“I’m trying to save you, but you have to help me,” Kiri whispered. Her throat tightened as she considered how close Charro must be by now. “Go back to your den.”
The panther didn’t move, and Kiri began to feel desperate. “Please. Go away.”
The panther’s fiery green eyes burned into Kiri for a moment longer. Then the panther focused her senses on something to the side. All was quiet.
A shot rang out, shattering the morning stillness.
“Run!” shouted Kiri.
The panther was already moving. It bolted from the grass not ten feet from where Kiri stood.
Kiri’s heart pounded. “Go, go, go!”
The panther bounded away, swift as water slipping through grasping fingers. It was all right—the shot must have missed. Nothing could catch the panther now. She was too fast and powerful.
Kiri beamed as she watched the panther dart through the ghost forest, muscles bunching and reaching. She leapt over logs with unspeakable grace. Kiri had never seen anything so beautiful.
But when the panther reached the clearing, her steps weren’t so quick and graceful anymore. She stumbled, dragging her muzzle across the ground. Then she raised her head and continued on in an odd skipping gait, one of her front paws raised.
Kiri gasped—it couldn’t be.
She sprinted after the panther, a cry lodged in her throat.
By the time Kiri entered the clearing, the panther mother was almost halfway across. Halfway to the den. She stumbled in the tall grass and didn’t reappear.
Kiri raced through the tall grass, not caring how the leaves scratched and cut her. Her stomach dropped when she saw the panther lying on her side. She staggered closer, not believing her eyes.
The panther’s tawny fur, matted with blood, glistened in the early-morning light. For a few seconds the panther’s legs continued to move, reaching for earth that was no longer beneath her paws. Then they stopped.
“No,” whispered Kiri. She knelt by the panther, half expecting the creature to growl and lunge at her like she’d done before. She’d welcome the panther’s snarls and fierceness now, but the panther barely moved. Her breath came in and out in a ragged way. So did Kiri’s. “You can’t die,” she whispered. “I can’t lose you.”
“Stay back! Don’t go near it!” shouted a gruff voice.
Charro barreled across the clearing toward her, long gun clutched in his hands, but Kiri ignored him.
She reached out to touch the soft fur of the panther’s neck. A shiver coursed through her. She didn’t remember losing her mother. She couldn’t recall a single thing about the day her ma had died. But Kiri knew she’d always remember this. The warm softness of the panther’s fur. The sticky smell of blood. The sound of the panther’s last breaths. The red glow of the rising sun. It wasn’t just the panther that she was losing. She felt as if her connection to her ma, and the wild wonder that made such connections possible, was being torn away. This can’t happen! she wanted to scream.
The panther’s fiery green eyes remained open, only they weren’t focused on Kiri. Instead, the panther’s gaze seemed fixed on something in the distance. Kiri knew exactly what the panther was looking for and where she’d been running to. The realization hollowed out a place in Kiri’s chest. The cubs would be like her now. Motherless. Lost.
“I’ll take care of them,” whispered Kiri. “I’ll keep them safe. I promise.”
Perhaps the panther understood, because she seemed to relax. Her breath shuddered out once more, but not in. Then there was no breath at all.
“Get back!” shouted Charro.
Kiri buried her face in the panther’s side, willing the creature to breathe again. It made no difference. The panther remained horribly still. There was only the lingering warmth of her body, and soon the warmth, too, would be gone.
“Crazy waller girl,” said Charro, pulling Kiri away from the panther’s body. “You almost got yourself killed.”
All three search parties rushed to the clearing, called by the sound of the gunshot. Kiri heard Nessa, Tarun, and Paulo arrive. Not long after, her da was by her side and hugging her, but she barely felt it.
The adults began arguing. Charro claimed salvage rights to the panther’s body, to which her da responded with the same sort of angry disbelief as when the sea turtle had been killed. “Salvage rights? That’s why you shot it? For salvage rights?”
