharp tongue.

  “That’s a Karloora ship. They’re after me. Come on.”

  “They can have you.” she snapped.

  “They’re a tough crowd. Let me take you out of here—”

  “Get away, you vulture. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

  “Come on—quick.”

  “I won’t.”

  The stones began to fly again, so I sped away. There was no time to say more, and no use. The girl was a fool.

  The Karloora men had seen me. It was all chance, but I had played my luck too far, and chance could be my undoing. I glanced back at the perch I had occupied. Yes, I had been perfectly silhouetted against the northern sky. Some of the men were piling out of the parked ship, racing over toward the stream, waving their disint guns.

  Let them come. I was already half a mile out of their range, gaining altitude with every stroke. Did they think they could capture me? I had wings. Those poor silly humans had to run around on the ground. It was a farce, their trying to threaten me into subjection with guns. I would be worth nothing to them dead. And I was just as determined never to be taken alive by them as Tangles was not to be taken alive by me.

  But in that moment something happened that tied my heart into knots. The Labazoff convertible, slid off the ground and took to the air, making a graceful turn.