by James Comins
"The Hunter's arms are swifter than the eye can follow. His spiked shoes can take him up trees to the leafmost in moments without relinquishizing his knives. He can run for hours without tiring. He trains strange bats to sight from above, and he teaches thumping worms to tell him what's underroot. They say his eyes can see the shapes of hidden things, through walls and behind trees. They say he smells beating hearts and tastes fear.
"We had no more than a quarter-toll of warning. The beetles told us the Hunter was coming, and by then it was too late to leave. Some families chose to run anyways. He caught those first, the beetles told us, sighted them and caught them as they screamed, and he skinned them of their fur and cut the muscles off their corpses and cooked them to eat. My aunts were among them. I saw the skins." Pafaul stopped speaking, Cory couldn't see why. After a shaky sound, Pafaul went on: "Then he left, taking their furs with him. It was only a week before he returned. We should have run then, but we were scared and di'n't have a place to go. He began hunting deeper into the Forest Depths, scything through the vines, tearing through the meat of the greenery with his knives to find us. My parents and sisters made no sound. We stayed inside our tree. There was no indication that we were there. A family of beetles kept watch for us, and there's no way the Hunter could have spotted them--they're camouflaged.
"Then the screams began, and the screams kept coming closer. The first day we heard fifteen screams, some close, some distant. Then it was night, and we had no way to keep warm without creating light that the Hunter might see. It was so cold. The only sound we heard inside our tree was the clicking of the beetle family keeping watch. We stayed up that night, tolls and tolls of sleeplessness, and heard two more cries in the dark as the Hunter stalked us and killed our people. That was how we knew there wouldn't be any ecks'cape--the Hunter di'n't sleep as we do, but kept vila'gint for those who tried to ecks'cape in the night. In the morning we took turns trying to sleep, but there wasn't no sleep for any of us--every sound outside resonated within the trunk of our larantine: the stamping of wild feet running, the beetles speaking to each other through their clicking legs, the voices of birds getting harassed by huge bats clustering against the treetops and swooping down on anything that moved. We were pinned, and so we stayed inside and hoped he'd abandon his hunting and take what he had.
"There were twelve screams the second day. We rationed our food. Parthim eat mostly sugar, and we mostly go out to find it each day. It's our joy to find wild nectar in forest flowers. We had stored three days of invert--three days if we were eating it normally, I mean, but we thought we could stretch it to six or seven days if we were careful. My sister Piruna was too young to know better, and stuffed herself on her private stash of candied lea-li that second day, when we first spoke of rationing. I don't want to go hungry, so I ate my food and now I'm not," she said. It might have stretched the food to nine days, but it was gone.
"That night was very bad. We decided we shouldn't speak, and Piruna took that hard, especially after my mothers lost their self-control and shouted--that was after Piruna had told them the stash of candy was gone. She was angry with Ata and Pata but we all couldn't speak for fear that the Hunter was near. It got worse about halfwise through the long night, because the beetles abandoned us. No, it wasn't like that, they di'n't abandon us. It was--the beetles are simple folk and they became overwhelmed by the bats, who came by the hundreds and began to eat the beetles. They were right outside our tree, and the outscouts began disser'pearin', including some valiant veterans who kept going out to get the word out for our family. For hours they relayed constant updates to us, and the five of us stayed close to hear the relays--eventually it got so that we could interpret the clicks as they came in. I'm still grateful. I remember how they kept flying out, even after reports of the bats came in. They were so brave. Eventually links in the relays stopped sounding, and they sent out the greenhorns to fill the gaps in their communification chain, but the greenhorns was less experienced and di'n't know how to evade the bats. Once the bats found the chain, it didn't take long before the greenhorns were gone and no one would go out."
A small sob.
"And all I remember about that night was pressing my ear to the wood, listening for the clicks, and then seeing one greenhorn after another being sent out into the open dark. Just for our protection. One after the other. At the end of the night, the chain was gone--the beetles had no connection to the outside. They stopped clicking, in case the bats found a way in. Then it was just silence.