His accusations provoked Charro into his own blustery outrage. “I saved your daughter, Waller Man. The panther was hunting her. Senek saw. It was in the grass, stalking her. If I hadn’t shot it, she’d be dead.”
“I needed it alive.”
“Would you prefer I let the panther eat her?”
“You could have scared it off. Done something else.”
This time, Kiri didn’t try to stop the argument. What was the point? She kept running her fingers through the panther’s tawny fur, watching the dust whirl into the air. How could something so beautiful be dead? How could a devi be dead?
“Greedy wallers,” snapped Charro. “All you care about are the things you can get. I saved her. You should be thanking me.”
“I needed the panther alive to get Kiri medicine,” said Martin.
Charro was silent for a moment. “It’s still worth something,” he replied. “The boat people will trade plenty for it. Tell you what—I’ll split my salvage with you. Maybe the boat people will have the medicine she needs.”
Her da cursed and paced by the panther’s body. Kiri wanted to shoo him away so she could be alone with her sadness. Couldn’t they see what she’d lost? What they’d all lost? How could they keep arguing?
“I’ve already contacted my patrons,” continued her da. “They’re sending a cargo tridrone at first light. When they find out the panther’s been shot…You’re not going to get anything for this, Charro. None of us are. You didn’t save my daughter. You robbed her of her best chance.”
At this, Kiri looked up. Was her da saying that she was going to die now too? She knew she was sick. She hadn’t forgotten her fever. But she’d thought now that her da was here, he’d find a way to save her. Was he saying he couldn’t?
“Wait,” said Paulo. “Look.”
Kiri glanced at her friend, but he didn’t look back at her. He seemed to be staring at something else across the clearing. “Think the wallers will trade medicine for that?” he asked, pointing at the saw palms.
One of the cubs peeked out between two palm leaves at the mouth of the den. Kiri recognized his startling blue eyes and fluffy white paws.
Cricket.
Her first thought was to chase him back into the den, only it was too late. The curious spotted cub was always the first out of the den, and the first to bound toward his mother when she returned. Brave, adventurous Cricket had already given himself away.
Cricket stalked out of the den, growling and with hackles raised. Did he smell his mother’s presence? Was he coming to protect her?
“By the devi,” said Charro, seeing the cub.
Martin gasped and stepped closer to the den.
The cub’s siblings, Mustache and Skitter, lingered in the mouth of the den behind him. Their spotted fur had kept them camouflaged in the dappled shade of the palm leaves, yet the more they moved, the more visible they became.
No, thought Kiri. Stay hidden! Her head reeled and her vision blurred. She didn’t want others to see the cubs, and she didn’t want the cubs to see their dead mother. Everything was going wrong at once.
“Three of them,” said Martin, continuing to edge toward the den.
“Not so fast, Waller,” grumbled Charro. He cocked the long gun. “You don’t get to take all of them. These belong to the village. We need the food and supplies that trading them will provide.”
“Be reasonable, Charro,” said Martin. He’d unslung the fancy waller gun from his shoulder. “These need to go to the wallers.”
Anger swelled up and broke loose in Kiri as she realized what Charro and
her da were discussing. “Stop!” she yelled.
She stumbled toward the den, putting herself between the humans and the cubs she’d promised to protect. “You can’t have them.”
Both her da and Charro froze. Each of them held a gun, and they seemed torn between aiming at each other and aiming at the cubs.
“They’re not yours. I won’t let you take them.” Kiri tried to sound fierce, but her voice faltered. A buzzing filled her ears, like a thousand angry flies approaching.
She thought the sound was only in her head. Then it grew louder and everyone looked up.
“You can’t take them!” she shouted to the sky, and the flies, and the cruel day that had already taken far too much.
A tridrone descended over the clearing, drowning out her protests.
The tridrone was the same dragonfly shape as the one that had landed on the beach several days before, only several times bigger. Two people could be seen through the dark, bulbous windows of the head, and the abdomen looked big enough to swallow a stilt house. One of the figures waved at Martin, whose satphone blinked with an urgent red light.
