Malefactor

by Robert Repino

  This time, the lead badger could simply yank on the rope around her neck to keep her quiet. It worked.

  “You bring a bat in here,” the badger said. “Acting like he’s wounded. You think we’re falling for that?”

  “The geese are eating meat these days,” another badger said, patting his belly. “Not just fish and bugs, either. And they’re very hungry.”

  Well, at least someone would carry them to their deaths, rather than forcing them to walk. How convenient. For all she knew, the badgers would drop them in the middle of the flock, and the geese, with their tapered beaks, would pick them apart, nibble by nibble. Like getting flayed to death with hundreds of teaspoons.

  Another badger raced alongside with a plastic tarp. They stopped to cover the wheelbarrow so Nikaya could not see where they were going. Once the covering was secure, Gaunt had the nerve to exhale in relief, and his terrible breath warmed Nikaya’s snout.

  The bat squeaked to her. What say you to birds?

  “I’m thinking.”

  She would have to talk fast since the badgers had probably tied them to the spit on which they would roast. The bat did not seem to realize that.

  The noise grew as they descended farther into the valley. There were thousands of geese honking and squawking at one another. Nikaya recognized the tone. Jammed together, hungry, tired, these birds would grow more irritable by the minute and would bicker over the pettiest slights. Gaunt twitched his ears as he tried to track the conversations. Nikaya snapped her head to the side, yanking his rope. He got the message: Stay calm, stay quiet. Nothing we can do now.

  The wheelbarrow halted. Footsteps surrounded them. A flurry of wings slapped at the sides of the tarp. The badgers said something Nikaya could not understand. At some point, the geese must have shoved them aside and taken over, eager for some entertainment while they waited. These flocks had no leaders, no hierarchy—only couples and their surviving offspring, families looking out for their own. Several rivals jostled the wheelbarrow until it tipped over. Nikaya landed on her ribs. Someone whipped the tarp away. A row of beaks appeared, exactly as Nikaya imagined. They nipped at her hide, probing it. Gaunt flinched each time their mouths clamped onto his wings.

  Though the Change did not grant them fingers, it made the geese larger, more unwieldy. Fine black feathers covered their heads, matching their dark eyes and beaks. A white strap of feathers wrapped under their chins. The black plumage wrapped around their long necks and came to an abrupt stop at their breasts, giving way to brown and gray. As if someone had painted it on.

  The geese fought over their quarry. A few of them began a dance in which they bobbed their heads, with their tongues sticking out. Several fanned out their wings and flapped them, kicking away clouds of dirt. Between the combatants, Nikaya spotted several weaker ones. One of them had a broken beak, with the top part missing. The tongue slipped out like a pink worm. That image grounded Nikaya. These were people like her. She could reason with them.

  “I am Nikaya of Lodge City!” she screamed. The geese continued to march about. “I know you can hear me!” she added. A large male craned his neck above her and honked so loud that her ears rang. Gaunt whimpered.

  “This is Gaunt of Thicktree,” she said, searching for the words. “The proudest family of the Great Cloud.”

  Good, Gaunt squeaked.

  “. . . and Protectors of the Sacred Forest—”

  The male clamped onto her arm and tore away a strip of flesh. The pain shivered through her entire body, compelling her to pull on the rope, thereby choking the bat. The smell of her blood sent the others into a frenzy. Feather and bone collided as the geese slashed at one another—for the hell of it, it seemed.

  Pushing through the melee, the goose with the broken beak stepped in between the fighters. As she squawked at them, her tongue popped out of the unnatural hole in her face before sliding in again. She leaned over and bit into the knot in the rope. The broken beak did not function well, and Nikaya wondered if the other members of the flock helped to keep this one alive. At this perilous time of year, they needed every female they could get. Once the goose secured a tight grip, she pulled one of the knots free. As the bonds loosened, Nikaya and Gaunt rolled away from the log.

  When the geese noticed what the female had done, they surrounded her, honking and flapping and stamping their oddly shaped feet. She responded in English, probably so Nikaya could understand. “Listen!” she screamed. “Listen! Listen!”

