Fish Tails (98 page)

“That's a helluva big tree,” muttered one of the men. “Take a while.”

Another commented, “It'd have to be, to make them go the other way. Otherwise they'd just haul it off the road.”

“Can't take long,” said Willum. “That wagon is one-­third a' the way down on this side and he's comin' downhill with a light load an' a eight-­horse hitch and the riders at full gallop an' I don't know how many cars and trucks behint him with those guns stickin' out the sides.”

“Go ring for Gister. He's the best woodsman. We can use one of the big salt saws.”

“He's not going to let you cut that tree!” several of the men cried in virtual unison.

Sun-­wings called, “Willum! The package Abasio gave you. Before we took off.”

Willum got red in the face. He really
had
listened. He dug into the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is stuff from a male tree like that'n we hafta cut. It's called . . .” He frowned again.

“Pollen,” said Sun-­wings. “The trees grow near Tingawa. That's where Fixit got it.”

Willum grinned. “Abasio said this will make seeds, to grow new ones.”

“Gister's been looking for a male tree for over thirty years!” cried Melkin.

“Well, he wouldn'ta found it around here. They grow where Sun-­wings said.”

The men went off in different directions. A bell began to ring, a strange
b'bing
sound. Melkin, noting Willum's puzzled look, explained. “There's four message bells. Small, middle, big, and huge. Different tones to each one. We hit it with different kinds of strikers; metal makes one sound, wood makes another, wood with a leather wrapped around it still another. Each man who lives or works away from Saltgosh has his own signal. That signal you heard was Gister's, the middle bell hit with a wooden mallet. If we did
b'bingy,
on that same bell, that'd be his boy. Anyhow, Gister's the one'll tell us where to cut and how deep, so it'll come down right over the road.”

Willum was furiously thinking of all the talk he'd overheard while they'd been getting him dressed. “So you'll keep all your folks safe and away from that wagon when it comes by you? And not leave any tools out where they could maybe get'm and clear the road? An', I jus' thought, there's that buncha Edgers with 'em and their guns. So, after the wagon goes through, if we go in there past the notch t'collect the stuff, if the giants don't . . . get ridduv 'em, THEN 'f you had some men with weapons ready, that might be a pretty good idea.”

Melkin grinned at him. “Thank you for the suggestions, and yes, I agree it'd be a pretty good idea. I'm glad we're down in Snow Town, though. We'd be vulnerable if we were still living up in the town. Oh, we'd get all the ­people down, but they'd have to leave all their possessions behind. Do you know why this guy took the stuff?”

“ 'Cause he's got somebody wants to buy it for, oh, a lot of gold. A great lot. But what these men want is only the Edgers should be left alive when the waters come. They wanta kill ever'body else an' specially the sea-­babies. An 'Basio and Mr. Fixit, they need that stuff to figure out what them Edgers're up to so they don't . . . kill a lot more ­people.”

“They want to be the only ones left alive? The Edgers?”

“Yessir. And they're the ones that're messin' things up, makin' things like those giants. Did you know they were still growing?”

“Still? Who says?”

“Sun-­wings, the Griffin! She says. Her folk have been watchin' them. She says they were still growin', but they've been stopped now by Mr. Fixit. Now they're getting littler.”

“You need anything before you go back? Or does she?” Melkin stared at the Griffin, shaking his head. He'd seen Griffins, now and then, at some distance, but never this close. “If you're going to park somewhere and watch what happens, you'll have to be high, and it's cold up there, so you should have a blanket. I'll bring you one. And could I . . . be introduced to her?”

“Sure. But be nice. She's very polite.” Willum remembered Digger. “ 'Cept when she's killing somebody, I guess. But she doesn't like the taste of ­people. So you're safe.”

Melkin was introduced to Sun-­wings and got into a conversation with her about the giants while Willum went hastily across the pasture to the privy the group had used when they had camped here previously. He had really, really not wanted to wet on Sun-­wings. Somehow, that just wasn't the relationship he wanted to have, but it was really cold up there and sort of swoopy and he really, really had to go.

