Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (49 page)

The stars guided him north. As the sun rose, Kaainka beat his short wings mightily to reach the top of a termite mound. The savannah stretched away around him, broken here and there by thorn-trees and other termite mounds. A warm breeze ruffled his feathers. This was his land, the land of the People, and he must leave if he was ever to take his place among the People and add his voice to their songs.

That night, his first night alone, he made a small fire and sang the Song of Beginning. He told himself that he would not be afraid until he came to truly unfamiliar lands. Thus reassured, he squatted down, resting on his ankles and tucking his beak under his feathers.

As his fire died, the night filled with sounds unbroken by the rhythm of the People’s footsteps. Something cried, and it sounded like laughter. Kaainka’s head snapped around. Eyes stared out at him from the darkness, eyes that would not have dared to come so close to a proper camp. Kaainka tucked his head back against his wings but kept his eyes open, watching the night.

He woke before dawn, somewhat surprised to find that he had fallen asleep and even more surprised that he hadn’t been eaten. Kaainka shook the sleep from his feathers, then sang the Song of Chasing Stars to the sun as it rose. The songs of the night insects ended and the daytime songs began. In the distance, he thought he heard a lion roaring a challenge to the waking world.

Kaainka walked north. Walking the savannah was no real challenge. Kaainka had done it all his life. Day followed night, and Kaainka walked, leaving all his familiar landmarks behind him. His skin prickled with excitement, and not with fear, or so he told himself. He scavenged when he could and hunted when he had to. Soon, Kaainka came to the edge of the desert.

Camps of the People seldom came this far north. Grass grew in clumps around bushes that had the bad grace to be poisonous as well as thorny. Between the huddled plants, the ground was cracked and barren. There were no lions here, no half-eaten carcasses to rob from the lesser scavengers, and no easy kills. Kaainka enjoyed chasing the brittle lizards and too-clever insects that were his only prey here, but it took a lot of them to fill his belly.

Kaainka woke. A low, loud sound vibrated up from the ground and into his breastbone. His fire was out, and high clouds made dark rents in the starry sky. He stood up, flipping his wings in annoyance, and peered into the night.

The first elephant nearly stepped on him. Gray mountains padded by on feet as wide as Kaainka’s outstretched wing. “Ahi!” he shouted at them. “Ahi! Ahi!” A camp could turn a herd with their cries when necessary, but he was alone. He looked around, but saw nowhere to go in the forest of legs; no tree or termite mound within reach. Kaainka huddled down and tried to be as small as possible, convinced he would be trampled and killed before his first glimpse of the true desert and what lay beyond. He moaned, slicking his feathers down hard to his sides, and closed his eyes.

Something soft poked him in the back, dragging up through his feathers and over his head. Kaainka opened his eyes. A trunk dangled in the air before him, pausing long enough for him to draw a panicked breath. Then it swung away into the darkness. Another one came down, delicately stroking his back, then another. Kaainka looked up and up, all the way to the elephant’s face. He thought he saw the flash of a dark and knowing eye. Then the herd vanished into the night. The bone-shaking rumble of their singing faded, and the world was still. Kaainka lay on the ground, panting.

For many nights after that, the elephant herd haunted Kaainka’s dreams. By day he walked, and foraged, and sang. Soon the savannah gave way to true desert, and he had more pressing problems.

When he came to the top of the first dune and looked out over the desert’s vastness, he found himself doubting the old stories about sand-lizards and other desert prey. Surely nothing could live in this emptiness. Sharp-edged hills of yellow sand marched away to the horizon, arranged like rows of feathers, utterly barren. Kaainka could only stare.

Eikss’s advice to move only at dawn and dusk saved him. The sun’s fierceness grew as it climbed in the sky, glaring down at him from above and burning the sand until he was scorched from both sides. Sand blew in his eyes, and the only shade came from outcroppings of golden stone.

