by Perrin Briar
Wark! it said.
It appeared to be staring at nothing in particular, its back to them.
“Hey!” Cassie said.
“What are you doing?” Aaron hissed, pulling Cassie back.
The big yellow ball of fluff began to turn, slowly, ominously. But before it could lay eyes on Cassie, she stepped aside, taking Aaron’s hand and pulling him in front of her, holding him there, a shield against the chick.
“You’re sacrificing me?” Aaron said.
“Just shut up for a minute,” Cassie said. “I’ve got an idea.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Aaron said. “You’re not the one facing down a chick from hell.”
The chick had made its full revolution and stared down at Aaron and Cassie with its big white googly eyes. He cocked his head to one side in curiosity before waddling closer.
Aaron squirmed against Cassie’s grip.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I don’t want to sacrifice myself now.”
“Hold still,” Cassie said. “Trust me.”
The chick bent forward and put its face within inches of Cassie’s eyes. It was big and powerful, strong. Its beak looked sharp as a razorblade and glinted in the sunlight. Its huge eyes were fixed firmly on Aaron. It appeared to be waiting for him to do something.
The creature made a strange Wark sound. It could almost have been an English word, tinted with a question. Though what a newly hatched chick would have to say to Aaron, he had no idea.
The chick bent closer and pressed the top of its beak, where its nostrils were located, to his hair. It sniffed.
“What does it want?” Aaron said.
“I think he wants you to return his affections,” Cassie said.
“His affections?” Aaron said. “What affections?”
“Make the same sound back to it,” Cassie said.
“What sound?” Aaron said, unable to take his eyes off the chick.
Wark!
“That sound,” Cassie said.
“You can’t be serious,” Aaron said.
A similar call came from above their heads. One of the parent birds circled above them. Cassie could see their one chance of escape slipping through their fingers. The bird descended at a sharp angle toward them.
The chick turned to look at these matching figures approaching at high speed from the sky. They would stand no chance of bringing the bird to their side if Aaron didn’t make the noise. Cassie stepped forward.
“Wark!” she said. “Wark wark!”
She flapped her arms and bobbed her head, mimicking the chick to the best of her ability. She turned to watch the chick’s reaction. The chick watched her, but evidently her performance wasn’t to the chick’s liking. It turned back to Aaron, twisting its head to one side, and made its customary inquisitive Wark?
“You’re the one who has to make the noise,” Cassie said to Aaron.
“I’m too young to be a mother!” Aaron said.
“But you’re not too young to die?” Cassie said. “Because that’s what’s going to happen to us if you don’t repeat its call.”
“I don’t want to die!” Aaron said.
“Then make the sound!” Cassie said.
The Humungo parents were swinging in low now, coming in to land. If the bond wasn’t sealed now they would have no chance. They would be stuck here. Likely, dead.
“Do it!” Cassie said. “Now!”
“Wark!” Aaron said. “Wark wark wark!”
He danced like a fool, flapping his arms and making a show of himself. His life depended on it. The chick turned its head to one side, peering at Aaron with confusion, and yet rapt with fascination. It was hard to read the young chick’s facial expressions.
“What have you done?” Aaron said. “Have you cast a spell? A love spell?”
“If I could do that I would have gone to the prom with David Ryan and not Debra Sayer,” Cassie said.
“What’s happening to me?” Aaron said. “Did you spray me with some kind of seed pheromones or something?”
“Seed pheromones?” Cassie said. “What are you talking about?”
“Why is this chick so into me?” Aaron said. “Is it really confused, do you think?”
“No, nothing like that,” Cassie said. “I remembered something from a biology lesson once.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Aaron said.
“Shut up!” Cassie said. “Though to be honest, I was surprised too. It was about imprinting, how young birds—ducks?—I can’t remember—developed a kinship with creatures that weren’t their biological mother. And I thought, what if the chick sees you first, before it sees its mother and father? Might it think you’re its mother and not want to harm you?”
“Why me?” Aaron said. “You’re female. You’re more motherly than me.”
Cassie arched an eyebrow at him.
“Or maybe not,” Aaron said. “Good idea. It’s likely to be the only way we’ll get out of this alive. But I wish it didn’t have to be me who had to be the caring one.”
“Who else would you suggest?” Cassie said.
Aaron pursed his lips.
“Good point,” he said.
The bird parents came in to land, extending their legs and flapping their wings to slow their approach. It still seemed strange to Cassie to see such large birds with relatively small wings come in to land like that. Their movements were smooth and choreographed with thousands of similar landings.
Cassie picked up on their aggressive stance immediately. They weren’t playing games, not any longer. They were here for the kill. They had harvested all these resources for their chicks and now they were going to get used. Chief amongst the resources would be the two living humans.
The nest shook with thudding footsteps as the parent birds marched with matching footsteps toward Aaron and Cassie, one on either side, like henchmen on the warpath to avenge their fallen comrade. Only now they had found the man responsible for his death. There was no way they were going to overcome them.
