Silent Dances (14 page)

retu
rn
ed home. It seemed
calculated
.
That's the time of day when the
Grus a
re
heavy from food and a little off their guard. They carried off

four
young birds."

Tesa looked stri
cken
,
the hidden Aquila feather suddenly becoming a

heavy weight in its sec
re
t place.

Meg forced a smile. "I'
m sor
ry
, I shouldn
'
t overreact. Come on, supper
'

s ready and Thorn hates his food to get cold."

As they
drew close to the shelter Thorn met them, handing Meg and

Tesa each a large
,
red fruit
.
With a bow
,
he signed,
"This
is a class
restaurant
,
mesdames
. Your
appetizer."

Tesa smiled her thanks and bit into sweet,
ta
rt
flesh and realized this was

the source of the delicious "orange juice" Meg had given her on board

the
Crane.
The intense flavor flooded her mouth,
making her ravenous.

Thorn'
s cheerful expression faded as Meg pointed out the speck in the

sky that might be an Aquila.

"Maybe I'
m being paranoid
,"
Meg signed
. "
I didn't get a good look at it.

Tesa was watching it
be
fore I got there." Thorn looked at her
. "
Was it
an Aquila?"

The younger woman hesitated. She thought about Taller. How would she

feel if anything happened to him?
In her mind's eye, Dr
.
Rob was saying

something about taming the Wakinyan
.
The shadow of a bronze wing

crossed
be
hind her eyelids. Eve
ry
thing was all jumbled up, doing

battle in her head with the last remnants of hi
bern
ation drug. She

touched the pocket that held the prayer feathers and the pipe.

66

How could anyone get into such a complicated situation after being here

less than an hour?
She remembered the Thunderbird
'
s exclamation,

What a backward forward way to be.

"No," she signed, gazing at Thorn. "
I'm sure it wasn't."

67

Taller stood in the human beings' shelter, wondering if he'd made a mistake.

Just this morning he'd looked at the calendar cloak and realized it had been

three fruiting seasons since the Year the Humans Came. Three seasons,

and he'd never stepped inside their shelter. It felt wrong to be inside such an

alien thing, but then, the humans were alien, and he'd befriended them. If

he'd made a mistake, he'd done it long ago.

He gazed about at the cluttered, other-Worldly place. Relaxed had said

they'd named it after Puff and had pointed to a slab of wood attached to the

entrance. Relaxed had said Puff's
real
name was on it, that this building was

now THE SCOTT HEDFORD MEMORIAL SHELTER. The wood was

beautiful, yet the lines burned into it showed no awareness of the wood's

own pattern. The humans either had no aesthetic sense or the worst

eyesight of any diurnal creature Taller had ever communicated with.

Then Relaxed had said this building would last forever and always bring

honor to Puff. Taller comforted himself that the wood was of the World and

would age and crumble. The

68

time it took
to decay would mark the days of his grief for his friend. He

would
not
mark his grief by the aging of a shelter that would last forever. He

didn't think Puff would want him to do that.

These painful memories only reminded him of Water Dancer and his family.

The hatching cloaks of Dancer, his
mate Rain
, and the unhatched chick

now hung outside Taller's nest shelter, marking the days of grief. Rain's

cloak and the chick's were already unraveling, but Dancer's cloak with its

complex patterns of old legends had been woven by Taller's mate, Weaver,

who had earned her name through her skill. His son's cloak would last, but

not forever. Not even mountains lasted forever.

Taller swallowed a hard lump of grief. The dark wings of Death had never

before flown as they had that terrible day, not
in all the seasons
of Taller's

life. When he was young, it was only the foolish chick of foolish parents that

had ever been caught by the hunters-but things were different now.

Taller gazed out the windows at the slanting rays of polarized light that led

him to the Sun Family and asked as he had every day since his son's death-

Why
does Death take
us as
though we were nothing more than simple water

dwellers?--but he had stopped getting answers to his prayers long ago.

Once you lost the Sun Family's favor, your people's loyalty would be next.

He'd seen their signs. Since Dancer's death, the worst of it was he could no

longer deny it in his heart.

Things had changed when the humans came. Some blamed everything on

that.
They disturbed the atmosphere and changed the weather, they upset

the Moon Family and changed the tides, they angered the Sun Family and

changed the sunsets.

Taller had seen more than seventy seasons of weather, tides, and sunsets,

and knew that was nonsense. Except for Death. That he could not deny.

How was it the humans had come just as Death decided the White Wind

people were easier prey than a spawning?

Some days, Taller wondered if he hadn't lived too long. Fluffing his feathers,

he pulled his crown up tight, dimming its color, and moved on through the

shelter.

The floor'
s unnatural
surface was slick; his sharp claws rattled uselessly

against it
. He was plagued by an itch between his right eye and his bill, but

he didn't dare lift a foot to scratch

69

it, for fear his other would slide out from under him. He blinked his third

eyelid
.
He was looking for Good Eyes.

