Tortall (31 page)

When I rattled down the ladder and into our kitchen, my younger brother, Peng, greeted me with his usual complaint: “When do I get to take the herd?” He must have thought if he got me early, I might not be awake enough to give him my usual answer.

“No, Peng.” I slung my pack onto the table and tucked the wrapped food set on the counter into it for later in the day. “I don’t know why you keep asking, when my answer is always the same. You do good work with the cows.”

Ma shook her head as she handed me a breakfast bowl of rice mixed with dried pork. I think she was getting tired of this argument between Peng and me.

“There’s plenty of folk to work the cows,” whined Peng. “You had your first flock when you were younger than me. Grandpa will take you for his apprentice any day, he says so all the time.”

I shoveled rice into my mouth. I didn’t want to say that I would cling to the freedom of the hillsides and my flock of sheep as long as I could. Study with Grandpa would mean hours indoors, away from the sun, the winds, and the wild
creatures. It would mean stuffy rooms and dusty books with only stuffed animals and dusty skeletons to look at.

“Your grandfather says there are other shamans without magic,” Ma said. “They use talismans and amulets made by those with power, or they borrow from their neighbors who have power.”

I glared at her, but Ma only shrugged. She was one of Grandpa’s helpers, a healer with no magic. She was happy with that.

“Unless the chief herdsman says different,” I told Peng, washing out my bowl and setting it to dry, “that flock is mine.” I slung my pack over my shoulder. Ma handed my staff and water bottle to me and kissed my cheek. As I left our house, I heard her tell Peng, “Your turn, my son. The cows are waiting.”

The early larks greeted me as I stopped to fill my bottle at the stream that ran by Grandpa’s house. I stopped to pour some of my fresh water into the wide drinking dish before the Shrine of the Compact. I visited the shrine daily. Its roof was made with feathers that the valley birds let fall, gathered by our people and placed here. Every day the roof was different. Today it seemed that someone had found a molting cardinal: bright red feathers graced the roof.

The shrine was also proof that, long ago, there had been plenty of magic in our village. In those days we were able to shape an agreement with all the birds who lived here. We would care for them and they for us, through all of time. There hadn’t been such big magics done in this valley in ages,
but we had this, at least, to remind us that one great magic still worked here every day.

I turned away from the shrine and walked to Grandpa’s workshop. He was awake and poking up his fire. I didn’t speak to him in case he was thinking of a new medicine or surgery, but went straight to the shelf where he kept the big jar of ointment for wounds. I was running out.

When I finished refilling my jar, I turned to find Grandpa scowling at me. I sighed: first Peng, now him.

“It’s too nice to argue,” I said before he spoke. “The birds are awake and calling. Thank you for the ointment!” I kissed his cheek and ran outside.

“Butterfly!” he called after me. “What will you do when the snows come?”

I didn’t shout back. It would have been rude. Besides, he knew what I did when the snows came. I spun wool and went outside as often as I could. The sheep still needed attention, and they didn’t fuss at me about doing something with my life. I was
living
my life!

I whistled Brighteyes and Chipper from the barn where the herding dogs spent their summer nights. My two came, tails wagging, still licking their breakfast from their chops. Together we went to our sheepfold and opened the gate. The sheep, lazy things, just stared at us. The dogs ran in to get them moving. “The birds are already awake, sleepyheads!” I told the sheep. Some of them gave rude, blatting answers as they filed past me.

Hundreds of songs, not just those of the larks, rose from the trees that surrounded our village and fields. The daytime flocks were waking up, getting ready for their part of the
contract: hunting the flying insects that plagued our workers as the day turned warm. The crows took to the skies first, a great black cloud of them. Half soared over my head, making a great racket as they went searching for food on the plain. Half flew the other way, bound for the woods and fields on the far side of the river that cut our valley in two. Only when they were gone and I could hear the prettier songs again did I take out my flute to play my reply to the songbirds.

On we went, sheep, dogs, and me. Brighteyes barked as she trotted beside the sheep. She thought the music was for her. Chipper ignored us as he guarded the flock on the other side. He was young and very serious about herding.

