Storm (3 page)

“Two.”

“Raw?”

“Don’t be such a baby. Pluck it. It’s better than starving.”

He shoves the bird in my face. “You kill it. You pluck it. You feed me.”

“Why should I?”

“I’ve got you by the hair.”

I take the bird from him. “Let go of my hair.”

“I will when I’ve finished. All of them. Ha! You thought I didn’t know about the others. But I felt them move.”

“There’s only one other.”

“Then I’ll finish both.”

I wring the bird’s neck and rip off the head and drop it for Screamer. The kit climbed up my mantle while the boy was talking, but he climbs back down now. Slowly, obviously worried. He needs to learn to jump. To leap, like a proper cat. But at least he’s going after the chukar head. I pluck the bird and bite into it.

The boy slaps me across the mouth.

I spit the bite in his face. “I wasn’t eating it, you idiot! My teeth are the only thing I have to rip off pieces. Here.” I shove the bird against his chest. “You do the rest on your own.”

He eats the bird. Then he pulls me downward by the hair till we’re both sitting. He picks the bite I spat at him from the mud, holds it up in the rain to wash it, and eats it. “The second one now.”

I do the same with the second bird. He eats it.

“You’re my woman now.”

My teeth clench. “I’m not looking for a husband.”

“You need protection. I’ll protect you.”

“I’m the one who fed you. Did you get that confused?”

“You’re my woman. Or else I’ll kill that kitten of yours.”

“Why should I care about a swamp kit?”

“You shouldn’t. But you do. You’re the baby.” He lies down, his hand still twisted in my hair, so that I have to lie with him, against his bare chest, but at least he has a swath of cloth around his middle. He reaches his other hand out across the mud and curls his fingers around a large piece of wood. A club. He must
have dropped it there when he fell on me. I wonder where he found it.

“You were sleeping when I tripped over you,” he says. “I haven’t slept since the rain started.”

Screamer climbs onto my chest.

“If you’re gone when I wake, I’ll find you. So you might as well sleep while I do.”

A
faint noise from somewhere to my right. Really? The rain masks everything, but I’m nearly certain this isn’t rocks sliding. This is different. I run.

And trip. My knee smacks against something hard as I fall. I reach out and feel: a small boulder. The mountain meadow is littered with them, and I know that, I know that very well, but fear got the best of me. Big mistake. I pull my mantle up to my thigh and extend that leg to the rain. My knee is split open, but I won’t touch it to see how big the gash is. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

Oh! Blood. I quick pull the mantle down over my leg so the rain won’t wash any more of it away. Then I wrestle Screamer free from under the hair at the back of my neck. I stuff the kit inside my mantle and hold the cloth up above my knee, like a
tent. It takes but an instant for the kit to figure things out and lap at the blood. After all, anytime I want, I eat the tall white mushrooms that have sprouted up everywhere; I simply gorge myself—but Screamer has had nothing to eat for too long.

Now, though, the kit takes a nibble of my flesh. I pull him out and slap him straight in the face. Not hard—he was only doing what any predator would do. But he can’t do that again. And a slap in the face sends a serious message. The boy slapped me in the face.

When? How long ago was that? More than a day? More than two?

I put Screamer back in his spot behind my neck and stand again. Onward. Slowly. No matter what I hear.

Walking in the dark makes me tense all over—though it’s not pitch black, not like before. There must be a moon up there somewhere. Maybe it’s even dawn already. Still, it’s dark enough to be hideous. But I have no choice. I disentangled myself from the boy while he slept, moving in itty-bitty segments at first, for fear of waking him. Soon, though, it was clear nothing could wake him. Exhaustion is a powerful force. I was so secure in that knowledge, I even pulled up some coriander before I left the boy, because I didn’t know when I’d next find a food source—I didn’t know that mushrooms would be springing up in such profusion. My family gathers them in spring, not now. But dislodging the coriander didn’t take much time—it barely had hold of the earth any longer. I looked at the boy’s club. A club would
be useful, and he’d given up his grip on it; it lay there, free for the taking. But it was his, and I’m not a thief. I left fast. The boy undoubtedly went on sleeping for hours and hours.

The boy is stronger than me. So I have to stay far from him—I mustn’t lose the advantage of that head start. He might not even be following me. But he might. He might want the company. Or maybe not. He was in a boat when the rain started; he must be the fisher boy, and fisher boys are used to being alone.