“Drop your weapons!” ordered the pilot from speakers on the tridrone’s belly.
Martin set down his rifle and shouted for Charro to do the same, but Charro didn’t listen. He hunched over his gun and bolted into the cover of the pines surrounding the clearing.
Kiri didn’t see what the adults did next. She was too concerned with herding the cubs back into the den before the waller pilot spotted them. If the wallers didn’t see the cubs, they might let them be. Then she could take care of them and keep them safe, like she’d promised their mother.
“Go!” Kiri shouted to the cubs. “Get away from here!”
Cricket flattened his black-tipped ears and refused to move. His gaze remained fixed on his mother’s body in the grass.
Kiri waved her hands menacingly at the cub, not caring if he scratched or bit her as long as she got him to go back under the cover of the saw palm bushes.
“Drop your weapons and lie down on the ground,” ordered the pilot. “This is your final warning.”
Instead of running away, Cricket prowled forward and sniffed Kiri’s hand. He must have smelled his mother’s scent on her, because he immediately stopped bristling and brushed his head against her fingers. His eyes were the same stunning blue that the sea turtle’s had been.
Kiri pulled her hand back. “No. Get away from me,” she said. “Your mother is dead, understand? Because of me she’s dead! You have to hide!”
The cub didn’t leave. He swiped at her leg like she was playing a game.
“On the ground now or you will be shot!” boomed the pilot.
Kiri heard her da calling to her, but she ignored him. She had to scare Cricket back into the bushes. She reached for her mother’s knife, thinking that the shiny blade might startle him enough to send him running into the den.
The shot hit her shoulder and knocked her off her feet. She skidded across the ground, clenching her eyes against the pain. Then she felt a rough tongue licking her cheek.
Cricket was still there, protecting her now.
Go home, she tried to tell him, but her mouth would barely move. Pain spread from her shoulder to her chest to her heart, dragging her into darkness.
Kiri had never talked with anyone about how she pictured death. It wasn’t something fugees in the village liked to talk about. And it wasn’t something she felt she could discuss with her da.
For fugees, death was an ocean engulfing an island—something surrounding them that had to be constantly struggled against, otherwise it would wash away the land. Kiri knew most fugees believed in ghosts. It wasn’t uncommon to see a netter standing with his back to the forest and his hands clasped over his ears because a ghost was calling to him and he didn’t want to listen to it. Or to see a woman walking briskly away from the waste pits, telling some spirit behind her to go bug someone else.
The ghosts that fugees claimed to see usually weren’t scary. The opposite, actually. Fugees talked about ghosts as if they were friendly, enticing figures, and that was why they wouldn’t speak to them. They believed that if they paid attention to ghosts, they’d be lured away from life, and death would claim them as sure as the ocean claiming an insect that landed too close to the waves.
There was only one day of the year when it was acceptable for fugees to speak to the dead. On the fall solstice, when night first became longer than day, each family made a feast for the ones they’d lost. They set out blankets near the edge of the forest and sat and talked with spirits for hours, pouring cups of palm wine for guests no one else could see. They even brought flowers and toys and other objects for the ghosts to enjoy.
Sometimes Kiri saw women crying and laughing with the children they’d lost. Or men nodding as they listened to the voices of fathers who’d died. But when the sun set, they buried all the food, flowers, and toys, and folded up their blankets. They walked back to the fires burning in the village and didn’t speak of the dead again for another year, no matter how many times the dead tried to speak to them.
For the fugees, death wasn’t a mystery or another world. It was as common as hunger. Everyone in the village had lost someone. Death was the norm and life the exception, and so death had to be struggled against for life to persist.
