Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  It stopped. Stood. Swayed. A small cry escaped its lips, almost a whimper. Close enough now, I saw blood pouring from one eye. I raised the gun again, aiming at its face. The light played across its other eye and it mewled again and dropped.

  Liam called, “Chelo!” Fear edged his voice. Close, so close. I sank to my knees, watching the cat. Liam stopped a few meters away and approached carefully. It lay stretched out, one leg at an odd angle, its golden, bloody face marked with dark scars where the laser had burned fur, and in a few cases, raw flesh. Its tail still twitched and its sides heaved.

  Carefully watching the dying animal, Liam stepped slowly to my side. “Are you okay?” he whispered, touching my cheek.

  My breath was still fast and my hands shook. “I… I think so. Thanks for the warning.” I reached up to sweep the blood from my forehead with my free hand. My palm fell back coated in red, blood dripping from my fingers into the green grass. “I don’t—don’t look so good, do I?”

  He shook his head, looking around, his eyes narrowed.

  “Are there more of them?”

  “I don’t see any more.” He grimaced. “You were right. I should never have separated us.” He stepped in toward the dying cat, pulling his knife out.

  I held out my hand. “Let me.”

  He stopped, then grinned. “Sure.” He held out the knife. “Be careful—it’s not dead yet.”

  “It will be.” The knife felt heavy and solid in my hand. The cat struggled, pushing up feebly with its front legs, and I grabbed it under the chin and cut its throat with the knife. Blood gushed out over the blade, warm on my hand, and pooled red in the grass. My own blood dripped from my forehead and mixed with the dead cat’s blood.

  As I let go of the great head, slick fur slid through my fingers until the head lolled back, staring from empty eyes. I stayed straddled over the carcass, staring down at the dead cat. Its jaws could have severed my throat or backbone. I put a hand up to my savaged head, feeling the deepest rent, smiling a bit at the idea I’d won. I’d brought down djuri with my bare hands, but I’d never directly taken on any kind of predator. My smile broadened.

  Liam came up next to me, his words echoing my thoughts. “It could have killed you.”

  I wiped his blade clean on the grass and handed it back to him. I stepped away from the carcass, standing unsteadily, wiping another handful of blood from my scalp. “Can you look at my head?”

  He shook himself. “Of course.” He stepped to my side, still looking around. “Kayleen!” he called, loudly. “Come here.”

  I glanced across the valley toward where she and Windy must be waiting in the trees. I couldn’t see them.

  Windy bolted from the tree cover, running free. She angled away from us, toward the narrow end of the valley closest to the mountains.

  9

  WINDY

  As soon as I saw Windy burst from cover, I screamed Kayleen’s name. She would never have let the hebra free like that. Liam took my hand and we raced toward the spot Windy had bolted from. My head swam, but fear gave me enough strength to hold onto him, to keep my footing as he pulled me along.

  Liam slowed down ten meters from the forest, putting a hand up to warn me not to race directly into possible danger. He called her name. “Kayleen?”

  Silence.

  Still no movement.

  He held his knife in one hand and pulled the laser gun out of his pocket with the other. When he glanced at me, his eyes were wide and frightened.

  Bushes rustled. “Kayleen—are you there?” I asked.

  Her voice came from up above us, quivering and soft. “I’m here.”

  I looked up, scanning the trees for her, my knees suddenly weak with relief. She was alive.

  “Are you okay?” Liam asked. “What happened?”

  Her voice tumbled through the leaves, and a single twintree branch quivered hard, as if she were shaking it to tell us where she was. “I heard something up above us, coming down, following our tracks. Windy spooked and pulled me off my feet and I lost her lead and she ran. I heard whatever it was keep coming. So I climbed up here.” I looked up, unable to spot her, watching for the twitch of branches. Two pair of twintrees shared the light with a few evergreens and two taller trees with broad trunks and wide yellow-green leaves.

  “Is it still there?” Liam asked.