Taller snaked his head around some obstacles--"furn
iture" Puff named

them
.
He could hear the sound of a muffled waterfall
.
He listened
.

Something
-
or someone-was moving in the water. That would have to

be Good Eyes
.
Relaxed and First
-
One-There were outside
,
supe
rv
ising the food collection.

He moved closer to the water sounds. Could the humans make a waterfall
in

their building?
Well, they could fly without wings in
a ship
that could travel so high that one night Taller had watched it become a star.

Puff said the ship took them to a
bigger
building where humans could live

even though there was no air outside it. The day Puff told him that,
Taller

knew he'd done the
ri
ght thing in bef
ri
ending these aliens. There

would be no way to drive people like this away, people who set up

house next door to the Moon Family
.
To su
rv
ive
,
the White Wind
people would have to lea
rn
to live with them and whatever changes

they would b
ri
ng.

But a waterfall in a building?
That
would be something to see. And if Good Eyes were there,
he could talk to her at the same time
.
Though why the

humans need a waterfall in he
re
when all the water of the World was

just outside, he could not guess.

This area was crowded, and he walked cautiously around the things the

humans collected from the World.
Taller sometimes helped them collect

objects, but he never understood why they wanted them
.
Maybe they

were like the
ro
usettes, always hoarding things they couldn
'
t eat
,
and
not knowing why.

Here was a row of beautiful stones, there
a mound of b
ri
ght leaves. The

humans
"
prese
rv
ed" them so they would always look alive, even
though they had died
.
Puff had explained that. On their world
,
eve
ry
thing had to be "p
re
se
rv
ed
"
to ward off famine
.
It broke Taller's hea
rt
to watch the human beings eat "prese
rv
ed
"
food
,
some of it years old,
so he had showed them the f
re
sh food his World offered
,
and

watched them grow healthy on it.

Taller turn
ed
,
nearly upending a pair of blue antlers, shed by a Leaf
-

Eater
.
Next to that was a row of bleached skulls--a Leaf
-
Eater
'
s, a
Digger
'
s, and a T
re
e Ripper
'
s. The humans

70

must need to consume bone-building minerals,
Taller thought, or perhaps

they needed to gnaw and file back their teeth. People with teeth had

different requi
re
ments than his own who had the supe
ri
or edge with
their bills. Teeth
,
after all, fell out.

He'd finally located the source of the water sounds and was try
ing to

remember how to open the "door
"
when something behind him,

something lovely
,
caught his rear vision, making him forget about the

waterfall. Taller focused one eye on it.

Under a row of windows was a platform,
its soft surface held up on stilts,

and lying on it was something beautiful. It was a
"
blanket
."
He'd seen
many blankets, but never any like this.

It was ri
ch with all the colors of the World
,
with an intricate, sharp-

angled design set against a white background
.
The weave was similar

to other blankets
,
but this was not woven in one piece
.
No, this was
many little pieces all put together to make a pa
tt
e
rn
that contrasted
shades of orange
,
reds, and yellows. Taller eased slowly onto his

hocks to examine it, to relish the play of light
an
d color
,
to enjoy its
artist
ry
.

Of all the things Puff had shown him,
nothing touched the g
re
at bird as

did this beautiful blanket
.
His hea
rt
raced.

Oh, there
were the wind chimes
,
and Puff had explained how they made

them, but that was craft
,
tu
rn
ing sand into stone
,
even as lovely a
stone as c
ry
stal glass
.
This was different. This w
as
the ability to tu
rn
color and shape into something that tr
an
scended color and shape
.

His eyes devoured the beauty of the old star quilt
.
He w
as
so

distracted that he never heard the water stop or noticed Good Eyes

emerging from a room behind him.

Finally,
the Sun Family had sent a sign
.
Had he done the
ri
ght thing in
bef
ri
ending the humans
?
Yes.
He held in his feathered fingers proof that the humans were not just beings who could communicate,
but rather fully

intelligent people--the humans were capable of
art.

The best adv
an
tage of being planetside was the availability of a

natural water source that
,
for Tesa, tr
an
slated into a long, luxu
ri
ous
shower
.
There wasn
'
t anything quite as good as washing away

months of sleep deb
ri
s.

She turn
ed the water off
an
d reached for the purple towel

71

someone had thoughtfully left out for her. After a brisk rubbing, she

wrapped the towel around her hair
,
changed into a fresh StarB
ri
dge

jumpsuit
,
and opened the door.

She was start
led to discover Taller
,
hock
-
sitting before her bed,

meticulously examining her quilt with one eye
,
then the other
,
while
running a finger along the tiny stitches.

Suddenly he spotted her with his rear vision.
Her purple-turbaned head

was too much of a surp
ri
se and he leaped to his feet
,
s
tr
etched to his
full height
,
and bounced his head against the
ri
gid ceiling
.
His feet slid
out from under him
.
Spreading enormous wings to counterbalance
,
he

managed to sweep off eve
ry
object that had the misfo
rt
une to be