By the third day, Kaainka became convinced that the desert hated him personally, and he hated it in return. Sand wore away the scales on his feet and what little prey he could catch tasted foul. On the fifth day, he couldn’t find even the meagre shelter of a rock. He abandoned his search when the terrible face of the sun heaved itself above the horizon. Finding a patch of firm sand, he dug himself in as he’d seen the sand-lizards do, flicking his wings until he was half-buried. Then he tucked his head under the shade of his own spread wings, and waited out the day.

Walking again at twilight, Kaainka felt terribly exposed. He imagined what he must look like: a lone black-feathered form on the empty sand. Night fell in the desert. Kaainka sang the Song of the Sun, then prayed quietly for clouds, if not rain. He ate his
chok
, happy to have any food when the sand-lizards evaded him once again.

Kaainka’s water ran out before the desert did. He cursed the glutton he had been at the start of his journey and sang openly under the sky for rain. His feet were heavy and his tongue lolled sideways out of his beak. The sun pressed down on him like a white-hot stone.

At noon on the second day after his water ran out, Kaainka’s mind touched the thought of giving up. Huddled in the dwindling shade of a boulder, he wondered whether he could just stop, just let the drifting sand bury his body. Perhaps it would be better, if he were truly lost and had no hope. Then he thought of Eikss’s laughter, and the inscrutable kindness of elephants. As twilight fell, Kaainka got to his feet and walked on.

Three days after his water ran out, Kaainka reached the river. At first he took it for a mirage, just another cruel illusion dreamed up by the sand. Thick, wet stalks of grass crunched under his feet before he believed the evidence of his eyes.

Kaainka flung himself headlong into the first puddle he saw. He landed in it belly-first, then he ducked his head low and splashed water up over his back with his wings, washing the dust and misery out of his feathers. He laughed with delight, got water in his nose, sneezed, and laughed some more. He ate fruit and grubs and drank until he sloshed.

As the sun set, the night sounds of a strange land rose around him. He shivered. In his joy at his salvation, he had forgotten the path he was on. At the heart of this green country lay the River of Death, the path from the lands of the People to the home of the Ancestors, and from there to the stars. Kaainka lifted his head and sang, for the first time, the Song of the River.

His voice faltered when he got to the part about the great river-lizards, whom even the lions feared. Kaainka wondered how far the lizards wandered from their river. According to the stories, they had to stay near the water, but the stories never said how near. Kaainka thought of his reckless dive into the pool, and shuddered.

His path turned north again, following the river. The stories said that far, far to the north, beyond the great nesting-mounds and the House of the Ancestors, there was a place where the river fell over roaring cataracts and down into the sky. No one he knew had ever seen it. He wondered who among the People had first come to this place and named the River, and if they’d seen the great waterfall. Did the Ancestors walk along its banks as he did? Lost in thought, Kaainka didn’t hear the dogs until it was almost too late.

Yellow-furred bodies burst out of the undergrowth on either side of him. Kaainka froze, eyes wide, then instinct took over. He launched himself into the air. Shrieking, he heaved himself into the lowest branches of a tree that was mercifully free of thorns. One yellow dog flung itself at the tree, running up almost high enough to nip Kaainka’s tail. The dog slid back and Kaainka fled higher as the pack surrounded him.

Kaainka’s heart pounded. The dogs circled and growled, but couldn’t reach him. He flipped his wings and tried to calm down enough to think. Something was missing. He looked down. To his horror, he saw the waterskin that Eikss had made for him in the jaws of a yellow dog. With a cry he ripped the nearest branch loose and flung it at the dog. It bounced off the creature’s nose. The dog sneezed and flinched, then opened its jaws to bark, dropping the waterskin. Kaainka could see water leaking from the holes the dog’s teeth had made in the leather, mixing with the dog’s glistening drool. He flared his tail in rage. Then he inflated his throat and boomed at them, singing the fiercest part of the Song of the Lion. The pack paused, but only for a moment.

Kaainka turned in place on the branch, looking down at the dogs. He told himself that the dogs would lose interest. He needed to outwait them, that was all. Eventually they would grow bored, or hungry, or something, and then they would go away.

