Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (5 page)

This nearly broke her, I think. She collapsed in a heap and covered her face with her hands and her head and body with her wings, and wept soundlessly as her poor, frail little body shook with sobs. She could not understand it. When she tried to speak to me, all she could manage was,
So heavy! Why am I so heavy?

It was Perry who explained it, though I did not understand the explanation, and neither did Mirina. Perry said there was something called
gravity
, which pulls us down to the land, and that the
gravity
of our land is stronger than the
gravity
of the moon. He went on at some length, and no one understood it. It was Innes that said, “There is so much more of our land than the land of the moon that it calls to everything upon it with greater strength.” That seemed logical to all of us, and we nodded, though Perry looked at us with disgust and muttered something under his breath.

Mirina then took to two pursuits. One was to spend herself into exhaustion, beating her wings to strengthen them, for after all, the Mahar can fly, and fly to her land, it seems, so eventually she felt she should be able to do the same.

The other was to follow Dek about, when she was not beating her wings.

For his part, he did not mind, although I could see that in his head he regarded her as a charming child, well worth indulging, and not the well-grown woman I knew her to be. He taught her a simple language of hand-signals, he supplied her with a light bow and arrows, which she used to great effect, so they went hunting together. He watched, fascinated, as she demonstrated
braiding
and
weaving.
Braiding he found particularly intriguing, especially as it enabled him to keep his long hair out of his face. So he enlisted her help in making his hair controlled . . . and I would watch her face as she did so, and it nearly broke my heart to see how it pleased and hurt her at the same time to give such an intimate service to him. For of course I was always their companion, since I was the only one who understood her.

Why do you torment yourself in this way, with him?
I would ask her. And the answer was always the same.

I will be miserable regardless. I would rather be miserable with him, than miserable without him.

So day by day, her wings grew stronger, and she grew sadder. I thought that in the end she would probably try to fly back to her home, and maybe die in the attempt. Maybe? Almost certainly—unless she would gain the help of one of Perry’s gigantic floating bags. Then . . . maybe she could. I wondered if I should tell her about them. Perry had never made another, after nearly killing Dian the Beautiful, the Emperor’s mate and beloved, when one ran away with her. But for this . . . for this he might make one.

Would that be a good thing, or a bad? Because the land does call to us ardently, and I was not at all sure that even with the help of a floating bag that she could escape the call. Even if she did, there would be the return to her own land, up there in the sky, and the Mahar that were living there and preying on her people. A perilous plummet that would be, even with stronger wings than she had before.

But before I could make up my mind whether to tell her or no, events were taken from my hands.

It happened, after the Emperor had left us to return to his land and mate, and Perry with him, satisfied with how well his boat had turned out, that Dek and I were out on one of those selfsame boats, with Mirina with us also, and three other men of Thuria. This time we were hunting in earnest, for the purpose of clearing the waters and making them safe to navigate for the canoes of our island allies. Mirina, light as she was, with her wings to help her balance, had a perch on the top of the mast and was serving as our scout.

We had just dispatched one of the great sea-creatures with surprisingly little bloodshed, our harpoon having gone through its head from eye-socket to eye-socket. Seeing an opportunity, we brought it quickly alongside and tied it there, making sure that no fluids leaked into the water to attract others of its kind. There was much good meat on such a beast, and the bones, the skin, all were of immense use to us. Even the ribs could be used to form the ribs of a boat. We had used such when they washed ashore, but now we had an opportunity to bring one home intact and not half-rotten.

So intent were we that we paid no attention to our surroundings until finally a shrill whistle from above penetrated the noise we were making as we worked. Several of us looked up.

Mirina was blowing on the alarm-whistle that Dek had made her from a bit of hollow bone and frantically gesturing to the stern.

And we saw it. One of the terrible, unpredictable storms, coming straight at us.

It killed us to do so, but we straightway cut the big carcass loose—though as the others sawed at the ropes, I took care to remove the fins and stow them belowdecks with our water. Mirina half-slid, half-fluttered down out the mast, for when that wind hit, she, with her wings, would be the most vulnerable of us all. Then we put on full sail to try to outrun it and get into shelter in the lee of one of our ally-islands.

But the storm was coming on too fast. Seeing this, Dek sent Mirina to huddle in the storage belowdecks, dropped all sail, and sent out the sea-anchor. He ordered all of us to rope ourselves to the boat, and just in time.

I cannot tell you how long the storm lasted. Dek and I stood at the tiller and kept her nose into the waves. The other three huddled down as best they could. Perry and that strange cannibalistic fellow who was so good at boat-building had sworn this craft could weather any storm, but I had never seen a storm such as this. I do know that it drove us right out of the Shadow and well into the part of the ocean where all is light very quickly, for the sky, which had been black, lightened into a sullen gray, and so it stayed.

It is good that we had my strength. I do not think Dek could have held the tiller steady without it. It is good that the ship had a tiller carved of the keelbone of a great sea-beast, for it was flexible and did not snap. Several times, a slender, white arm came from below the deck between us, at a little hatch, and Dek would stoop and take what Mirina offered—dried fish, dried meat, a waterskin. If we had not had those, I think we would have perished. The other men crawled to us and shared what Mirina sent up to us, then huddled down at our feet.

Then came a terrible moment, when a wave as tall as a mountain towered over us, blotting out the sky. The other men stared at it in horror as it threatened to fall upon us. But Dek and I held the tiller steady, and the sea-anchor held, and we somehow climbed the near-vertical face of that dreadful water, hovered for a moment on the peak, then slid down the other side with a speed that stole the breath from my body and made my heart stand still.

And that was the worst of the storm. Not long after, we got into a place of calmer winds, huge swells rather than waves, rain and lightning.