  “No.” A pause. “I don’t think so. I threw branches at it, and I used the disruptor button. It headed back up the hill. A big thing, as big as the dogs, I’m sure.” Another pause. “But I think there was just one.”

  “Can you climb down and come out here?” Liam asked levelly.

  Tree limbs rustled against each other. Kayleen’s feet thumped into the soft ground and she exhaled loudly. “I’m coming.” She emerged, sap staining her clothes and two large scratches across her face. One hand bled. She ran into my arms, holding me tightly.

  In that moment, I forgave her everything.

  Liam stepped close to us, laying a hand gingerly on each of us, his brow furrowed with worry.

  “Did you see where Windy went? Is she okay?” Kayleen pushed gently from us and looked around. We did the same. There was no sign of the panicked hebra.

  “We saw her run off.” Liam pointed in the general direction of Windy’s escape. “I have no idea where she went. We were running toward you.” He put a hand on Kayleen’s shoulder and looked at her quizzically. “We’ll look after I know how you and Chelo are.” He looked back at Kayleen’s bloody face and hands. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Kayleen squinted at my face. “Better than Chelo,” she said. “What happened to you? The last I saw, that cat had almost landed on you. Are you okay?”

  “I… I don’t know. We didn’t take time to look. It scared us when Windy ran out and you weren’t with her.”

  Kayleen stepped over and reached a hand up toward my head. “Bend down. Let me see. People came to Paloma a lot with injuries. I helped her.”

  I took a deep breath, steadying myself. My footing felt strange and the valley wanted to whirl around me.

  “There’s no color in your face except the blood,” Kayleen said. “Sit down before you fall down.” Then to Liam, “Get my pack. I brought medical supplies.”

  I knelt rather than sat, wanting to be able to get to my feet easily. Liam disappeared and reappeared quickly, all three of our packs in his right hand. He set them down and stood a bit away, still keeping watch.

  Kayleen pulled a shirt out of her pack, doused it with water from her water bottle, and carefully wiped the blood away from the top of my head. “Does that hurt?”

  I grit my teeth. “Not much. What do you see?”

  “It scratched you. Not very deep, except one place I can see bone. Scalp wounds bleed a lot—it’s probably not as bad as it looks.”

  She folded the bloody shirt up and set it across my head. “Here, hold that down. Stop the bleeding.”

  I clamped the damp rag to my head while Liam quickly helped Kayleen wash her own wounds. He pulled two big spiky evergreen needles from her palm. They came out slowly, Kayleen’s face screwed up in pain as the long needles inched outward. “They have barbs on them,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “Try not to leave anything behind.” Lastly, at Kayleen’s direction, he pulled out a container of Paloma’s all-purpose antibiotic salve and applied it liberally to Kayleen’s hand and face.

  As soon as he was finished he looked over at me. “Should I put some on your head?”

  Kayleen plucked the jar from his hands. “Not yet. I want her to keep the pressure on for a little more, and then I think we need to dig up the medi-tape to close the worst cut.”

  “What?” I made a face at her. “Did you bring a whole apothecary with you?”

  She laughed. “I’m my mother’s daughter.” Pain flashed across her face. “In some ways.” She squinted down at me. “You’re probably going to have a little bit of a scar down your right temple.” Then she turned her gaze outward, in the direction Wind
y had gone.

  “Will she come if you call her?” I asked.

  Kayleen chewed her lower lip. “She might. If she can hear me.” Her voice trembled. “If she’s okay.”

  Liam frowned, glancing toward the carcass of the cat. “Let’s go out to the middle of the field. Halfway to the cat—she won’t come near that easily. But I don’t want to draw attention here, where there’s cover for whatever scared you.”

  We picked up our packs and headed wearily away from the forest. Thirty paces out, Liam turned and looked back. He kept going, another twenty paces or so, and then stopped for a few moments and watched. We saw little movement—none of the big beautiful grazers, no scary golden cats except the dead one, nothing unknown and clawed leaping from the forest. Three birds wheeled above the cat carcass, but apparently we were too close for them to land and investigate.

  “Okay,” Liam said. “Call her.”