Cassie and Aaron said a prayer under their breaths, unable to take their eyes from the twin images of death heading directly for them. Aaron and Cassie were forced backward, toward the eggs lined up like soldiers, ready to defend them should the enemy encroach too far and close. A feathery deathsquad. The dark feathers about their eyes were blindfolds, their sharp talons their weapon of choice.
Wark!
The newly hatched chick came to a skidding halt between Aaron and Zoe on one side and the birds on the other. It bucked its legs and stamped its feet, making rattling, menacing noises. The parent birds warbled in response in a questioning tone. The chick ducked its head and bounced on its toes. It was ready to put up a fight.
No one was more surprised by the sudden turn of events than the bird parents themselves, who stood with confused expressions, looking down at Aaron and Cassie as if they had cast some kind of spell on their little chick.
The parents turned and headed away, casting harried glances at their lost baby. The chick rubbed its face against Aaron. Just like a cat.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Aaron said.
He was staring uncertainly at the chick.
“He thinks you’re his mother,” Cassie said.
“Lucky me,” Aaron said. “I hope it doesn’t expect milk.”
“Birds don’t get milk from its mother, you idiot,” Cassie said. “And I thought you were meant to be the smart one.”
“Regurgitate, then,” Aaron said. “Whatever.”
“Comes with the territory, I’m afraid,” Cassie said. “At least until it realizes you’re not his mother. Then we’re for it.”
Cassie had bought them a little more time. Perhaps not a lot, but some.
20.
STURGESS HAD never experienced fear before. He didn’t know if it was a weakness or a strength, but it was certainly something that distinguished him from the rest of the miners.
Miners by their nature w
ere hardy people. They had to enter the abyss, the dark, without knowing what might lie inside it. And they had to hack at the very substance that kept them safe, the very material that kept the roof over their heads. A wrong stroke, and the cave would fall in upon them.
But even they felt the filament of fear glint in their heart when they heard the ominous creak of the surrounding earth begin to give way. Sturgess, for better or worse, didn’t even feel that much fear. He trusted himself to get out when and if the need arose.
There was nothing he had ever been afraid of… And yet, deep in the pit of his stomach he began to feel something, something he had no prior experience of. At first he took it for indigestion, a discomfort deep in his chest. But it persisted, and he found it was attached to some disconcerting thoughts.
“You’ve got that look in your eye,” a voice said.
Sturgess turned to find his wife, Greisha, standing with her hands on his hips. One weakness of not feeling fear was not being able to sense what it was his wife was really saying. A man’s ability to read between the lines was stunted when he didn’t fear what his wife was saying.
“I’m just thinking,” Sturgess said.
“I know you were,” Greisha said. “And it never leads to anywhere nice.”
“I might surprise you,” Sturgess said.
“That you would,” Greisha said.
She sighed and approached her husband. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close.
“I might not be able to read,” she said. “But I can read you like a book.”
“I was just thinking about what Bryan and Zoe said to us, about not having to put up with what we have here,” Sturgess said.
“I know what you were thinking,” Greisha said. “But what we have here isn’t so bad, is it?”
“It’s not about that,” Sturgess said. “I’m happy with you, you know that.”
He put his hand to her stomach.
“But it’s not just us we have to think about,” he said. “We have to think about his future, what he might want to do. I don’t want him to be a miner, to have no choice but to follow in my steps. My father didn’t want that for me either, but he didn’t do anything about it.”
“But you will?” Greisha said.
“Maybe,” Sturgess said. “If I don’t, who will?”
Greisha pulled back and looked her husband in the eye.
“Don’t forget what happened to Key,” she said. “He wanted to make a change too, and the only change he made was not returning to his wife and child.”
“You don’t think I remember?” Sturgess said. “He was my best friend.”
“When you talk like this, no,” Greisha said. “I don’t think you do remember.”
“He gave his life for us,” Sturgess said.
“He gave his life for himself,” Greisha said. “He was selfish.”
“He was trying to help us, save us, protect us,” Sturgess said. “Any man worth his salt would have—should have—done the same thing.”
“Then there would have been two husbandless wives instead of one,” Greisha said. “Please, just drop it. I can’t stand to lose you.”
“And you think I could stand to be the kind of man who just sits back and lets the world—our future—get destroyed?” Sturgess said. “You could respect such a man? Could continue to love him? I couldn’t stand to be such a man. Never. And I could never subject you to his weakness.”
Greisha had never known such an outburst from Sturgess. He was always so quiet and tight lipped. Now he had spoken openly to her about his emotions.
“Those surface dwellers had quite an impact on you, didn’t they?” Greisha said.
“I need to go for a walk,” Sturgess said. “Get some fresh air.”
He stepped outside without waiting for her response. He shut the door behind himself and breathed in the warm air laced with dust. It scratched the back of his throat, and then he realized the sensation had nothing to do with the dust, but the burning onset of tears.
