Tortall (32 page)

As I washed my hands and arms in the stream, I thanked the gods for sparing its life. Then I checked the flock, making sure no sheep had wandered off. After confirming that everyone was present, I left the dogs to mind the herd and returned to my belongings. A crow I had healed once—I knew him from his white-splotched tail—stood over the lizard, his black wings spread to shelter the wounded creature from the sun. When I came near, the crow squawked and flapped away. I stopped for a moment, breathless with wonder. How had the crow known to do that? And why had he done it for this stranger?

The lizard raised its head and looked at me, those copper eyes bright even in the afternoon sun. It opened its mouth and cawed, exactly as the crow had done.

I laughed and crouched beside it. “That’s so clever! Are you a mimic?” I asked. The creature cocked its head, opened
its mouth a second time, and barked just like Brighteyes did. I sat back on my heels, startled. It seemed far more normal for a lizard to copy a bird’s sound than a dog’s. Here was another puzzle to add to that of a crow sheltering a strange creature. “Then shall I call you Mimic?”

The lizard trilled a lark’s musical song. I lifted it free of its resting place. “Mimic you shall be, whatever you are. And will you mind if I say you are a he? You seem like a boy to me, getting into trouble and falling out of it.”

He was patient as I inspected him. The stitches looked good. His bleeding had stopped. The ointment I had placed on his hurts was still there. “You
are
very good,” I told him. “You didn’t lick it off. The sheep always try that.”

Mimic smacked his jaws.

“Are you hungry?” I had meat patties left for the dogs. I took one out and broke it in half. When I offered a piece to Mimic, a forked blue tongue flicked from his mouth, picked up several bits of meat, and vanished into his mouth again.

Three more trips for his tongue, and the half-patty was gone. Mimic looked at me and squawked. I hurried to feed him the second half. Once he was done, I poured water from my bottle into one cupped hand. When he had drunk his fill, he went back to sleep.

I shifted him onto my pack, then carried both into deeper shade. While he slept, I worked up a harness so I might carry him home, fashioning it from splints of bamboo and cloth ties. Toward sunset he began to stir. Gently I tucked him into the harness and strapped him to my pack. The ties held him in place but did not touch his splinted wing or rub his stitched wounds.

Securing him, I felt heat rising under his skin. I had expected a fever, but it still made me nervous. What treatment could work for this unknown animal? I needed to take him to Grandpa. For a moment I hesitated. My grandfather did not care for lizards as I did. In fact, he’d ordered me not to bring them to him anymore.

I shook my head. Grandpa would relent, once he saw how odd Mimic was. How could he resist those beautiful copper eyes?

“I can’t believe you’re not panicking,” I said to Mimic as I tested the harness cords yet another time. I tucked bits of wool under them, so they wouldn’t chafe. “Any other creature would thrash like mad. Now, be nice and don’t try to open your good wing, all right?”

Our eyes met. For a moment I had the idea that Mimic wanted to say he
would
be good and keep as still as possible. I giggled at the folly of the idea and carefully lifted my pack to my shoulders. With the dogs on either side of us, I whistled for the sheep and walked down to the trail. It was time for the part of the compact I loved best.

I explained it to Mimic, since he was a newcomer. “Long ago, the shaman who led my ancestors to settle here made a compact with the birds of the valley,” I explained. “If they agreed to guard our fields, fruit trees, and gardens from insects, each day when everyone headed home for supper, the seed-eating birds could help themselves to grain, and the others could have the insects. In the winter, any birds who stayed here instead of flying south were welcome to grain from our own stores.” Mimic cawed like a crow in my ear. “Well, crows eat scraps,” I told him. “Isn’t it wonderful?
When more birds come, they guard us as we work, so we hardly get any itchy bites. And they help the other animals with fleas and ticks. Nobody told them, they just figured it out, and did it.” Mimic made a chuckling sound that got
me
to chuckle. “There are other villages all along these foothills. Their people laugh at us. They make their children drive the birds away from the fields. They don’t believe our crops are bigger than theirs, that we lose very little to insects. That that makes up for what the birds take.”

I heard the voice of the big gong at the heart of the village. That was the signal for the fieldworkers to go home. Already the cattlemen were coming through the pass, on their way to the barns. “Now watch,” I told Mimic as the last workers and cowmen passed down the road into the village. “This is the good part.”