The sun fell through the sky, shadows lengthened, and the dogs settled down around the tree to wait. Frustrated, Kaainka flung more branches down at them, but elicited nothing from the dogs but growls and the occasional futile attempt to climb the tree. Kaainka paced back and forth on the branch. He considered throwing his knife, but at best he could only hit one dog. Then he would have no knife, and that would hardly improve his situation.

He knew he could not outrun the dogs on the flat, nor could he fly longer than they could run. He despaired of them ever losing interest. Kaainka looked down at the dogs, then out at the river. A plan hatched in his mind.

Kaainka shuffled sideways, and flipped his wings. A dog sat up, watching him. He shuffled the other way, clacked his beak, and shook his tail. All the dogs were watching him, now. He danced and sang, working his way lower in the tree. The pack leapt up, barking. When they were all on their feet, tongues lolling, he flung himself out of the tree, flapping hard. For one gut-twisting moment he thought he had misjudged the distance.

Then Kaainka was among the reeds. His wings banged painfully against them and his feet groped for purchase. He came to rest suspended over the water, a reed gripped in each foot and another in his beak. The dogs hit the water behind him, and the water erupted.

Kaainka dared not move his head. His eye that faced the water gave him an incomplete view of the carnage. The river’s muddy froth was full of teeth as the great river-lizards tore the bloody dog-bodies to pieces. Then the splashing and the barking ceased, leaving only the hiss and snap of the great lizards’ jaws.

Kaainka felt a moment of pride that faded as he considered his new situation. It was possible, he thought, that this was not an improvement. Reeds shifted around him as the river-lizards settled back into the water. He lost his grip with one foot, then another. Kaainka grabbed for the reed that he held in his beak, but it could not support his weight. Slowly, inevitably, it bent. The reed dipped him into the water with barely a splash, abandoning him to the river.

Kaainka tried to fly, but he could not push off against the sagging reed or the surface of the water. He flapped his sodden wings like paddles, trying to swim the other bank. He could almost feel the lizards’ teeth closing around him. Kaainka panicked, and inhaled a noseful of water. He struggled against the river until his feathers were waterlogged and he was utterly exhausted. Then the current had him, and he was swept away.

The river carried him north, past stands of rushes and basking lizards. He tumbled through its rapids, and he had just enough strength left to keep his head above water. Then, as quickly as it had seized him, the river tossed him up against a mound of dead reeds and went on its way.

All the stars were in the sky before Kaainka found the strength to pull himself onto the shore. He huddled in the rushes, fluffing his dripping feathers away from his skin in a futile attempt to keep warm. His waterskin was lost to the dogs, and now the river had taken his knife and all of his supplies. Far from home, out of the sight of the People and alone, Kaainka shivered until sleep dragged his mind away.

The rising sun warmed Kaainka’s back. Slowly, the dejected lump of black feathers on the bank of the river regained the aspect of one of the People. Kaainka stood up, and lifted his head. He could see his reflection in the muddy water: red wattles dulled by hunger, feathers that had dried into muddy spikes, and the proud casque on the top of his beak where it met his head.

He still had his life. Everything else could be replaced. He would weave a new bag, gather supplies, and finish his journey. His Ancestor’s footsteps had shaken the foundations of the world before the first Long Winter. He could not fail now.

Kaainka fluffed, and began the long process of working the river-filth out of his feathers. It was, he thought, probably full of lizard dung. He looked around at the stands of cane and the river that ran through a lush, green land. He would not have to worry about going hungry, provided that he did not let himself become somebody else’s meal.

And when he came home, Kaainka promised himself, he would feed Eikss entrails himself . . . And perhaps she would forgive him the loss of the waterskin.

Kaainka hunted dry cane by the edge of the river. When he found a piece he liked, he split it with a practiced blow of his beak. The sharp edges would serve as an acceptable knife until he could gather proper stones and knap a replacement for the one he’d lost. He spent the rest of the day making a fire-saw, and by sunset he was able to make a fire.