  “Windy! Windy!” Kayleen’s voice belled out across the field, loud and clear. She shaded her eyes from the late-afternoon sun, watching the field.

  I turned to Liam. “We’ll never get back before dark, now.”

  He looked down at me, his face gentle but his eyes far away, lost in thought. “I know. I think we should stay out here in the open.” He looked up at the sky. “There’s already one moon. I expect two more. If it stays clear, we’ll be able to see well enough, and there’s plenty of wood.”

  I eyed the forest. “Probably.”

  He glanced over at Kayleen, his brows furrowed. “I hope we find that darned hebra soon. I hope she comes by herself.”

  We didn’t, and she didn’t.

  After about ten minutes, Kayleen gave up calling and turned to us, her eyes pleading. “We need to go find her. She doesn’t know anything about dangerous animals.”

  Liam pointed up at the sun, canted way too close to the horizon. “We’ll have to camp here. We have to get set first. Then we can look.”

  Tears sprang to Kayleen’s eyes, but neither she nor I argued. We gathered wood from near the riverbank, making three trips. Then, while Liam stacked the wood, I knelt on the grass while Kayleen painted my scalp with Paloma’s salve and glued together the worst bits with medi-tape, muttering. “I think you should just shave your head until this heals. But I don’t have anything to do it with.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You really are lucky. I hope Windy comes back. I was so mad at myself when she pulled away.” Proudly: “She is getting bigger. She’s much stronger. A few weeks ago she wouldn’t have been able to pull free. I hope we do get moons tonight. You’re going to look like quite a sight. We should call you the-woman-who-tangles-with-cats. You still have scars from the last paw-cat, the one that killed Jinks. You’re going to look as bad as Jenna if you keep this up.”

  She sounded so much like herself, I just let her go on, not interrupting her monologue. Maybe now we had the Kayleen we were first worried about, the one who couldn’t focus well enough to survive in the wild, but wasn’t crazy either.

  I let her ramble the whole time she finished working on me, not even listening to the words she said after a while, but just to the rise and fall of her voice.

  Liam dug a shallow pit to protect the grass, lining the edges with rocks. He stacked some of the wood inside the pit, and the rest in two small, neat piles. Then he dragged the cat carcass over, sat down on a thick log, and pulled out his notebook. “What should we call it?”

  “Do we have to do that now?” Kayleen asked. “I want to go find Windy.” The luminous rays of the sun’s last full stand in the sky poured down on her face, painting her dark hair with reddish highlights.

  I wanted to find Windy, too. “Let’s all go. Just a little ways—we need to be back before dark. But I don’t want to be separated.”

  Liam sighed. “No, that didn’t work out too well.” He stood up, looking down at the cat. “I don’t want to go far enough for this to draw scavengers. It’s our dinner.” He glanced back up at the sky. “I need to record this, and skin it, too. Why don’t you two walk up the middle of the valley, just a little ways, and call her again? We can look in earnest tomorrow if she doesn’t come back.”

  Kayleen sighed. “Come on, Chelo. I can’t stand the idea of Windy spending the night alone.”

  “Liam, please? I don’t want to be separated,” I repeated.

  “All right. But not far.”

  The trip was in vain. We didn’t see or hear Windy, or much of anything else before the tips of the western hills made inroads into the sun’s disk, and the forest shadows reached across the field for us. As the light failed, it sucked the heat from the air. The three of us walked back closely, Kayleen and I arm in arm, Liam on my other side. “She’ll be okay,” I whispered.

  Kayleen’s voice sounded small. “She has to be.”

  I held her closer, not knowing what else to do.

  Back at camp, Liam lit the fire, and the three of us stood around it for a moment, warming our hands. “Did anyone bring a pan?” he asked. He’d warned us about not carrying too much, and been completely sure we’d get back. Surely, he didn’t have one. Me either. Kayleen smiled a secretive little smile. “Of course I did. I have a pan, and an extra knife.”

  And we were the roamers.