We followed a stream up along the flank of Taka Hill. Taka was my favorite place to graze the sheep, and we hadn’t been up there in a week. It was broad and tall, with plenty of wide dips filled with grass. On the east side it ended in a cliff. From there, I could look out over the Great Plain, beyond the hills that marked our valley’s eastern flank.

The early ground mists had burned off. The sun turned the plains grasses to gold and gave long shadows to the herds of buffalo and antelope that grazed there. They were safe from our hunters for now. Winter was a good three months off, time enough for the little animals to grow strong on summer greens. The only thing the wild herds had to fear, or us, for that matter, was the terrible summer storms. One of them flashed lightning in the distance, at the very edge of my vision. I don’t know what it was that made me shiver—those rapid spears of fire out on the immense plain, or the single gray finger of a tornado that reached from clouds to ground.

Only when the tornado vanished and the storm was gone from my view did I turn to view my own, smaller world. I loved our valley. Unlike the longer valleys to the north and south, strung like beads along the foothills of the Heavenly Fire Mountains, our valley held only our village, fields, and orchards. The Birdsong River and its companion road split it in two along its length. A second road divided the valley in half across the middle, bringing us travelers from the cities on the far side of the plain and from the mountains in the west. From the hill where I stood I had a king’s view of it all.

The rest of the village was awake. Out came the other shepherds and their flocks, and the goatherds. The goatherds went into the hills on the western side of the river, closer to the mountains. Other shepherds waved as they passed us on the way into the hills south of the pass and the road at my feet. The cowherds moved out on the heels of the smaller animals. They led our cattle through the pass onto the edge of the Great Plain. With men and dogs on guard, the cows would graze as their wild cousins did. Small flocks of birds followed the herds to feed on bugs and warn against enemies. None of the other villages in neighboring valleys had such a useful arrangement. They said we were stupid to feed the birds in addition to what they took as they hunted.

With my sheep settled across the hill, away from the cliff, I took out my spindle and my bag of wool. Spinning thread, I walked around the edges of the herd. The sheep were in a good mood. Even the lambs were well behaved after a few chasing games.

Noontime came with its hard, hot sun. Brighteyes,
Chipper, and I moved the sheep to cooler grazing under the trees by the stream. I piped a hello to the birds there, who sang their own greetings in reply. I opened our lunch. First, because they looked so sad, I fed the dogs chopped-meat patties that Ma had fixed for them.

“I didn’t fall for the drooping ears, though,” I said as I put their food on the ground. “I give you this because it’s time to eat, not because you made me feel sorry for you.” Brighteyes wagged her tail and barked, then gobbled her lunch. Chipper simply ate. Pa said he didn’t know what would happen when Chipper got too old to run with the sheep. The way he ate, without a herd to keep him busy, Chip might turn into a ball with a tail.

As the dogs fed, I ate my own lunch. Then I broke up some cakes and tossed the crumbs out on the ground in front of me.

The birds here were friends. Most had been brought to me by the fieldworkers and herders. All had been in danger once. They’d had broken wings or legs, or their nests had fallen from trees. Grandpa had taught me what to do for them. Now I tended injured birds on my own. I always kept back some of my food for those who had returned to the sky. They would visit me wherever I took my sheep, happy for a free meal, as I was happy for the company.

While everyone pecked at crumbs, I sat back and played my flute. The birds lit all around me, peeping and singing along.

Suddenly they shrieked and fled into the shelter of the trees. Brighteyes and Chipper snarled, staring at the sky. I
leaped to my feet. It was the golden eagle who hunted our hills. It had prey in its claws and was flying toward us, on its way home.

I had a score to settle with that eagle. He must have come from a nest outside our valley, because he ignored the compact between our village and the birds. He had taken a lamb in the early spring. It was time for him to learn I was no one to meddle with. I set a rock in my sling and let fly. The eagle screamed at me and flew higher. I loaded the sling a second time and spun it through the air, choosing my moment. I didn’t really want to kill the great thief. He was trying to live, like me. I just wanted him to stay away from my sheep! I loosed my stone.

The eagle shrieked as my rock drove through his tail feathers, knocking two of them free. They spun on their drop to the earth.

