A Whisper of Wings (22 page)

She had edged closer to him, her pupils wide with yearning. He leaned towards her, and his fur tingled as he felt her warmth. Did she want him to touch her? What if he was wrong? What if he frightened her away? Kotaru froze, too terrified to even move.

Shadarii tilted up her head, her eyes closed as she craned expectantly up towards him. Kotaru felt his spirits leap in sudden panic. She was warm and soft, sweet and oh so frightened; Kotaru leaned towards her, slowly closing in to take a kiss…

Suddenly they were falling. They flapped frantically as they spiraled down into the ferns. Shadarii landed with a thump, her legs splayed awkwardly before her. Kotaru gave a yelp and crashed onto the grass, his face thudding down between Shadarii’s thighs. Kotaru coughed and spat out grass, then recoiled from Shadarii in surprise. He looked up at Shadarii’s staring face, a dead leaf still sticking to his nose. Shadarii grinned despite herself, reaching out to pluck the leaf away.

Kotaru laughed; he laughed even though the joke was on himself. Shadarii smiled to hear him, grinning at the foolish spectacle the two of them must make.

Kotaru leaned his face against his hand and looked ruefully at Shadarii.

“Awwww skreg it! I had this all figgered out! I’d look into your eyes and tell you I’d been thinkin’ day and night about you! You’d blush - you’d almost turn to run, and then all of a sudden we’d be in one another’s arms…” He blew irritably at his whiskers. “Ah nothin’ ever goes right! It’s all true though. I have been thinkin’ of you. I came all this way just in the hope of seein’ you once again.”

Shadarii sighed in bliss, and Kotaru lay back on the grass.

“I’ve been dreamin’ about you, my lady of the lovely eyes! Your kiss stayed with me night and day. Did you kiss me, or did I kiss you? I only remember how beautiful I felt. T’was as if I’d only just now opened up my eyes - as though I’d been blind and now could see.”

He looked adoringly at Shadarii.

“I made a song for you. I made it with my flute. I’d like so very much to play it for you. Just-just to have you hear…” Kotaru reached into his pouch and drew out a round clay flute. “I’m a musician y’ see. Not much of a one - not a professional mind. I play all the time, though. When I’m out hunting or just thinkin’. I do a lot of thinkin’.”

He sighed.

“I’m poor, Shadarii. I’ve got no right to talk to a fine lady like yourself. You’re a talented woman, a fine lady and a dancer. And here I am, shabby as a woodmouse and twice as poor. But… a man has a right to dream, doesn’t he? I mean, sometimes dreams come true…”

“Oh Rain! Here I am, babbling again! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to drown you out.” Damn! It was his one great fault. He’d let his mouth run away from his head again. “Sorry! I just… Well I just want to know you, that’s all. I’d love to hear you tell me everything there is to know, every precious little detail. But slowly. Oh so slowly. Let me savour thee piece by little piece…”

Shadarii looked sick. The man gazed dreamily up at her and sighed.

“When I thought of thee, I knew you’d have a voice just like a songbird. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and imagine I could hear you sing. I always knew the woman of my dreams would sound just like a… my lady?”

Kotaru jerked upright as Shadarii stumbled away from him, her hands clasped against her throat. She looked at him in anguish, tears streaming from her eyes.

Shadarii slammed into a tree and staggered onwards, tears streaming though her fur. She was a fool; she’d let the fantasy go on too long. She wasn’t a woman, she wasn’t anything! She had no voice to speak to him, no words to sing. She was nothing but a cripple. A cripple!

The girl wept and sped into the darkness.

***

Piece by piece a mighty crowd assembled in the trees. They had come in their thousands, from every clan, from every walk of life; come to hear a message of the future.

Zhukora sat beneath the treeferns with Daimïru by her side, while Skull-faced guardians crouched in watchful silence. The jiteng team was slowly transforming into something more. They were the elite inner circle of Zhukora’s chosen. She had touched each one of them with the fire of her dreams; they had been baptised in her light and had emerged reborn.

Daimïru stirred, her black armour rattling softly.

“More people are sure to arrive, but most of them are here. Is it time to begin, Zhukora?”

Zhukora gazed out across the shifting faces of the crowd. They lined the valley, filling up the chasm with expectant faces. She had called them here, all her nation’s restless and oppressed; the youth who had been denied their futures. She stared at them in wonder, her eyes slowly opening wide.

“Look at them Daimïru! Look at them! Could you ever have dreamed so many would want to hear?” Zhukora shook her head. “Why? Why have they all come? What can I tell them that that don’t already know?”

“Oh Daimïru, why do you care so? Without your faith, I could never find my strength. So much stands against us. It frightens me at times, my love. Can we really succeed against so much?”

Daimïru clenched her fists, her young face alight with power.

“Nothing must stand in your way. Nothing! There’s no deed I would not do for you, no part of me I would not give! You are my beginning and my ending, my purpose and my soul! Without you there is no joy in life. Without you I have no reward in death! We will follow you in our thousands and in our tens of thousands!”

The black huntress stared at Daimïru in silence, then turned and slowly walked out before the crowd. A pool of radiance began to spread about her.

“We are youth. Ours is the dream of bright tomorrows, of family and friendship, of challenge and triumph. The future is our inheritance.

“My people! Youth of the Katakanii. You have come here because there are questions that you believe need answers. You have come because our future is dying here before our eyes. It is dying and the chiefs and councils will not listen!”

The girl’s voice rose to a bark of sound. People jumped as her words cracked out with power.