  As the bird raised her wings, Nikaya noticed the remnants of cracked eggshells stuck to her tail feathers, most likely frozen onto her from endless days of flight in the jet stream. Nikaya had heard stories of mother geese whose nests were destroyed and who instinctively sat on the broken eggs while the yolk oozed out. Whoever or whatever destroyed her eggs had to break her face to do it. What have you seen? Nikaya wondered.

  The goose was too proud to accept a word of thanks from a beaver. Instead, she shouted down the others, then nodded for Nikaya to continue.

  “You deserve a better nesting ground than this,” Nikaya said, clutching the wound on her arm. “Lodge City is not far from here. Well, it’s not far for you. And your magnificent wings.”

  The geese tightened the circle. Nikaya suddenly remembered that these birds did not value flattery. Had she faced a tribunal of peregrine falcons, she would have had to spew praise for hours before they let her get to her point.

  “We once discussed letting your flock use Lodge City as a base on your way north,” she continued. “If you take me,” she said. “If you take us over the mountains, we can build a whole nesting site. Safe from the wolves.” Her engineer brain went into action. She pictured a field carved from the woods, where the geese could congregate and pluck the bugs from one another’s feathers. And after they left, the beavers could use their droppings for fuel.

  A few of the geese stopped and craned their necks in thought. Several others continued to lean forward like vipers ready to strike. Gaunt, huddled on the ground beside Nikaya and motioned to the ones who seemed ready to listen. She addressed them directly.

  “How much are you paying these badgers, anyway?” she asked. “You think they’re worth it?”

  “Yeah, we’re worth it, you old bag!” one of the badgers said.

  Nikaya turned toward the voice. The badgers waited behind a row of geese.

  “What do you do exactly?” she asked.

  “Protection.”

  “Protection? Then how did you let two assassins get this close?” She bared her buck teeth. “I can take down a live tree in minutes. What do you think I can do to a bird’s neck?”

  In a moment so satisfying she could never have imagined it while in prison, the badgers’ faces dropped. They turned to one another, completely helpless.

  A plump male goose waddled toward her. He was older than the others, with a scuffed beak and a limp. In the air, he could fly like an angel, no doubt. On the ground, gravity weighed on him like everyone else. “You want deal?” the goose said.

  The female with the broken mouth flicked her tongue again. Nikaya tried to ignore it.

  “Yes. A trip over the mountains, and then Lodge City will be part of goose country.”

  The plump one turned to Gaunt. “Bats hate beavers. Beavers hate bats.”

  “Not anymore,” Nikaya said, trying to place her body between them. “Lodge City is a haven. For all species. Beavers built it, but we share. Like we shared the ponds we created, before the Change.”

  Gaunt was right. This was what she was good at. Lying. It might still save their lives.

  “What do you offer?” the goose said to Gaunt.

  Squinting in the bright light, the bat twitched his head until he located the sound of his voice. He waddled over to her and extended his right wing, like a handshake.

  Nothing, Nikaya thought. He has nothing to offer. Refuge i
n a cave, perhaps, but little else. Yet the bird extended his own wing nonetheless, brushing his feathers against Gaunt’s limb.

  “You want deal,” the goose said to Nikaya. “Bats want friendship.”

  A murmur rippled through the birds. The plump goose quieted them with a loud honk.

  “We know you,” the goose said. “We know what you do. You betray the bats. You think you run away from this? You think you wash it clean? No.” He made a show of shaking his head so that the beak flipped from side to side. Soon, the others joined in. All the beaks moved in unison. The female with the eggshells in her feathers lowered her head. Though unwilling to pile on, she knew the old bird was right.

  “How many dead?” the plump one asked. “How many did your monster kill?”

  Castor once gave her a number, long before he learned of her plot to use the spider to destroy the bats. It was unbearable, especially with little Nikki among them. Someone else figured the number to be higher, considering how many went missing after the attack. One or a thousand, it made no difference. She was beyond saving. Beyond redemption.