Hundreds of birds rose in flocks from the valley’s many trees. They settled in the fruit trees, the grain, and the gardens for their share of seed and insects. Once they were full, they would return to their home trees. And they sang, their many songs mingling into one beauty. The village cats came and sat in the road as they always did, to watch. As far as anyone knew, the truce between cats and birds at the day’s end was also part of the great magical pact.

Once the home trees were empty, the crows returned from the plains and foothills, making their noise. They sounded like a village meeting, only
much
louder. I wondered if they exchanged news about the things they saw, and traded gossip, the way the grown-ups did at our meetings.

Usually I waited to bring the flock in until everyone went quiet and twilight came on. Tonight, worried about the
heat coming from Mimic, I called in the dogs and the sheep and took them down the trail. The birds in the path and the cats in the road moved out of our way to let us pass.

Once the sheep were in their fold and the dogs fed, I took Mimic to Grandpa. The lizard was starting to worry me. Here it was nigh on full dark, and Mimic was hot and restless. Lizards were day folk. They turned cold and sleepy at night. His fever was rising fast, and I knew nothing about lizard fevers.

Grandpa was napping when I barged into his workroom with Mimic. He jumped when I slammed the door. “Howshi bless the fields, haven’t I
begged
you people not to do that!” he cried. Then he saw it was me, and he smiled. “Ri, don’t do that to your old grandfather. I don’t like to be cross with my tiger lily. What have you got on your back?”

With grumbling and moaning he pried himself from his chair and came over to help me remove my pack. When he saw what I carried, he went still. “I told you last time, Ri, no more lizards. They’re vermin. This one’s a
big
vermin.”

I turned around and faced Grandpa, angry that he was being so cruel. “He’s hurt, and he’s getting sick. You can’t turn him away! Look at him! He’s a lizard with wings!”

“Then he’s deformed and ought to be left to die peacefully,” Grandpa said flatly.

“Might he be a dragon?” I asked. “You know, a little one that guards rocks? A baby?”

But Grandpa was already shaking his head. “No dragon I have ever seen could match your lizard. They are colorful, and their head horns and antennae are long and slender. Their scales shine, like they have been painted with lacquer.
This thing is big for a lizard, but dragon babies would have to be larger still. And it is dying.”

“No,” I whispered.

Grandpa heard me anyway. “Take it out and put it on the compost heap to wait for death. Or break its neck if you want to be truly merciful.”

I set my pack on the long work counter, glaring at Grandpa. “You doctor Tuerh, even though you fight all the time and you think he cheats on weights at the mill.”

“Tuerh is a human being. That’s my calling—good or bad, I treat all humans. I make exceptions for our animals, who work hard, even the birds.” Grandpa was glaring at me, his thick eyebrows half-hiding his eyes. “What are lizards good for? It’s just a waste of work! Be sensible, Ri. You’d doctor rats if I let you.”

I didn’t tell Grandpa I did help the occasional rat, in secret.

“Look at this ugly thing,” Grandpa went on. “It probably steals eggs from the nest—maybe even whole chickens. I mean it this time, I won’t help.”

I grabbed his tunic with both of my hands. “Please, Grandpa,” I begged. “An eagle was going to kill him. He hasn’t been stealing eggs. He’s all skin and bone. You should hear him sing! Please?”

Everyone always said I was Grandpa’s favorite. I took advantage of it, hanging on to his tunic until he sighed.

“One last time, girl,” he told me. “If I can even help at all.” His hands were knobby and stiff with bone disease, but their touch was feather-light when he lifted Mimic and his harness away from the pack. He set Mimic on the counter as
I lit two more lamps to help him see. I undid the knots that held my lizard to the harness.

“Ugly creature,” Grandpa muttered. He bent over Mimic, squinting as he traced the long ribs of Mimic’s splinted wing. “Not like a bird’s wing, but a bat’s. Each rib is a finger, each claw the nail. But this thing is too heavy. It’ll never fly on these.”

Mimic looked up and tweetled like a mountain thrush. His eyes were glassy.

“Interesting,” Grandpa said. “Lizards don’t whistle, or have wings.” He raised Mimic to have a better view of the stitches I had made. “You’ve sewn it up well, my dear. But this lizard, it’s too warm for this cool night. And see here. What do you make of these lumps on its head and back?”