“Can any fool not see disaster? Our way of life is dying. Next year there will be famine. The year after - death! The children first, and then the old, the weak, the helpless. Maggots will fatten in the dead flesh of our young! The Katakanii, the alpine tribes, gone! Gone because our leaders cannot break free of their rules!”

The crowd began to rise. Suddenly waves of anger swept across the people. Zhukora rode its energy, flinging her hair back behind her face.

“The older generations have betrayed us! They cling to their rules and customs, rules we had no say in making. The councils claim to represent us, but do they listen? Do they care that in a year your children may be dying? And what of their “One Great Rule”? Do the plains tribesmen starve on weeds and worms? No! They live and grow and breed and laugh while we squat upon our hills and die!

“We are told to live within the forest. We are told not to till the soil or herd the beasts! If this is the way of the alpine tribes, then I say this way is wrong! I say it is the way of death, the way of starvation! It is a betrayal of our greater destiny. The ancient customs will be the death of the alpine people!”

Zhukora shook her fists in rage, her whole body wringing in an ecstasy of anger. She tore at her clothes in fury.

“I am a noble! I! I have seen the chieftains living in utter luxury. I have seen the King with his necklaces of silver. They laugh at the commoners! Laugh! You give up your food to keep them in splendour while your young go hungry! You toil, you suffer, and yet power is in the hands of the nobility, not in the hands of the people!”

The answer was a snarl of fury from the crowd. Zhukora whirled and whipped them on.

“They tell us lies! They tell us the true way is the way of peace, of submission! To grovel down before them while they betray our very future!

“Lies lies lies!”

The girl shrieked out in sickening fury, her fists tearing at her hair. The crowd’s roar was like a waterfall, a pounding, raging rush of energy; Zhukora rode their power feeding it with words.

“Mother Rain fought for what she wanted! She won the love of Father Wind and created the Kashranii people. The Kashra are born of struggle! The fight for what is right is holy!”

Zhukora’s fists crashed against her breasts as she screamed her challenge to the very stars.

“I say we fight!”

The crowd had leapt up to their feet; thousands of voices thundered in an awesome roar of rage. They took up Zhukora’s cry and let her anger fill them with its strength. Her people cheered until their voices numbed - they hammered on the trees and shook their weapons in the air.

Zhukora swept out her hands, and the crowd suddenly fell silent.

“We shall bind the alpine tribes together into one great nation. This has been our time of testing! The forge burns hottest to make the strongest steel! The alpine peoples are the chosen of the Kashra. We have lived the way of purity - the way of Rain and Wind. We are sanctified and strengthened, and now our time of mission has begun!”

They roared, they shrieked out Zhukora’s name. She closed her eyes and let the hysterical cheering wash across her soul.

“We have the right! We have the will! We shall grasp the future with our claws and drag the Kashran race into the light. Our passion is invincible!” Zhukora shrieked in exultation.

“Long live the Kashran race! Long live The Dream!”

The people screamed in adoration. A shock of fury made the very earth begin to shake. Zhukora folded her hands across her breast and bowed her head, basking in the raging heat. Skull-Wings kept the crowds at bay, their own eyes fixed upon their savage black messiah.

Zhukora slowly turned and sought Daimïru’s adoring face. Her voice was thick with power.

“Go amongst them, my faithful one! Go and tell them of my love. I am theirs now. Tonight we have seen the birthing of a nation.”

Daimïru fell upon her knees and covered up her face. She shivered in Zhukora’s wake, her eyes wild and bright with love. Zhukora passed into the dark, leaving her Dream to burn within the hearts and minds of thousands.

Alpine clans were originally differentiated by the shapes of their butterfly-like wings - distinctions slowly dissappearing with successive generations of intermarriage.

Kashran gestation periods are approximately three months in the womb until the young are birthed in the form of a hard-shelled egg. The egg must be nurtured for a further six months until it hatches. The young are then nursed at the breast until they are of an age to fly.

Notes:

1) “Swoop”: A distance measure. A fist of fist of spans - approximately 940 metres.

Chapter Eight

A single, perfect note hung sadly on the cold dawn air. It rose above the ferns and slowly died, withering piece by piece into the fog. Birds stopped in their tracks and ceased their cries, while the treefrogs and the lizards emerged to sit and stare. Down by the stream a platypus arose dripping on the banks, touched by the sheer misery of the music.

Kotaru sat beside a clear, still pool and poured his anguish down into his flute. The round clay pipe lay cradled in his long, expressive hands as he gave himself into his music, shaping his grief about himself like a weeping cloud. Finally he let his hands drop down, and Kotaru hung his head, a single tear slowly gathering in his eye.

Oh lady, what did I do wrong?

A small sound crept into Kotaru’s grief, and he reluctantly raised his head, his drooping ears twitching listlessly.

A young girl stood beside the stream, her skinny legs clad in hunter’s moccasins. She had a thin, grave face and fur of fine dove-grey, and her hair shone whiter than stream of stars. The girl looked at him through weird silver eyes, examining him carefully. When she spoke, her voice rang with a wisdom far beyond her meagre years.

“Your name is Kotaru. You saved me from the raiders.”

The hunter’s red-rimmed eyes looked blankly at the little girl. She stalked across the stones and sat down on the rocks beside him, drawing her face into a scowl.

“Your team is looking for you. They’ve been worried sick. What are you doing all the way out here?”

Kotaru felt too crushed by pain to even speak. The little girl tucked her heels beneath her skinny rump and spoke on regardless; she had the sensible, no-nonsense voice of an elocution teacher.