  “Bat comes with us,” the plump one said. “We carry him.” He pointed his feathers at Nikaya. “Tie the beaver to a tree. When wolves come, they eat her instead of us.”

  Nikaya turned to the female goose. The bird hid behind her siblings. In her condition, she must have owed them her life, and therefore could not question their decisions. As the badgers seized Nikaya, she went limp in their arms, defeated, but finally able to rest. Of course it would end like this. The bats would win, and the other animals would forget all the good her people did.

  The honking started as they hauled her away. For all their talk of friendship, these people were not above taunting a defeated enemy. Nikaya felt a vibration through the ground—a scuffling somewhere behind her. Cutting through the noise, a single voice screeched and wailed. The birds’ fat bodies moved aside to make room. Gaunt stomped through the opening they created. Someone had returned his goggles to him, but they sat askew on his face after he’d hastily put them on. It made him resemble a helpless child pretending to be a grownup. But then he bared his fangs and pounded his good wing in the dirt. The circle around him grew larger as the geese tried to distance themselves.

  Gaunt pointed to Nikaya. “She make . . . good deal,” he said. Nikaya had never heard him speak so many words in her language. “She make fair deal! You take. You take!”

  “No deal with traitors,” the plump goose said. Again, his people drove the point home by shaking their heads.

  “You take deal. You need deal.”

  “Need,” the goose said, dragging out the word.

  “Yes! Need! Beaver served time. She . . .” He searched for the words. “She . . . shoveled. Shoveled the caves! She carry me!” He tried to mimic climbing onto Nikaya and tromping through the woods.

  “We carry too much already,” the plump goose said. “No more—”

  “I carry!” someone said. Nikaya knew right away that it was the broken female, the one with the eggshells and the mangled face. Maybe the only person here who could fathom what Nikaya had gone through to get here. “We need deal,” she said. She did not need to elaborate. Her condition spoke for her.

  Still, the fat goose hesitated.

  “War between our people over!” Gaunt shouted, looking right at Nikaya. “Over now!”

  Realizing that he had no real control over this flock, the old goose glanced at his comrades. A lone bird honked somewhere, but his protest died out.

  “Very well,” the goose said. “The wind arrives today.” He limped into the crowd, into the protection of his immediate family. The female followed him. Nikaya realized then that they were father and daughter. He would forgive her for challenging him, but probably not today.

  Nikaya took all of this as a yes to her offer. So did the badgers. They let her go, sniffing in disgust. “Hope they don’t drop your fat ass,” one of them said as he sauntered away.

  Gaunt approached, a walking blanket with his wings dragging behind him. He waited for her to speak while he straightened his goggles. She wanted to say thanks. But it was too hard, like relaxing a cramped muscle.

  Wind, the bat said in Chiropteran. It would have to do.

  “The water flows,” Nikaya replied. It would also have to do.

  Later that afternoon, while Nikaya and Gaunt napped in a ditch, one of the badgers dropped a pair of harnesses beside them. The clatter woke Nikaya first. Gaunt merely rolled onto his other side. All around them, the birds doddered about, still tired, yet anxious to fly. As the old goose predicted, a cruel wind gathered strength, sending feathers, leaves, and pine needles swirling in miniature tornadoes. The breeze carried away the scent of bird shit for a few seconds before it settled in again.

  The harnesses, fashioned from hemp, must have come from a squirrel community. Nikaya could tell by the stitching, having seen much of their work in the days when she oversaw the barter system for Lodge City. The geese may have traded some exotic seeds from the south for them. Though originally meant for transporting supplies, here they would carry a fully grown person.

  When Nikaya tried on the harness, slipping it over her heard like a vest, she pondered the insanity of this plan. What would stop the geese from dropping them at the first sign of a predator? They already spoke openly of using her as bait on the ground. Why not in the sky? Why not dangle her to a bird of prey? Until now, she could at least control the slow pace she took. Here, she trusted a disfigured, possibly deranged goose and her strange people.