When he came out, a woman was coming down from the town with a sandwich and a blanket for him. It was Liny, the tailor's sister, the one who'd made all the cookies. (
They'd met her before but he hadn't swiped anything from her, so he could just say thank you without being ashamed or having to apologize. He'd really never had that feeling until Abasio had taught it to him. Probably because there wasn't anything in Gravysuck worth stealing.
) Liny asked if the Griffin would like anything.

“Any raw meat,” Sun-­wings replied. “A piece about the size of that boy.” And then she laughed, and after a moment the woman laughed with her. Still, she returned in a little while with two men carrying a leg of something that kept Sun-­wings busy for some little time. Flying had given her an appetite. Recently she hadn't really been eating much.

Gister showed up. The men began to move machinery. Sun-­wings suggested Willum get on her shoulders while she climbed a sidewall. Waving farewell, Willum did so. The men not busy moving machinery stood staring as the Griffin climbed to the top of the south wall. Looking at the drop, Willum put the folded blanket under his bottom, his legs under the rope, bent his knees to clamp down on it, tucked his toes under, and gripped it tight, closing his eyes and concentrating on not throwing up as she launched herself down, then WHAP and they were headed up. She circled, higher and higher. He heard machinery below them; a huge-wheeled block-­cutting machine was slicing into the south side of the tree.

High and higher, they went. The machine shrieked. Higher yet. Willum looked over his shoulder as they crossed the watchtower. The tree trembled. Sun-­wings heard it and turned so they could watch the huge bulk of it tremble and tremble while the men ran to get away from the trunk. The tree shook and leaned and came down across the road to the west with a crash that buffeted them, high as they were. Now the men came back and were trimming away the growth around the other road, making the way to the notch more visible, more . . . Willum thought about it. More usable-­looking.

Willum looked back once more when they were above the pass. The watchtower wall blocked his view of the Saltgosh Valley. It did not block his view of the switchbacks on the western side, and the Gold King's wagon was maybe six or eight roads lower than it had been, the followers strung out in a long line behind it. He still had the twelve riders, but there were slightly fewer of the trucks. He spotted two of them higher on the mountain, gushing steam into the cold morning air. Willum turned his attention back to the wagon and visualized it going through the notch . . . not. If the wagon stayed in front, they'd have to stop every truck, then unhitch the horses and shorten the harness to make it just a two-­horse hitch—­no way more than a two-­horse hitch could get through there, then go through, take the other horses through, then rehitch. The sun was lower. It was midafternoon. Sun-­wings sculled, catching an updraft, using it to lift, then to slide.

Willum leaned forward. “ 'Basio wants to know if they go through, and what happens.”

“I can land somewhere if you're cold.”

“Just if you're tired, Sun-­wings. Otherwise I'm fine.”

Willum grinned. Oh, it really might be worth learning to listen. He finally figured it out. If you wanted to do anything NEW, you had to
listen
for what was
new
. Everything back in Gravysuck was OLD. He had
listened
to things Xulai told him on the trip, because they were NEW things, but
bein' told what to do
was just OLD stuff. Anyhow, it had felt like . . . seemed like . . . no, it just used some of the same words like it was an OLD thing, but what he hadn't figured out was it
couldn't be
OLD when Abasio or Xulai did it, because
everything
they were doing was a NEW thing. That's why they were so tired all the time, because doing NEW stuff all the time meant you hadn't got used to it or figured out the easiest way to do it yet, or figured out how to get out of doing it yet, and that was why they got so . . . peeved at him.

He finally figured it out. He was going to try really, really hard, to learn to listen.

Sun-­wings found a place on a southwest-­facing side of a peak, almost at the corner of the north and east valley walls but cupped and sheltered from the northeast wind and warmed by the afternoon sun. She lay upon a ledge, fluffed out both feathers and fur to hold the heat from the sun-­warmed stone while the boy cleared some of the sand and gravel that had accumulated at the bottom of the wall to make room for her legs. Then he snuggled into the warm notch between her left front leg and rib cage, covering his legs and her front feet with the blanket.