Dek was exhausted. He trembled as he stood there. I assured him I could hold the tiller while he slept, which of course I could and did, and he fell down with the others, pulling the canvas of the sail over the lot of them to shelter them a bit from the rain.

Mirina crept out from belowdecks. She was soaked, of course, from the times when she had opened the hatch, but she did not appear to feel the cold. She had brought me a great piece of fin, all meat and fat, which I devoured and did me much good.

Do you know where we are?
she asked me.

“Not in the least,” I answered aloud. “But this ship has that
compass
thing fastened in that box on the prow.” I pointed with my chin, not wanting to let go of the tiller. “The prow would have to crack off before we lost it, and if that happened, we would be in such straits that losing the
compass
would be the least of our worries.”

My home is there,—
she said, and pointed up and to our stern.
I can feel it. So if we go that way, we will come to the Shadow and all will be well with you.

Well! That was useful. I knew, of course, that every human and most Sagoth, when on land, knows exactly where the land of his birth is—and also any land he has visited in person. It is something born in us, but we lose it on the water. The natives of the islands can tell you each where his own island is as well, though they are lost on the land. But it seemed this child of the air was not lost, neither on land, nor on water. And she was right. If we followed where she pointed, we would come to the Shadow of her world and be home. Thus it would not matter even if we lost the
compass.

I confess that I was much cheered by this, and restored by the food and this knowledge, I held course through the rain and thunder until at last the storm died and the men awoke. Then I imparted what Mirina had told me to Dek.

By now we could see we were deep among the islands. The
moon
was not visible; it must have been hidden behind one or more of them. These islands towered around us, looking like what Innes and Perry had told us they were, the tops of submerged mountains. We recognized none of them, and reckoned ourselves lucky that caution on my part had caused me to insist that we had sailed with water belowdecks enough for many sleeps. Food we could catch with our harpoon, and by fishing, but water . . .

Before I slept myself, I helped Dek haul in the sea-anchor and stow it, helped the men to rig the sail, and got the boat turned about and pointed in the direction Mirina wished us to go—which agreed with the
compass
.

We knew we were not out of peril yet. There are many strange races living on the islands. Some are peaceful and friendly. Some are wary and hostile.

And some are deadly.

Also, there were the great beasts of the sea.

No, we were by no means celebrating, except in that we celebrated going down the throat of the storm and coming out alive.

I flung myself down on the deck and slept, as Dek and the others made for home.

It was Dek kicking me in the ribs that woke me. A quick glance at the hurried preparations for combat told me why.

“Astern,” Dek said, briefly, and took the tiller.

Now, the good thing about being a sailing ship with only four rowers is that most of the time the rowers do not need to work; the wind does it all for you. The bad thing about being a sailing ship with only four rowers is that when you are being overtaken by a dozen islander canoes of the sort with the pods on the side, and the wind is scarcely a breeze, then you know that the canoes are going to win this race. We Thurians did not know many folk with that sort of canoes—only one of our island allies had such, and these were too far to be our allies.

I glanced up. Mirina was hanging quiver after quiver full of arrows on the top of the mast at her usual perch. Good. She would be able to stay out of reach, at least until they swarmed us. What would happen to her then . . .

I got my sword and my club, and a tiny shield I fastened on my wrist. I was of little use with distance weapons. The rest armed themselves with their guns—alas, we had not brought much ammunition for them, since they were all but useless against the sea-beasts—and put spears, bows, and their swords at their sides in readiness. We turned to face the foe. There was no point in trying to race them, and our harpoon gun and cannon faced forward. We might as well use them while we could.

As soon as the first canoe was in range, we fired the cannon. It was both a lucky and a good shot; it hit the canoe squarely, and the thing exploded in flying splinters and falling bodies.

That took our foes aback; we could see them gesturing to one another vehemently, and the paddlers slowed or stopped. But they must have been made of stern stuff; before long the paddlers dug their oars into the water, and they came at us again.

But of course this had given us plenty of time to reload and aim, and the second shot hit another canoe before they had gotten properly underway. This time our attack was met with fierce howls of rage.

We got off two more shots, both scoring direct hits, before we knew there would be no time to reload for a fifth. But now they were in harpoon range, and Dek ran to that gun, taking careful aim before firing.

It was a terrible sight.

The harpoon not only struck the man he had been aiming for, it passed through him and impaled the second man in the canoe as well. Dek had used one of the harpoons that had no line fastened to it, as those were more accurate, so the two men thrashed together, screaming and bleeding, before they finally fell overboard, still pinned together.

This only enraged the attackers, but Dek managed to get off a second harpoon before they were on us.

But we had narrowed the odds against us, somewhat. There had been a dozen canoes, with two men to each; the cannon had taken four, and the harpoon one. That left but seven, with fourteen men to our four, plus Mirina, though to be honest, I did not think she would be of much use.

We began to hurl spears, but those were deflected by the bark shields the men put up as they came alongside. We four put our backs to the mast and prepared to fight as we were surrounded by canoes and their occupants swarmed the sides of the boat.

A strange sound came to my ears as they screamed and boarded us. I looked up. It was Mirina. She was flying!

Hovering, rather, using what little wind there was to help her stay aloft. And with a grim look upon her face, she was carefully sighting and loosing her arrows down into the mob around us.

Her bow was light, and her arrows, perforce, were just big enough to take down birds or hare. They were hardly man-killers, unless she got off a lucky shot.

But they
were
man-cripplers.

And she had the advantage of height and the knowledge that even if one of them got past us and up the mast, he could not reach her. She could take her time sighting, and pick her target—their arms, their necks, their heads. One arrow in a bicep made it hard to wield the club-like, shell-edged wooden swords they were using. Two made it almost impossible. They could not use their shields to protect themselves from her arrows without opening themselves to our swords.