"The third day there were eighteen screams. Ata-Mother told Pata-Mother that it was a bad sign. It meant the Hunter had found a way to locate hidden Parthim like us, she said. I don't know if that was true. We discussed all kinds of options--splitting up, finding the nearest cave system, escaping into the canopy, digging holes inside the roots to hide in. But we all knew about the thumping worms--you could hear them, although even the communification beetles couldn't figure out their code. So the ground beneath us was even more of an enemy than the sky full of bats. And now we had no way of knowing whether the Hunter was right outside our larantine, ready with his knives.
"That night Palauna fell asleep. It was the first real sleep any of us'd had. She had a nightmare, and . . . she screamed when she woke. Oh. I don't know if I a'splained that before: Parthim have a scream that we scream only once in our lives, always at the very end. It's our death-scream. To make it, our hearts squeeze all of our blood into our throats, to produce one final warning. Normally we make it at a very old age, and it's more of a sick groan, but it's much louder when you're younger. It's to warn of danger. It carries for miles. But if you make it before you have to die, like my--my sister--" Pafaul made a sound that cut into Cory's chest--"then the scream crushes your heart, it's automatic-like, and your heart can't be restarted because the blood's squeezed away. Which isn't to say Ata and Pata didn't try to restart Palauna's heart. They tried. They tried for tolls. But a Partha's last scream is final.
"So my sister was dead in her bed. Finally safe, really. I could tell you so many stories about Palauna, she was such a baby, I could tell about the way she accused everyone of cheating at games whenever she lost, and how we forgave her, or about the way she'd twirl her finger in the air after she burped, like she'd won a prize for it, or about the way you could make her laugh and she couldn't stop and she'd keep laughing nearly all night, but . . . We drew a curtain around her and left the funeral for when the Hunter was gone. But now me and Piruna and probably our mothers too all imagined, what if we fell asleep and had the same nightmare? I'd never heard of Parthim dreaming themselves dead before. None of us had. But the pressure was getting to all of us, the silence and the solitudin' and the sounds that came through now that the beetles had stopped, and we all kept ourselves awake all night, in case we broke down in our sleep and screamed.
"I don't know if the Hunter heard the scream or knew what it meant, but sometime on that day, it was the fourth day, after my sister--after she had screamed, I found myself waking up--I think we all finally lost our will to stay awake indefin'bly--and Palauna's body, which we'd left in her bed, was gone. I di'n't know what to make of that. Had the Hunter found our home, taken Palauna, and then left the rest of us alive? Had our mothers buried her in the night? Had the thumping worms broke'd through and dragged her away? I di'n't know. I asked where my sister was, but she di'n't know and Ata wouldn't say and Pata just cried, and I didn't want to hurt my mothers by asking again. I never found out where Palauna went.
"By the fifth day, the screams had dropped to about four, but they were spaced out, so we didn't get two tolls in a row without one. Ata started to flinch at every sound from outside, and Pata held her hand all through the day. We were very low on invert by then, and we'd taken to chewing the crusty gum that forms on the inside of the jars, which doesn't taste like anything but takes your mind off the hunger. Ata told Pata she was sure that when she fell asleep next, she'd scream. Pata told us all to sit in a circle and hold hands and
we all said goodbye to Ata, just in case. We told happy stories, and both my mothers cried, and we tried to find peace in losing her in case we did lose her, but I didn't see any peace anywhere. Pata said that she'd rather risk running from the Hunter than wait for Ata to scream in her sleep, but Ata told her there was no reason to risk all of us running, that she'd go out alone.
"And she did. Without looking back, my Ata walked down the larantine's steps, slid through the stinging ferns and out into the evening. Pata grabbed Piruna and me and held us close, and told us to stay absolutely silent, and told the beetles to stop all their noises, not that they were making any anymore, so we could listen for Ata's last scream.
"What we heard instead was the bats. As soon as Ata left, a thousand shrieks worse than death began shaking the branches of our tree down to the rootmosts, and the bats swarmed, and we waited.
"Pata di'n't have to worry. We all heard Ata's last scream."
* * *
"The Emperor has commanded me to take your shiny little crystal from you."