Sturgess turned to head back into his home, and then decided against it. He turned back two more times before he took a deep breath, exhaled, and decided to head away, into the night.
The village was quiet. Tents glowed with the soft ethereal lights of candles, and shadows of families played on the walls. There was so much good here, so many good people, so much they still had to achieve, and yet Sturgess couldn’t shake the feeling he had in the pit of his stomach.
He drifted within sight of the giant Gravitas boulder they had discovered. It was the largest fragment they had ever found. The Merchants would be happy. Or would they? It was hard to tell. It had been so long since they had had much correspondence with them.
This wasn’t the first time Sturgess had had his reservations. He’d suggested they stop mining, stop sending Gravitas to the Merchants, but he’d been shouted down. So long as the Merchants continued to send food, they would continue to send Gravitas.
Sturgess spent the rest of the night walking. That was what he did when he needed to think deeply on a subject. He walked and walked and walked, until he looked up and realized he didn’t know where he was. Then he turned around and continued his walk back to camp. He always found his way.
Sometimes, if the problem was big enough, he would walk all night, arriving just a few minutes before work began the next day. His wife would give him his breakfast and they would both walk toward the pit.
She would always give him the same expression, the same look on her face that showed how she didn’t understand why he did what he did, only that she supported him in his need to do it.
Bryan and Zoe had continued on their journey. Sturgess didn’t know if they would find what they were looking for. He only hoped they would. It was a terrible thing to lose your children, and to have them taken from you like that was never easy to overcome.
Sturgess wished them all the best and understood the challenges they faced in reaching the nest. Many a miner child had been taken by the birds in the past. It had happened a great deal in the past when there were many more Humungos. Over the years they had gradually been wiped from the face of the world and replaced with the magma and red hot lava.
Sturgess feared that was precisely what was going to happen to the miners too. They would do their utmost to protect themselves, but at times there was precious little you could do when the world turned its back on you. Something had to be done about it, and soon.
Sturgess’s thoughts revolved unceasingly inside his skull. He was chipping away at the great Gravitas rock, slipped, and struck his own foot, slicing his little toe in half. He’d long since learned how to block the pain from such wounds. Greisha was on hand to aid him.
“Where is your mind today?” his wife said.
“Up in the clouds,” Sturgess said.
“You keep having accidents like this, the rest of you will be sliced up there too,” Greisha said.
“You have such a way with words,” Sturgess said.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Greisha said.
“Nothing,” Sturgess said, though the word was hard fought in his throat.
His wife arched an eyebrow, but she didn’t pry. She knew he would tell her if he wanted to discuss the subject.
“It’s just…” Sturgess said. “I never thought we would be here. I never thought we would be stuck here like this.”
“We have friends, family, a home, food, a baby on the way…” Greisha said.
“The stories Bryan and Zoe told us, about all the things they had achieved and done, the education they have, the kind of things their children can do compared to ours…” Sturgess said. “Do you think that’s how the Merchants live?”
Greisha’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you expect to achieve with such questions?” she said, her voice low.
She tied off his bandage, a little tighter than she needed, and leaned forward to kiss him on the knee.
“What I fear, what I dread with every fi
ber of my being, is the day we wrench too much Gravitas out of the earth and it destroys our world,” Sturgess said. “When we can’t go back, ruined the only world we have ever known. We must rebel. It’s our only chance.”
He spoke in a low voice, like he was uttering a dirty word within hearing of his parents. Greisha cast a look over her shoulders.
“You’ll get something, if you’re not careful,” Greisha said. “Some of the others will take any opportunity to take advantage to get what they want.”
“The Merchants don’t keep an eye on us the way they once did,” Sturgess said.
“What are you thinking?” Greisha said, eyes wide.
“Lava spills from the world like blood,” Sturgess said. “One of these days we’re going to inflict a mortal wound, one the world will never recover from. And that’ll be it. It might even be this lump of Gravitas. It’s big, larger than any we’ve extracted up till now.”
“You’re worrying about nothing,” Greisha said. “None of that has ever happened.”
“You’re right, it hasn’t,” Sturgess said. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t. There are signs, if we only open our eyes to see them. The Humungos have been disappearing, the temperature has gotten hotter, and it’s tougher to survive. Don’t you think it at least has something to do with the Gravitas we’re extracting from the walls?”
“No,” Greisha said. “So maybe Gravitas mining does have something to do with it. But then again, maybe it doesn’t. How can we know?”
“By stopping,” Sturgess said. “And seeing what happens. If the world recovers, we’ll stop. If it continues to get worse anyway, then we haven’t lost anything.”
“Except our only source of food,” Greisha said.
“Better than our only home,” Sturgess said. “We’re miners. We can survive.”
“This decision, if you make it, you’ll be making for all of us,” Greisha said. “It’s fair if everyone has a chance to cast a vote.”
“No,” Sturgess said. “Not everyone will agree with what we have to do.”