I shook my head. I had assumed they were all part of Mimic.

Grandpa sighed. “I do
not
say this because I want to get rid of it.” His eyes were grave. “It’s dying already. The last time I saw a creature with so many lumps on his head—a squirrel, it was—the lumps grew until the squirrel could not raise his head. He died. This thing’s fever is part of his last sickness.”

“No,” I said, digging in for another fight. “He got hurt when the eagle dropped him. Creatures always run a fever when they’ve been hurt a lot. The lumps don’t mean anything.” I’d expected Grandpa to say all manner of strange things, but not that Mimic and I were beaten before we’d begun.

Grandpa went to his collection of small skulls and picked one out that I’d never seen before. It had been hidden at the back of the shelf. When he handed it to me, I
flinched. I wouldn’t have known it was a squirrel’s skull, so distorted was it with bony knobs.

“If you are kind, you will let it die without more suffering,” Grandpa said.

Mimic turned to me and peeped. I had the idea that he was saying Grandpa was wrong. Grandpa was never wrong, but I didn’t want to listen this time. “Do you know what kind of lizard he is?” I asked. “Maybe if we had the right food?”

Grandpa carefully ran his fingers over Mimic’s beaded skin. “I’ve never seen the like of it before.”

Mimic waved his good wing, catching its claws in my sleeve. I unhooked him, only to have him snag my sleeve again. I knew this time that he did it on purpose.

“He wants to live, Grandpa. Don’t give up,” I begged. “Maybe the bumps will come off. Maybe the eagle dropped him on his head—”

Grandpa rested a hand on my shoulder. “Ri, your heart is too big.” He held his free hand a couple of inches over Mimic. “I can feel it burning up without touching him. We must free it of its pain.”

“He
ate
,” I said, trying to put it like a healer, not a child. “Most of two fishes, and a meat patty. He kept them down, and all the water I could give him.” But Grandpa was shaking his head.

Mimic looked at me. He was depending on
me
.

I remembered something Grandfather had done twice that I had witnessed. “A cold bath,” I said, excited. “Twice when people have been really feverish you put them in the river and kept them there. You said it was a risk, but their fevers broke.”

“Ri, this is a
lizard.
” Grandfather took my hands. “Humans carry heat with them. Lizards don’t. The river will kill him. I only dared try such a cure with young people who were otherwise healthy.”

I pulled out of his grip. “I’ll keep Mimic with me tonight,” I said, getting one of Grandfather’s flat baskets. I thought Mimic would like it better than my harness for the short walk home. “He’s stronger than you think. You’ll see.” I set a few rags in the basket to make it softer and carefully put my lizard inside.

“Very well,” Grandpa said gruffly. “This is a thing you must learn on your own. If Mimic lives until morning—which I doubt—maybe you will see fit to do the merciful thing then.”

I shouldered my pack, picked up Mimic’s basket, and went home.

Mother only rolled up her eyes when she saw what I carried. She was used to my habit of bringing home sick or injured creatures. “Clean up, and put
that
in your room. It is not eating with us,” she ordered me.

I took Mimic up the ladder one-handed. Once inside my little room, I replaced the rags in the basket with wool and set the nest beside a bowl of water. When I returned after supper with a dish of minced chicken, I found him half out of his bed. He lay over the rim of the basket, supporting himself on his good wing.

I knelt. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?” I asked. I slid my hands under him.

Mimic was burning hot. His eyes were glassy and he’d drunk all of his water. Carefully I set him back inside the
basket. “Now stay there,” I told him. “Let the basket hold up your splinted wing, so you don’t have to. And relax!”

I filled his water bowl. He drank, but he refused the chicken and the cold meat patty I stole when no one was looking. I even let Peng try to feed him, but Mimic refused to eat. When Peng gave up in disgust and stomped back to his attic room, Mimic went to sleep, his bumpy head propped against my hand.

I left the food next to the basket, filled the water bowl again, then changed to my nightshirt. I was asleep the moment I pulled up the covers. Healing was hard, and harder still when it looked as if my patient would not live.

A sound in the night woke me. I waited, blinking, not sure what it was, until it was repeated. It was a dry, rasping noise. Pa had sounded louder but much the same when he’d been so sick last winter.