"Let the Emperor tell me in person," skekTek replied.
The steel frame around the Slavemaster hovered close. SkekTek could not endure his fear and fumed wanly as the knuckles of skekNa took his new, ornamented robe and held it. Another set of knuckles, cracked and scratched and scabbed and healed and re-scabbed, began to sort through the disguised pockets in skekTek's vast sleeves. The scientist smiled grimly as one of his spring defenses snapped shut on the Slavemaster's knuckles, giving him a newly broken hand. The Slavemaster withdrew it, turning skekTek's pocket inside out as the mechanism pulled on the fabric around it. The Slavemaster sprung the trap and took back his hand. Still-powerful purple light tumbled to the floor, not quite blinding them both. SkekTek was not wearing his darkglasses, and shielded his eyes.
"You were ordered to turn over this stone," the Slavemaster said, reaching for it, giving it a brief, unsquinting look and pocketing it. "Instead you resisted. You will be punished."
"Try it," skekTek snarled.
A nasty metal implement leaped to the Slavemaster's hand and came down without warning onto the bridge of skekTek's beak. He cursed and would have bent double if the hard hand of the Slavemaster had not kept him upright. His new robes tore, however, and the fine cloth frayed at the Slavemaster's blow.
"My task is completed," skekNa told him. "Return to your duties."
"I'll do whatever I like with my time," skekTek snapped.
The Slavemaster tapped out a complex code on the tubular bells just inside the heavy double doors, and the doors unlocked. Again, skekTek memorized the pattern.
"Leave here," the Slavemaster told him.
SkekTek departed swiftly from the kennels. He was, however, certain that there were secrets here that might be used against the Slavemaster. A nasty sensation in his forehead burned and rang and nibbled and tore at him. Pressing a hand to his head, skekTek found an ooze of orange blood. First he would close the wound, then he would monitor the Slavemaster, and then he would infiltrate the kennels and pry the secrets out.
* * *
"How did you escape, Pafaul?" Cory asked, as gently as he could.
The furry blue Partha was not far from him. She said: "I need to tell you other things first. After Ata screamed, the bats began to coggin'regate around our tree. They make a high-pitched shriek which is maybe creepy an' unnerving from a distance, but when it surrounds you . . ." Pafaul made a fearful sound. "There were dozens on each side of the tree, and they would not stop shrieking. My sister Piruna began to hyperventilate, and Pata began to eat scoopfuls of the very last of our invert nectar to calm her nerves. Imagine being closed in on every side, no way to get out, and now the enemy was shrieking, wailin', less than a tror away, right through the walls. And where was the Hunter? We didn't know. We knew nothing.
"Piruna fell asleep on the loft floor, curled up beside her bed. She was shivering. I sat beside her, and the minute she started to sweat I woke her up, silently, by throwing her stuffed animals at her. When she woke, she let out a gasp that sounded like her heart was starting to give out. She said she'd had a nightmare, where it was years from now and the Hunter still prowled outside, day and night, and we had all gotten old and were starving and as thin as twigs with fur, and Pata had grown into the chair at the dinner table, like solidified almost, but she was still alive, waiting for Ata to return, with cobwebs and lichens growing on her. Turned to stone, like the Stonetree. And then, in the nightmare, she said she knew the Hunter had finally found her, after years of searching. She could hear him breathing. And she knew that if she looked out through the tree-knots even once, there would be a pair of pure white eyes waiting for her.
"I held Piruna as she told me that, and she told me that she was never going back to sleep again. Then she yawned. And I kissed her. And I told her goodbye."
Loora's thin rough hand took Cory's and squeezed it.
"Piruna made it through that night without falling asleep. But on the seventh morning, she went to scrape the sides of the invert barrel and didn't come back for a full toll." A breath. "My sister screamed just as I was planning to go in to check on her. I was, I'm not lying, I was going to go in to check on her.
