A Gathering of Wings (30 page)

Why does being near Lume make her feel thrummingly alive and yet like a large clumsy child with a tongue full of knots?

Seemingly unaware of her difficulty, he looks beyond her to the others. “So these are the friends that had you scurrying home to Mount Kheiron.”

She nods. “Along with Zephele, yes.”

“I like them,” he says. “I had fun with them.”

“I thought you said you didn’t need company, that you were your own best companion,” Malora says boldly.

His eyes sweep briefly over her. “So I did. I must be changing. Look, I really have to go now. There is no time to lose.”

She blurts, “We wouldn’t have made it out alive without you!”

“That’s true,” he replies evenly. “See that you take care, since you will be without me for the foreseeable future.”

“After this, I think we could survive anything,” she says.

His frown deepens. “It’s dangerous even to
think
that. Returning to the wild centaurs is folly. Your friends are as stubborn and foolish as you are. You have no idea—”

She cuts in with force:
“I’m trying to tell you how thankful I am to you for helping us!”

A smile breaks through the frown. The dimple in his left cheek appears. She wants to move closer and run her lips over that dimple.

There is a glint in his eye, as if he were daring her to act on the impulse. Taking a step closer to her, he says in a very soft voice, “If you want to thank me, Malora, just say the words.”

“Thank you!” she says, feeling more foolish than ever.

“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He lifts his hand and works his thumb along her jawline. “You are very
welcome, Malora Thora-Jayke. And if you were not covered in Leatherwing gore,” he says, “I might even be tempted to kiss you.”

He turns away from her, and with a powerful stroke of his wings he is up and soaring away without so much as a backward glance.

Each time he leaves, she thinks, she misses him a little more. Sky goes dashing off after him, whinnying up at Lume, as if to call him back.

Malora trudges back to her friends.

“So that’s Lume,” Orion says musingly.

“That’s Lume,” Malora says, turning to watch his dwindling form.

“Do you think Sky will follow him all the way back to Mount Kheiron?” Neal wonders.

“Birds of a feather,” Honus says breezily.

Kneeling by the river, Malora washes the blood off her face. “I doubt it,” she says, rising and wiping her chin on the hem of her tunic. “I think Sky’s just seeing him off. I think he likes the Wonder.”

“Sky isn’t the only one,” Orion says, gently teasing.

Malora blushes and loops Jayke’s rope over one shoulder. She looks around at them. “Well!” she says, just to be filling the silence.

Honus says, “I know
I’m
in love.” He is only half-joking.

“You just say that because he saved your life,” Neal says.

“That might have something to do with it,” Honus muses. “But he’s an engaging fellow. And those dazzling white feathers … I wonder if he’ll take me up with him again sometime. Under less stressful conditions …”

Neal, narrowing his eyes in thought, turns slowly to Malora. “Is he the one I nearly shot with my bow and arrow?”

Malora blushes. “Turns out, it was.”

A slow smile spreads across Neal’s lips. “Good thing you stopped me.”

She shrugs. “He claims you would have missed,” she says.

“Hmmm …” Neal strokes his beard thoughtfully.

“Wonder all you like about the Wonder,” Orion says, getting to his feet. “This isn’t getting Zeph back.”

Honus rises with a groan. They gather up their meager supplies and, as quickly as that, are on their way again on foot.

In the aftermath of the attack, they are all hungry. Neal’s sword is useless for hunting, and they agree not to risk losing any of Orion’s remaining darts on game. There are no ostriches here, so there will be no lassoing them with Jayke’s rope.

“I’m a hunter, not a gatherer,” Neal says, deferring to Malora.

Now that they are back on land, she is comfortable leading and sets to gathering what’s edible as they go—wild berries and hard, tart-tasting fruits and plants whose gritty roots she digs up with her bare hands. That night, their stomachs are hollow and growling. As if that weren’t bad enough, it rains, and they sleep huddled miserably together beneath a tree. Malora has the first watch, followed by Neal. At sunrise, she is the last to wake up to the sight of everyone staggering toward the river to drink. She stops them with a shout.

“Give the silt time to settle to the bottom!” she says.

Neal spits out a mouthful and nods. “Of course. I knew that.”