For wallers, death was something else entirely—at least, that was the sense of it Kiri had gotten from her da. He never talked about death or what he thought happened after someone died, but he’d made it clear that he thought the fugee feasts for the dead were a ridiculous waste of time and resources, and their claims of seeing ghosts were superstitious nonsense. Death, as he saw it, was simply the absence of life—a void that was pointless to contemplate, and discussing what happened after death would be like discussing why two plus two didn’t equal five. It simply didn’t, and that was that.
As far back as Kiri could remember, though, she’d imagined death differently. She didn’t see it as something to be struggled against in a constant tug-of-war between the living and the dead. And it wasn’t an absence to be ignored, either. Instead, she’d always pictured death as this: a mirror.
But not an ordinary mirror.
Death, as Kiri imagined it, was a mirror that reflected all of life. In death, everything she’d experienced—all the people she’d known and all the things she’d seen, touched, tasted, smelled, and heard—could be reflected back to her. She could experience any moment over and over again until she finally understood it. And when she was ready, she might tumble back into life to collect new experiences and find a new death.
Kiri sometimes wondered if there might be other worlds besides this one that she could live in, or maybe she’d be reborn as other creatures in this world. But between each life there’d be a place of reflection, like a room full of mirrors bouncing light back and forth until it blurred into one experience, and she became the mirror. Because life needed to see itself reflected somewhere.
So Kiri didn’t fear death, and she didn’t think death would be paradise, either. She thought it could be both a beautiful and a terrible place, depending on what experiences she collected and how she reflected those experiences back to herself. That’s why she wasn’t surprised to find herself, after being shot and losing consciousness, in a room where the air felt cool and crisp, as it did on the mornings by the shore that she’d always liked best. Nor was she surprised to find herself bathed in warm light, with the softest ground beneath her.
What was a surprise, though, was the sky. The clouds were dark blue instead of white, and the air between them glowed as orange as the center of a honeysuckle flower. While Kiri studied the clouds, three enormous purple birds flew past, with long, forked tails that streamed behind them like ribbons in a breeze. A strange fake-flowery smell tinged the air as well.
Nothing she saw or smelled seemed close to anything she’d experienced in life before. The sky, clouds, and long-tailed purple birds were entirely new to her.
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As she considered how this could be, it dawned on her that she might not have died after all.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said a woman leaning over Kiri. She wore a crisp white shirt and had straight, shiny hair. She didn’t look up at the orange sky with blue clouds, not even when a flock of green-feathered snakes with yellow stripes fluttered past. “How is your comfort level?”
Kiri lifted a finger to point at the sky.
The woman finally glanced up, right as what appeared to be a gigantic red alligator with four black wings flew a loop. She shook her head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “The night nurse must have done that,” she said, speaking in a terse way that sounded odd to Kiri. Then the woman reached out and touched something on a nearby vid screen.
A moment later, the sky changed. Now it was light blue with white clouds. It looked almost normal, except that several kittens played on the clouds, chasing balls of string.
“There. Better?” asked the woman.
“It’s a vid!” said Kiri. “The sky is all a vid!” She stared in wonder, having never seen a vid screen so big or realistic before.
The woman sighed and shook her head. “You’re a very lucky girl, you know. In all my years as a nurse, this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone as old as you get a bio-visa.”
“Bio-visa?” asked Kiri.
The woman pointed to a cluster of thin black, green, and purple lines on the inside of Kiri’s wrist. It looked similar to her da’s waller mark, except it was smaller and shaped like a blackbird feather, with the odd rainbow sheen of oil on water. Kiri tried rubbing the mark, but it seemed etched into her skin.
“Careful. The nano ink is still setting. It had to be installed before you could be given treatment. You must have some very influential friends to be granted a mark like that.”
Friends? thought Kiri. She looked up at the woman, wondering what friends she could be talking about, but her gaze kept sliding past the woman to the kittens frolicking on the clouds. They looked almost like the panther cubs. And with that thought, Kiri’s jaw clenched and stomach twisted. The cubs were in danger. They needed her. “Where are the cubs?” she asked, trying to sit up.
The Last Panther Page 11