"And then it was me and Pata. She kept telling me that she didn't say goodbye to Piruna because she wasn't ready. I believe her; she wasn't ready. And the bats kept shrieking. There wasn't any way out. To pass the time we combed each others' fur, talked to the beetles as quietly as we could, and tried to come up with some way to find out what was happening on the outside. Piruna's body stayed in the storage room. Neither of us could manage to look at it or move it. Funny how it stopped being my sister after she died." Pafaul's voice took on a very different, meditative tone. "Maybe it's just how Parthim think. I'm sure there was nothing inside the body. Just dead fur. I think that if I were honest, I'd have been happy to give the bodies of dead Parthim to the Skeksis, if they'd died naturalwise. I know some people care about dead bodies, you Gelflings do, but my people don't. Didn't, I guess. But the Skeksis didn't even ask for our fur. Never spoke to us. Did nothing except hunt us.
"Anyways. There were three screams that evening. It rained, but you can hear Partha screams through the rain. We was out of food, and neither of us could go into the storage area to scrape the sides, 'cause, I mean, we didn't even talk about the idea, but the hunger was still manageable. I tried to convince Pata to tell me stories, but she didn't have the heart in her to talk. So I tried telling stories, but Pata stopped me anytime I mentioned anyone we knew. I'm not much good at making up stories. There was an old Partha in our woods who told stories--they all took place in a flying city she invented, in a world where Parthim had wings like birds--but I couldn't remember them much. I tried, though, and it took Pata's mind off for a little while. But not for very long."
"So how did you--" Loora said.
"I'm getting to it. It's important. You'll see why. Pata finally got hungry--Parthim run through food very fast, since we're mainly sugar-eaters--and she told me to wait while she rolled the empty barrels in.
"Moments later she came running back in. She wrapped herself around me. I figured it was just nerves from seeing Piruna, but she held onto me the way she used to hold onto Ata and walked me over to see what had happened.
"Piruna was gone."
The Worshippers and their snippy-voiced leader all seemed to be holding their breath, listening. Cory stood still and felt Loora's arm against his.
"Where did she go?" Loora asked.
"I don't know. Neither did Pata. We couldn't even talk about it, but I was sure that what happened was, the Hunter wasn't even killing anyone. He was just waiting for us to scream from fear, just from the idea, then taking the corpses away. If that was true, then he already knew we was here. He knew where our tree was. He had been inside the larantine, here with us. That was why the bats was surrounding us. They were trying to play with our minds, to scare us into screaming.
"Pata told me, and I remember her
exact words, 'Our tree has his footprints in it.' She told me that the beetles must have did it, must have taken Piruna's body away, taken her to Him, to the Hunter, that they were all traitors, that they were conspiratin' with the bats. She shouted at them in beetle-language that the beetles were the ones who had killed our family--the same beetles who had lined up so bravely to sacker'fice themselves for us. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told Pata to stop, that she was saying hurtful things, that the beetles was our friends and always had been, but she had lost her sense and wouldn't stop. Shouting and shouting until that beautiful language started to sound like the language of hate. She told them all to get out. But with bats all around us, there was no way for the beetles to leave. Some of them did what she tole them, and the bats got them. The rest were too scared to move.
"And Pata climbed the walls of our home, reached the open tree-caverns of the beetles, and began to eat them."
Pafaul's voice cracked once again.
"Those brave beetles. Our friends--for generations, our friends. And they was all too scared to move, couldn't fly away or run or anything. And Pata--my own mother--stuffed them into her mouth in handfuls and smashed them in her teeth. I think she had been driven insane by her hunger. Older Parthim eat much more than younger ones. I don't know whether it was hunger or fear. But I do know that when she had climbed the topmost shelf of the beetles' homes, she began tossing the frightened beetles down to me. As if she wanted me to--to--"
Loora pressed her face into Cory's shoulder. Cory didn't feel anything.
"And then she fell. From the top shelf, thirty or forty trors up the insides of the larantine. Fell onto the rug where I woke Piruna from the dream that was about to kill her. The sound she made when she hit--I thought she was going to scream, but she didn't. She had broken bones, but couldn't tell me which ones. I managed to pull Pata onto Piruna's bed, an' I left her there. I sort of started to--but I can't say that. She was just so afraid, and hungry.