  The strangeness did not stop once the geese agreed to Nikaya’s bargain. Rather than offer food or some other gesture of diplomacy, the geese continued milling around, honking at one another, treating the two intruders like new obstacles placed in their way. No songs to lighten the mood, no rituals to mark the occasion, no games to pass the time. So many days spent drifting on an air current allowed these animals to get by with little interaction, and virtually no signs of affection that Nikaya could see. On the ground, everyone was a nuisance, and the birds hoped to settle old scores from the previous season. Fights broke out among the younger ones while the older birds resorted to passive aggressive tactics, like shoving their enemies from behind or shitting on someone’s outstretched foot.

  A strong male goose emerged from the crowd, wearing his own harness, a badger at his flank. Nikaya knew right away that this bird—most likely another offspring of the old goose—would carry Gaunt. The badger helped the wounded bat to climb onto the goose and strap in. The bird honked at Gaunt, who responded with a squeak. You okay? Yes!

  One by one, the geese pointed in the direction of the wind, like clumsy weather vanes. A few of them flapped their wings, loosening them, shaking away the rust. Powder drifted from the snowcaps. The failing sunlight refracted through the particles. Nikaya’s last day on earth would at least provide a pretty sight.

  Something tapped Nikaya’s arm. She turned to find the female goose, ready to take her. Next to her brother, the female appeared small, frail, disheveled. Her harness hung loose from her breast. Part of the vest covered the shells encrusting her feathers. Nikaya decided then that she would not ask the goose what happened to her children. She remembered a proverb that almost all the species claimed as their own: “You are the master over someone who tells you their story.” Perhaps she was getting soft in her old age, but she could not bear to hold that kind of power over someone like this. Without a word, she climbed onto the goose and clipped herself into the harness.

  Another stiff wind pointed the geese in the direction of the mountains. Somehow, this flock knew down to the minute when this air current would arrive. The leaders, far in the front of the flock, lifted from the earth one row at a time. As they climbed the slope, they formed into a triangle, with the strongest serving as the tip. Nikaya’s heart seized. She could do this. Because she had to.

  To her
right, the gander spread his wings, ready to lift off. Gaunt clung to him, peering around his thick neck with his goggles in place. He had never seemed so small to Nikaya before.

  “Hey,” she shouted. The wind stole her voice, so she screeched like a bat. Gaunt turned to her. His goggles reflected the orange sun.

  She wanted to say thank you. She wanted to say sorry.

  “I’ll see you on the other side,” she said.

  The female goose coiled her neck so that she faced Nikaya. Her long tongue slipped out of the hole in her beak, then retracted. “You see your friend again,” she said. “Promise.”

  When her row reached the front of the flock, Nikaya braced herself by wrapping her arms tight around the goose’s throat. The wings spread out. Nikaya expected to rumble and bounce. Instead, with a hop and a light flick of her wings, the goose glided along with the air current. Below her, the dirt gave way to rock. As they got higher, they passed over a layer of pristine, perfectly white snow. A chorus of honking cut through the wind. Nikaya felt the thrumming in the goose’s neck as she joined in.

  They flew on the right arm of a great V formation, with Gaunt two spots to the left. The bat flapped his wings, pretending to carry the enormous bird beneath him. He turned to Nikaya, his fangs protruding—a terrible sight under normal circumstances, but this was how the bat showed his approval. He was flying again, something he must have thought impossible when this journey began.

  As the flock cleared the first set of mountain peaks, they shifted so the V formations stacked on top of one another. Nikaya glanced above to see the bellies of the geese. Below, a column of wings swayed in unison, with the spiked mountaintops passing far underneath.

  A new current of air bounced Nikaya in her saddle. The bird groaned in protest. Another blast of wind carried the voices of dozens of geese, honking furiously like little trumpets. Her goose veered away from the sound in perfect timing with the other birds in the squadron. While Nikaya hung on, she caught sight of two geese dropping from the formation, trailing feathers in their wake.