I want company. It doesn’t feel right to be so alone. If the boy was younger than me, or if he was a girl, I’d have stayed with him whether I liked him or not. But he can hurt me. So being alone is better, no matter how awful. I let myself sleep whenever I truly need to. I won’t risk the kind of exhaustion he felt. Anything could happen to someone too weary to wake easily. But besides those brief naps, I keep moving. I walk even as I eat, always uphill. It’s slow, though. I haven’t gone far, I know that.

That sound comes again—the one that made me rush and fall before. Panic can be an enemy. I stop and stare through the rain.

That fur looks familiar—even matted down, I can see it’s like Screamer’s. But the creature is more massive than a swamp cat, and that tail is short for any kind of cat. It moves a little, and now, in profile, it’s obvious: heavy head on a thick neck, sloped back. A striped hyena. The skin on my arms prickles against the rough wet cloth of my mantle. That mantle is wool. It smells like sheep when it’s wet. My sense of smell no longer works, but maybe the hyena’s does.

I once saw a hyena splinter a camel’s thigh bone. It was at dusk in a garbage heap outside town. I watched from the safety of a perch on my father’s shoulders. I was little then—so I sat sideways, a leg down his chest, a leg down his back. But even high and safe like that, I still clasped his head with both arms as I stared. The camel was dead already, of course, and its meat had been cut off and taken away. But, still, that bone was gigantic.

This hyena’s gaze is fixed on another creature, facing it. A boar. His tusks protrude only a half finger’s length, but that doesn’t fool me. Boars can slash anything apart. My stomach clenches. My cousins are shepherds. They complain of boars preying on lambs.

Both creatures are scavengers. Neither should be a danger to the other. But this is a mortal standoff. Unnatural. And they shouldn’t even be out and about now—not in daytime. It’s the fault of the rain. Starvation changes habits.

I swallow the saliva that has gathered in my mouth—a taste of sick. I mustn’t run. I can’t risk falling. My only chance is to slip away without them noticing me. I take a step. But standing in one place for that long caused me to sink into the mud. Pulling my foot free of it makes a quick suck noise, like a kiss. The hyena turns his head in my direction. His rounded ears stand high. The boar lifts his head and snuffles. They might not see me, but for sure they heard me. And they might smell the wool. And the blood from my knee.

I run. I don’t know where to. I just run. They chase. I hear them right behind me, gaining on me. It’s as though they’ve joined forces.

And, oh yes, a tree. A cedar! A stand of cedars! Magical cedars!

The first branching is easy to reach just by lifting a leg and hiking myself up. I cling there. The trunk is so wide, my arms barely reach to its sides. The next branching is higher. I stand on tiptoes; only my fingers graze it. The hyena and boar are nearly here. No choice, no choice. I hurry along the lower branch as it inclines upward. I go as fast as I dare, my hands out to each side for balance. The hyena yips. I take a long step. My hands can clutch the next branch up now. I take another long step, then grab hold of that branch and swing up so my legs hook on it. I struggle to right myself on the top side of the branch.

I look down. The hyena jumps into the first crux of the cedar. I’ve never heard of hyenas climbing trees. But he’s sure-footed. He runs up the branch I was just on. Races up it. I barely have time to pull up my legs before he jumps at me. And falls, smashing against the lower branch, skittering off it,
splat
below. The boar is on him in a flash.

And it is a flash for real. Lightning. The whole world fills with light—a sheet of it. I watch the boar. The light comes on, then off. Each time I can see, the boar is working in a different spot—so it seems like he has jumped from one place to another. It’s almost comical, except it’s grisly and awful. The
boar now stands amid the shreds of the hyena. He gobbles.

When my body no longer thrums hard from inside, I scoot along the branch. It scrapes the insides of my calves and thighs. I don’t care. No more standing with arms free. I reach the trunk and put my feet under my butt and straighten up, pressing against the bark, the wonderfully solid bark. The next branching is too high to reach again. Well, that’s all right. I press myself back down to sitting. The way the trunk leans, I can nestle into the wedge, sheltered. It’s amazing to be out of the rain. I sleep.

