by Unknown
“Do you honor her choice?” said Moor.
Living or dying, she would have been alone. I shrugged. “Is death worse than empty life?”
Moor laughed. “Come, and see purpose.”
First, I packed her wound with lichen and bound it with fern in scant hope that it might heal, then scraped a hole to bury the dead one so she would not draw carrion feeders. Then I went up again to see what Moor would show me.
We climbed, and I marveled at her strength. We leapt from a high branch to the next tree, caught a low branch on that tree, climbed, and leapt again. Gods, she wore me out with fear she would fall. Each leap, with only one hind foot, was a twisted affair, but she kept on and on. Leap and desperate grab, then patient climb and leap again, by leaf and limb, tree to tree.
She stopped finally and purled a quiet sound, a puddle croon. I barely heard it, though I rested just above her. There was a wog on the ground below, this year’s hatching, one of hers. He nosed in the leaf litter, rose up to listen and look about, then searched the ground again. She told me what progress he had made, but didn’t show herself to him.
We moved on and again she stopped to point out another, clinging to the side of a tree, and another farther on who also searched the ground. They never knew we watched.
“Don’t you teach them?” I asked.
“Did your mother?”
She had not.
“No one does. We bear them and defend them at the puddle. That is our purpose.”
“Nothing more?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Beyond that, each must make his own way.”
I felt great pity for her children. Moor was wrong, though I couldn’t say how I knew it.
At the next tree, she searched, then climbed lower and found none of her children. At the next tree again, she saw none, but continued tree to tree, searching, not stopping until there came the sound of water. She paused then to listen.
Her eyes were red with pain. She shifted her weight to her hands gripping the limb and rocked from side to side. Most of the wrapping had fallen from her wound. She dripped a fetid trail that could draw the attention of even a belly-full hunter.
Suddenly, the thin shrieks of crying wogs shivered up my arms. She roared.
I would have said Moor had no strength remaining, but she set a desperate pace, limb to branch, then a crashing leap to the ground. I cast a hasty glance for leaves or moss to soften my landing before I leapt. Though close behind her, by the time I’d plowed into a bed of green and spit out a broken fern, she was away.
I could have wept, watching her hobbled race. On both her hands and one good leg, she flew to her children. Badly crippled, her courage despised pity. First shamed, then heartened, I pelted after her.
Heedless to the danger of our reckless passage, we topped a steep bank, intent only on the cries of dying wogs. A shallow pond lay before us, its edges a meld of grasses and water. A stream trickled along one side. A lurker stood in the slow water near the bank, its knees just below the surface. It was the color of twilight. It turned its head from side to side, looking for wogs at the water’s edge. They had returned to their puddle, though Moor had driven them away. The lurker also had returned.
It turned toward us, somber eyes so near. I chilled. With a lightening stroke, it pierced a wog hiding in the grass just below us.
The wog screamed and Moor leapt from the bank onto the back of the lurker. She began to climb its neck. “Go for its eyes,” she had told me, “if you ever fight a lurker.”
Crippled, she was not quick enough.
The lurker let go of the bleeding wog and plucked Moor from its hide. I leapt to the lurker’s back as it shook her with a hard snap that broke her spine. The lurker tried to cast Moor away to get at me, but she clung to its beak with her two strong hands, and gave me time. I scrambled to its crest, grabbed two hands full of slick, dark feathers, and drove a spur into the base of its skull. The lurker dropped.
I pried Moor’s fingers loose from the murderous beak and held her in the slow water. It bore her weight as she died. I hoped it eased her pain. The last of her wogs gathered at the bank and sang an evening song.
♦ ♦ ♦
Seasons passed, and morning came. I waited in a taubaugh tree, higher than ever before, to watch first light. It pierced the dark. I threw out my tongue to catch a dancing gossamer, melting, small meat. My new pack ran below, little ones so eager behind big ones so serious, chasing fresh meat. I smiled, and watched the spangled dawn.
I eased down the taubaugh to a lower limb, waiting. They would come back this way. I knew them better than they knew themselves.
After a time they returned, their faces smudged with success. Careless, they did not see me until I spoke. “Children.”
They stopped, every mouth opened with surprise. These were my first sons, and Moor’s sons who had crooned her death, and a few others. They gathered their wits, then greeted me.
“Mother, mother, mother…”
“Mother, mother…” The oldest nudged the smallest with his elbow.
“Mother,” he said with a voice that was as light as he. Graceful, more long-limbed than the others, a stranger, he would become a quick climber. It was a worthy talent.
The older ones, sons of Moor, rose to sniff the air, pretending innocence. The largest eyed my speckled side, then met my gaze. Too late. I am egg heavy already. I growled a lazy warning. He lowered himself and turned toward the forest as if he didn’t care. I knew their thoughts before they did.
They were fine fellows, every one. They told me of their hunt until I stretched and turned away. They padded off, toward the water, to wash their sticky faces. As they left, I heard the small one say, “Next hunt, can I help?”
“Yes,” said the tall one beside him. “Stay by me. I’ll show you how.”
I am Boon. I teach my pack.
Copyright © 2008 by Catherine S. Perdue