“Ha!” I yelled, and set another stone in the sling. “Take that, sheep-stealer!” I let fly again.

The eagle veered away, losing a wing feather. Better, I had alarmed him so badly that he dropped his catch. I ran to get it, in case it was still alive.

Luckily, the prey fell straight into some brush. I heard it squawk and thrash as I searched the branches for it. I pried its claws away from the tough stems, talking softly. It calmed as I worked, and stopped struggling. Finally I drew back from the bushes, scratched and bloody, and got a real look at the eagle’s prize.

If it was a bird, it was the ugliest bird I had ever seen. An ailment, maybe, had stripped away its feathers, leaving only brownish pink skin stretched tight over its ribs. Two
long flaps of skin over a couple of long, slender bones joined its sides and arms, like a bat’s wings, but it wasn’t furry like a bat. Its forepaws were little more than hooks on the long arm bone. Its hind paws were like a lizard’s, with toes that ended in hooked claws, but lizards had no wings, and bats did not have beaded skin. I ran my finger along the thing’s back. It was as long as my forearm, not counting its tail, and there were small bumps along its spine. Could it be a dragon? They were bigger in the stories, bigger than barns. Could it be a baby dragon? Surely this baby was too small to one day grow large enough to carry a bull away.

It panted in my hands, eyes closed, as I examined it. One forearm was broken. A flap of skin on its right arm hung open, the wound bleeding. I guessed the eagle’s talons had made that and the long cut in its left side.

“You tried to fight, didn’t you?” I asked. I cradled it in my arms gently, pressing the bloody wounds to halt the bleeding. It still did not struggle, as if it knew I meant it no harm. “You are very brave,” I said as I carried it to my pack. “Now, I’m sorry to say I must hurt you a little to make you feel better. I have to sew you up so you won’t bleed anymore.” I sat cross-legged by my pack and opened it one-handed, the other hand still pressed to the worst cut in the lizard’s side. I opened my medicine kit, setting out all I would need, including the cloth I used as a worktable in the fields. I did everything slowly to keep from frightening my patient. When I placed it on the cloth, it stayed still, panting softly. I wished all the animals I had cared for had been like this one—they had fought unless they were too sick to struggle.

“You are so good,” I told it. “Brighteyes, isn’t this a good fellow?” Looking around, I saw that Brighteyes had left. She and Chipper were minding the sheep. They were used to watching the flock as I doctored.

After wetting a square of cloth with water from my bottle, I touched the damp cloth to the cut in the lizard’s side. It let out a sharp peep and opened its eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did warn you it might hurt. I have to clean all the blood away.” Then I got a good look into its eyes. They were bright copper, the shade of fresh-worked metal, with long black pupils. Those were not bat eyes. I wondered if they gave off heat, and scolded myself for so foolish an idea. It blinked, and I blinked, too. Now its eyes lost their hold on me.

The lizard shrilled and bumped my hand with its nose. It seemed to be telling me to go ahead.

Gently I cleaned its wounds, where the bleeding had stopped. It was wonderfully well behaved, though I must be hurting it. As I stitched the cuts, it began to trill in a high, sweet voice. I stopped, but the lizard only looked at me and continued to sing. I resumed my work as it did, splinting the broken bone in the wing once the open wounds were stitched. I learned to be careful of those finger-hooks: they were sharp. My last step was to put Grandpa’s healing ointment on the stitches.

Only when I was done did the lizard’s song end. I wiped my forehead on my arm and looked up, to see that the trees around us were filled with birds. The sheep and the dogs had gathered near us on the ground. The creature looked around
and gave one final, drawn-out whistle. Finally it stretched out on the cloth and went to sleep.

The birds took off when they realized the newcomer was done with its song. I covered it with a clean, dry cloth and walked down to the stream with the dogs. Now that I’d cared for its wounds, the question of what it was returned to baffle me. I
knew
our valley’s lizards. This creature was like none of them. I had seen pet lizards brought by travelers to sell to mountain and city dwellers, lizards with frills around their necks, or chins covered with spikes, or strange-colored scales. None of those lizards did more than hiss, let alone sing. None were so ugly as this creature, with its pink-brown skin and lumpy head and spine.