When I wake, the boar
is nowhere around. Scraps of hyena lie scattered at the base of the cedar, soaking up the rain. I’m hungry. “Hey, Screamer, are you starving?” The kit doesn’t move. I can’t remember the last time he moved. But I feel his weight. I stand and stretch and give myself a good shake. “Wake up.” The kit still doesn’t move. But he doesn’t fall off, either. If he were dead, he’d have fallen off. Right? I should pull him from my neck and find out. But I don’t. I need to have food to offer him before I do that. “Wait, Screamer. Please live. I’ll get you food. You’ll see.”

My mantle is damp, more in the front, where I was curled over it, than the back, which was open to the air. Damp, not dripping. It’s odd to be so nearly dry. I lean over and finger my knee; a thick scab has formed. Good. I look around, giddy with hope.

The only way down is to reverse how I got here. I scoot out the branch on my butt, then lie on my tummy and let my legs
dangle until I’m hanging there. My toes don’t reach! I didn’t scoot out far enough. But it takes too much strength to go hand over hand. I don’t trust my strength. There’s no choice: I hold my breath and drop.

And I’m teetering on the branch below. I skitter along it down to the first crook before I can lose my precarious balance. Success! It’s an easy jump from there to the ground. But where is that boar?

The rain comes less here; the cedar needles screen it out. And my sense of smell has returned. The flesh of that hyena actually entices.

I drop from the crook and pounce on a large clump of fur and gristle and bones. The boar bursts from nowhere. I bite down hard on the mess in my mouth and climb into the crook. It’s at the boar’s snout level. He grunts and jumps, rising onto his hind legs, but he can’t balance that way more than an instant. Ha! I’m safe, right there in the bottom crook.

I squat and take the mess from my mouth and drop it into the hammock my mantle forms between my knees. “Meal time.” I squeeze my eyes shut a moment, then dare to pull on Screamer. The kit comes easily into my hand. Limp. Like the chukar chick back when I was on the rock shelf. But like the chick, his chest moves. “Good boy.” I rub his tummy with one finger and lick his face. He opens his eyes and mews. He mews! I let out a little whoop. Then I rearrange my legs so I’m sitting and the kit and hyena mess are cradled in my lap. “It’s yours.” Screamer eats.

The boar watches. He stands on all fours, his nasty eyes fixed on us. All at once he opens his mouth wide. Teeth. So many teeth. He clamps his jaw shut again. Was that a yawn or a threat? He’s an idiot if he thinks I’ll be scared into doing something witless.

Screamer devours every last bit of flesh and gristle.

I’m hungry.

The boar still stands.

Slowly the little bit of light fades. The boar’s hulk remains unmoving.

I imagine a blob of milky honey on top of my tongue, slowly melting. My friend Hurriya is a good cook. She makes better pudding than Mamma even. I miss her. I miss everyone.

I sleep again.

When I wake, the boar stands in the same spot. Surely he moved about during the night. But he’s back at his post. His eyes are closed. He must be sleeping, yet still he stands.

As quiet as I can, I take the sleeping kit from my lap and tuck him behind my neck. I walk out the branch. I will not fall, I will not be scared. I will not give victory to a boar. I am too blasted hungry and a boar is too blasted idiotic. I walk to where I can easily reach the branch above. But I don’t stop. I walk farther, now hooking my arm over the higher branch. I walk out to where I can reach among the needles. I grab a cone and wrest it from its branch. I bite in hard and chew. The bitterness makes my nose wrinkle. But birds eat cedar cones, so they’re not
poisonous. And I can’t be picky. I swallow. The rough clump catches in my throat. Coughing doubles me over. I hang on to the branch my arm is hooked over, hang on with all my strength.

The boar grunts and walks to stand immediately below me.

I throw the bitten cone as far as I can. It whizzes over the boar’s head and disappears into the rain beyond. The boar practically spins in the mud. He races off after the cone.

I grab two, three, four more cones. I run down the branch to the trunk and wait for the boar to come trotting back toward me. Then I hurl a cone again. The boar is blessedly brainless; he turns and runs after that cone.

I drop from the tree and snatch a handful of hyena mess. But, oh, there’s a sizable piece of flesh over there, just right there. I make a dash for it.

Out of nowhere the boar rushes me. He’s between me and the tree—no! I run, but there’s nowhere to run to. The next tree is so far.