“Don't your feet get cold, Sun-­wings?”

“They have a venturi tube in each one of them.”

“What's that?”

“A place where the blood is forced through a tighter place that makes it move faster. Birds have them in their legs. Otherwise their feet would freeze in the winter.”

“Who told you that?”

She paused, suddenly thoughtful. “I don't . . . I don't remember. Someone did. Before I was grown. Long, long ago.
Venturi tubes and dual musculature in the upper back, and unequal weight distribution of internal organs,
many things like that. I shouldn't be able to fly, you know.” She sighed. “But I do.”

They looked down on both sides of the wall, Saltgosh to the south, the Valley of the Giants to the north. It was truly a valley of the giants, for the huge creatures were readily visible, two or three of them moving about at any one time, one or two of them tall enough that their heads were almost even with the tops of some trees. They must have been a long way west when he and Abasio and Xulai had come through here before. Two of them were what Abasio had seen when he went back in the notch that time. Willum tried to identify different ones and count them, but they all looked alike. No clothes, of course. How did they keep warm in the winter? There seemed to be at least five, maybe one or two more. In the Saltgosh Valley, ­people were busy moving livestock: all the cows and horses were disappearing among the trees. Though the ­people had been moved down some time ago, the animals were let out on pasture daytimes until it actually snowed. Sun-­wings nudged his leg and pointed with her beak, and he saw the water was building up behind the huge dropped tree trunk. Some still ran under the trunk in the old riverbed, but more was diverted into the northwestward flow, through the notch. He nodded sleepily.

It seemed a very short time before they spotted the Gold King's wagon approaching the watchtower, and Willum realized both he and the Griffin had fallen asleep for a while. Sun-­wings's beak was resting on his shoulder. He rubbed his eyes, letting his elbow casually shove the beak a little to wake her up. The horses were still running and the Gold King's entourage was alert, weapons at the ready, looking all about themselves for any hostile action and finding none at all.

Willum could look almost directly down into the town. It seemed completely dead, no sign of life at all. The place might as well have been deserted. The wagon and horsemen thundered on—­the sound clearly audible even at their height—­covering a distance about halfway to the split in the road before any of the riders seemed to notice that they would have to take the right-­hand fork. From the back side of the east wall, unseen, Sun-­wings and Willum dropped into flight and circled high above to look directly down on the notch, then returned to their former resting place.

“Notch is bigger'n it was,” Willum remarked when they were back on their high terrace. “Looks like those giants been pullin' stones outta the way.”

“Do the men in the city know?”

“Dunno,” said Willum. “They'll know if they help us, down there, because they'll see it. Otherwise, we sh'd stop and tell 'um.”

“We'll see,” said Sun-­wings. The Gold King's wagon was approaching the barrier. It stopped. The men and horses milled about, the driver got off the wagon and looked at the other route. Finally he gestured and the mounted men went toward the notch, entering it one at a time. They emerged on the giant-­valley side, milled about, returned to the south side. There were no giants in sight. All the horses were unhitched, then the front two were rehitched.

“I'd a sent summa those cars through first,” murmured Willum.

“I imagine anyone who calls himself a king is more interested in being first than in being smart,” murmured Sun-­wings. The wagon started through with just two horses pulling it, several men staying behind with the unhitched ones. There was some confusion, some coming and going, someone carrying a rope.

“It's slippery in there,” Willum explained to his huge friend . . . well, he guessed she was his friend. “I think the wagon may've slipped off the road. When we went through, Abasio had a rope on the outside a' the wagon so it wouldn't slide.”

Eventually, the men got the wagon on the road and edged out on the giant-­valley side. Two other horses followed, and the men got busy hitching them to the wagon once more. Sun-­wings nudged Willum with her shoulder and pointed with her beak—­beyond the men. There, approaching them one behind the other, were two giants. The men probably didn't hear the footsteps over the noise of the water. Willum leapt up, put the blanket by the gravel and scooped a quantity of it onto the blanket, grabbed the blanket by the four corners, and turned to watch.