She is pleased to share what she knows with her friends. While they walk along and wait to slake their thirst, she teaches them how to fold a leaf and make a cup to scoop up the drinking water. When she finally gives them permission, they fall to their knees and scoop up cup after cup. Malora fills the flasks.

By the end of the second day, their mouths have broken out in sores from the tartness of the fruit.

“Is there anything else on the menu?” Neal says plaintively. “I’d settle for bugs at this point.”

“I will see what I can do,” Malora says.

They watch as Malora hunts around the weedlike shrubs that grow along the riverbank. “Flannel bush,” she explains as she cuts several stems and begins twisting them up. She looks up from her work and says, “Can someone catch me some grasshoppers?”

Orion makes a face. “We’re not going to eat them, are we? Neal was just joking.”

“Grasshoppers happen to be very tasty, roasted over a fire,” Malora says. “But no, they’re just bait.”

Orion and Neal stumble all over each other chasing a single grasshopper along the riverbank, but it is Honus, the collector, who manages to catch several in his cupped hands and deliver them to Malora.

“Orion, can you please fetch me a big thorn from that acacia over there? Watch you don’t hurt yourself, they’re sharp.”

Orion brings back the thorn, and they watch as she ties it to one end of what is now a long string fashioned from the twisted stems of the flannel bush.

“You
are
good,” Neal says in grudging admiration. “I am officially in awe. Without you, I’d have been guzzling mud and chewing clods of dirt by now.”

“An entire fishing apparatus, improvised from nature. What a remarkable feat!” Orion says.

Malora grins crookedly. “Only if the fish actually bite.”

Honus says, “Are you ready for your grasshopper, Malora?”

She nods. Honus opens his hands long enough for her to pinch one of the grasshoppers between two fingers.

Impaling it on the thorn, she tosses the end of the line, twitching grasshopper and all, into the middle of the river, then settles back on the riverbank to wait. “This may take some time. Honus, do you know a puzzle bush and a silver bush when you see them?”

“I most assuredly do,” Honus says.

“Go and find them. With your Bushman’s Friend, cut me a straight branch from each. Your puzzle bush is the twirling stick, and your silver bush is the rubbing stick.”

“We’re going to make
fire
!” Honus says with zeal.

“
You’re
going to make fire. I’m going to hold this line and wait for a fish to get interested. Neal, see if you can find us some dry tinder beneath the bigger trees. And some stones for a fire circle. And, Honus, after you’ve found me the fire sticks, see if you can’t track down a velvet raisin bush. Orion, go with him and collect everything from it: leaves, branches, roots, stems, seeds, fruit.”

“Whatever for?” Orion asks.

“Everything!” Malora says cheerfully.

Orion smiles at her. “Thora’s daughter watches over us!”

Over time, with the help of another six of Honus’s
grasshoppers, Malora manages to pull three big bass from the river. They flop and leap about on the bank like living silver. One by one, she whacks them against the rocks and guts them and scales them with her knife. When the fire is ready, she coats them with salt, wraps them in damp leaves, and sets them in the coals to steam. When the fish is cooked, they sit around the fire eating it, all except for Orion, who looks on with a squeamish expression.

Malora says to him, “I know you have never eaten the flesh of a living thing, Orrie, but you won’t be much good to Zephele if you can’t keep up your strength.”

She arranges some of the flaky white meat on a fresh green leaf and places it in his hands. “Try it. For Zephie.”

“For Zephie,” he agrees. He tastes it tentatively, then with more enthusiasm. “A little muddy-tasting, but not bad at all!”

Afterward, they sit around and pick their teeth with twigs from the velvet raisin bush, propped around the fire shoulder to shoulder.

Having real food in their stomachs makes them more talkative than they have been since they set out on foot. Neal leads the way: “Tell us, pet, did you know all along that your horse was a hibe and just neglected to mention that niggling detail to us?”

Malora says, “When I got him back from Ixion, I noticed a change in him. It was as if his bones had been altered. But I thought it was malnutrition, or something the wild centaurs had done to him.”

“Then he was some sort of latent hibe?” Orion asks.

“He’s not a hibe,” Honus says.

They all turn to look at him. He holds a stick in his mouth, favoring it as if it were his pipe.