  Liam and I looked at each other balefully as Kayleen rummaged in the bottom of her pack and produced a pan, a cup, a full set of silverware, and a long metal knife. She looked up at me and grinned. “We might have to eat one by one.”

  I laughed. “That’s fine.” I took the knife from her and turned to help Liam skin the cat. He shook his head, returned to his stone and pulled his notebook back out, settling in immediately with a focused look on his face to draw an outline of the beast. I smiled at the way the firelight played along his face even though some daylight remained. “I think we should just call it a golden cat,” I said. “It’s rather pretty.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It’s probably not directly related to a paw-cat.” He pointed to its nearly ruined face. “Its head is shaped completely different, and it has shorter teeth. Shorter claws, too. The body style is much lower, and the tail longer.”

  “So is ‘golden cat’ okay?”

  “Sure. Your kill. You can have naming rights.”

  I liked that idea. I hadn’t named anything on Fremont, and Liam had named three new species of birds just in the last year.

  As I turned back to the fire, Kayleen screamed, “Windy!” and raced past me, toward the river. I squinted and made out Windy’s head poking through the brush, and then her body, a silhouette with a tall shadow. We had decided to camp away from any cover, but the river was close enough that I heard Windy’s high welcoming bugle as she trotted out to meet her person.

  Kayleen slowed, walking carefully up to the hebra. I smiled as she and Kayleen touched noses. Kayleen picked up Windy’s lead, which somehow hadn’t gotten her tangled in anything, and the two of them walked back, heads together, like two old women friends.

  I turned back to Liam. “Perhaps this will all work out, after all.”

  He grunted. “Right, and the sun will rise twice tomorrow.” But I caught a small smile playing across his lips as the last of the daylight faded. I looked up. It was a three-moon night, a good-luck night, clear and cool. A small shower of meteors streaked across the sky from right to left. Even though I wore the scars of my day on my lightly throbbing head, hope touched my heart as I looked up to find Destiny, Faith, and Dreamcatcher all visible in the night sky.

  We’d need the luck to survive the night in the open with no perimeter.

  10

  A TEMPORARY HOME

  I took first watch, sitting with the fire at my back. Kayleen lay close to me, curled in a ball with her head on her pack and one hand clutching Windy’s lead. Liam stretched out on my other side, periodically moving restlessly.

  Grass rustled in front of me.

  Something large, given away by the silence that surrounded it. My laser was in my left hand, and
I curled my right hand around a rock nearly the size of my fist.

  The grass rustled again, about five meters in front of me, a shivering in the moonlight. Windy’s head went up and Kayleen pushed herself to a seated position, watching me. She, too, seemed to hear whatever was out there. As she turned toward it, I burst into a stand and threw the rock. Something large raced away. Just one, so more likely a cat than dogs, or something new.

  Kayleen gave me a thumbs up, and stayed seated. She held up a rock in her fist, the firelight glinting on a vein of something bright and metallic in the rock. I gestured her toward me, and she came and sat near by, pulling Windy as close to the fire as the hebra was willing to come.

  We sat in silence, listening carefully to the night noises of the valley: the rustle of small birds gathered in the trees near the river, the screech of big hunting birds over the grasses, the skitter of small mammal feet, and, twice, high nervous calls that may have been the normal sounds of the beautiful, big animals I’d seen in the valley.

  The sky clouded over, and before it was time to wake Liam great drops of rain splattered and hissed on the fire.

  Dawn found all of us awake, dripping wet, standing together near a firepit soaked in rainwater. The sky had cleared again, and mist rose from the damp grass as the heat of the day kissed it awake. I rubbed at tired, stinging eyes and said, “I guess the three-moon promise was luck if you count not being eaten.”

  Liam grunted. “Every day of being alive here is luck.” He handed out meat we’d cooked the night before. “We might as well find out more about this valley before we head back to the skimmer.” He pointed down toward the sea, a blue line an hour’s walk or so away, with nothing but grass, river, and rocks between us and it. “There’s probably no shelter that way. We’d best go up-valley and see if we get lucky and find a cave or something.”