“Then what is he?” Neal asks.

“My guess is that when the Leatherwings attacked him years ago, the wounds they inflicted festered and introduced some sort of toxin into his system. A lesser creature might have died, but Sky’s body fought the invasion by gradually taking on some of the physical properties of his attackers. It is a kind of defensive mutation.”

Malora recalls aloud Lume’s words: “He’s a miracle horse.”

“Do you mean,” says Neal, “that if the Leatherwings scratched me, I’d grow wings, too?” His face is suddenly alight with the possibilities.

Honus says, “It is not beyond the realm of possibility.”

“In that case,” Neal says, leaning back with his arms crossed, “I regret defending myself so successfully. Next time, I’ll let the Leatherwings have at me.”

“Then again,” Honus adds blithely, “you might just die instead.”

“True,” Neal says wistfully. “Still, it would be worth the risk to have wings.”

“I think Zephele might think otherwise,” Malora says.

Neal heaves a wistful sigh, whether over Zephele or wings it is hard to tell.

The next morning, they are awakened by the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Sky trots into their camp, covered in dust, trailing a baby zebra in his wake.

“You’ve found a new friend!” Malora says to the horse.

“Well, look at that!” says Neal. “A mount for Honus.”

Malora grins. “Honus can ride with me on Sky.”

Honus looks intrigued. “Do you think Sky would let me fly on his back sometime soon?”

“Maybe. But something tells me it takes a crisis to bring out the wings,” Malora says.

Honus holds up a hand. “In that case, I’ll settle for riding on the ground for now.”

“Step only where Sky steps,” Malora cautions Neal and Orion endlessly.

Since dawn, they have been working their way through the Downs, Malora leading the way on Sky’s back with Honus clinging to her like a burr. In keeping with her theory of sinkholes, they leap from dune to dune, bypassing the sinkholes that might lie in the valleys. The zebra, whom they have taken to calling Baby, wallows in their wake, in spite of Malora’s attempts to chase her off.
Poor thing doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into
.

Malora has just caught the first whiff of the sea, when Baby clamors ahead of them, up to the top of the next dune, and turns to wait for them. Sky is just reassuring her with a low nicker that he is coming when the baby zebra begins to sink into the top of the dune. Sky leaps forward.

“No, Sky!” Malora screams.

But there is no controlling her horse as he lunges to the
aid of the zebra. The zebra is sinking fast. Only her black-and-white head shows, mouth agape, as she bleats in terror. And then it is as if the entire dune were collapsing in on itself, bringing down Sky with Malora and Honus on his back. Orion and Neal struggle to free themselves, but they go down, too. Malora grabs hold of Sky’s mane and feels him falling down, down into the darkness, with Honus nearly strangling her in his own fear and desperation. Sky falling faster than she does, she quickly loses her seat. They continue to fall, and Malora is thinking, the farther we fall, the harder we will hit, when she lands on her side with a jarring thud that knocks the wind out of her and Honus’s grip loose from her neck.

Darkness, stillness, silence follow. Malora catches her breath, surprised to be breathing air rather than sand. She moves her joints and tests her bones. Nothing seems to be broken. Beneath her is sand. It is the sand that cushioned her fall and saved her from fracturing every bone in her body. She hopes the others are as lucky. She is just about to call out to them when, from somewhere in the darkness, Neal says in a calm and conversational tone of voice, “So much for Malora’s Theory of Sinkholes!”

She sits up, gropes around, and bumps into something hard.

“I beg your pardon?” Honus says.

It is his horn. She finds his face and pats it. “Are you all right?” she asks him.

“I’m not yet sure. I seem to have someone’s hoof in my armpit.”

The next moment, Malora hears a sharp little bleat.

“Baby!” she says. “The others?”

“The others,” Orion calls out, “appear to be intact.”

“Speak for yourself, Silvermane,” says Neal. “And do you mind removing the tip of your blowgun from my ear?”

“Sorry!” Orion says.

“We’re alive!” says Malora.

“Apparently,” Neal says.

“The sinkholes aren’t deadly, after all,” Malora says.

“I’ll believe that when we’re back in the sunlight again,” Neal says.

“There
is
sunlight,” Malora says, squinting upward and pointing. “Look.”